Created as Partners in God's Great Enterprise

The making of human beings comes at the culmination of this account of God’s creating. Now the initial action of creation is finished. Where before, after each thing that God made came into being, ‘God saw that it was good’, now ‘God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good’. There is a satisfying completeness about all that God has now done. In the light of this, God is content to rest ‘from all the work that he had done in creation’.
 

Yet we sense that this is only a beginning—there is so much more to come. As this account of creation has unfolded, we have sensed that there is an ordered and purposeful movement about it all. For instance, it would appear that the six days are in two more or less parallel sets of three:

 

1. day and night; 2. sky and seas; 3. dry land called Earth, with its covering of plants—all in readiness to be inhabited and filled—
 

then: 4. the sun and moon, with the stars, to rule the day and night; 5. the birds and fish to fill the sky and seas: and 6. the animals and human beings to people the Earth—there is a thrust here towards fullness and habitation. 

 

Nor does it stop there. In the particular mandate given to humankind, there is a further filling that is to happen. They are told to "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it". As the initial creation is brought to completion, a new chapter is beginning. We start to see there is an ongoing purpose in the whole of creation, a goal to which it is all moving. In this purpose, the human beings are to play a key role.

 

Later Scriptures confirm what this goal is. God says, ‘I am about to create new heavens and a new earth’ which ‘shall remain before me’ (Isaiah 65:17; 66:22). This new creation will be full of joy and delight, with nothing untoward about it—no cause of distress or calamity, nothing evil, unclean or accursed. Yet it is not an alternative replacement of this present creation: it is all these things made new! (See Revelation 21:5.) Other undertakings on God’s part fill this out, as this one from Numbers 14:21:

...as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD.

Habakkuk 2:14 says:

...the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.

It is God’s clear intention to dwell in His creation, with His people, in a fitting way (see e.g. Exodus 29:46; Revelation 21:3–4). No less will the creation participate in God’s own restful fullness (see Hebrews 4:9–11). Peter sums it up in this way:

...in accordance with his promise. we wait for new heavens and a new earth. where righteousness is at home (2 Pet. 3:13).

And we thought that we were like microbes on a speck of dust in a vast and endless universe! What difference does this make to our estimation of what a human being is? This, then, is God’s great enterprise. It is with a view to this ultimate new creation that the present initial creation has been brought into being.
 

What is the part in this of the human creatures that God has made? What does it mean to ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it: and have dominion’? Does it mean just ‘Have lots of children and move out and occupy the earth and take charge of it’? If so, what would be the point of that? In the light of this goal of the new creation, is there not much more to it than that?
  

Genesis 2:8 gives us an indication. Genesis 2:4—24 is another more detailed account of the creation of the man and the woman. It is clear that by the time they are both made, they are in the ‘garden in Eden’. This is the garden that God has planted. It is the place where God dwells. In this garden, God is with the man and the woman, and they are with God. This is where God walks with them and talks with them (see particularly Genesis 3:8). From here God rules over His creation, and issues decrees and engages in actions which determine the entire course of history.
  
It is in the context of all of this that the mandate in Genesis 1:28 is given. ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion’, in this setting, means to move out into the whole of creation with all of this! Until ‘all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD’ (Numbers 14:21). For us to be able to do this, God creates us ‘in the image of God’. We are not God, but we are like Him. Whatever else that might entail, it means at heart that we have a direct affinity with God, to be able to early out this mandate—to be with God in this great enterprise!

From God and Prayer, by Martin Bleby pp. 10-11.