I enjoy imagining life as it was in the garden of Eden. The intricate beauty of butterflies, hydrangeas, and elephants would have been wondrously new. The creating God was delighted that all created things were good and served good purposes. I wonder also if the prophet Isaiah’s vision of the lamb and lion laying down together occurred in those beginning days as well. How I would love to see rottweilers and yorkies play together! Imagining a chihuahua and a pit bull mix playing in the grass together brings delight to my heart. How I would love it if the squirrels and the birds could graciously co-exist without there being any bullying!
It seems like this is the way that God intended life to be. Everything and everyone receiving their very life-breath from God. Everyone enjoying their evening stroll with God through the garden in the early evening. This is the kind of life for which all of us were made.
This doesn’t seem to be the reality for most people, even those who claim to be Christian. God delighted in His creation and set out one simple restriction for the humans that would inhabit the garden. The simple restriction was to enjoy all of the other fruits, just not that one. Soon enough, as Genesis 3 depicts, humans doubted God’s goodness and faithfulness to them. Both the man and woman ate the fruit from that one tree. They turned from God and hid from his presence. God had promised them that the consequence of eating that particular fruit was death. That very day, they suffered the loss of their relationship with God. They were now running and hiding from God and not fit to walk and talk with God in the cool evening.
Human beings were once alive to God. They were created to be responsive to and interactive with him. Adam and Eve lived in a conversational relationship with their Creator, daily renewed. When they mistrusted God and disobeyed him, that cut them off from the realm of the Spirit. Thus they became dead in relation to it… (Willard, Hearing God, 150)
Scripture describes two types of life: physical life and spiritual life. Obviously, Adam and Eve did not suffer physical death that day. They doubted, ate the fruit, and spiritual death was the result just as God had promised. Evidence of their spiritual death is that they could not bear to see their creator, they knew what they had done, and were ashamed.
Genesis 3:8: “They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him ‘where are you?’” Even in their sin, God was seeking them. “When we were dispersed like scattered sheep, and lost in the labyrinth of the world, Christ gathered us together again, that he might bring us back to himself.” (Calvin, The Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life, p. 17)
Moreover, God has continued through all times and places to seek human beings. As is most convincingly clear in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus. He declared that this was the main reason for his life: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) Jesus’ kind of life, the life that we are all welcomed into as we put our confidence in him, is an interactive, conversational and vibrant life. Daily renewed by us and by God. So perfectly set before us in scripture: Psalm 27:13 “I believe that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living,” and Psalm 90:14: “satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days” and Lamentations 3:22: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercy never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
It seems like this is the way that God intended life to be. Everything and everyone receiving their very life-breath from God. Everyone enjoying their evening stroll with God through the garden in the early evening. This is the kind of life for which all of us were made.
This doesn’t seem to be the reality for most people, even those who claim to be Christian. God delighted in His creation and set out one simple restriction for the humans that would inhabit the garden. The simple restriction was to enjoy all of the other fruits, just not that one. Soon enough, as Genesis 3 depicts, humans doubted God’s goodness and faithfulness to them. Both the man and woman ate the fruit from that one tree. They turned from God and hid from his presence. God had promised them that the consequence of eating that particular fruit was death. That very day, they suffered the loss of their relationship with God. They were now running and hiding from God and not fit to walk and talk with God in the cool evening.
Human beings were once alive to God. They were created to be responsive to and interactive with him. Adam and Eve lived in a conversational relationship with their Creator, daily renewed. When they mistrusted God and disobeyed him, that cut them off from the realm of the Spirit. Thus they became dead in relation to it… (Willard, Hearing God, 150)
Scripture describes two types of life: physical life and spiritual life. Obviously, Adam and Eve did not suffer physical death that day. They doubted, ate the fruit, and spiritual death was the result just as God had promised. Evidence of their spiritual death is that they could not bear to see their creator, they knew what they had done, and were ashamed.
Genesis 3:8: “They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him ‘where are you?’” Even in their sin, God was seeking them. “When we were dispersed like scattered sheep, and lost in the labyrinth of the world, Christ gathered us together again, that he might bring us back to himself.” (Calvin, The Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life, p. 17)
Moreover, God has continued through all times and places to seek human beings. As is most convincingly clear in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus. He declared that this was the main reason for his life: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) Jesus’ kind of life, the life that we are all welcomed into as we put our confidence in him, is an interactive, conversational and vibrant life. Daily renewed by us and by God. So perfectly set before us in scripture: Psalm 27:13 “I believe that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living,” and Psalm 90:14: “satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days” and Lamentations 3:22: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercy never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
The writers of scripture emphasis that each and every day there is interaction with God. The spiritual life that God restores to people is a day to day dynamic relationship. It cannot be reduced to what Dallas Willard calls vampire Christianity that is satisfied with a little bit of Jesus’ blood to cover sin and yet leaves people unchanged. There is no mention of such a thing in scripture. Salvation is a life and salvation is a living, breathing, day to day exchange with God. The evening breeze comes to us and because of Jesus, we are no longer hiding from our God, but we now come out into His light and find that our spirit life has been restored to us. We can enjoy the evening breeze, the morning chill, and the warmth of the noonday sun with our loving God.
