The World is Broken

Genesis 1-3, Philippians 3:20-21, Acts 17:31, Romans 8:19, Revelation 21:1-3

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Something’s off about the world today. Whether you’re a Christian or not, you probably agree with that. At least most people I talk to do. But what I hear from people about what to do about it varies. Some people are really passionate about how we need to figure out a way to kind of fix the world, or other people have kind of just given up on it. But thankfully the good news of Jesus gives us a better solution. It helps us understand what’s wrong with the world, but then also it helps us see, it points us to the solution for the world.

First of all, think about what’s wrong with the world. If you go back to Genesis 1 to 3, it helps lay out for us what’s really going on in the world today. It lays out for us the fact that God created this world to be this place where he and humanity would live together and partner together. He created humanity to be in his image and his likeness. Not that we would physically look like him, but that we could live in a way that looked like him.

It’s this really amazing thing, if you think about it. How does an invisible God visibly show what he looks like? Well, he creates people to live in a way that reflects who he is, to live in a way that reflects his character. Then he also gave us the opportunity to rule over the world in his likeness. So then to partner with him and ruling his world.

Well, people turn away from God. We now no longer live in a way that always looks like God or reflects God. And so since we, the rulers of his world, live in a way that doesn’t look like him, what happens? We have a world that is now broken. We have a world that doesn’t function right, because we don’t live in a way that looks like its creator. We don’t trust our creator. Instead, we try to do things our own way.

But now Jesus is the hope for humanity. We know that Jesus came into this world and he looked perfectly like God, partly because he is fully God, but also because he is the human who lived the way that we were meant to live. And then he went to the cross and died for our sins, to pay for those things we’ve done wrong, to take the justice on himself. And then he rose again to give us a new life. And our hope is ultimately of resurrection, where we can have restored to us the life we were meant to have in the beginning.

Think about Philippians 3:21. It says,

Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him to even subject all things to himself. (Philippians 3:20-21)

So we’re looking forward to a resurrection or restoration of what was lost. But it’s not just about us as individuals. In Acts 17:31, it talks about how God has fixed a day where he will judge the world in righteousness. So all the injustice we see in the world today, God will set it all right. And when Jesus returns, it also means liberation for the whole creation itself. In Romans 8:19, it talks about how the creation is longing for the sons of God to be revealed. That it has been subjected to frustration and to all the issues we see in the world today, so that at some point it can be liberated from it.

There will be a day that Jesus returns. This broken world as we know it comes to an end. And there is, as Revelation 21:1-3 describes, the new heavens and the new earth, there will be the new creation. Where finally everything will be set right. There is something wrong with the world today, but Jesus is the one who sets it all right.