We have spent the last several weeks working on discovering how God thinks about some basic issues, i.e., what He is
like (absolutely sovereign), what we are like (absolutely sinful), and how God relates to me (absolutely by grace alone). Today we will explore the fourth and final foundation stone of what I believe God is teaching us—”What do I do now?” The answer lies buried in a seldom-referenced passage of Scripture in Genesis 1:
“Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; Let them have dominion …over all the earth…male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over …every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26-28).
This is the Bible’s first reference to man and why he was created; first, in God’s image, in both male and female expressions. Secondly, God’s eternal purpose for man, also in both male and female forms, is to rule over the earth and all it contains. Finally, we will reproduce offspring to carry on this rule by producing new “God-like image-bearers” who will follow in our foot-steps.
Thus, GOD RULES HIS EARTH THROUGH US , HIS IMAGE-BEARERS. That alone is our eternal purpose. This is foundational to all we do—taking the rule of Jesus Christ wherever we go, thus experiencing His Kingdom, the City of God in Revelation 21!
Shockingly, our Fall in the Garden at the Tree was designed, yes, by our sovereign God Himself, to help teach us how to rule over the earth! Without the Fall, we would never have learned God’s backward, inside-out, upside-down, crazy way of ruling.
We have a perfect model in Jesus at the cross. In order for us to learn ourselves to rule as Jesus did, we have to “think God’s way” and not continue to think “man’s way” (Isaiah 55:8, 9), because as a man “thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7).
However, while agreeing with these ideas intellectually is a necessary first step, naturally, spontaneously and unconsciously (NSU) experiencing them is another matter entirely. We can’t “work at it.” It just happens to us, NSU.
As it does (and IT IS happening in us, right now!), we will find ourselves NSU “ruling,” NOT as did Moses with the Law of God, but ruling by the Truth of God—which is that very same Law of God but, as John 1:17 tells us, APPLIED by the grace of God! Where this is present, the Kingdom of God has come to that place, wherever it may be, from a megachurch pastor to a common laborer! Jesus, God’s perfect model for us, brought God’s rule, in God’s Kingdom, wherever He went, including while being falsely accused and murdered! We are learning to do the same.
In previous postings, we have discussed, at some length, the three, specific, God-ordained institutions through which our rule is most obviously applied—the family, the church, and the civil government. The Bible provides both instructions and models for how we rule as His vice-regent in each institution. This rule expressed on the earth is the Kingdom, the New Jerusalem.
It is fascinating to me how God moves toward that goal, not only in our lives as individuals, but in the life-span of nations as well.Today, just after this posting is released, God is making a dramatic course correction to our journey. Donald Trump will be inaugurated again today as President of the United States, a most unlikely, but also the most significant, ruling assignment in this country’s civil government institution.
After the debacle of the 2020 election, I was afraid God’s plan for America was to bring its 250-year existence, in its present form, to an end. The advent of Marxism, the wholesale acceptance of evolutionary theory, and the popularity of escapist, retreat-from-culture theology among Christians, all united in a perfect storm to send our de facto Christian nation into what I feared was a death spiral. If that proved to be the case, I could see that it could be the best thing for the true church if it were outlawed and driven underground, a la China, but I hoped that was not God’s plan!
“But God…,!” And God did have other ideas. He was not yet through with the defeated, rejected, one-term president, Donald Trump, and I hoped that meant He was not yet through with the USA! After his loss in 2020, violent opposition from the establishment leaders of both political parties, and after surviving two assassination attempts, God, indeed, brought a dramatic course correction to America: Trump won the 2024 presidential election in a landslide, electorally and popularly! How in the world did he do it?
He did it because God sent him specifically to be our president! At just the right time, back in 2016, God Himself sent Donald Trump down the golden escalator in Trump Tower in New York to declare as a candidate to be our president! A successful, billionaire businessman and television personality, with no political experience, but possessing an indefatigable, fighting spirit, he entered the 2016 presidential race as a Republican and won!
I didn’t vote for him as I was turned off by his sometimes abrasive personality and his demeaning, personal attacks against his opposition. I voted for Ted Cruz in 2016 with a write-in vote. I believed Cruz was the most qualified of the candidates. However, after a year or so of watching this rookie Trump work to keep his campaign promises one after another, and relate to both the common man and international leaders as I had never seen any president do, I found myself an eager MAGA believer!
I remain enthusiastically so today. Yes, Trump is a sinner, much more so than he realizes. But that is true, in spades, of ME as well. We all see the sins of others much more readily than we see our own. But we are all on that road to “The City With Foundations Whose Builder and Maker is God.” As we learn to rule in God’s Kingdom wherever He has placed us here, we are actually, right now, ruling in the City!
I am proud to be making that trip and learning to rule, side-by-side with Donald Trump as he learns, as well. Jump on-board and join us as God’s little children, learning to rule today in God’s Kingdom, the City of God!
