Longing and Hope

"For if through the offense of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many." Romans 5:15 (KJV)

By nature we, that is every member of the human race, is dead. Dead in the sense that we are dead to God. His justice condemns us because in Adam, as our corporal head, we have sinned against Him (and continue to sin because we are fallen.) This is awful for us who are human because it means that our eternal destination is to be perpetually consumed by the wrath of a just God, and we entirely deserve it.

In his book Engaging God's World, Cornelius Plantinga speaks of a longing that humans have. I quote the following: "We human beings want God even when we think that what we really want is a green valley, or a good time from our past, or a loved one." I find this hard to believe, because of the quote from Scripture I have above. We are dead to God, which means we are cut off from him. We cannot desire Him because we are dead to Him. It is true that we have a longing, but because we are dead to God, we fill that longing with our new god that the human race worships by nature, Self.

Now, I do not believe that this is the end of the story. If so, then all of reality would be pure vanity, because the pursuit of Self is temporal, and that same Self will be consumed by the fires of Hell without an intervention; because even though we are dead to God by Nature, God has showed mercy. "...the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many." Now there is a place for longing after God. By nature, we long after self-fulfillment, but when God saves us, and instills in us a new life by the work of Jesus Christ, then our heart bursts with the longing that Plantinga refers to:

"This webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets called shalom. We call it "peace," but it means far more than just peace of mind or cease-fire between enemies....In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight - a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, all under the arch of God's love."

This is what God's people will experience in the new Heavens and the new Earth. Not because of us, but because God in His mercy chose to do it. This is our hope, because by nature we would seek our Self god until it dragged us into perpetual agony away from God. Instead, because God sent His Son to perform the work of salvation, we will experience shalom with Him for all eternity.

Thanks be to God for the work which He has done!