REDEMPTION The Gardener Comes JOHN VOOYS Our world is not as wonderful as it once was. The “Garden of Eden” that God intended for us, needs to have its “weeds” dealt with. The good news is that this action has been taken. The Gardener Himself has come to tackle the root problem, sin. The Bible tells us that God, in the person of His Son Jesus Christ, entered this troubled world. This we find in John, a New Testament “book” in the Bible. There Jesus Christ, symbolically called the “Word”, is credited with being the creator of all things and the giver of life (John 1:3-4). Then John goes on to say, “The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us” (John 1:14). Can you believe it? The Creator coming to live in creation, as one of us! Why? Again, the Bible gives us the answer: “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son” (John 3:16). The Bible explains that Jesus Christ, God’s Son, came to earth in order to be “crucified” – executed on a cross by Roman soldiers – for our sins. Jesus did not come merely to be a teacher of how we should live, as some suggest. He also came to take the punishment for human sin, to die for all men and women. As sinners, all people deserve punishment. Jesus Christ did not. We read in the Bible book of Hebrews that even though Jesus experienced every temptation we experience, “He was without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). For this reason, Jesus could take our place; He could be a “sacrifice” for our sins. Therefore, if we accept Jesus, our sins will be forgiven and our relationship with God will be restored. As well, because He is the source of life, and because He has removed sin, which brought death into the world, Jesus gives us new life, an “eternal life” that will not be destroyed by death. The Bible, in Romans 10:9, says of Jesus that “God raised Him from the dead.” The grave was not the end of the story for Jesus. He rose from the dead. That is why Easter, which commemorates this event, is so important for Christians around the world. They know that Jesus Christ is alive. They also know that, because of Jesus’ victory over death, they, too, will have life beyond the grave. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, especially, distinguish the teaching of the Bible and Christianity from other religions. Other religions may offer faint hopes through rituals, special offerings, periods of self-denial or even extraterrestrial intervention. It is only the God of the Bible who has dealt with the sin question. Those committed to Jesus Christ, Christians, are promised that they will live forever with God in a perfectly restored creation. This might sound like “pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by”, but it also means that even in this life some of the damage of sin may be reversed, some of the weeds may be destroyed. The Bible says that, as a result of committing their lives to Jesus Christ, Christians are already “a new creation” (II Corinthians 5:17). These people are made new, sin’s power over them is broken, and the presence of Jesus Christ lives in them to help them (Romans 8:9-11). Christians find that God gives them the power to overcome addictions, anger, hatred, fear and many other results of sin. As “new people”, they can again have a healthy relationship with God and their fellow human beings. They find personal healing, and try to bring healing to the environment. In a sense, Christians are the Gardener’s assistants in this needy world. Some day, they will live in a restored Garden of Eden with the Creator, the Gardener, forever. (For that part of the story, read the last two chapters of the last book of the Bible, Revelation.) John Vooys is an instructor at Columbia Bible College in Abbotsford, B.C.

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