Prayer Challenges

Current Challenge from Doug Knox.

September

Theology of the Gospel 1

Isaiah 6:1-7

GOD IS HOLY

A Brief Autobiographical Footnote

Five and a half years ago, the church where Patty and I are members faced a series of potential crises that began when elder board entered a vision quest that looked to corporate business models to build our church. During that time, we were engaged in discussions with a seeker-friendly church that wanted to take over our congregation and reshape us into an evangelism machine. Thankfully, that plan never materialized. It left us wounded, however. During our months in Limbo, we lost members. Three men came in to serve either as interim pastors or as pastoral candidates. None of them stayed. Thankfully, the Lord brought us a man earlier this year who has reawakened us to our sense of mission. My autobiographical footnote occurs during the period of our upheaval. I was on the board during that time that the vision quest took place. While I defended the biblical position of the church, it was a weak defense. When it was over, I had to consider why I was not more vocal for the truth. The answer came through Scripture. In the final months of our struggle, the church gave me periodic opportunities to preach on Sunday mornings. What would I preach about? I determined that I would focus exclusively on the meaning and theology of the gospel—not the fifteen-minute presentation designed to entice our listeners to “pray this prayer,” but the foundational, history-long drama that runs from Genesis to Revelation. The teachings that include God in creation, the meaning of sin and the Fall, divine wrath paired with the promise of grace, the incarnation of Jesus in the flesh, his redemptive work on the cross, his burial and resurrection, his promise to return to judge the world, the call to repentance, the believer’s walk in faith, and his hope of redemption. Now, I do not possess natural charisma. I love to teach, but I have wilted under criticism. I knew that this series would require levels of fortitude that I had yet to generate. Yet the Lord showed his affirmation as I gathered material. Notes and ideas for sermons filled pages my laptop screen, and I could sense the Lord’s presence behind them. This was the gospel, after all. If the Lord had given me deep understanding, my responsibility was to communicate that understanding. Two surprises resulted when I began the series. One, the church responded positively to the teaching. Not so much by popular vote, but in their thoughts. They responded to the ideas like a dried houseplant responds to water. And two, my courage in the gospel became grounded. I knew were I stood, and that fact alone gave me renewed confidence to stand on the truth and to share it. With that, I offer this series to you. I look forward to sharing the truths again, and I hope you will experience the same blessings that I have.

The Biblical Call to Hear the Gospel

The Bible never introduces the gospel message by appealing to human need with a promise that good things are about to come to the listeners. It begins with God.

• The opening words of the Bible proclaim, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).
• The LORD’s introduction to Moses when he spoke to him from a burning bush: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God if Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” (Exodus 3:6).
• The LORD’s words to Israel during the inauguration of the Law covenant on Mount Sinai: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” (Exodus20:2).
• The Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).
• Paul’s proclamation of the Gospel to the philosophers at Athens: “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth…” (Acts 17:24).
• The opening of the book of Romans, the most complete theological presentation of the gospel in the Bible: “Paul...set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures…(Romans 1:1-2).

If the gospel that we preach is to be biblical, it must follow the biblical pattern. When we look at the foundational principles of the gospel from the Bible, the order is always the same. In the broadest terms, God, who is our creator and who holds authority over his creation, rules from his heaven to judge the affairs of all men and will hold them accountable for their deeds. God’s rule includes redemption. That theme enters history in the third chapter of Genesis. Conversely, we cannot appreciate redemption fully until we understand the most fundamental truth about God, that he is holy.

