A Brief Book Summary from Books At a Glance
by Steve West
Table of Contents
1 A Good World Goes Awry
2 Hints at a Solution
3 The Great King and Humble Servant Comes
4 The New Creation
5 Living as God’s New Humanity Now and in the Future
Summary
Chapter 1: A Good World Goes Awry
The Bible opens with declaring that a perfectly good God made a perfectly good world, over which he installed two perfectly good human beings who were his image bearers. Almost immediately, the Bible also reveals how this good, ordered, harmonious system was plunged into sin. The creation narrative is balanced and orderly, reflecting the balance and symmetry in the created world itself. All of this order and goodness reflects the transcendent goodness of God. Ecosystems are arranged symbiotically, and harmony and peace characterized the original design. Human beings were given the task of developing this order and furthering its peaceful existence. They were to work hard for six days—imitating God—and then rest on the seventh.
God provided Adam with everything he could need in Eden, and the gift of Eve was his crowning provision. They were to take care of the creation together, and trust in the goodness of God by obeying him. God wanted them to trust him for growth in knowledge; he did not want them to try to live autonomously or try to put themselves over him. Wisdom is found in the fear of the Lord, so every one of God’s commands was good for them. The context of the restriction not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was one of abundant provision and bounty, which further revealed God’s goodness to them. In this good world, God gave Adam and Eve the good relationship of covenant marriage, where they could establish a family unit, love each other, raise children, and fulfill their mandate in the world.
Despite the fact that God is the Creator of everything and infinitely good, Adam and Eve turned away from him to trust a creature and themselves more than they trusted God. They wanted to be independent, but submitted to the serpent, a created being. Rather than by directly contradicting God’s command at first, the serpent subtly misrepresented it and misrepresented God’s character. It was only after he perceived that Eve was beginning to doubt God’s word and character that the serpent moved to explicitly denying the truth of what God had said. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they were asserting their independence from God, and they terminated their relationship of trust in him. Immediately, they experienced alienation with God and alienation with each other. On the day they ate, they started into physical and spiritual death. God pronounced judgments which affected every aspect of life in the world. Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, and Genesis reveals a subsequent downward spiral of depravity and enmity in human relationships. Even still, there are also hints of hope. God is known to be perfectly good, and even as he banishes Adam and Eve, he provides them with coverings. Despite human sin, God continues to provide the world with bounty, and has mercy on sinners. . . .
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