July 14, 2011
I just finished helping my family put up approximately 300 ears of corn at our little farm. I remembered planting the seeds back in late April. This ritual has happened many times before, but it never fails to bring to my mind God’s faithfulness to germinate the seeds. Our corn is a product of God’s ordained plan for the cycle of life.
From the very beginning, God established His unchanging blueprint of biological reproduction. God commanded that all living things reproduce after their kind, both plants and animals. This reproductive cycle has held its pattern since the dawn of creation. The phrase according to its kind is repeated over and over for an incredible purpose. Apple seeds produce apples; peach seeds produce peaches; corn seed . . . you get the idea.
God created human beings and placed them upon the earth. Like the plants and the animals, He told them to be fruitful and to multiply and fill the earth. He provided all that they would need to thrive. There was only one thing God told them not to do. To disobey Him at this one point would bring death. We know what happened. The first couple disobeyed, and they died. Their human spirits – their connection to God – died. They became natural, sinful people separated from God. Sin and death had entered the world.
In obedience to God, after the fall Adam and Eve began to reproduce. True to God’s regeneration formula, they reproduced after their kind. They were now sinners, and they populated a world of sinners. Death spread to all because Adam’s seed had become corrupt seed. God connected the entire biological world to Adam’s fall. Paul said that the entire creation was subjected to futility and locked in the bondage of corruption. All biological seed is stained with death. Regardless of whether we get rain or not, Papa’s garden is going to die. Why? Corrupt seed!
But wait! Amazingly God allowed at least two kinds of seed to slip past the corruption of the fall. These two seeds are the very reason that we become Christians. The first was the miracle seed of the Holy Spirit planted in the womb of the virgin Mary. This seed produced the Lord Jesus Christ. Without a human biological father, He was born without the sin of Adam. Thus, He who knew no sin became the sinless Lamb of God who died for us.
The other seed is the living seed of the Word of God. The words of the Bible are living and powerful spiritual seeds. God, You are a genius! This miracle seed is being used to spawn a new generation of people – spiritual people. The apostle Peter said that “we have been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever, because all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures forever. Now this is the word which by the gospel was preached to you” (1 Peter 1:23-25).
Born again? Yes. Christians experience a second birth – a spiritual birth that connects us to God. An incorruptible seed generates this birth. Peter contrasted all human life that comes from corrupt fallen seed with grass. Like grass, we are all destined to die. And all of our human achievements, no matter how impressive, are fleeting. All of man’s glory – that which sheds light upon man: pride, wisdom, intelligence, beauty, talent, wealth – is temporary. It appears briefly like a mist, and then it is quickly gone. In contrast, the spiritual seed of the word of God is eternal seed. The only thing that lasts through this fallen world must come from this seed.
Peter stressed that the gospel of God’s grace is that eternal seed. When physical seed, like our corn seed, is placed into the ground and is germinated, new life begins. Likewise, when the gospel is planted into the soil of the fallen human mind and germinated by the Holy Spirit, new life is generated. But this life, unlike the fallen corn seed, will never die because seed that will never die produces it. Amazing, absolutely amazing! God, what a genius you are!