Thoughts on the Dominion Mandate

September 17, 2005

“We will study repentance for our own lives, hold one another accountable for the path of righteousness, and demand of our leaders that they model the way of beauty, goodness, and truth in all they do. We will condemn sin wherever we find it, and we will not compromise with those who seek the overthrow of God and His law. We must guard our own hearts, and guard all our cultural involvements, as securely as though we were protecting a stricken city against those who would rob it of whatever goodness remains. If we fail in our calling as guards against the inroads of sin and corruption, we shall not be able to fulfil our role as keepers of all that is good and God-like in ethics and culture… By nurturing true love for God and others, devoting ourselves o the path of righteousness, taking up the vocabulary and message of the Kingdom, recalling our heritage and venerable traditions, and working together as keepers and guards of the goodness of God, we may hope to pioneer new paths and forge new exemplars in every aspect of cultural life – in all the artefacts, institutions, and conventions in which we are involved – that shine with the radiance of the beauty, goodness, and truth of God.”

- T. M. Moore

When the Lord told Adam to take dominion of the earth as His image-bearer, there were two facets of this. First, exercising dominion as God’s image-bearer involved bringing structure, order, and ultimately civilization, into the world. We see Adam exercising this kind of dominion in his job of naming the animals. To name a thing is part of what is involved in bringing structure, civilization and the dominion of man into the world. This is itself a cameo of what Adam had the opportunity to do on a wider sphere. Since the earth held unlimited potential for cultural, aesthetic, intellectual and technological advance, a mighty civilization could have grown up to the glory of God with Adam as king.

The second aspect of exercising dominion as God’s image-bearer was to keep and guard the good things that God had already given. In Genesis 2:15 we read that “God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.” (The Hebrew word ‘keep’ here is the same as the word translated ‘guard’ in 3:24.) It was Adam’s responsibility to guard both the garden sanctuary and the woman God had given him. In this vocation Adam functioned as a priest since he was a guard of God’s holy things. So he had the job of both king and priest of the human race: a priest to guard what God had given and a king to go out and rule the earth and take dominion.

As we know, Adam failed in his vocation as guard of the garden and the woman. As soon as Eve was tempted to disobey God, Adam should have driven the serpent out of the garden. From then on, it became a struggle for man to exercise dominion. The Lord said that from then on it would be through sweat and toil that man would achieve dominion of the earth. In addition to this, sin brought about two further complications. The first is that because man is now fallen, he is a defaced image and needs redemption before he can take dominion as God’s image-bearer. This is where the law came in, to show mankind how to act as God’s images in the midst of a fallen world. The new covenant of Christ actually makes it possible for us to do this through the enabling power of God’s spirit. So God now has redeemed image-bearers who can take dominion of the earth.

It is here that the second complication kicks in. Not only is it hard work to achieve dominion as God’s image bearers, but it is a battle to do so. God’s redeemed image-bearers now must contend with rivals. Since all the false gods want to make man in their image and to have their false images establish worldwide dominion, certain things follow. As people grow into the image of their false gods, they and their culture become less human. Because of the enmity between the serpent and the seed of man, Satan hates anything that is truly human. The reason he hates what is truly human is because humanity is the image-bearer of God. So the devil will try to twist everything that makes us truly human, everything of what it means to be a true man or woman.

The devil wants to achieve worldwide dominion of the earth just as much as God does. This means that Satan will try to achieve dominion of all the arts, the sciences, the technology, the economic systems, the families, the cultures, the churches – all aspects of our world. As God’s living temple, we are the ones who must fight against this. Remember that the temple guarded the heritage God had given to His people. The temple kept safe the physical ark and tablets of stone. We are also called to be stewards of God’s truth, to preserve all the good, true and beautiful things that we, as a people and as a culture, have inherited. At the moment, all that is good and beautiful in Western culture is under fierce attack, and it is up to the Christians to act as stewards of the good, the true and the beautiful against such an influx of spiritual pollution. Just as Adam had the responsibility to protect the garden in which he lived, so God’s corporate temple should seek to protect the culture in which we live against the dehumanising influences, the ugliness, the uncleanness and banality with which it is constantly bombarded. In terms of the culture of the home, this effects everything from whether you have a television to what kind of music you allow into your home.

But our job is not just defensive. Throughout the prophetic writings, the temple is always connected with rulership, with the dominion of God’s throne. Since we are God’s living temple, we are called to go out and take dominion over every aspect of life and culture, bringing all things back into submission to the kingship of Christ. The dominion mandate was never meant to apply to only ‘spiritual’ things, when the spiritual is made equivalent to the personal, private realm of the individual. On the contrary, the dominion mandate covers all of reality. It follows that as God’s corporate temple seeks to enact this calling, we should be seeking to bring God’s dominion to bear on every aspect of our world. Christian parents need to instil this vision into their children, particularly their boys, who will go out as conquerors to advance the goodness of God in every area of life and culture, to take back and redefine that which has been lost, and to take an uncompromising stand against those who seek to overthrow God and His law.

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