redemption: it wasn't plan b

There were two trees in the center of the garden. 

To indulge in the fruit of one tree would lead to certain death. 

To eat of the other tree? -- would lead to life forever. 

That Snake saw fruit pertaining to life and fruit pertaining to death and thus was induced his greatest fear: that Adam and Eve would pluck the fruit of life and live forever. 

God planted Life before humanity and Satan feared its consummation. Before Adam and Eve could reach out for Life and so be sealed into life eternal, Satan shifted their gaze toward the supposed satisfaction of another kind of fruit. The fruit God said not to eat. 

I wonder aloud. Why did You even plant a tree that grows poisoned apples? It's evident that the redemption story for His glory was Purpose from the beginning. 

We know that only one thing can break the curse of a poisoned apple. 

Adam and Eve and you and I bit into poisoned fruit and died. To put it bluntly. 

The tree of death encompassed our lives that our direction could ever always only be death. 

It's windy as God strolls through the garden, that same day. As God sees: man has rejected the Life that stood before them and chosen to indulge in death. Man is sent out, lest he reach out to Life and so be mired in his present condition forever. 

We ate into the curse and so were consumed by it. 

We cannot break our own death. 

:::

Thousands of years later, God enters the garden. It's the cool of the night and once again, the Betrayer is present. [John 18]

This is the most amazing thing. This is actually the most amazing thing. This is the fulfillment of what God had intended all along. This is redemption: this is its story. 

Man ate the poisoned apple and died, unable to ever recover himself from his death. 

Borne into the tree, literally into the tree, God became the death that consumed us. God came to become the death that consumed us. Because -- and this is where the truth and glory of grace starts to permeate your being and it.is.holy -- He has no desire for us die forever. 

We ask why God would even plant that tree whose fruit, if consumed, would lead to death. We conclude that the love of God is some kind of gimmick because what kind of God knowingly allows humanity to eat itself into death.

Genesis 1:2, the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

This moment astounds me. This is before He brings dust and sky and us into existence. This moment astounds me, because God sees us eat of the tree of death, destroying the intended purpose of Life. The astounding part isn't that He sees that we're completely self-ful beings and still breathes us into existence. 

What is astounding is this: the full intent of His purpose to bring redemption from Himself by becoming the death He watched us consume into ourselves -- was in this moment present. 

The redemption plan didn't come into existence after we ate into death. 

Hovering over the face of the waters, the Spirit of God knew Himself taking death into Himself on the Cross. 

The extent of His love doesn't begin in the middle of Moses, or with His promise to Abraham, His birth in the manger or nails pierced into the Tree. 

It begins before the beginning. 

As if all of creation exists in order for Him to glory Himself in this love for us. 

Taking the tree of death into Himself, He became the curse -- and so dissolved the curse. [Galatians 3] 

Revelation 2. We abandoned the love we had at first.  "To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God."

We can return. He came in order that we might be returned to Him. This is Love from the beginning. God redeeming us, reconciling us, to Himself. 

That we might come back into the garden. Redeemed. Forgiven. Delivered. Kissed awake from the curse -- 

into the Fruit that is life forever.