I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me [Jesus] (John 14:6).

The Gospel, Christians know, is that this way spoken of by Jesus was made possible through His death on the cross in order that sin would be atoned for and its negative effects on the earth ultimately reversed.  And His subsequent resurrection both affirmed and demonstrated our own ultimate victory over death. I believe, though, that one aspect of our “apologetic” for the Christian faith that we often fail to offer when we are asked why we believe Jesus is the “only way” is the fact the comes from the context of John 14:  Jesus is actually God in the flesh (a truth profoundly exclaimed in John 1, Colossians 1, and Hebrews 1).  This means, then, what one of my old favorite spiritual songs proclaims (“Down From His Glory” to the tune of the old opera song “O Solo Mio”): “The great Creator became my Savior, and all God’s fullness dwelleth in Him.”  The baby in the manger was God in the flesh.

A good question we can offer to the question of why we believe Jesus is the only way is this: “How could it be possible to be made right with our Creator unless we follow the way the Creator offers us?”  Jesus was not just another prophet; nor was He the founder of a religion.  He was God incarnate (”I am in the Father and the Father is in me,” said Jesus).  Adherents to a faith that does not claim Jesus as the way are rejecting the only way God has provided.  How can you be made right with God the Father if you do not go through God the Son who then sends God the Holy Spirit to dwell in us and empower us?

Christians throughout the centuries have voiced this biblical affirmation of hope for every man and woman.  However, many of us have missed the implication of Jesus’ defeat of sin on the cross for the rest of the creation.  On the cross Jesus wore a crown of thorns.  Thorns are the symbol of the curse that was placed on the natural world to discipline a sinful, disobedient, and rebellious humanity.  Jesus’ suffering, then, was also effective in procuring the end of the curse.  Revelation 22:3 tells us that there will be no more curse.  So the creation itself shares the hope we have for a coming restoration, reconciliation, and reunification of all things.

The ultimate meaning of this truth is that we really have more affinity with the creation (nature) than we do with rebellious humanity and the sinful world system that will be destroyed—destroyed in part so that harmony would return between us and God and between us and the creation.  Francis Schaeffer made this clear in his seminal book on the Christian view of ecology: Pollution and the Death of Man.

On the basis of the fact that there is going to be total redemption in the future, not only of man but of all creation, the Christian who believes the Bible should be the man who—with God’s help and in the power of the Holy Spirit—is treating nature now in the direction of the way nature will be then.  It will not now be perfect, but it must be substantial, or we have missed our calling.  God’s calling to the Christian now, and to the Christian community, in the area of nature—just as it is in the area of personal Christian living in true spirituality—is that we should exhibit a substantial healing here and now, between man and nature and nature and itself, as far as Christians can bring it to pass.

In Novum Organon Francis Bacon wrote this: “Man by the Fall fell at the same time from his state of innocency and from his dominion over nature.  Both of these losses, however, even in this life, can in some part be repaired; the former by religion and faith, the later by the arts and sciences.”  It is a tragedy that the Church, including the orthodox, evangelical Church, has not always remembered that.  Here, in this present life, it is possible for the Christian to have some share, through sciences and the arts, in returning nature to its proper place.

It is this affirmation that made me understand the importance of our relationship to the natural world and the fact that there is more to the “wonder of creation” than what it tells us about its Creator: the creation shares with us the same hope of restoration that will come about when Jesus returns—His Second Advent.  This kinship with the natural world, then, should cause us grief over its suffering and compel us to do what we can to, as Schaeffer says, return “nature to its proper place.”

Once we are committed to doing that, we can sing with more sincerity “Joy To the World.” What a wonderful hymn it is!  Though we sing it in celebration of the First Advent when Jesus came as a powerless infant,  this great Christmas song actually looks forward to the Second Advent when He will return as reigning King.  This year let us sing it as a forward looking sacrament and commit ourselves to restoring joy to the world of mankind—and the creation itself which also looks forward to the coming King.  [You can hear the music on YouTube as you read the lyrics here]

Joy to the world, the Lord is come
Let earth receive her King
Let every heart prepare Him room
And heaven and nature sing
And heaven and nature sing
And heaven, and nature sing

Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns
Let men their songs employ
While fields and floods
Rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy
Repeat the sounding joy
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy

No more let sins and sorrows grow
Nor thorns infest the ground
He comes to make His blessing flow
Far as the curse is found
Far as the curse is found
Far as, far as the curse is found

He rules the world with truth and grace
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness
And wonders of His love
And wonders of His love
And wonders, of His love