Fixing Flaws to the Masterpiece as Only the Creator Can

Imagine being a renowned artist who has just finished a painting for a major art exhibit. After examining it with pride, he believes it might be his best work yet. About the time the artist is putting his signature to the painting, one of his grandchildren, four-year-old Eva, arrives with her mom and dad. Excited about their visit, the painter leaves the artwork to greet them. 

While they’re engaged in conversation, Eva slips away, enters the artist’s studio, and decides to try her own creative skills. Following the example observed while watching granddad at work, she goes to the paint palette, its oils still fresh, picks up a brush and happily starts dabbing paint on the lower corners within her reach.

 

Her grandfather, noticing she has disappeared from sight, tracks her down and instantly sees the damage Susan innocently has inflicted on his masterpiece. Because he loves his granddaughter, the master artist stifles an urge to cry out in dismay. He guides Eva away from the painting as calmly as possible, places the palette far out of reach, and immediately starts contemplating how to fix his now-flawed creation.

 

If the painter resolves to repair the artwork, do you think he would he ask little Susan to do it? Of course not. He would do it himself, since as its creator, he’s the only one capable of restoring it to its former beauty.

 

Even as I describe this imagined scene, I can’t help cringing, thinking about how I might react if I were in his shoes. The paramount work of a lifetime, painstakingly created and completed, seriously marred by careless hands. Do you just take a “mulligan” or a start-over?

 

In the most profound sense, this is exactly the story we find unfolding throughout the Bible, starting with its opening words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), followed by its description of the creation account. That first chapter closes with these words: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good…” (verse 31). By “very good,” I don’t think He was saying, “Not too shabby” or “it’s okay.” It was the greatest “Ta-Dah!” of all time.

 

But we know the story didn’t end there. The first humans, whom the Bible identifies as Adam and Eve, wrecked the Lord’s perfect, idyllic work. Committing what is commonly referred to as the original sin, they defied His command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A singular but devastating act of disobedience and rebellion, with tragic ripples that we experience to this day.

 

One term for those ripples is our “sin nature.” Adam and Eve didn’t keep their wayward ways to themselves. Throughout history, men, women and children have been carrying on their sinful “DNA.” As Romans 3:10 declares, “There is no one righteous, not even one…,” and Romans 3:23 adds, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” From the moment we’re born, we arrive with something inside that seems intent on continuing to taint the Lord’s masterpiece.

 

Toward the end of the 7^th chapter of the book, the apostle Paul – having confessed his own struggles with right and wrong – bemoans, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death” (Romans 7:24). Great question, one most of us have asked ourselves, probably more than once.

 

Hymn writer and former slave owner John Newton himself faced this dilemma, wrestling with his dismal past, but arrived at this joyous conclusion as he wrote, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.”

 

This wasn’t rationalization on Newton’s part. He had discovered and embraced this truth from reading the Scriptures after being dramatically transformed by Jesus Christ. He read passages like Romans 7:25-8:2, in which Paul celebrated, after having asked who would rescue him:

“Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.”

Adam and Eve, and every human ever born since, set about ruining God’s perfect creation, but He instituted a better plan, one that will ultimately dispense with the devastation completely. The Bible teaches this in many places, but one of the great passages explaining what the Lord has done – and continues to do – is 2 Corinthians 5:17-21.

 

It begins by revisiting God’s creative powers: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ…” Then we find the incredible declaration that we, even in our current imperfect state, have the privilege of being participants in this redemptive process:

“…And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made [Jesus Christ] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

 

As an old preacher said, “If that doesn’t light your fire, your wood’s wet!”

 

Maybe the imagined master painter we met above didn’t enlist little Eva to help him in restoring his masterpiece; but amazingly by His grace – as Newton recognized – God has chosen not only to reconcile us to Himself through His Son, Jesus, but also wants us to serve as His agents in seeing others restored in relationship to Him as well. Praise the Lord!

What We Learn from Good Movies

This time of year, traditional holiday movies reappear on various network and cable TV stations, social media, and on DVDs at retail stores, where you can purchase your very own copies of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “A Christmas Carol,” “Miracle on 34^th Street,” “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” “A Christmas Story,” and others.

Hallmark channels present their own Christmas movie marathons, demonstrating how to produce the same story over and over in many different ways: Boy meets girl; girl hates boy; curious circumstances bring boy and girl together; hate turns to mere dislike, then to like and intense like; conflict pulls girl and boy apart; and finally the story ties itself into a neat bow, boy and girl deeply in love and locked arm in arm, walking toward a glorious future together.

Some critics turn up their noses at such films, dismissing them as shallow, sentimental and sappy. In some instances, they’re right. Happily-ever-after may exist in fairy tales and Disney animated films, but not so much in real life. And yet there’s something about rollercoaster storylines that end up with a smile.

Familiar images of Jesus, Mary and Joseph
tell only a small part of the redemption story.

Years ago, I attended a presentation about what good movies can teach us about biblical truth. Almost all classic films – the ones we want to watch over and over – have three common elements that reflect what the Bible teaches. In one way or another, they present us with Creation, followed by the Fall, and then Redemption.

The film starts out with characters well-defined that we grow to like in a very short time: The Creation. At some point conflict invades the scenario, putting those characters into difficulty, even peril. In many cases, it’s the result of their own bad choices, what the Scriptures define as “sin”: The Fall. Before the story ends, the intense conflict is somehow satisfactorily resolved, relationships are restored, and the viewers leave with “feel good” moods: Redemption.

Consider “It’s a Wonderful Life” as an example. George Bailey the banker is a good guy, beloved by most in his hometown of Bedford Falls. Reeling from the negligence of trusted Uncle Billy, George is pushed to the brink of suicide. Providence intervenes, using a comical angel named Clarence. George is rescued from the fatal throes of despair as he discovers his life was not the failure he supposed. Ultimately the townspeople rally around him, evil Mr. Potter’s scheme is foiled, and a merry Christmas is restored in Bedford Falls.

Recently, speaker Alistair Begg expressed this progression a bit differently. He defined the three stages as Alienation, Reconciliation, and Transformation. We see these steps repeatedly in the Bible’s Old and New Testaments.

Alienation from God, our separation from Him by sin, is clearly expressed in Romans 3:10, “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.” Later in the same chapter we’re told, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). There’s a chasm between us and God that we can’t cross.

The idea of Reconciliation is presented to us in Romans 5:8, which says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  This truth is restated in Romans 6:23, affirming that, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We respond to God’s love, but He initiated the reconciliation process through the atoning death of Christ on the cross.

In 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 we also read about “God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, no counting men’s sins against them….”

Finally comes the Transformation, described one verse earlier in 2 Corinthians 5:17 – “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” Galatians 2:20 communicates the same reality when it says that each follower of Jesus can trust that, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

As we prepare to celebrate Christmas and Christ’s birth in just a few days, it would be good to remember that we – part of God’s creation – were subjected to the fall of man, but when Jesus came to earth in the humblest of circumstances, it was the first step in His eternal plan for our redemption. Kind of like in the movies.