Today in the western world we have all heard the “good news” as the message that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and if we choose to believe in Him according to John 3:16, 1 we can be saved from eternity in hell. This is true! But, there is so much more to the gospel, there is so much more to the story, there are so many more amazing details to discover about the Lord’s plan for humanity and the cross is just one of the major markers in God’s timeline of human redemption.
In the beginning, the triune God created the earth. He created the heavens, the waters, the sky, the mountains and the trees, He even filled it with animals2 but it was still lacking. There was one part of creation that He was giddy with excitement about creating, you! Have you ever had a great idea? A painting that you see in your mind that you are wild with excitement to splash onto a canvas? Or, an invention in that you know is going to be revolutionary to the world that you are practically dying to fabricate? I would imagine that anticipation would be a fraction of the excitement that was in the Lord’s heart as He planned the blueprint for humanity. Before the earth was formed, God had an eternity to dream about how He would create us in His image3, how He would breathe life into us, how He would create our hearts to yearn for Him and love Him, and how He would partner with us in bringing new life to fill the earth. When the time came for Him to create the first man, imagine the inordinate tenderness and passion He felt as He drew Adam from the dust4 and looked into the eyes of His dream for the first time. There is no word in the english language that can describe the emotion He felt at that moment.
The most mind blowing part of our design is that the Lord gave us our own will to think and choose to love Him on our own accord. We have all heard the devastating story about Adam and Eve5 being expelled from the garden of Eden after committing the first sin. You see, we were created to be the bearers of His manifest glory on the earth. But that only comes with perfect relationship with Him. God’s dream for humanity was to have a people who lived in
wholehearted obedience and devotion to Him, but He wanted voluntary love and affection from us. He could have created us as robots who compulsively do and say all that we are asked, but
He did not. He didn’t want friends who loved Him because they had to. From Adam and Eve’s perspective, can you imagine enjoying perfect friendship and experiencing the fullness of the glory of God on a daily basis and then because you chose disobedience, having that intimacy and face to face relationship broken forever6? The grief and longing they experienced for the rest of their days must have been overwhelming.
This is the state that we were born into, as a result of Adam and Eve’s original sin, we were born into sinful flesh in need of a Savior. Throughout the bible we see countless examples of men and women who are loved by God, showered with favor and provision and then we see them turn their hearts away in sin just as Adam and Eve did. Each and every time man chooses sin and disobedience it strikes the Lord’s heart with grief. Tim Keller describes sin as “the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to gain an identity apart from Him.7” When we choose to sin, it creates a chasm between our hearts and the Lord that only the true turning of our heart in repentance can restore.
Consider the Israelites in the desert. The Lord rescued them from slavery, opened up the sea to secure their deliverance8 and provided food and drink9 for them in miraculous ways. The Lord pursued them in love, but they were created with free will and they chose to worship false gods.10 We can look at their choices and point judgmental fingers at them all we want, but the plain truth is this, we ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.11 Jesus came in human flesh and gave His life as the ultimate payment for our sins, without His blood we would remain in our sin, separate from God12. If we choose to repent and turn from our sin, we can begin the journey of restoring relationship with the Lord as He intended.
Just before He ascended to heaven, Jesus left us with a promise. He assured His disciples that He would return on the clouds for us, the desire of His heart, His creation, His friends, His bride. He also promised to send His Holy Spirit to dwell in us13 and among us so that He would always be with us in part until the restoration of all things. The indwelling of Holy Spirit fills us with the hope of glory
and is merely a taste of what He has for us in the end.14
Salvation boils down to this: if we acknowledge our sin, repent and turn from our ways, accepting His sacrifice for us on the cross as payment for our sins, choosing to serve Him and love Him faithfully with every fragment of our being, we will be the bride that He returns for and restores fully the relationship that was broken in the garden. His ultimate plan is to be with us where we are15 in a fully restored heaven and earth, where we will walk with Him, bearing the fullness of His glory, talking with Him and communing with Him just like Adam and Eve did in the garden. That is the deepest, most intense longing of His heart, even now.
I think our modern view of Christianity is a bit skewed to be honest. We focus on being saved from hell and pursue being a “good” person and label that as righteousness. The Lord doesn’t just want to save us from hell, He wants a relationship that is fully restored. One of the central themes of the New Testament is that we need to be watchful and ready16 for the return of our bridegroom. When He returns will He find friends on the earth? I think we need to shift our pursuit from being saved from hell to focusing on being fully prepared for His return, faithfully pursuing friendship and relationship to be restored so that His glory can be manifest in its fullness on the earth again.
The “Good News” is not just that He created us, it is not just that He died on the cross. The good news is about the love that the Lord has in His heart for us from the beginning and that we can access it simply by realizing that we are sinners in need of a savior! This life is not worth living without fellowship with the Lord, we are created by love, for love, to live as eternal companions of our Bridegroom. When He returns, will you be one that He calls friend? Have you truly given your heart in pursuit of relationship with the Lord or have you settled for the “don’t go to hell” mentality of our culture?
1 ”For God so loved the world that He gave His only son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but will have
everlasting life” John 3:16
2 Genesis 1:1-253 Genesis 1:27
4 Genesis 2:7
5 Genesis 3
6 Genesis 3:20-24
7 Tim Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Scepticism (New York:Penguin, 2008),162.
8 Exodus 14
9 Exodus 15:22-27, Exodus 16:4-21, Exodus 17:1-7
10 Exodus 32
11 Romans 3:23
12 Romans 6:23
13 Luke 24:49
14 Colossians 1:27
15 John 17:24,Leviticus 26:12, Jeremiah 32:38, Ezekiel 37:27
16 1 Peter 4:7-11, Matthew 24, Mark 13
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