Holiness in the Old Testament, from the Literal Ground Up

Contemporary descriptions of holiness often describe it as the perfection of God’s attributes, or his revealed characteristics. These include his omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, sovereignty, justice, goodness, mercy, and others. The Old Testament gives us a much more concrete revelation of the meaning of the word. The Hebrew word for holy is qadosh (with a long o). Besides the adjective form, variants of the word appear as nouns (holy things) and verbs (to be holy). In all cases in the Hebrew Scriptures, holiness refers to something that is separate or sanctified, either assignment or by its nature. In Genesis 2:3, for example, “God blessed the seventh day and made it holy” (Hebrew, qadash, meaning, “he sanctified it”). Physically, the Sabbath is no different from any other day. The sun rises and sets like always. The Sabbath gains its significance as a sanctified day because God appointed it for rest and worship. Again, when Moses stood near the burning bush, the LORD told him, “Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy (qodesh) ground.” The sand remained unchanged. The holiness of the place came from God’s presence. In one description, Moses “steps across a boundary, enters a threshold into a different domain. This is not moral achievement, but a crossing into presence that will forever mark him.”¹ To be near God is to be in the midst of sacredness. Israel as a nation was separated for God’s glory following their redemption from Egypt. “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy (qadosh) nation.” Israel’s covenant call was to be a nation distinct from others, set apart for God’s glory.

The Lord, the Ultimate “Other”

If the LORD has the right to decree days of the week, or the sand on which his servant stands, or the identity of his people as holy, how much more is his own presence a terrifying thing to contemplate? The prophet Isaiah’s well-known encounter is traumatic.

Isaiah describes the ultimate loss of self in the other. Several months ago, I discussed the writer H.P. Lovecraft’s concept of “cosmic horror.” His writings explored the terror that consumes finite beings when they come into contact with the immensity of the raw cosmos. Isaiah’s trauma results from his encounter a vision of the LORD, who created the cosmos. He does not confront merely indescribable vastness. He confronts a God who is personal and altogether separate from everything created. The four burning ones (the literal translation of the word seraphim) cover their eyes and feet as they fly about crying, “Other, Other, Other is the LORD of hosts! The whole earth is full of his glory.” The LORD’s triply-emphasized otherness that the burning ones address speaks to the essence of holiness. Isaiah sees his corruption in this light. “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” Compared to Isaiah’s encounter with the Holy, our usual evangelical description of holiness as the perfection of his attributes fallsflat. Our modern description reduces the meaning of holiness to the totality of a list of abstract qualities. God knows all things, he sees all things, he is all-powerful, he is just, he is perfectly good, and so on. This is little more than the expansion of human characteristics into infinity. As great as Gods’ attributes are, they do not merge to make him holy. Holiness is not the sum of everything infinite in God’s personality. That idea fails to shock us. Isaiah became traumatized because his unclean lips had become exposed to the God whose nature was separate from anything unclean. He stood naked in the presence of perfection. Isaiah’s horror mirrors that of Job, centuries earlier, when the LORD revealed himself to him at the resolution of the book. After the LORD interrogates Job, the man declares,

The Lord is real, personal, and infinitely “other.” Lovecraft’s cosmic horror, as intriguing as the idea is, pales next to God’s holiness. As small as we are, we are part of the cosmos. It shares our corruption (Romans 8:22). The whole creation waits for the day when the Lord will drive corruption and the corrupted ones from his presence (Romans 8:23). The completion of history involves the creation’s rescue from the Genesis curse and its return to holiness. Yet the new creation in Revelation 21-22 will be unimaginably different from the original. The creation in Genesis 1-2 was holy because it was free from corruption (Genesis 1:31). The new creation will be infinitely more holy because it will have been redeemed by nothing less than Christ’s perfect blood. The cosmos will have been bought by Christ’s righteousness.

Holiness in the Hope of Glory

If the believer’s hope were only an eternal vacation in heaven, it would never survive the challenges that we face. Our hope lies in the promise that Christ will conform us fully into God’s image, that we will be able to worship the eternal Other in full standing. The Apostle John writes,

I want to make two points on this passage. One, the promise that we will see God as he is points to perfection. Paul’s theology shows how this involves the physical aspects of our being (1 Corinthians 15:35-49; also see Romans 8:15-17²). John emphasizes the spiritual dimension in his letter. When God brings us into his eternal presence, our sanctification will find its final and complete fulfillment through Christ. The otherness that traumatized Isaiah no longer will be a barrier to our fellowship with the Father because we will be conformed to his likeness and glory. Two, this hope compels us to seek God’s practical righteousness in this life. “Everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.” The word, purifies, comes from the Greek word hagiadzo, meaning to make clean or to purify. This New Testament word is used to translate the Old Testament term, qadosh, to make holy in order to set aside for God’s particular use. This brings us full circle. We who have been redeemed set ourselves aside for God’s redemptive use.

