When God created man and placed him in the garden, he gave him a job that was offensive. Man was told to go out and fill the earth and to take dominion of it.

But man was also given a defensive job. In Genesis 2:15 we read that “God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to tend and keep it.” The Hebrew word ‘keep’ is the same word that is translated ‘guard’ in 3:24. It was Adam’s responsibility to guard the garden sanctuary as well as the woman God had given him. As guard of the garden, Adam should have crushed the head of the serpent as soon as he found out that the beast had tempted his wife to disobey God.

The arch-victor over the serpent, Christ, requires His followers to fulfill this dual vocation. We are called to be offensive warriors for the gospel, multiplying the second-Adam’s descendents throughout the whole earth, taking dominion by advancing the kingdom of Christ into every nook and cranny of earth and culture. But we are also called to be defensive, laboring to protect what is good, true and beautiful from the attack of dragons, serpents and pagans.

Throughout the Christian era, there have been numerous heroes who have embodied both sides of this calling. Some of these heroes, like Boniface and Jim Elliot, have done this by taking the gospel to new territories that had never before been exposed to Christianity. Thanks to their efforts, the lands they pioneered became or are becoming part of what we call Christendom. Other heroes, like Edmund Burke and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, labored to defend an already Christian civilization against Barbarian attack or ideas. Still others, like William Wilberforce and Thomas Chalmers, labored to make Christendom more Christian.

These and many other Christian heroes inspire us in our own vocation of being protectors and dominion-takers. Like the saints listed in Hebrews 11, they form part of an innumerable cloud of witnesses that reach down through time to show us what it means to put the gospel into action. They encourage us to expand our vision of what is possible and never to cease striving against the dragons and arch villains that confront us in our own time.

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