Reclaim the Rainbow!

IMPORTANT UPDATE: June 18 -The number 1 hip-hop/rap song in the US is Reclaim the Rainbow by Bryson Gray, Shemeka Michelle, and Jimmy Levy. It is also the number 3 hit in all music genres! What is it about? Exactly what I wrote in the following:

You see a lot of rainbows these days, but I don’t mean the ones in the sky after a rain storm. The rainbows you see are on flags, protest signs, bumper stickers, and clothing. Which would be okay, given that the origin of the rainbow is biblical; unfortunately, the rainbow has been “co-opted,” that is, hijacked by society and given a completely different meaning. To display it publicly now is to affirm the new, corrupted meaning, rather than the original biblical one. Which is unfortunate, because the original meaning is beautiful, combining the two essential doctrines of the Christian faith: Law and Gospel.

To recapture the original meaning, we have to go back to the Book of Genesis. There, we read of the Great Flood of Noah, when God was so grieved at the complete wickedness of his greatest creation – human beings – that he decided to wipe them and all air-breathing animals off the face of the earth. Genesis 6 presents the prologue to the Flood and God’s  call on Noah to build the ark and preserve and preserve his family and a remnant of the animals. The Flood begins in Chapter 7, and lasts until Genesis 8:18, when Noah, his family, and the animals exit the ark to repopulate the earth.

In Genesis 9 we come to the pertinent passage. It reads as follows:

9:8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ⁹ “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, ¹⁰ and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth. ¹¹ I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” ¹² And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: ¹³ I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴ When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, ¹⁵ I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. ¹⁶ When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” ¹⁷ God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

Some have said that this was the first rainbow ever seen on earth, because the Bible talks only of mist watering the ground (Genesis 2:6) before the “windows of heaven” (Genesis 7:11) were opened to cause the Flood. Others say that rainbows had appeared before, but that God now gave them new significance. Either way, what is important is that God did endow the rainbow with a special meaning: his promise to never again destroy the earth by a flood. Now obviously, many floods have occurred, some of them with horrific damage and great loss of life. But these were local floods; never has the whole earth been destroyed by one great flood. Nor will it ever be again, thanks to God’s promise.

Earlier I said that rainbows were signs of the two great doctrines of Law and Gospel. How so?

Consider first the connection to the Law. The Law tells us God’s command-ments, that is, what he expects from us. It also warns us of God’s judgment against us when we break his commandments. An example of this is the Second Commandment, which commands us not to take the Lord’s name in vain, and warns us that “the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain” (Exodus 20:7). An even more explicit statement is found in Romans 6:23, “for the wages of sin is death.” The law condemns us all because “we all sin and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). The Law cannot save us. It only pronounces righteous judgment against us, just as God did against the wicked generation of people in Noah’s day. Those people were not just bad; they were really bad. Genesis 6:5 says, “The Lord  saw  that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” That’s really bad. They were so bad that God was sorry he had made mankind, and decided to destroy all but a remnant of them.

So how is a rainbow a symbol of the Law? Because it reminds us of how severely a holy God punished wickedness. It reminds us that God will not allow sin to go unpunished; as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be one day when God visits his judgment on an unrepentant earth. Peter warns us of the connection. He writes in 2 Peter 3:5-7, “For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.” When we see a rainbow, we must remember that God will destroy the ungodly one day, not with water, but with fire. This is Law. 

Now consider how the rainbow is also a sign of the Gospel. The Gospel is a message of God’s grace and mercy. It proclaims what God did for us to save us from the due penalty of our sinfulness. We could not gain this grace by our own efforts, but by God’s gracious decree. This grace is based on Jesus Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross, by which we are forgiven and brought near to God. Colossians 2:13-14 says,  “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”  This is the Gospel, that although we earned only death and judgment, God himself saved and redeemed us to eternal life for the sake of his Son. This promise not to destroy those who believe in Jesus Christ for their salvation is embodied in the message of the rainbow: that God will spare mankind, even when they sin, by setting aside a watery destruction.

Why has God set aside such a destruction and delayed the fire to come? According to Peter, it is because of God’s mercy. As he writes in 2 Peter 3:9, “but [the Lord] is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” So even now, God holds his judgment to allow the lost to come to him for forgiveness. That is Gospel.

Therefore, God gave us the rainbow and gave it to us as Law, a reminder of how God judged sin with the Great Flood, and as Gospel, a  promise to never again destroy mankind by another Flood. As Christians, we should feel good to see a rainbow, because God gave it to us as a promise.  To us it not only holds a promise about flooding, but also about God’s forgiveness of our sins, and the promise that those who believe in Christ will never die. (John 11:26).

My hope, therefore, is that we will one day reclaim this powerful symbol, and rescue it from those who kidnapped it. Maybe we could do something like the following, adding the word REAL to the rainbow to show we believe in its real meaning, the meaning given to us by God himself.

Now may the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.

Read: Genesis 6; Genesis 9:8-17; Colossians 3:8-14; 2 Peter 3:1-13.