Holiness in the Gospel

The gospel is not a plea from a weak god who waits heaven for someone to annex him into his unchanged life in a half-hearted affirmation of belief. This cheapens the gospel to the level of Confederate money. The biblical gospel recognizes God’s otherness. He is the holy God who stands forever against sin but who also gave his Son to be sin on our behalf. He will judge the living and the dead on one term and one term alone—whether or not we have forsaken our evil ways and have sought his righteousness at any cost.

¹ The Local Dreamer Podcast, “What Does ‘Holy’ Really Mean | Kadesh, Kadash, & Kadosh Explained,” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQLIKI0vtEQ, accessed August 19, 2026. ↩

² The final clause in this reference, “...provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him,” does not imply that some who happen to escape suffering miss out. The same expression occurs in Romans 8:29-30, where the term is is translated as causal: “Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one—who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.” So it should be in Romans 8, where the promise is unmistakable: “...since we suffer with him….” The text that follows in in Romans 8:18-27 addresses the meaning and ultimate glory of the suffering that every believer experiences. ↩

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October

Theology of the Gospel 2

Genesis 1–3, Survey

GOD IS CREATOR

The Organized Church’s Surrender of the Doctrine of Creation to Secular Science

The defining foundation for the gospel is the message that God is Creator. Without this foundation, the gospel message crumbles. Here is an example. While I was involved in my seminary studies, the church associated with my school hosted a conference on the gospel. The seminary touted the event as a big deal, so I went to the opening session. The speaker introduced his message with the following observation and recommendation. I write this from memory, but his intent was clear. He said,

We must admit that we Christians cannot compete with modern science on the question of origins, so we must not try to confront them on their own territory. We cannot possibly persuade them otherwise. Instead, we should consider an alternate message that goes to the heart of the gospel issue. When someone confronts us with evolutionary theory, we should say, “Let’s not talk about that right now. Let me tell you about the love of Jesus.”

The speaker surrendered the gospel in the first minute of his presentation. As we compare the biblical narrative with the evolutionary narrative, we will see why this is the case.

The Three-Chapter Foundation of the Gospel in Genesis

The gospel narrative, the story of God’s redemption, begins in the opening of Genesis. If we look at the first three chapters, we see the kernel that blossoms into the glorious gospel of grace. Genesis 1 introduces our origins. The chapter stands as hymn of praise to God for the work that he accomplishes. The original language uses the word Elohim to portray God in this chapter. It is God’s title of majesty in the original language. “In the beginning, Elohim created the heavens and the earth.” The chapter is doxlolical. In it, God acts alone. He speaks, and the command comes to pass. He makes things according to his determination. All creation obeys his word. All glory for a good creation goes to Elohim. When we look at the details, the chapter depicts the successive levels of order that God brings to it day by day. Even before man is created, the heavens and earth declare God’s glory. He builds beauty into the fabric of the universe. He sees that what he makes is good. When he creates man on the sixth day, he makes male and female in his image and assigns them their position at the head of creation. The account of the seven days continues through Genesis 2:3, where God rests from his creation work.

Genesis 2:4 recounts the creation account with the words, “These are the generations….” The clause appears fourteen times in Genesis. The other thirteen occurrences refer to the human descendants of the major characters in summary. We must interpret Genesis 2 the same way. It is the same story, retold in covenant terms. That is, the account records God’s act of creating relationship with Adam. The chapter introduces the name, Yahweh-Elohim, translated the LORD God in our Bibles. For context, when the LORD first summons Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3, he declares the name as God’s covenant name with Israel, the name by which they will know him. “Say this to the people of Israel, I AM has sent me to you…. This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations” (Exodus 3:14, 15b).

Genesis 2, carries that meaning in light of God’s covenant with Adam. Here, the LORD God places Adam at the head of creation and commands him to rule it. In this chapter we also learn that “It is not good that the man should be alone.” The LORD God establishes marriage, the most fundamental human relationship, by presenting a wife to Adam to complete him. Adam recognizes the gift and calls her “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” The man and his wife are invited to enjoy all the fruits of the Garden. They have great freedom before their God and Creator. The only exception is the tree in the middle of the garden, about which the LORD God warns them, “The day they eat of it, you will surely die.” The tree was never meant to be a stumbling block for the man and woman. Instead, it defined their faith requirement. They were to enjoy the LORD God’s blessings in the Garden while they trusted him for what they could not understand (Hebrews 11:6).

