The Creation

The men who discipled me in my earliest days as a Christ-follower gave me a strong drive for evangelistic outreach. Indeed, the man who taught me the gospel and baptized me into Christ also taught me that, going forward, I have only two categories of relationships.

• I have a relationship with other brothers and sisters in Christ and I interact with them based on that reality.
• I have a relationship with everyone else, and everything I do in my interactions with them is, in some way, designed to bring them into relationship one, that relationship with my brothers and sisters in Christ.

That’s IT!! Those are the only relationships I have: in Christ, and not in Christ.

Proclaim the Gospel to All Creation

And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”
– Mark 16:15-16, ESV

Pondering what Jesus said above, it seems there is a global target for that command. It seems we have a responsibility as Christ-followers to be spreading the good news of the kingdom to everyone on the planet.

I have taught many times that the “great commission” in Matthew 28 is an endless, self-perpetuating command. The same concept is put forward here in Mark, but with a little less punch than the Matthew commission.

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
– Matthew 28:18-20a, ESV

Jesus has just told his disciples to go and make disciples, baptizing them, and then teaching them what?? To obey everything that he, Jesus, had commended them, the disciples. Well, what did Jesus just command the disciples to do? “Go make disciples.” “Baptize them.” “Teach them to obey everything,” including the command to go make disciples and teach those disciples to obey everything…

The Audience for the Gospel

In the quotation from Mark, above, Jesus told his disciples to preach the gospel to the whole of creation. I’ve been following Jesus since January 16, 1983, and it was not until Tuesday of last week, that it hit me that, taken literally, Jesus wasn’t limiting that to people.

He deliberately used the word κτίσις (ktisis) which is the term that describes what has been created. Earlier in Mark’s account, Jesus used that same term, twice, explicitly, to describe the creation.

For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, and never will be.
– Mark 13:19, ESV

Same word. Let’s look at some other uses of ktisis.

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
– Romans 1:20, ESV

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.
– Romans 8:19-22, ESV

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
– Romans 8:38-39, ESV

These passages, though a little bizarre, are straightforward. There is nothing tricky going on here. Ktisis is referring to the physical creation. That creation is in subjection to futility, it is in bondage to corruption, it groans, but will one day be set free. I’m not certain exactly what all that means, and it fires the imagination.

But here is where things take an odd turn. In Mark, with the opening quotation above, Jesus commanded that the gospel should be preached to all creation. In his letter to the Colossians, less than thirty years after Jesus gave the command, the apostle Paul tells us that this has already happened.

…not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.
– Colossians 1:23b, ESV

In All Creation

To resolve the confusion in my head, I decided to zero in on those phrases, “to the whole creation” from Mark, and “in all creation” in Colossians. In examining the Mark passage, the reality is that the preposition “to” is not there. The translators provide it to add clarity the English readers. The “to” is inferred using the dative case which implies how something is accomplished.

Some see a connection between what Jesus said at the end of Mark’s gospel and what the prophet Isaiah said in Isaiah 9:

But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.

    The people who walked in darkness
        have seen a great light;
    those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
        on them has light shone.
    You have multiplied the nation;
        you have increased its joy;
    they rejoice before you
        as with joy at the harvest,
        as they are glad when they divide the spoil.
– Isaiah 9:1-3, ESV

The land of Zebulun and Naphtali were brought into contempt, where clearly it is the people of those lands that fell under contempt. The passage even anthropomorphizes the land, calling it “she.”

I read one interpretation of Paul’s letter to the Colossians saying the gospel now being brought to Colossae was in line with what they already knew of God from looking at the creation. There is a structure, a symmetry, a behavior in all that God has created.

In chapter 55, Isaiah uses similar language to say that the mountains and the hills will break forth into singing, and all the trees shall clap their hands.

The well-known passage from Psalm 19 has the heavens shouting God’s glory.

The heavens declare the glory of God,
    and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech,
    and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words,
    whose voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out through all the earth,
    and their words to the end of the world.
In them he has set a tent for the sun,
    which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber,
    and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy.
Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
    and its circuit to the end of them,
    and there is nothing hidden from its heat.
– Isaiah 9:1-3, ESV

In his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul said the invisible things of God have been clearly seen in the creation.¹ Paul and Barnabus told the people of Lystra that in creation God has not left himself without witness.²

So, having rambled on about these two passages for so long, here is what I believe we can pull from this. The truth of God is available for all to see if they are willing to see it. Yes, there is a spoken gospel, and each of us holds a sacred responsibility to convey that message to the unsaved, but the beauty, complexity, variety, and perpetuity of nature shout a message all their own. All of it proclaims God’s glory and reveals Christ as Creator, King, and Savior.

Blessings upon you, my friends.

Victoriously in Christ!

– damon

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1. Romans 1:20
2. Acts 14:17