I’m not in the habit of citing Karl Barth favorably, but when you’re right you’re right. Counter-intuitively, but insightfully Barth considers the sin of sloth to be on par with the sin of pride. We are prone to it, and our embrace of it is profoundly destructive. It is our habit, when speaking of the imago dei, the image of God in man, to see it principally in terms of our capabilities. We are like God, we bear His image because He thinks and we think; He feels and we feel; He wills and we will. It’s all true, of course, but there is so much more. We reflect His image not just in our capabilities, but in our calling.
The first command of God, the one Eve was made a helper suitable to Adam for, is what we call “the dominion mandate.” They were to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it, to rule over the birds of the air, the fish of the sea and everything that creeps upon the ground (Genesis 1:28). Lest you think the fall set this command aside note two things. First, one of the curses Eve was given was pain in child-bearing. The call to be fruitful abides. Adam received thorns and thistles that would multiply. The call to exercise dominion abides. Secondly, the same command is to Noah after departing the ark.
That command, the dominion mandate (sometimes called the cultural mandate) is still with us, and we, because we are given to sloth, are prone to falling down on the job. Reformation demands that we pick up the calling we have never lost.
The first Reformation, in fact, understood this. In the Middle Ages Roman Catholicism had come to divide reality into the sacred and the secular, seeing the first as good and the second not so good. If you wanted to be godly you needed to work, live, operate in the sacred realm alone. The Reformers understood that the reign of Jesus is over all things. Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch Prime Minister, theologian, publisher followed in that pattern when he said “There is not one square inch in all of reality over which Jesus does not cry, ‘MINE!’”
Jesus is succeeding where the first Adam failed, bringing all things under subjection. Under His reign every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord. And Jesus, the last Adam, has been given a help suitable to Him, the last Eve, the church. Of course we are to proclaim the good news to all men, to be witnesses of His work on the cross. We are also, however, to make known the beauty, the glory and the power of His reign over all things, ruling with Him, under the Father. We are indeed to make disciples of the nations, which means in part, teaching them to obey all that He has commanded.
Reformation is not for the faint of heart, for the slothful of spirit. We are kings and queens with the King of Kings. May we rule well.