I want you to imagine this scene.

God had just finished creating Adam and Eve placing them within the pristine landscape of Eden; a land of paradise beyond our wildest imagination.

They live in a garden paradise where they could thrive and raise a family of their own, but this garden of theirs is more than a physical utopia. It’s a land where they live in perfect harmony with one another and with their Creator. They would commune with Him as their Father and as a friend. And that relationship – more than all the fruit-bearing trees, more than all the crystal waters, more than the beauty and comfort of their surroundings – provides everything their human hearts could ever desire. They have love, because their love came from God. They had joy, because their joy came from God. They had peace because their peace came from God. There was no hunger, greed, fear, or pain because God’s holy presence surrounded and filled that perfect place.

Suddenly a rebellious angel invades this perfect scene in the form of a serpent. He introduces doubt and suspicion; they are deceived into believing his words instead of God’s words. He convinces them to choose their own way rather than trusting God’s way. They are persuaded to eat the only fruit God has said is off-limits. They believed a lie that God was somehow withholding His very best from them and tragedy strikes.

Then the scene fades to black with a gut wrenching silence; that act – their willful sin against God, in spite of all the generosity and goodness, love, and friendship He has shared with them. This resulted in their expulsion from the garden, the perfect home they always enjoyed each and every day. But even worse than that, the consequences are dreadful and devastating, affecting all of creation itself – every plant and animal, extending even to every human being who would be born after that day.

The entrance of sin into the world brought death with it. This sin severed all their connection to the presence of God. Gone were the shared moments of intimacy and happiness with Him. Gone were the thrills of laughter they enjoyed together. Their close relationship, the constant awareness of His love, the sensation of going to sleep in His embrace was all gone.

Soon they would learn that their sin brought into the world, not only living death of separation from God, but also all the symptoms of death—hunger, disease, hatred, and heartache—symptoms that would only reign over the whole human race from that moment forward.

God has watched with unspeakable grief as each one of us has been born into the very world were He and His first human creations once walked together in perfect relationship. He longs to relate to you as intimately as He once did with them. He wants to take pleasure in you. He wants to see in your eyes the delight that only His life and love can bring you, but that’s not possible because you have been dead to Him from the moment you were born, separated from the life that is found in Him. God has been watching from the very first moments of your life as you follow in Adam and Eve’s footsteps, creating further and further separation from Him by repeatedly choosing your own sinful ways instead of God’s ways. This breaks His heart.

But His heart is far from helpless. Even in the garden, He knew how He would respond. Before the world was created, God worked out a masterful redemptive plan by which He would enter our world, run to us with open arms and say, “I love you no matter what you’ve done, and I want you to be my child again.”

So God makes His move. He takes the initiative. You are the one who desperately needs Him, but you didn’t seek Him out because you have gone and made the world your friend. You are the one who should have been crying, “Please, God, do something; I can’t live without you.” But you don’t and you continue on in your own selfish ways, not seeking or wanting Him adding to every tear drop He cries. Amazingly, He wants you! He wants to reclaim you, to relate to you, to enjoy and delight and take pleasure in a personal relationship with you.

So you know what He does?

He trades Heaven for Earth and enters our world to set things straight. The mighty God of the universe became human and lived here on earth among us in shared life and engaged mankind. Because God’s human creation is made of flesh and blood, Jesus also became flesh and blood by being born in human form. For only a human being could He die, and only by dying could He break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. Don’t you see? Only the Son of the living God could wrench the power of death out of the hand of Satan, so that God could be reconnected to all creation—to you—in a personal one-on-one relationship.

His heart cries out, “You may have turned away from Me, but I’m not turning away from you. You are so important to Me that I will go to extraordinary lengths to reclaim you again as my friend, my companion, my child” God’s divine passion to redeem you by entering our world and dying for us isn’t based on anything we have done or could do in the future. It is purely the result of His incredible grace. Regardless of all we’ve done or haven’t done, He offers us grace. God pursues you, God accepts you completely, and in spite of your sin, He provides a way back to Him.

I love you could not have been said a better way!