Messiah's Renewal (part 2 of 2)

The new creation, as has been previously mentioned in this study and visualized by Isaiah, was inaugurated and goes forth with the word (and power) of the Resurrection.  Any understanding of the telos of the new creation is contingent on understanding the first creation, as presented by Genesis.  Thus, one can only comprehend the role of the covenant people in the new creation in light of the role that was to be played by the original covenant bearer.  As the first divine image-bearer, Adam was placed in God’s good creation, to tend and steward it as his charge.  The second and complete divine image-bearer, Jesus, was resurrected into a world of the covenant God’s creation---a world that was now fundamentally changed because of the power for Resurrection that had been somehow unleashed into the world through its delivery to His lifeless body. 

Considering the comprehensive renewal that is associated with the Messiah (whether in Isaiah’s vision or in the New Testament reflections upon the Christ), Scripture insists that Jesus was the first-fruits of those to be raised up from the dead.  Thus, just as Jesus was raised, so too will those that believe in and order their lives around His royal claims be raised with Him.  Along with that, the creation itself awaits its liberation from its long bondage to corruption.  Jesus’ Resurrection into this very creation, along with the Creator God’s working through His people to be ambassadors of His light and glory and purposes in this world, means that believers do not simply await the end of their days or the world’s days, so that they can be whisked off into the blessed, eternal state, of an other-worldly existence.  The Creator God did not broker a deal with death and corruption, giving over the somehow sub-standard physical bodies and this world that He created.  On the contrary, the bent of Scripture informs the world that the Creator intends to redeem the whole of His creation. 

Believes then do not await the demise of this world.  The Scriptures constantly point to a restoration of this world to the condition for which it was intended by its Creator.  Again, this is part of the renewal that accompanied messianic activity, and it could be said that, among other things, this restoration was why Israel’s God sent forth His Messiah.  This restoration is why that Messiah, contrary to all expectations, would suffer and die.  As the King would embody Israel in both exile and exodus, this restoration is why that same Messiah, contrary to all expectations, would be physically raised up from the dead.  All of this was done, it seems, to point the covenant God’s people to the time in which the final defeat of death would be accomplished, and in which “there will be universal submission to the Lord’s sovereignty” (11:9b). 

Though that Resurrection power is manifest in and works through believers that share in eternal life as they live the Gospel (Jesus is Lord of all), those same believers will most certainly fade and die; but because Jesus was physically raised, with a glorified body, and because all that cling to Him as Lord have the promise that they will experience the same, believers look to their being raised to a new life and a new creation in which “A wolf will reside with a lamb, and a leopard will lie down with a young goat; an ox and a young lion will graze together, as a small child leads them along” (11:6). 

When the curse of exile from the Creator God’s original purposes is finally broken, and the people of the covenant are led into the promised land of that God’s renewed creation, they will see that “A cow and a bear will graze together, their young will lie down together.  A lion, like an ox, will eat straw” (11:7).  Because of the Resurrection, “A baby will play over the hole of a snake; over the nest of a serpent an infant will put his hand” (11:8).  When Jesus reigns without question, the Creator God says, “They will no longer injure or destroy on My entire royal mountain” (11:9a).  If this is truly believed, then it is incumbent upon believers to lift up the Gospel of Jesus “like a signal flag for the nations,” so that “Nations will look to Him for guidance and His residence will be majestic” (11:10b).