The Promise of the Beginning Is Fulfilled in the End

Original sin introduced disharmony into the world on three levels. On each level, there is an effect on the relational aspects of human existence.

The first level of disharmony is between the human race and God—demonstrated by Adam hiding from his Creator. On the second level, human beings are out of harmony with each other, beginning with the primary unity between husbands and wives. Adam blames Eve, and woman will now suffer male dominance that God did not intend. And finally, the human race is out of harmony with the earth. The physical environment, over which the human being originally had dominion, now will be an aggressor against the good of human existence. Barred from the tree of life, fighting thorns and thistles, in the end the human person returns to the earth. These three levels of disharmony will mark human existence until the end of time, and constitute what it means to be banished from the garden.

But the beginning of Genesis is not simply about man’s fall any more than it is simply about the beginning of creation. It is about the beginning of redemption, a redemption that takes place in the historical order. Time and history—this world is the arena of God’s saving action.

The rest of Genesis records the historical development, the linear development, of God’s saving action, which involves the formation of a people: beginning with the call of Abraham, to whom God promised land and descendants and through whom the entire world would be blessed (Gen. 12:1-3). Ultimately, this historical action of God will be fulfilled in the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14), in whom God himself enters the historical order, and by his personal, physical presence the historical order is transformed.

Among all religions, Judaism and Christianity (which as the fulfillment of Judaism’s covenant) alone affirm the goodness of the created order.

This world matters!

And if this world matters, then justice and right in this world matter. This is the religion that affirms that there is an inherent relation between the human intellect and the universe, that the world makes sense!

Human beings do not simply live inside their head. The mind is given to be in relation to the universe God created. The human race may study, explore and probe a world that makes sense to the human intellect. This is the religion that affirms the importance of the human person; and so important is the human person to God that he actually calls persons to partner with him in the salvation of the world. It is the religion of hope, in which the future is open to the salvific mercy of God.

Finally, and most crucially, this is the religion that declares God is near— not aloof, not far off, not a God shut up within himself. It is a faith that dares to say, in the words of 1 John 3:2 that we are his children—that “We shall be like him—for we shall see him as he is.”

At the conclusion of Genesis 3, the human race is barricaded from the tree of life. Angels guard it from anyone gaining entry. But what was lost to man is restored as the First Book is linked to Revelation—the Last Book. In the Blood of the Lamb, the pathway to the tree of life is opened. God himself will see to it that “the victor eats from the tree of life which grows in the garden of God” (Rev. 2:7). The promise of the Beginning is fulfilled in the End.

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