The Ending Makes All the Difference
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What is your favorite story? Wasn’t the first time you experienced that story a unique experience? Hasn’t it been different ever since? That is the way that stories work. Once you know the ending, you then understand the whole story in a different way. Just think about your favorite movie or book. Your first encounter with that story was a unique experience. From then on, it has always been experienced backwards. In other words, the ending colors the rest of the story. It affects how we see everything else. The ending makes all the difference.
The biblical story is no different. The ending (i.e. God's plan of recreation) makes all the difference.
The biblical story begins in a garden (Genesis 1-2) and ends in a garden (Revelation 21-22). God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. This garden was a place of beauty and order. It was paradise. Even though this world is now broken (i.e. full of the chaos of sin and its effects), one Day God will dwell with His people on a renewed earth forever. The biblical story begins with God creating the heavens and the earth out of the chaos of darkness, and it ends with God recreating the heavens and the earth out of the chaos of rebellion. God’s plan is not to destroy or wipe out His creation. His infinitely wise plan involves something greater. God is the Redeemer who brings order and life out of chaos and death. When Jesus returns, our physical bodies will be resurrected. And God will recreate this broken world. This ending makes all the difference.
God really does care about His creation - to the extent that He enters into the chaos and corruption of this world to redeem and recreate it.
God loves His creation to such an extent that He was willing to act at great cost to Himself for it's sake. Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God through whom all things were made, became human for our sake. He humbled Himself and became one of us because of His great love for us. And what is even more mind-blowing is that this Creator of life died. Jesus experienced the painful, humiliating death of a criminal, on a very public symbol of execution (i.e. a Roman cross). However - to everyone's astonishment - He got up and actually walked out of the grave. Even though we live in this broken world and we have to fight every day against our sin that enslaves us, God has already begun to make us new. God's Spirit miraculously opens up our eyes so that we believe in this resurrected Jesus and follow Him. But the story doesn't end there.
We are still waiting in anticipation for the ending of the story to finally happen.
We are waiting. We are waiting for God to complete what He has promised. The new creation that God has begun in Christ is not yet complete. We are still waiting for the ending to finally take place. Instead of leaving us and this world in our self-destructing rebellion, God loves enough to rescue. And we are still waiting for the completion of this great rescue mission. This world will not remain sin-filled and cursed forever. One Day, when Jesus Christ returns in glory, we will be physically resurrected - our physical bodies will actually get up out of the grave like Jesus did. We will have new bodies that do not experience pain, do not grow old and weary, do not decay and die. And this broken world will be recreated.
Jesus Christ is our only hope, so we are eagerly waiting for His return. This is what we are longing for. This is what we are praying for. This hope reminds us that this world is not the way it's supposed to be, so we don't need to be pretend like everything is fine. We don't need to try in vain to find our deepest satisfaction in the temporary pleasures of this broken world. This great hope motivates us to pursue holiness and to love our neighbors with as much energy and we love ourselves. This hope energizes us to live and work in ways like we care about this world - because God cares so much about it that He will one Day recreate it. This great hope - the ending of the story - makes all the difference.
