The Big Questions God Asks Us

really need speciic commands that confront us in our sinfulness and arouse us to repentance and faith. The natural moral law means that God’s moral principles are built into human reason, emotions, and relationships so deeply that his written law inds a profound echo in our hearts and minds, making clear and speciic those things we might otherwise neglect or ind doubtful. It means that his written law its our human nature and relationships in such a way that both his law written in creation and his law written in Scripture guide us in a direction that makes life lourish. It also means that people are partly prepared for the gospel; when people hear the gospel, they already have at least some experience of God’s natural moral law condemning them for their sins and making them partly aware of their need for forgiveness and reconciliation. For this we can be grateful. God’s law, both in creation and in Scripture, always has multiple functions and uses in our lives. Three of these functions of God’s law are especially important: 1. It confronts us with our sin, making us aware of our sinfulness; this is the theological (also called “condemning” or “converting”) use of God’s law. 2. God’s law also tends to restrain sin, even if people do not fully acknowledge or understand it; this is the civil or political (meaning “community oriented,” based on the old Greek word polis or community), which makes life in society possible, so that we do not usually practice a war of all against all. 3. And God’s law shows us how to live lives of gratitude to God for his gifts of creation and redemption. This third use (as a guide for the life of gratitude) is only active in believers, whereas the irst (theological) and second (civil) uses of the law are active in both believers and unbelievers. If people do not trust in God’s forgiveness, they may often have very negative thoughts and feelings about God’s law as it comes to them in creation and Scripture, but this not does mean that God’s law has no role in their lives. They may be partly aware of their need for the gospel, and they are often able to be reasonably good neighbors and good citizens (practicing what used to be called “civil righteousness”), because no one can totally avoid God’s law. G. God the Father and the Universal Questions When God came to Adam and Eve, after they had revolted in the Garden of Eden, the irst thing God did was to ask a question. In Genesis 3:8–9 we read, “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’” The all-knowing God does not ask questions to gain new information; he already knew that Adam and Eve were 30 playing a silly game of hiding themselves in the trees. So why did he ask this question? The question was a way of starting the dialogue with Adam and Eve that would lead to a renewed relationship between them and God. This new relationship did not immediately overcome the wide ranging effects of their revolt against God; in the following story there are signs of a comprehensive alienation, meaning that there is brokenness in their relation to God, to each other, to themselves, and even to the physical world. But at least Adam and Eve were talking with God, and God made a vague but profound promise, that the offspring of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. (3:15) And the whole dialogue started with God asking a probing question that tended to point out that there was something deeply wrong within Adam and Eve. Our Creator continues to be a question-asking God, and these questions go out to all people by means of God’s general revelation. There are certain questions which seem to come to mind to people almost all over the world and in almost every time. We might call them universal questions. These questions include: What is a human being? What is wrong with the world? What is the meaning of life? Where did everything come from? What has always existed? What is death? Why do we feel guilt? How can we ind forgiveness? Is there any real hope? These questions are not mere mind games; often they are the expression of the deepest anxieties which people ponder in philosophy, culture, and the religions. These questions are much like God’s question to Adam and Eve, “Where are you?” These questions can torment people deeply, because deep within they retain some suppressed knowledge of the Creator, whose moral law they know and whose wrath they fear. By means of these questions God would chase the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve out from their hiding places to begin an honest dialogue with God. The answers to these deepest questions of religions, culture, and philosophy are found in the Bible; culture and human experience are the question, and the Bible provides the answers. Or we could say that life is the question and Christ is the answer. When we say we believe in “God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth,” we are claiming that our Father still is the question-asking God who raises questions for all people, questions that prepare the way for his answer, which is Christ, the Savior. When we and our neighbors think about ultimate questions, we should realize that these questions are raised by our Creator, so that he can give us the answers we need. 31