Instinctively, do you regard creation care to be part of the Gospel? Why or why not? What is the gospel?
For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as servants for Jesus’ sake.
2 Corinthians 4:5 (NIV)
Ed Brown starts this video by quoting from the Cape Town Commitment, ‘Creation care is a gospel issue within the Lordship of Jesus Christ’.
The gospel, the ‘good news’ we have to share, is the Lordship of Jesus Christ (‘what we preach is… Jesus Christ as Lord’).
Partly because of the way we have disconnected the spiritual and material, the focus of ‘preaching the gospel’ has been teaching individual salvation and relationship with God. But, as Ruth Padilla DeBorst says, ‘we need to expand our understanding of the good news’ to encompass its full breadth.
Jesus Christ is Lord of all creation.
We reduce the gospel when we exclude the created world from Jesus’ Lordship. Creation is not only good; it is integral to both the glory of Jesus Christ, and His redemptive purposes.
We need to think about the implications of this as people who believe Jesus Christ is Lord and are seeking to live in accordance with this (‘…as servants for Jesus’ sake’).
If Jesus’ Lordship extends over all of creation, creation care becomes integral to the gospel and integral to our witness that Jesus Christ is Lord. As Mandisa Gumada says in the video, ‘creation care needs to be something we live by’.
What does it mean to preach Jesus Christ as Lord?
Has this video changed your understanding of the gospel?
Can you identify ways in which we have disconnected the spiritual and material? How has this impacted your own faith? Do you have any ideas of ways to reconnect the spiritual and material?
If creation care is integral to the gospel, what does this mean for mission? How about discipleship?
Pray, praising Jesus Christ and thanking God for the breadth of the gospel.
- Author: Rachel Mander and Dave Bookless
- Publisher: A Rocha International
- Licensing: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
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