The narrative paints a glorious picture of humanity. The LORD God gave Adam (who represented all human beings) intelligence, an ethical framework, understanding, dignity, meaning, purpose, and responsibility. It grants human beings infinite worth from their Creator. Then we come to Genesis 3, which records the fall of the man and woman. The serpent entices the woman. Together the couple disobeys the LORD God’s single command. Now the warning, “You shall surely die,” takes on experiential meaning. They discover moral guilt and shame. The picture of the consciousness of their nakedness is the most graphic way to depict the horror of their fall. God becomes a terror to them, and they receive the sentence of condemnation from God. But grace shines through the darkness in the cryptic promise that the woman’s seed will bruise the serpent’s head. Further, the man and his wife witness grace firsthand the LORD God makes animal-skin coverings for them. The innocent dies for the guilty so that their sin may be covered. The fundamentals for the gospel shine from the first three chapters of Genesis.¹

Evolution’s Opposing Narrative

In that light, reconsider evolution dogma in the context of the seminary speaker’s address. Evolution’s first offensive shot is to claim “scientific” superiority over the biblical creation account. It claims to rest on concrete experimentation and observation. In truth, the evolutionary account only seeks to remove God from the narrative. The “theory” is an attempt to give assign weight to the cosmos, and it is deeply religious. Some older readers may recall Carl Sagan’s 1980 PBS series, “Cosmos.” The production quality was top notch, and the series became iconic in its place in television history. Sagan’s opening statement, “The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be,” laid the gauntlet for his position the nature of reality. It marked his sign on the door, “No Deities Allowed.” However, I always found it ironic that following his no-god introduction, he would laud the wonder of “billions and billions of years” while an incredibly ethereal and beautiful soundtrack played in the background. The music was an expression of awe. The series was never ultimately about science. It was a narrative that “worshiped the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25), right on our television screens. All praise to evolution.

Narratives in Opposition

Historically, evolution dogma has claimed the carry the groundwork for the greatness of human aspirations. During its early days especially, it promised an ever-progressive future. Lifeless matter spontaneously generates into living material, capable of growing and reproducing itself. Life springs spontaneously, and biological entities thrive. Biology becomes ever more complex until we human beings find ourselves showing self-awareness, reason, and self-direction. In the classical evolutionary universe, everything rises to its present state, and there is no limit. And that brings us back to the speaker at the seminary. If we have risen to our current status, who needs the love of Jesus? What does the term even mean?

This challenge is not meant to push dogmatic but ignorant insistence that creation is right. It seeks to demonstrate two points. One is to show that the creation narrative coexists with the gospel. It gives the gospel meaning by showing that we have fallen rather than risen to our present state. When the Bible introduces God to those who do not know him, it portrays him as Creator (see, for example, Jonah 1:7–9 and Acts 17:22–25). Two, we must recognize that the creation narrative cannot coexist with the evolution account. The two are logically opposed to each other at every point. We know that the gospel declares Jesus as Savior and Lord. But it also declares him as Creator, Sustain-er, and Judge. The creation account reveals man’s dignity and moral nature, his condemnation under God’s just law, and hope for redemption through God’s grace. The evolution narrative has erased moral constraints and brought racial and sexual violence, eugenic war, abortion on demand, and now the permission for mothers to take their own children’s lives. It has no basis to declare moral authority. In the moral sense, it has no way to give man a sense of dignity. If we are only a product of matter plus time plus chance, nothing can be right or wrong. There is no moral difference between a rescue worker carrying a victim from a burning building and a mother of three who garrotes her children with an exercise band. When we give in to evolution narrative and say, “Let me tell you about the love of Jesus,” we surrender the gospel itself. For the gospel to offer any hope to a world that is dead in sin, it must be rooted in creation.

