In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The Bible tells us that. I used to wonder why God bothered. He had to know that Adam and Eve would sin.  He had to foresee all the evil that would ensue.  Despite all that, the all knowing, infinitely wise Creator saw fit to create the world in which we live. So why would He do that?

There is an order to creation.  It was not haphazard.  He created the trees, the vegetation before the animals.  Had He done it the other way around, an elephant could have ended on top of a tree.  Not a pretty sight.  Everything He created during the first five days was good.  It had to be.  He is incapable of anything less.

On the sixth day, He created mankind, the crowning of His creation.  He created mankind to rule over the earth, to be its caretaker.  Mankind was to multiply, to be fruitful.  This was the beginning of God’s co-laboring with mankind.  Mankind was created after His image, His likeness. Why was mankind created after God’s likeness?

I live with my wife and our dog Sparky (we also have three grown children and three grandchildren).  While I love Sparky and talk to him frequently (he is not a sterling conversationalist) there is no deep fellowship, no heartfelt interchange between us.  That is reserved for my wife.  After thirty-eight years of marriage we understand each other pretty well.  We have a level of understanding that is only possible because my wife is also a human being.  Only human beings can relate to other humans on both an emotional as well as an intellectual level.  If we were two different species our ability to understand each other, to love each other, to empathize with each other would be severely hindered.

God is the ultimate lover.  The Bible tells us that He is love.  The most natural expression of love is to give, to share with others.  For God to have the deepest level of fellowship possible with mankind, they would have to be in His image.  Nothing else would suffice.  And while we are not God, understanding that we are truly in His image gives us a dignity that would not otherwise be possible.

It is vital that we understand God’s purpose in creation.  When mankind sinned, God immediately prophesied the coming Messiah who would bring restoration (Ge 3:15).  So why did Jesus come?  Many Christians will tell you that He came so that we could go to heaven when we die.  Surely this is part of the redemptive package.  Those of us who are His will spend eternity with Him in heaven.  But that doesn’t fully explain why He came.  Jesus came to restore what was lost in the fall.  In fact, Romans 5 tells us that the effect of the cross is greater than that of the fall.  In other words, Jesus’s sacrifice did more for us than the fall of man did to us.  The Bible tells us that Jesus came to give us eternal life (Jn 3:16). Many of us think that eternal life means that we will live forever with God in heaven.  While that is true, that is not the essence of eternal life but the result of having eternal life.  So what is eternal life?  Jesus said, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3, ESV). Eternal life is relational.  It is knowing God.  In receiving eternal life, God’s original purpose for mankind, to know mankind intimately, to walk amongst them, is restored.

It is because of what Jesus did that we become the temple of the Holy Spirit, the very habitation of God.  It is because of the cross that we can come to the throne of grace boldly, with confidence (Heb 4:16). The fellowship, the intimacy with God that Adam and Eve experienced before the fall is now once available through the sacrifice of Jesus.