Written by T.M. Suffield |
Wednesday, February 15, 2023
We can judge from creation, that the division that comes by saying the truth leads in time to order, which leads in time to unity. How do we know? Because Genesis 1 is eventually leading to the reconciliation of all things in God (Colossians 1). Division leads to order leads to unity.

God creates by dividing, that’s the pattern begun in Genesis 1. He continues to create that way today. I’ve written before on how the Lord makes order from chaos in the first Creation narrative, and how that work which is begun but not completed becomes our work. Adam was meant to create order in the garden by slaying or expelling the serpent, doing God’s works after himself: ruling over the dragons of chaos.
Let me show you what I mean. On the first three days of creation, God forms things: Light or Day, the Sky and the Sea, and the Land. On the next three days of creation, God fills those things:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

Light. Day and Night
Sky and Sea
Land and Trees

Day 4
Day 5
Day 6

Day is “filled” with the Sun, and Night with the Moon, powers to rule over them so that we can tell the right time for the festivals.
Sky and Sea are filled with animal life and dragons.
Land and Trees are filled with animal life and humans.

On the seventh day God rested.
So, where’s the division? Well, let’s look at how God creates on each day. On the first day he creates light by separating it from the Darkness, making two defined ‘times’ that did not exist before: Day and Night.
On the second day he creates the heavens and the sea by separating the waters above from the waters below. Where before there was one water, there is now water below (the sea, where chaos and evil dwell) and the water above (the sky or heavens, where order and angels dwell).
On the third day he creates the land by separating it from the water below, and then all the trees by separating them into their kinds. The phrase “according to its kind” begins to occur frequently.
On the filling days we find categories multiplying: heavenly bodies, birds, fish, dragons (have I ever mentioned that there are dragons here and we just skip over it? I have?).
Creation is an act of breaking things down into kinds. When we meet humans we then immediately find them divided into male and female. God creates by dividing.
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The Lord blesses us with particular blessings of the future heavenly life during our time on earth. We come into union with Christ, which will be the bedrock of our heavenly joy. He declares the current, heavenly blessing of union with Christ in Colossians by saying, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27). Furthermore, Paul described the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as the present “guarantee” or “down payment” of the future communion with God in the heavenly life. As a result of all these new realities brought about by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, Paul lived with a foot in heaven and a toe on earth.

The Ever-Inspiring, Heavenward Life
When my oldest child died, I knew that my life would never be the same. In the initial months that followed, I expected that the change would be entirely negative. However, not all of the differences were painful. The Lord did something unexpectedly positive that has remained with me ten years later.
On November 10, 2013, my son lived in my house. On November 11, 2013, he lived in heaven above. Heaven was no longer an abstract, theological concept. It was now my son’s home.
Before this season, I would describe myself as a heavenly-minded person. I would think about heaven on nights when my head rested on the pillow but I could not still my mind for sleep. Heaven would be on my mind when I watched men carry a coffin down the aisle of the church at a funeral or at time when a loved one was nearing their final days. These were occasions when I would intentionally think about eternity.
However, after my son’s death, the Lord created a change in my mind, heart, and life that I would describe as a “heavenward shift.” God effectuated this turning both through the tragic circumstances of my son’s death but also through a critical new “friendship” that I made in the pages of Scripture.
I became consumed with heaven in a manner that eternity had a constant presence in my perspective in the routine matters of daily life. I missed attending a college reunion but found solace knowing that I’d have plenty of time with my believing friends in the new heaven and new earth. I’d forget to pay a bill and incur a late fee, something that would previously unravel me. Now I thought, “I won’t miss the $15 in eternity.” When I’d prepare a Bible study lesson or sermon, I would conceive of the lesson as an offering to place before the judgment seat of Christ at the second coming. This mindset brought more meaning, inspiration, and focus to lesson prep. During a hard season of life, the length of the struggles seemed shorter and more manageable with eternity as the backdrop of the trial. All of these realities were blessing me immensely and taking my spiritual life to new places.
I use the term heavenward to distinguish between heavenly-mindedness as compared to what I was experiencing. Heavenly-mindedness constitutes a spiritual discipline whereby we deliberately meditate on eternity (as God calls us to in Col. 3:1). On the other hand, I characterize heavenward as “a work of God in your life in which heaven becomes an organic part of your daily perspective and the object of your life’s direction.”
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The early Christians, acting in obedience to Christ, began to care for the poor, the sick, and the marginalized. So alien were their charitable acts and self-sacrificial lives that the Romans referred to them as “the third race.” In the centuries to follow, even though Christians were still a demographic minority, their care of the poor and sick, would serve as the first steps in achieving cultural authority.

Note: This is the conclusion of a 4-part series. Click here for Part I, Part II, and Part III.
We now come to our third and final example of cultural engagement: the early Christian church and its triumph over the pagan culture of Rome. The Roman world was brutal and generally indifferent to suffering. Sympathy and mercy were weaknesses, virtues anathema to those of Rome. The ancient world was both decadent and cruel. The practice of infanticide, for example, was widespread and legal throughout the Greek and Roman world during the early days of Christianity. In fact, abortion, infanticide, and child sacrifice were extremely common throughout the ancient world.
Cicero (106-43 BC), writing in the period before Christ, cited the Twelve Tables of Roman Law when he wrote, “deformed infants should be killed” (De Ligibus 3.8). Similarly, Seneca (4 BC-AD 39) wrote, “We drown children who are at birth weakly and abnormal” (De Ira 1.15). The ancient writer Plutarch (c. AD 46-120), discussing the casual acceptance of child sacrifice, mentions the Carthaginians, who, he says, “offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds while the mother stood by without tear or moan” (Moralia 2.171D). Polybius (ca. 200-118 BC) blamed infanticide for the population decline in Greece (Histories 6).
Historical research reveals that infanticide was common throughout India, China, Japan, and the Brazilian jungles as well as among the Eskimos. Dr. James Dennis, writing in the 1890s, showed how infanticide was common in many parts of Africa and was “well known among the Indians of North and South America” (Social Evils of the Non-Christian World, 1898). Suffice it to say, for much of the world and throughout most of its history the culture of death and brutality has been the rule, and a culture of life, love, and mercy has been the exception. It is to the cause of this exception that we now turn.
In roughly AD 27, a young Jewish carpenter—in an obscure Roman outpost—began to preach and teach, saying he was the Son of God, the savior of the world, the promised Messiah of the Jewish Scriptures. He claimed to be a king whose kingdom was not of this world—a kingdom without end. This king—Jesus—would validate all that had been revealed to the Israelites: there was a God and this God, who was hidden from the world, was a personal being who had made mankind in his image because he desired a relationship with mankind.
And so this Holy God further revealed himself—becoming incarnate. God became flesh and dwelt among us to do what only he could do: reconcile the chasm between God and man that sin had caused. God would implement his plan for reconciling man to God, man to himself, man to man, and man to creation. Suddenly, a radically new conception of reality, the world, and life would take hold. A new ethic and morality would challenge the old. All life would now be understood as precious, the intentional gift of a loving God. The kingdom of God was inaugurated on earth! A new day had dawned, and those who had been drawn into this kingdom began to think and act in new ways. They would strive to live and act in obedience to their king—not their flesh and not their culture.
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