¹ Of course, the gospel continues through the Old Testament in what many have called “the scarlet thread of redemption.” In the remainder of the book of Genesis we witness the progression of sin in the world (Genesis 4:1–6:8); judgment, grace, and covenant with Noah (Genesis 6:9–9:29); the rebellion of the nations (Genesis 10:1–11:9), and finally the call of Abraham to be the model of faith for the world (Genesis 12–23 with Romans 4:1–25), along with the patriarchs who followed in his steps (Genesis 24–50). ↩

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October

Theology of the Gospel 3

Psalm 8

UNDERSTANDING THE REASON FOR EVIL IN THE WORLD, PART ONE

An Unusual Reply to an Important Question

Several years ago, I had the privilege to watch a young man’s ordination before a body of church elders. During the interview, one of the pastors asked a question that interested me deeply. “Why did God allow evil to enter the world?” It was an important question, and I waited to hear the candidate would say about it. However, he answered, “I don’t know.” I could not fault him. He was still young. But then the minister who asked the question replied, “I don’t know either.” I thought to myself, “No, no, no, don’t skip this question! The answer goes to the heart of the gospel!” This segment, along with the next, will explore that question and answer it.

The Genesis Account of the Beginning: Creation, Rebellion, Condemnation, and Salvation

The previous challenge discussed the importance of the creation account in Genesis 1–3 in the gospel message. Think about the account for a moment. The narrative for the entire Bible unfolds in three short chapters of Genesis. First, God created an unblemished man and woman, placed them in a perfect environment, provided them with everything they needed to experience satisfaction and fellowship with their Creator, and gave them a mandate to fill the earth and subdue it. That is, they were to take Eden into the world. Yet he placed the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the Garden and told Adam not to eat from it. The first tragedy in history revolves around this single tree.

Second, we witness the man and his wife’s corruption. The serpent (the term in the original language suggests a majestic angelic being rather than an ordinary snake) enticed the woman into coveting the fruit for its forbidden qualities. The text says that she saw that the tree was good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise in the matter of knowing good and evil. Their rebellion reaps devastating consequences. They experience shame in their nakedness and cover it with fig leaves. They hide from the LORD God. Their former marriage harmony degenerates into blame.

This results in the third stage when the LORD God pronounces condemnation on them. The effects of their sin follow throughout the remainder of human history. Finally, the unexpected occurs. In the middle the pronouncement of their death sentence, God utters a cryptic promise that ties the serpent to the woman (Genesis 3:15). Then he slaughters animals and clothed the man and woman with the skins (Genesis 3:21). Salvation comes into view by the death of the innocent for the guilty.

Difficult Questions

All of human history turns on these events. The story would have been so much easier if they had not occurred. The mystery drives us to the question that has confounded people for ages, “Why did God allow evil to enter the world?” Thankfully, the Bible answers the question. To grasp it, we must recognize the weight of two critical either/or decisions that the Bible records in the beginning:

The first decision involves God’s act of creation:
If he had made a “safe” world in which human beings were protected from rebellion, the tragedy not would have occurred. Instead, he created a world in which the man and woman had the capacity to choose evil. Why did God build the possibility for such a failure into his creation? This will be the focus of the present installment.

The second decision belongs to the man in the Garden:
God gave Adam a choice. He could trust his God and live in unbroken harmony, or he could eat the fruit of the tree and die. As we know, he and his wife indulged in it. Ever since, world history suffers under the consequences of their rebellion. This reality brings us to a what-if question. What would have happened if Adam and his wife had obeyed the LORD God’s command? We will consider this in the next study.

I promise good news. The questions have genuine answers, and when we see them spelled out, we will discover that the Bible’s ultimate answer is glorious beyond imagination.

The First Big Question

The question about a safe creation is a universal issue. Christians and non-Christians ask it at one time or another. And it is far more than a smoke screen to hide from the “real” issue. To the contrary, it is part of it. Let me explain. Years ago, I came to understand the importance of the biblical creation account for our witness. When we talk to people who lack a biblical background (which is most everybody), it is the only logical starting point of the gospel. This is what Paul does in the Greek cities of Lystra (Acts 14:8–18) and Athens (Acts 17:16–34). Whenever I raise the subject about God’s work as the Creator of humanity, people’s response is as predictable as wet sidewalks after a rain shower. “If God knew that we were going to sin, why couldn’t he have protected us from it?” The question is actually an objection that tries to shift the blame for our error to God. “God had the chance to keep us safe, but he didn’t.”

