How should a Christian view environmentalism?

Sustainability is still important. There is no reason to spoil God’s creation, to waste scarce resources or to damage the environment through pollution.

I think we might examine our links with the creation in the light of these Scriptures. James speaks of us as men, being a kind of first-fruits of His creation. One has wondered whether it would not be a salutary matter to consider whether alignment in relation to God's thoughts in creation is with us. Generally speaking things are awry and out of alignment; the danger is of our affections being caught by it. It is not suggested that this line of things is to take precedence in our hearts over the thought of new creation, what we have been brought to as in Christ, but I feel that we should move in our spheres of responsibility with more pleasure to God if our position as men here was really understood.

The land was to enjoy her sabbaths, in perpetual token that it belonged to the Lord. Hence it, as well as man, must share God's rest. Here, however, the poor and the beasts of the field are prominent. There was consideration both for the one and the other — both alike, whatever the distance between, being creatures of God. The children of Israel were thus reminded that they were but tenants, and that, as holding their land as well as their vineyards and oliveyards from the Lord, even the poor and the beasts of the field must be considered, since they were the objects of His care.

In Ex. 23:12 and 13 the sabbath is mentioned as a time of rest not only for the people, but also for the animals which served them, and that "the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger may be refreshed." The land was to enjoy its sabbaths as a constant token that it belonged to the Lord, so that not only man, but the land itself, the poor and the beasts of the field were to share God's rest. All were the objects of God's tender compassion.

Next we find men tested by their treatment of the creation which God put into subjection to the race. Indifference to one's beast is unworthy; cruelty is worse. Hence the righteous is concerned for his beast's life, while even the wicked's tender mercies are cruelty. Jehovah's tender mercies are over all His works, and the day comes when everything that has breath shall praise Him.

Here accordingly God establishes His covenant with Noah and his sons on a footing which ignores all question of the soul or moral considerations. Where these enter as at the close of the chapter, the divine title is changed in harmony with what is revealed. But in the previous portion all is general as expressly as possible. God never forgets His rights as Creator and Preserver; and even when our blessed Lord brought out heavenly and eternal things, He was far from teaching us to despise the birds of the heaven or the lilies of the field, or God's care in either case. Their Creator and Preserver was our heavenly Father, without Whom not even one sparrow falls upon the earth. No doubt the Christian is called to things higher beyond comparison; but God did not omit to testify and teach His people His mind as to the least of His creatures in the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets, of which last the closing verse of Jonah is not the least remarkable. And the New Testament is quite as clear as the Old in keeping before us the blessed deliverance which He will surely effect for all the creation groaning and travailing in pain together until now. It waits for the manifestation of the Second man, Head over all things to the church which is His body. For when Christ, our life, shall be manifested, then shall we also with Him be manifested in glory.

Creation's Future. — The apostle speaks, be it remarked, of the glory which should be revealed to us, as he really wrote, and not simply of our being in glory, all true and sure as this last is. For his eye by faith was surveying a scene on which no creature has ever yet looked, viz., creation itself resting in the calm delight of the liberty of the glory of the children of God (21). The divine purposes, as revealed in the Gospel, are not bounded by, nor confined to, the blessing of God's saints; creation animate and inanimate is concerned in them likewise. And the Creator has given it to expect this. He thinks of His created things, as well as of His saints. He thought of the cattle at Nineveh (Jonah 4:11). He thought of every living thing upon the earth after the flood (Gen. 9:8-17). He will care for creation in the coming day. How creation comes to understand this it is not for us to say. But it would be strange indeed if the Creator could not communicate with everything that He has brought into being, and be also the interpreter to His intelligent creatures of the earnest expectation of the to us non-intelligent creation. He alone, of course, was competent to do this. He has done it; and by Paul, a vessel of revelation, this is made known to us: "The earnest expectation of the creature (i.e., creation) waits for the manifestation (or, revelation) of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who has subjected the same, in hope because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory (not, the glorious liberty, as the Authorised Version has unhappily given it) of the children of God" (Rom. 8:19-21).

This creation awaits its redemption; but it cannot be delivered and restored until the children of God, in the glory of the kingdom, are ready to take possession of it as joint-heirs with Christ. Christ sits at the right hand of God until these joint-heirs are gathered. It is a blessed thought, that as we have brought the earthly creation under the bondage of corruption, so now it must wait for our being glorified, to be restored and delivered from this bondage (v. 19). It is not the will of the creature that subjected it to this bondage; we have done it - but in hope; for this condition will not continue always: the creation will be restored. God, however, in the counsels of His grace, begins with the guilty, with those who are most alienated, with those in whom He will, in the ages to come, shew the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus; Eph. 2:7; compare Colossians 1:20-21.

"The land," and the earth too as a whole, will then become a direct object of divine blessing; and the reader of Old Testament scripture is inexcusable, who overlooks the many obvious places in which God pledges Himself to this end. Doubtless His people and the nations are nearer to His heart; but the long groaning earth, the creation travailing in pain together until now, shall be set free from the bondage of corruption into the liberty (not of grace, which is for souls by the Spirit now, but) of the glory of the children of God at Christ's appearing. Does this surprise or offend any? It was here the Son of God, Who created all, became man, and lived, and died, by the grace of God. It was here was manifested the wonder of a divine person humbling Himself in obedience to death — yea, death of the cross. It was here God was glorified in the Holy One made sin and here that Satan was vanquished for ever by Him Who had accomplished redemption by His blood, and was raised in power according to the Spirit of holiness. If heaven and God's throne be the worthy reward, this earth shall be delivered and reconciled. It may be a little spot compared with the universe, but it is the little spot where Christ wrought in divine love a work matchless in value, to which not man only is indebted for blessing, but God for His retrieved moral glory, and in virtue of which blessing the man who believes is made God's righteousness. If sin of the first Adam subjected all to vanity, how meet it is that the second Man should more than restore all things! How blessed that Satan should be banished, not only grace as now reigning to eternal life in Christ, and that Christ, no longer hidden, should establish the rejoicing earth with His power and blessing, yet still to the glory of God the Father!

We will now consider briefly what God will do in that day for the CREATION IN GENERAL. Man, by his sin, has not only brought ruin on himself, but has marred his home, and dragged down all the creatures dependent upon him. Thorns and thistles are marks of man's sin, much more the groans of the brute creation (Gen. 3:18). Man, unlike angels, was constituted by God the centre of a system of things. The whole of this lower creation either suffers or rejoices with its head. This is its time of suffering. "We know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now" (Rom. 8:22). We who believe groan also in sympathy, our mortal bodies forming a link with the old creation. But we alone are in God's secret, as to where deliverance will come from, and when. Though it understands it not, "the earnest expectation of the creature waits for the manifestations of the sons of God." When Christ comes upon the scene, bringing with him the whole glorified family of God, then the creation will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.