Fides 18 N2 - Revista do Centro Presbiteriano Andrew Jumper

FIDES REFORMATA XVIIi, Nº 2 (2013): 99-115
we keep the Ten Commandments, there may be a better way to look at Adam’s
job assignment.
Adam and Eve’s assignment is recorded in Genesis 1:28:
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and
fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over
the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
This calling has become known as the cultural mandate. I suggest that
observance of the moral law, rather than pictured as a job to be fulfilled in
addition to the cultural mandate, is better viewed as defining how the job is to
be performed or how the job is to be performed righteously. This means that for
the cultural mandate we may use the language of production of a commodity,
but we should not do so for moral obedience. Keeping the Ten Commandments
is not the job or a job assigned to humankind, but a definition of the rules for
how the job is to be performed.
In God’s original order for man there was work to be performed, an earth
to be cultivated and conserved, a world to be populated and dominion to be
exercised. In order to fulfill this work, Adam and Eve received God’s blessing.
As altogether dependent on him in whom they lived and moved and had their
being (cf. Acts 17:28), they could work out their service with perfect love,
knowing that God would be at work in them both to will and to do his good
pleasure (cf. Phil 2:12-13; 1 John 4:18). Faithfully persevering in trust in their
Creator and his promises, they walked by faith in the works that had been prepared
for them beforehand (cf. Eph 2:10). This is how they carried out their
job with righteousness before they fell into sin. 11
Righteousness is not a job to perform. It is to perform a job rightly.
Righteousness is not to win a race. It is to run a race according to the rules.
Justification is not a declaration that the race is over or has been won. It is to
declare that it is being (or has been) run fairly. For a correct understanding
of righteousness and justification it is fundamental to bear in mind that righteousness
must precede job performance (and, of course, be maintained during
and after the fulfillment of the task). Adam and Eve could not carry out the
assignment without first being righteous. They needed to be right and good
in order to do their work and did not become righteous or more righteous by
11 This perspective of dependence on the Lord and his empowerment contrasts sharply with that
of John MacPherson writing about the covenant of works, The Westminster Confession of Faith: with
Introduction and Notes (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1882), p. 66, “The obedience must be personal; no
special aids are promised or allowed, but by the creature’s own natural strength is the covenant to be
fulfilled. Grace may have been shown in the condescension that entered into a covenant, but the covenant
in its terms is not of grace but of works.”
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