Almost immediately after saying this, however, the person makes a course correction in his thinking. “But we have to have free will.” Of course, the two human demands lie in conflict with each other, and the people realize it quickly. If God creates “safe” human beings who are programed to love God, our loyalty is only a mechanical response. He gains nothing, and we matter for nothing. Conscious loyalty to God has meaning only if it is voluntary. That eliminates the moral safety net.

The Real Issue: Tameness Versus Dignity

The fact that men almost universally abandon their desire to be safe for their need to act with genuine will is a testimony to the way that God has created us. He gave us the power to choose good or evil, and with it the consequences. “Free will,” however, is an inadequate term to describe what God has created in us. (We will discuss the term at length later.) A more accurate term would be dignity. That is, God created us to worship with our minds and our wills. This is the only way to experience full joy under his care. It falls under God’s self-counsel in Genesis 1, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” But Genesis is not the only place that affirms the truth about dignity. Psalm 8, a creation psalm, celebrates it. The psalm is symmetrical in form. Here is its structure:

Prelude: The Marvel of the Name (v. 1ab)

Following the superscription, “To the choirmaster: according to the Gittith. A Psalm of David,” the text begins,

Psalm 8 begins and ends with this declaration of God’s greatness over creation. God’s position as Creator marks the beginning of the gospel. The first step in our obedience to the gospel is to recognize him as Creator.

Stanza I: The Majesty of God

The first stanza introduces a curious mix of elements:

What do the mouths of babies and infants have to do with God’s glory in the heavens and his strength over his foes? The common denominator between the three appears to be God’s ministry of justice in the world. That moral glory is shares the greatness of his physical glory from the heavens. Further, when the enemy and avenger wreck havoc, babies and infants cry. God hears them and responds to their cries with justice. A similar sentiment on God’s passion for justice occurs in Psalm 9:7–10.

Stanzas 2–4: The Dignity of Man

David’s observation on babies and infants marks only the beginning of the psalm. The bulk focuses on the dignity that God has granted man in his creation. The second stanza compares the grandeur of the cosmos with what God has created man to be.

The heavens are vast. The fact that David uses the term, “the work of your fingers,” rather than “the work of your hands” to describe them, emphasizes the intricacy of the moon and stars that God has “set in place.” David spoke about what he could see on a dark night. Modern astrophysics has revealed a universe that is unimaginably vast and yet one that is unimaginably complex. Gravity, for example, works over the entire universe. Yet it is balanced with the subatomic forces that hold atoms together and make electricity for our homes possible. The balanced precision has been described as hitting a two-foot target at the opposite side of the universe. This balance is necessary for biological life to able to exist. God created the universe in order to assign life to the earth. Yet the LORD has marked out a unique niche for man.

The third stanza focuses on the dignity that God placed in his covenant creation:

We should not be surprised that man occupies a lower position than heavenly beings. After all, they live in the very presence of God. But the heavenly beings do not exercise dominion over God’s creation. That office was assigned to man during the creation week (Genesis 1:24–28). This psalm indicates that we still possess remnants of that dominion, even after the fall of man in Genesis 3. The fourth stanza expands on the degree of man’s dominion:

We have discovered that many animals demonstrate high-level intelligence in communication, recognition, of tool-making. But no other living creature possesses the creativity, intelligence, and moral understanding that God has given man. No wonder that David begins and closes his psalm with the words,

This is what I mean by the term dignity. “Safe” creatures would lack any sense of worth or ability to think. God gave us something infinitely greater than simply “free will.” He gave us his image. But with the gift came equally great responsibility. When Adam and his wife rebelled, they redirected world history and wrenched it from blessing to curse and from life to death in an instant. Yet our fall does not mark the end of the story. Even that great failure continues to serve God’s interests. In the next segment, we will see why the answer to the big question is not just good. It is glorious.

¹ Samuel Terrien, The Psalms: Strophic Structure and Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), 226. Verse numbers are changed to reflect contemporary numbering. ↩

Doug Knox

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