We have the holy duty of delight to clear and align our [Lord’s] day so that we may best rest in our Lord. This rest is accomplished not through laziness or isolation but with a holy vigor, as we earnestly pursue the service of God in both private and public worship.

Having grown up in a mainline church and having taken pride in faithfully attending Sunday service week in and week out, I must admit that I was a bit taken aback during my freshman year of college when one of my hallmates asked me to attend a Sunday evening worship service with him. On the one hand, I was shocked that there even was such a thing. But then also, when I looked into the face of my friend, I could see plainly through his smile that no one was forcing him to go but that he actually wanted to go back to church. “I get to go back to church” was a phrase that I distinctly recall my friend’s uttering.
I was blown away. I didn’t understand what he meant by that phrase or the delight he had in going to a second worship service on Sunday. I would not understand until two years later when I became a Christian. Now, by the grace of God and to my great joy, I get to go back to church to worship my Lord and Savior.
As we consider the subject of holiness and specifically how it applies to the Lord’s Day or the Christian Sabbath, I would like to approach our discussion from just this angle: “I get to go to church.” In other words, we Christians have an immense privilege to worship the Lord on Sunday, and we should delight in doing so.
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We see in the opening chapters of Genesis a wealth of material related to political theology. We witness a God whose rule includes the act of creation. We see the importance of creative words as introducing the rule of law. We encounter a creation mandate that reveals man to be a rational, fruitful, working being created to rule over the world. Finally, we observe the Fall into sin and death requiring new laws to respond appropriately to  the onset of evil, as well as the new (and necessary) tool of coercion to offset humanity’s depraved recalcitrance.

“In the beginning”
So opens Holy Scripture, telling of God’s creation of the world from nothing. When discussing political theology, we must consider the proper place to begin. A Protestant political theology should start with Scripture, particularly Genesis 1-3 and the creation of the world.
God exists, Genesis 1:1 tells us, “[i]n the beginning.” He alone stands without beginning and thus unmade. His first recorded action in Genesis is that He, “created the heavens and the earth.” We must consider the relationship between creator and creature in the political context. We revere our Founders. In this we do not differ from many other political communities who also revere the men or gods who founded their city, whether it be  Solon or Athena. To create involves exercising rule over the created. The creator’s rule stems from a certain right over the creature. The created owes something to his endower as a matter of justice. In addition, the creator rules by defining his creation in its development. This definition involves a fundamental kind of lawmaking—establishing the nature, and thus the end or telos, of the creature. Thus, God calls on animals to reproduce “according to” their “kind” (Genesis 1:11-12, 21, 24-25). Their “kind” entails a set nature for each, a pattern to follow. Put another way, the laws of nature and of reason, as Richard Hooker referred to them in his Lawes, stem from what God made.
God speaking creation into existence (“Let there be”) teaches  a political lesson as well. People talk with reverence regarding the “rule of law.” Such governance requires words; one must communicate the law’s content. It demands that we subject ourselves to its prescription precisely as spoken. God could have created by some other, physical action. His “hands” might have formed the earth, his “fingers” fashioning animals. He did not. He spoke into existence. God’s spoken creation is an act of lawmaking, thus in God’s words we find the supremacy  of law. Rulers can employ power in other, more physical fashions. But the spoken and later written word is primary; physical force secondary and supportive. As primary, verbal governance reveals a rational God, rationally creating the universe, meant to be understood and obeyed by any other rational beings to which He gives existence.
Thus, from the start, God did not intend humans to be ruled like rocks or even like cattle. They were meant to observe, to hear, and to know God’s laws and respond, knowingly and willingly, in obedience. This role for man, implied in God’s very speaking creation into existence, sets him apart. We see rule established in other forms by God’s creative speech. The sun and moon both exist to “rule” (Genesis 1:16) over day and night. The sun and moon order time, including seasons and years. Though both sun and moon are irrational entities “ruling” over irrational entities, the rule found in the natural world reveals a political principle:  even inanimate objects require ordering and some entity to do the ordering. Moreover, we as rational beings must respond to these rulers and to their subjects. These orderings set rhythms for which human laws must account. They help to define our experience in a manner to which governments must conform.
At the end of each day, the good God pronounces His creation “good,” going on to say, “very good” of the creation as a whole. This concept of goodness also directly affects political life. God creates in conformity with His own nature. Politics seeks the good. Thus, it must know the good to rightly pursue its end. Genesis tells us that politics, to know the good on earth, must know the creating One who is good first and foremost. As all other goods stem from His, and pale in comparison to His, the student of politics must also be a student of theology proper. To know God is to understand the ends of political life—the righteousness and justice political power acts to achieve.
This task helps us to consider man as created in God’s image. John Calvin locates the substantive portion of this image in our own righteousness and holiness. Politically speaking, we show the image of God in us when we think, feel, and act justly. Good politics, therefore, reinforces this divine image, so tarnished by the events of Genesis 3.  Just political action falls far short of regeneration and sanctification. But it does push us to act as we ought, making a small recovery of our unfallen nature.
The Creation Mandate
We next turn to the laws God gives human beings. Yes, creating man with a fixed nature establishes laws for him. But God gives explicit commands to Adam, rules that help explain his nature and thus his purpose. First, God commands mankind, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” In tandem with this command, God finds no suitable helper for Adam until He creates Eve. This requirement addresses an important starting point for considering the human beings who will inhabit political communities. Some political philosophers start from the perspective of the individual, especially Early Moderns like John Locke. Others begin from the communal view, with ancients like Aristotle and Plato leading the way. Early moderns certainly saw a role for human community, and ancients did not ignore the individual. However, which perspective  you start with makes a big difference. The command to be fruitful and multiply means human communities from the start involve families, not merely individuals. Politics, then, will spring from and have concern for humans as they exist in community. We are naturally social beings, an insight that is as biblical as it is Aristotelian. Even pre-Fall, Adam would have made human laws to regulate these interactions. These laws would not have involved coercive restraint, but cultivation and education. Along similar lines, pre-Fall politics must concern itself with families. It must encourage and facilitate fruitfulness. It also must regulate the interaction between families so as to assure the proper ordering of family life.
The creation mandate continues that man should “subdue” the earth and “have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Rule—we could even say politics does not arise as a punishment for the Fall. It originates as part of man’s rule over the earth and all that is in it. Calvin saw a small bit of God’s image in this mandate. Man will subdue the earth and the animals in accordance with certain rules for their cultivation. In other words, man will make and enforce laws. These laws would conform to those already established by  God  at creation. Adam must know. Then he must regulate according to that knowledge. Thus, the relationship between natural law and human law existed prior to the Fall, wherein the latter applies the former.
The Fall
The world and the humans inhabiting it do not stay perfect, of course. Genesis 3 recounts humans’ Fall, through Adam, into a state of sin and death. The Fall holds political importance both in how it happens and in what it means for humanity going forward.
Regarding how, we must begin with the spoken law God gave to Adam and Eve. They might eat of any tree in the Garden of Eden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
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The Old Testament furnishes the Israelite with a sure hope in a complete reversal of the curse, a resurrected body, a renewed earth, and joy in the presence of God for all eternity.

