Dominion
“God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply! Fill the earth and subdue it! Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that moves on the ground.” – Genesis 1:28 NET
This well-known passage is referred to by students of the Bible as the “Dominion Mandate”, “Creation Mandate” or “The Cultural Mandate”. There are few verses in the Bible so packed with meaning. In fact, each time I come back to it, I find some new facet of this diamond to explore.
In this one verse, God gives humans instructions for (just to name a few):
1) Marital intimacy (the first thing on God’s list. No trivial thing)
2) Families and households
3) Filling the planet with people
4) Subdue – to master creation, not adversarially, but figure out how to use it how it was designed. Aka science.
5) Protecting it all
6) Stewardship, using it well
7) Caretaking of animals (Zoo keeper can claim the first job ordained by God)
8) Leadership
9) Maintaining an economy
This mandate has applied to every human from Adam until you, yes you who are reading this. You may say, ‘wait I didn’t sign up for this!’. Yet regardless of whether or not we accept this mandate, it has been sovereignly given to us by God, he has equipped us for it, and we will answer to him for how well we did on it. It doesn’t even matter if we believe in God or not, we will answer for it. And since you are reading this right now you can’t argue that you didn’t know about it 😊.
In the book “The Titus Ten” by J. Josh Smith, Smith explores dominion and suggests there are four domains of dominion, lifted from the book of Titus, that each of us is accountable for “the flesh, church, family, work”. While he does not call it out directly, Genesis 1:28 encompasses these domains in a broad sense. However, I argue that such a limited view of dominion does not shape our thinking in a way that reflects the fullness of what God is looking for in our view of the responsibility God has given us all. I will go with his model of thinking though because it can create a great visual model.
Imagine a concentric group of circles, perhaps 5 or 6 of them. It flows logically that the innermost circle should be taking dominion over our flesh. If we cannot control our flesh, then we are going to wreck everything else. Here’s the bad news – unless you are born again, you have only limited ability to take dominion over your flesh. In fact, the Bible says that our flesh is at war with God’s laws. Our flesh wants to be God and make our own laws. When one is born again we get God’s Holy Spirit in us and this allows us to take dominion over the flesh and truly master it, not by our power but by God. The book of Galatians and Romans talks a lot about this. It is critical that the innermost circle be stable or it is like cancer, wrecking the rest of the circles.
Moving out from the center we go to the circle of spouses. This is a one-of-a-kind relationship ordained by God where the two become one. God is not just talking about sex here. It is a mingling of souls. The two abandon thinking of ‘me’ and instead think of ‘we’. God assigns roles within marriage but there is no question that man is to show dominion in marriage by leading in sacrificial love just like Jesus did for the Church, (see other blog entries here about marriage).
Moving out from our spouse we go to dominion over family, including children but also extended family. Interestingly Jesus drew a new division here saying that those who believed in him were his family, not just biological relations. He went so far as to say that unless we were willing to leave our biological relations for his sake, we were not worthy to follow him.
The next circle, which blurs to a degree with family is Church. We who call Jesus Lord are part of the body of Christ also called the Church, and we each have been given a role to perform in it. We must discover the role(s) and take dominion over them. This is where vocation comes in. A follower of Jesus does not just ‘work’, they have a calling, a vocation. That vocation will most often flow outside of the boundaries of the Church into the world to serve others and be a witness for Jesus.
Here is where the circle engages creation. This is things like discovering how creation works. How it was designed, and how to use it to benefit others most. How to take the best care of it. Here is an explosion of vocations people have from farming, ranching, building, environmental stewardship, sciences, medicine, economics, finance, and insert just about every other job that brings glory to God. A couple of salient aspects of this area are that God has revealed himself to us in two major ways: The written word, but also Romans chapter 1 says creation itself is a revelation about God. Romans goes on to say that the revelation of creation is so complete that God is just judging people for not believing in him from the revelation of creation alone. When we dig into creation to learn, we are digging into knowing God. All Truth (capital T) is God’s Truth and He has left an abundance of it to discover. We need to have dominion in this area. Each of us has things to learn about God in our vocation and studies of his creation.
In fact, all that we have dominion over doesn’t get fully realized this side of heaven – In the new heavens and new earth those who follow Jesus as Lord get additional bonus dominions! The book of Revelation says we get to rule over nations and 1 Cor 6 says we will judge angels.
The bottom line is this: If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in the depths of your being that God raised him from the dead, you are saved and born again. God has given you the Holy Spirit. Your flesh is so irreparably corrupt that God must destroy it in physical death. Until then the Holy Spirit gives you dominion over your flesh. You need to lay hold of that dominion to effectively take dominion in every other area of your life.
Make it so. In Jesus' name.
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