February 25: Genesis 6

Today's reading.

In this chapter, the Fall of humanity is going deeper and deeper into the depths. Though there was a family line—the descendants of Seth—who "called upon the name of the Lord" (4:26), death's persistent beat and the sinfulness of the human heart has led to more and more decay in God's good world. The place that once was "very good" is now filled with fallen man, and "every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (6:5). Always only evil. So much for walking with God in the Garden.

God went from singing with joy over his creation to regretting he had even made it (6:7). There was one lone man who "found favor in the eyes of the Lord," a man named Noah. In contrast to the rest of his generation, "Noah walked with God" (6:9). God reveals to Noah that he will destroy the earth by flood, but promises to deliver Noah by having him build an ark in which he and his family and many other living things will survive God's judgment. And it says that Noah obeyed the Lord; "he did all that God commanded him" (6:22).

Oftentimes, when I read third party accounts of the flood, Noah is shown to be an upstanding man who kept all God's ways and so deserved salvation. How else could he find favor in the eyes of the Lord? How else could he be righteous?

The thing about that is that the opening verses of the chapter reveal that the heart of man was always only evil (6:5). So, how can you reconcile one statement that says everyone is evil, and then say there was one man who was not evil? Is Scripture self-contradictory?

Genesis doesn't say that Noah wasn't evil. And we'll see in a few chapters that Noah's heart is far from perfect. The story says that Noah "found favor in the eyes of the Lord" (6:8). Favor isn't something that you earn. It's something that is granted.

Proverbs 3:34 says, "Toward the scorners he [God] is scornful, but to the humble he gives favor." Humble people aren't people who beat their chest and prove their righteousness through works! Humble people get on their knees before the Lord and ask his forgiveness. They plead God's mercies because they recognize that there is nothing in themselves that deserves God's favor. They admit their fallenness, their always-only-evilness, and fall at the feet of the Lord, begging for what they cannot earn, pleading for what only God can give.

James, in his New Testament letter, quotes Proverbs 3:34, but changes it slightly in the Hebrew to Greek translation. James 4:6 reads: "he gives more grace. Therefore it says, 'God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.'"

Noah didn't earn salvation on the ark through all his good works that he stored up across his lifetime. In many ways, Noah was decidedly irreligious (just wait till Gen. 9). No, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Noah was humble, repentant. He understood that he desperately needed what he could not earn and put himself at God's mercy. And, when we do that—even we who are always only evil on our own strength—God is all too willing to pour out his grace to us. In fact, God already has poured out his grace at the cross. In Christ, at calvary, sufficient grace was given for all the world. Taking hold of grace requires that we recognize our own fallenness and humble ourselves before the Lord. When you do that "he will exalt you" (James 4:10).






*There is a lot of mystery around the first four verses of chapter 6. "Nephilim" is a word that means giants, but does that mean 9-foot-tall men? I don't know. A lot of conjecture centers on the "sons of God" and "daughters of man" in 6:2. Though some have proposed that these are angels mating with humans, I do not believe that this could be the case; Jesus himself says that the reason we will not be married in heaven is that we will be "like angels in heaven" (Mark 12:25). Rather, I think the "sons of God" are those who are descendants of Seth who had a tradition of walking with God in the wake of the fall, but who had rejected his ways and taken wives who were not believers. There are clear prohibitions against inter-marriage with those who are not of the faith elsewhere in Scripture (Deut. 7:3; Ex. 34:16; 2 Cor. 6:14). This opening paragraph seems to explain why there was no one but Noah who found favor in God's eyes; everyone else had been carried away to worship other gods, to rebellion against Yahweh, their Creator.