Home With God: Reflecting on Our Union in ChristSample

Created for Home With God

We were created for home with God, not because God was lonely or bored, but because of the delighting love of God. And this is important to remember about creation: God didn’t create out of mercy, God didn’t create out of pity, God didn’t create out of forgiveness. God created the world out of delighting love.

The garden home was not supposed to come to an end. Eden, as a temple home with God in delighting love, was meant to be stretched over the whole world. Adam and Eve were called to multiply, cultivate, and subdue in the presence of God. The last day of creation was to be an unending Sabbath, an unending seventh day marked by God’s people living their whole lives in His presence to reflect His purposes in His place.

But by the time the words of Genesis are heard by an audience, something has gone terribly wrong. The garden home has been lost. How did we get here? And how do we get back home with God?

Before we were created, we were chosen. We were beloved before the beginning. How do we know this and why does it matter? Before there was anything, before there was a garden home, before there was a world at all, God’s people were destined to live at home with God in Christ Jesus forever. Before our fellowship with God was ever experienced or disrupted, we were already chosen for union with Christ. We were beloved before the beginning.

The very same God who eternally enjoyed delighting love in Himself, who created all that is, out of the overflow of this trinitarian delight, made a covenant for the salvation of His people. Theologians call this the pactum salutis. The fancy Latin phrase means “agreement of salvation.” We use it to describe God’s eternal plan to save His people. It is the first covenant, and it stands as the foundation for all the covenants we read in Scripture. This “agreement of salvation,” like all covenant promises, finds its perfect fulfillment in Christ Jesus.