GeoCreationism.com

 ⁵ The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. ⁶ The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. ⁷ So the LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.” 

Genesis 6:5-7 is an interesting passage.  Christians use it to teach how much God hates sin; skeptics use it to teach how emotional and flighty God appears to them.  Well, our God is emotional, and He does hate sin.  However, He is not flighty.

The main objection of skeptics is that in this verse, God appears to have not known before creating man that they would become evil.  Even allowing for human free will, God’s ability to transcend time should have allowed Him the ability to see the future, whether controlling it all or not.  He should not have been surprised like this.  Some Christians say that God wasn’t surprised, that He knew it all had to happen, but finally seeing it grieved Him.  However, the skeptic’s response is that because God knew, and because God is outside time, why not skip it all?  Why let it come to this?  Why not spare them and Himself?  All of history is before Him, including His own interactions with it.  Being so complacent to the evil of mankind, how can He then be sorry for what He had done?  Didn’t He know He would have to kill them all?  And this leads on to a diatribe about how artificial it all seems, creating this need for Jesus as if compensating for things God had no idea would happen.  Well, in an odd way, the skeptic has a point.  Wh-wh-what?

We forget when reading these verses that God is a Trinity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit.  Keeping that in mind, the Christian who gets caught in defending God for verses 5-7 may actually be limiting Him to the characteristics of God the Father.  Really? Limiting? Yes, because God is more than than our Father who art in Heaven.  He is Jesus, who seeks out His Father’s will in the desert.  He is the Holy Spirit who obediently walks by our side as we navigate life.  Forgetting these other aspects of God, the Christian may hear the objection of the skeptic as an expression of ignorance about God’s divinity, when in fact the objections reflect a profound insight: that because God the Father knows all, He cannot fall prey to His own actions as He appears to in the verses above.  God the Father precedes all truth (except for the truth contained within the Father’s mere existence); acting as if God the Father can be surprised by the outcome of His own actions suggests the opposite, that all truth precedes the Father.

So then, who in God was grieved?  Who spoke in verse 7?  There are many to clues for us to follow, but I will give you the answer right now: Jesus.

Clue #1 - Who created mankind?

Who said in verse 7, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.” ? As I wrote in Jesus as God’s Servant, “Jesus is the creator and the nurturer; God the Father is the owner and the overseer.” I pointed this out, based in part on the following parable Jesus told:

 A certain man had a fig tree which had been planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it, and did not find any.  And he said to the vineyard-keeper, ‘Behold, for three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree without finding any.  Cut it down!  Why does it even use up the ground?’  And he answered and said to him, ‘Let it alone, sir, for this year, too, until I dig around it and put in fertilizer; and if it bears fruit next year, fine; but if not, cut it down.’(Luke 13:6-9)

Now keep in mind the Father who is all-knowing.  If He is the owner in this parable, then He knew the fig tree would not yield fruit.  Jesus, as the servant did not know it, but negotiated for more time to nurture it before cutting it down.  The Father relented to Christ’s intercession.  Of course, the Father knew He would relent.  Jesus did not.  Of course, in the case of the Flood, the fig tree that was mankind in fact was destroyed.  I cannot say what God “wanted”, but that is what He did.  But, recall that when Enosh was born, that was when man started calling on the name of the LORD.  In other words, the situation in verse 7 was not new; perhaps Jesus was already attempting to intercede on mankind’s behalf with the birth of Enosh.  However, it would seem it was not enough.  Jesus had created mankind; could He prevent his destruction? Well, not entirely.  As a race, mankind was saved through Noah… looks like the tree was pruned, but it was saved.  And this doesn’t even begin to touch on His work on the Cross.

Clue #2 - Who “saw” in verse 5 that mankind was wicked?

Who in verse 5 was appearing to realize that mankind was wicked, and would need to be destroyed?  It is worded as though God didn’t know this was true until one day, He looked and “saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.”  How could He not know?  In what context, would God “find this out”? Consider also that God was “grieved” by this discovery.  If it was eternal knowledge spoken of in verse 5, then God either would not have been grieved, or He would have prevented it.  Therefore, once again, I believe this was the Son in verse 5.

Consider the context in which this might have happened.  Re-read my post Jesus, the Father’s Proxy on Earth.  It recalls how Jesus was most likely the scout which God the Father sent out to scope out Sodom and Gomorrah.  Genesis 18 contains what they call a Christophany, a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus in the Old Testament.  Another Christophany appears in Genesis 3:8, when He was walking in the Garden… again scoping out the situation and “discovering” Adam and Eve.  Another is in Exodus, when He visits Moses in his tent, and later on the mountain to show His glory.  As I show in Jesus, the Father’s Proxy on Earth, God the Father is always in Heaven.  Therefore, any appearance of God on Earth is Jesus… and it would seem that Jesus is regularly sent out to scope the area before God the Father metes out judgement.  It therefore seems as if Jesus scoped out mankind here as well. 

Moses recorded the Christophony of Genesis 18 in quite a bit of detail, though only mentions the Christophany of Genesis 3; it would seem he nearly glossed over the Christophony of Genesis 6 altogether.  However, it would explain the process of discovery implied in the words of verse 5.  As Jesus walked among mankind, he “saw” that that they were wicked.  And because it was truly a discovery on His part, it was the first time that it really hit Jesus that the Father was right… the Fig Tree needed to be destroyed.  However, there was a remnant He could save.  And as always seems to happen, when the Father threatens with complete destruction, the Son instead makes a deep pruning… just as the Father wants.  Adam and Eve weren’t killed in the Garden.  Lot and his family were rescued form Sodom and Gomorrah.  Paul even describes the pruning of the Olive Tree in Romans.  And Noah’s family was chosen to survive The Flood.

Clue #3 - Who grieved?

I have already mentioned that Jesus grieved, but I want to cover this a little more.  From the perspective of God the Father, there comes direction to create, direction to destroy, direction to obey for those who belief, and justice is meted out.  God knows all, sees all, plans all… yet provding an allowance of free will on man’s part, yet His will be done.  Jesus on the other hand, is not omniscient.  He is believing and obedient… and emotional.  Jesus grieves at what He sees, and is self-sacrificing (literally!).  He does not live in eternity when He is down here on earth, but like us He is in the moment.  In His obedience to the Father, His compassion for the Creation compels Him to intercede.  He almost cannot help it; it is His shape.  It is what He does.  And to the extent that not everyone can be saved, it grieves Him, and it grieves Him deeply.  You can see the love in His sacrifice on the Cross, and His intercession in our lives as He negotiates our salvation in the face of destruction by the Father.  The Father knows He will do this, and so perhaps comes off as harsh when He knows He will back down.  But then other times, judgement must be harsh, in which case Jesus is grieved… but when He cannot save all, He saves a remnant. 

Jesus loves His creation, regardless of what they do.  We must see this, lest we conclude there be no one to grieve for.  There is grief because there is love… and both are profound.  But, when mankind becomes completely wicked, when the Fig Tree stops producing fruit, it is destroyed… or at least pruned back significantly.  In this case, it was pruned.  Mankind’s destruction wasn’t “utter”, for Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 2nd, 2010 at 7:39 am and is filed under Bible Commentary, Jesus as Witness, Devotional Notes, The Flood, Walking with God, Righteousness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.