Living in communion

“But He answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” (Matt. 4:4).

Isn’t living in communion with God what Adam lost when he fell into sin? Before sin he had timeless peace with a Friend. Born with a nature that gravitated to his Creator, and surrounded by every evidence of his Creator’s power and love, Adam was happy, very happy. Eve, the crowning work of creation, revealed to Adam the epitome of creation’s glory. She offered the only thing creation fell short of—perfect companionship. Adam was united with his new world in many ways. The chemistry, the physics, the biology, the astronomy, the geology, the study of animal and plant, all were there for his intellectual pleasure. He even had communion with animals and plants; but, it was not enough. The spiritual union he had with them lacked in a way he couldn’t put his finger on.

Then, through spiritual discernment, when he understood that the animals and plants had their own special form of communion between male and female kinds, Adam realized what had been missing from his perfect happiness. He needed another like himself but not exactly like him; he needed another Adam of the other gender.

The Lord God revealed Himself and His Father in the creation of the first couple. And He illustrated His Father’s universe in miniature when He created the earth. When the Lord God chose this world it was a large, gaseous, rogue planet. Like Neptune, whose atmosphere is mostly water and whose core is the size of Earth, our planet needed a makeover to allow beauty and life to exist and be seen.

So, He condensed the water atmosphere of Earth, forming its gigantic ocean, its seas and lakes and rivers. Then He went to work forming the intricacies of life, right down to the molecule. He created it to be inhabited, ultimately placing two rulers over the glorious new creation, who would be figures of Himself and His Father. Now He had a sanctuary He could visit, a synagogue, a temporary dwelling, a sandbox. It was a world which He filled with His workmanship and with evidences of Himself. “Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the LORD.” (Jer. 23:24). The earth was “full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.” (Isa. 11:9).

This His Father had done to the universe. The Father had brought together the stuff of space, molding the stars into galaxies and nebulae. He had decorated His own home and filled it with His workmanship and with evidences of Himself for the pleasure of the future hosts that would surround Him. It was His sanctuary, an extension of His throne, of Himself.

This was His great pleasure, but something was missing. He beheld the companionship between the stars and their planets. He comprehended a union, albeit mechanical, within galaxies and the nebulae, and realized His lack. He needed one like Himself, who would not be exactly the same. So after incomprehensible eons, He brought forth His firstborn Son, “the Beginning of the creation of God” (Rev. 3:14). His Prototokos was “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature” (Col. 1:15); He was the essence of His Father condensed into a visible form. He was “the angel of the LORD” (Zech. 3:1), “Michael the archangel” (Jude 1:9). He was the Lord God, “the Lord of sabaoth” (Jas. 5:4), “the prince of the host” (Dan. 8:11). He was “the Prince of princes” (Dan. 8:25) and the “Prince of Peace.” (Isa. 9:6).

Now God’s communion was perfect. In His Son He found the epitome of perfection of His universe. Now the Father could be perfectly happy; and heaven could be perfectly joyful. “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined.” (Ps. 50:2).

Plans were made to create a miniature, a corporeal representation of the happiness and glory of the heavenly home and its universe. The Father and Son came together for this most precious project after choosing one of Their innumerable rogue, gaseous planets. By His Father’s direction in the operation, the Son spoke everything of the earth into existence. The Son did as His Father had shown Him in the “holy mountain of God” (Eze. 28:14). “He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.” (Ps. 33:9).

“The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do: for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth Him all things that Himself doeth.… That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent Him.… For as the Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.” (John 5:19,20,23,26). “God…created all things by Jesus Christ.” (Eph. 3:9).

The earth represented to Adam the whole kingdom of God throughout the immensity of space. The Lord God had a personal relationship with the land, as His Father had with the first dominion—His universe of peace. “I [will] remember My covenant with Jacob, and also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land. The land also shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her sabbaths, while she lieth desolate without them.” (Lev. 26:42,43). As earth’s land needed rest from being overworked, God’s whole universe has needed rest from the unrest caused by the sin problem.

“Thus saith the Lord GOD; In the day that I shall have cleansed you from all your iniquities I will also cause you to dwell in the cities, and the wastes shall be builded. And the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by. And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the Garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced, and are inhabited. Then the heathen that are left round about you shall know that I the LORD build the ruined places, and plant that that was desolate: I the LORD have spoken it, and I will do it.” (Eze. 36:33-36).

Adam had exchanged his wondrous divine nature and glorious world for dry chaff. His new life and world would be nothingness, even less than nothing. All the glory that he had experienced disappeared, because God had ceased His communion with Adam. God could no longer enjoy the nature of Adam and Eve. The new self-indulgent, self-exalted spirit that filled their minds was a constant irritant to His selfless mind. His Spirit was at odds with theirs. Their spirit jarred His Spirit every moment. Their spirit was Satan’s spirit of hatefulness and implacable self-centeredness, adversarial to the love and joy that had once filled the universe until now. “The kingdom of God suffereth violence; and the violent take it by force.” (Matt. 11:12).

Sin brought immense pain to God and to His creation. “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” (Rom. 8:22). At every sight and sound and sense, Adam and Eve and their race caused God constant torture instead of constant pleasure. Instead of the previous unending joy, now all that Jehovah received from them was unending suffering and regret for having made the Human Race. And this was as Satan desired in order to wreak his revenge on God and His Son.

Vomiting his vendettas: “This is what they deserve for disrespecting Lucifer and dismissing Me from their presence! I’ll bring jehovah untold misery through those highly prized urchins until he has to destroy them! Jehovah always loved them better than me! He had dreamed of them, even before We the angels were created! He’ll know how I feel when I get even! And when he has destroyed these unworthy jars of clay, then I will heap My final vengeance on jehovah by proclaiming his hypocrisy. He always portrayed himself as gracious; and I will prove him to be otherwise when he destroys the human race which I will make utterly worthless! I will make him eternally miserable for what he has done to Me! I will destroy his credibility forever! jehovah and his precious son will burn forever, even forever and ever, in the fire of My making!”

Yet, despite Jehovah’s infinite misery, He remembers what He lost. He knows what He had with Adam and what can be again. He also knows His precious children of Adam are somewhat ignorant of why and to what extent they cause Him torment. Jehovah says, “They know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34). Our Father’s love toward us “suffereth long, and is kind.” (1Cor. 13:4).

Long before the run-in with Lucifer He had provided a way to win back the precious creation of His dreams. “All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ…. To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them…. For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” (2Cor. 5:18,19,21).

Reconciliation is available to all of His children of Earth. The previous, perfect communion can be restored. Through His Son, the infinite God can once again hold blessed conversation with finite creatures of clay. Constant meditation and prayer—two way communion—returns to Adam’s dominion! Heaven is again reconnected with earth, scarred humanity with divinity that it helped to eternally damage!

Oh, the condescension of the Most High God to dwell again in vessels of valueless clay! The pristine King of heaven living in sanctuaries of Earth’s dust! From where does He derive that self-sacrificing pleasure? It will take the redeemed race an eternity to know. Oh, the depth of the riches of the humility and condescension of God! How unsearchable is His mercy, and His love past finding out!