The discovery and publication of ancient Near Eastern literature has shed much light upon the religious beliefs and practices of earliest civilization. It has also generated much discussion about the relationship of Mesopotamian and Egyptian religion to that of the Old Testament. In fact, many scholars view the similarities in cosmogonies, flood accounts, cultic ritual, legal texts, wisdom literature, and belief in the afterlife as proof that the Old Testament writers borrowed from or adapted the literary corpus of Israel’s neighbors. As a result, Old Testament religion is treated as essentially one more primitive religion among many, although slightly more advanced in the evolutionary stage of development.1 But there are also substantial and significant differences between Israel’s religion and that of her neighbors. Furthermore, the genuine similarities do not require literary dependence or borrowing. This article will summarize the primary features of ancient Near Eastern religion, contrast them with the Old Testament, and offer another explanation for the similarities between the biblical and non-biblical religions.2
Gods, Mankind, and the Cosmos
All ancients believed in a reality that transcended the physical world. But in contrast with Israel’s monotheistic world-view, the Mesopotamians and Egyptians saw a myriad of gods behind the cosmos.3 Of course, some deities were more prominent and popular than others.4 Often a city-state or region would have its own patron god.5 But no one god was absolutely sovereign over the others.6 Each had his or her respective sphere of influence, which usually corresponded to some aspect of nature, such as the sun, the atmosphere, the earth, or the underworld. Although the gods were behind every event, they did not ultimately control the future.7 And though they were immanent in the world, they remained somewhat aloof from their human devotees.8
The ancient Near Easterner sometimes expressed his polytheistic theology in the form of creation-myth. But unlike the Genesis account, which focuses primarily upon humanity’s origin, these pagan cosmogonies focus primarily upon the origin, relationship, and function of the gods. For example, the Enuma Elish, a Babylonian creation account, begins with two primeval gods, Apsu and Tiamat, who give birth to a host of other gods. Apsu then becomes irritated at the clamor made by his offspring and decides to destroy them in spite of Tiamat’s protests. However, one of the younger gods, Ea, slays Apsu. At this point, the gods divide and champions are chosen to do battle. Tiamat chooses Kingu and a host of demons, monsters, and dragons. Marduk, who happens to be Babylon’s patron god, volunteers to lead the other side. When Tiamat opens her mouth to swallow Marduk, the latter directs the four winds to fill her belly, and he shoots an arrow that pierces her heart. Then, using Tiamat’s carcass, Marduk creates the firmament and the earth. Later he slays Kingu and uses his blood to fashion mankind.9 It is worthy to note that in this story of creation, as well as Egyptian cosmogonies,10 the creation of humans is almost treated as an afterthought.11
In addition to creation accounts, Israel’s neighbors also told their own stories of the worldwide flood. Perhaps the most well-known is contained in the Gilgamesh epic. Enlil, one of the chief deities, becomes irritated with the “noise” of humanity. He holds counsel with his fellow gods, and a decision is made to destroy mankind with a flood. But one of the gods, Ea, warns King Utnapishtim and advises him to build a boat. He and his family survive the flood and are granted immortality.12
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