COVENANTAL CREATION

Covenant is relationship between Creator & creation: the Creator proves responsibility by promising to sustain all creation and enabling creatures with the freedom to respond as well; the creature is free to respond by doing that which is consistent with the purposes of the Creator .

• God initiated the relationship by creating all that is, forming the earth itself in such a way as to support life.
• God created mankind in his own image; each human is created to carry the character of the Creator’s image.
• God planted a garden as the place where the creature carrying God’s character could live.
• God lay on this human creature the responsibility to care for the well-being of all other created things.
• God lightened life for the lone man by creating as well a woman to be a help meet for him.
• God created man and woman with the command to continue creation through their mutual physical relations.
• God, being a Divine Community in Himself, commanded humans to create community as well.
• God, in His Divine Community as Father and Son and Spirit,
  created man so that he could become father to sons and daughters through the woman
  and created woman so that she could become mother of those daughters and sons,
  making the family foundational for community

God’s face/favor
God found all that He created to be good and called His creation, “Good.” This favor God showed His creation continued especially in the creation of the man and woman, created in God’s own image. To see the face of one another was to see the face of God.

The man and woman looked upon their nakedness without shame; they did not turn their faces away at first. Then came the command of God regarding one of two trees planted in the middle of the Garden where they lived. The fruit of this particular tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad, was forbidden to the man & woman. Then came the clever serpent, by way of devious word, to distract the woman from attending to God’s command: “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden?”

Rather than recognizing the devilish doubt darkening the glorious truth of God’s own Word, the woman considered the contradiction without alarm, poorly remembering what God actually said. The serpent, hearing how she deviated from God’s Word, drove deeper his wicked wedge and said, “ You will not surely die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

The Forbidden Fruit then took on an appearance devilishly different than the other trees in one devious way: Like the other trees, the tree on which the woman found the Forbidden Fruit was good for food and a delight to the eyes, but it was as well desirable to make one wise. Not only did the woman take and eat from the fruit of this Forbidden Tree, but she also gave some to her husband.

While this was happening, the man whom God created had been with the woman whom God created for him. Not only did he fail to recognize the deception, he deliberately chose to eat as well what God had forbidden him to eat. The consequence of contradicting God’s command came immediately. “Then the eyes of both of them were opened …” They now knew that they were naked, a new kind of knowing that caused them shame. Now knowing this new thing, this bad thing, so different from knowing only what is good, they covered themselves, or at least attempted to do so by making loin covering with sewn-together fig leaves.

The LORD God found them just like that, shivering shamefully in the crazy costumes they had made themselves. The sound of God’s coming caused the two to try to hide from the presence of the LORD God. However, their hiding place, among the trees of the Garden where God walked in the cool of the day, hideously failed to keep them from having face the LORD.

The human creature found himself fallen out of favor with his own Creator. For the first time ever, Creator God turned his face away from His creation. Hope remained in the covenantal promise of God to overcome the curse Himself someday in the woman’s seed.