Even Better Than The Garden

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." – John 1:1

I love the fact that Scripture speaks of Christians as being “in Christ.” We typically hear of Jesus being in us, but do you ever consider what it means to be in Jesus? As I look at John 1:1, I notice something more than a proof-text for the deity of Christ; I notice relationship, sacrifice, and our great hope as those who are “in Christ.”

The first phrase in this great verse teaches us that Jesus, the Word (see Jn 1:14), did not begin in a Bethlehem stable, but that He had no beginning at all. For, we read, “In the beginning was the Word;” that is, at the beginning of creation, when God spoke time and matter into existence, the Son of God, Jesus, was. He did not come into existence at the beginning; rather, at the beginning, He existed.

What caught my attention and took me from one thought to another, was the next phrase. Instead of a restatement of the deity of Christ, we discover something about His existence before the beginning of time. We discover that Jesus, the Son of God, the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us, was not alone. “The Word was with God,” and because God is relational, perfect in love (and in every other way), we can rightly conclude that Jesus was never lonely before “the beginning,” and that this perfect relationship with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit is better than any relationship we have ever enjoyed.

We all want to know and be known; that is, to be in a loving relationship with others. Some of us know the joy of family; but even in the best of marriages, and with wonderful kids, there is pain because of the imperfections associated with our sin. But God, who is perfect and without sin, enjoyed the relationship we now only long for; one better than we are even capable of imagining.

If we cannot even imagine such perfection, then we certainly cannot rightly appreciate God giving this up. When I think of Jesus being with God, in perfect relationship, I also think of the enormous sacrifice described in John 3:16. Not only did Jesus willingly come to save us, but the Father willingly gave His Son into a dark and sinful world – knowing that they would reject him, and eventually murder him on a cross. Think of the sacrifice of the Father. Think of the sacrifice of the Son – not only in dying, but in experiencing loneliness and separation, as the Father turned His face away from the one whom He had always, and perfectly, loved. God willingly sacrificed this loving, perfect, eternal relationship so that we might be brought into the union He enjoyed before creation.

We long for the relationship enjoyed by our first parents in the garden - an innocent, sinless, and shame-free existence; but God has something even better in mind. He did not make this sacrifice to only give us what Adam and Eve previously enjoyed; He sacrificed so that we might be “in Christ,” and therefore brought into the relationship Jesus enjoyed within the Godhead before the garden was created. Like all of Scripture, God uses types and shadows to point us to the greater reality of Christ. If you are “in Christ,” the reality that awaits you is infinitely better than a walk with God in the garden. Better than this, what awaits you is seen in Jesus’ own prayer for us:

“Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one … But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves … that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me … Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” – John 17:11, 13, 21, 24

God has something better for us than another walk in the garden. What awaits us is not a relationship from the perspective of Adam and Eve, but instead from the perspective of the Word who was with God before the garden, and who will be with Him forevermore.