Come, Let Us Go to the House of the Lord

Because Jesus has gone on his own exile in his death and returned to the presence of God in his resurrection and ascension, we can see that we have one step back into Eden. Because Christ has gone before us into the presence of God, the next movement of history is the full homecoming of the church into a new creation where God “will dwell with them, and they will be his people” (Revelation 21:3)!

The Bible traverses a cosmic spectacle from creation to new creation. Genesis 1‒2 describes the original Eden, and Revelation 21‒22 foretells a new Eden. Thus, the Creator’s original intent in forming and fashioning the world is never abandoned in the Bible and is finally accomplished in the end. But between those two poles, we have a multi-layered story of exile and return. Adam and Eve are expelled from Eden in Genesis 3:24, and in Revelation 21:24‒26 the “kings of the earth” bring their glories and honors back into the paradisical presence of God. It is no overstatement to say, therefore, that the Bible is one long drama of humanity’s homecoming.

I contend that the drama climaxes as Jesus’s death becomes his own personal exile, and his resurrection is his own personal return from exile. For in his resurrection, and by extension his ascension, Jesus is the first man to re-enter the very presence of God, “not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf” (Heb. 9:24). In turn, Jesus’s resurrection secures our resurrection—a historical downpayment guaranteeing the future return of all Jesus’s people to that same presence of God (1 Thess. 4:13‒18).

This means that the Bible portrays a grand theology of history. That is, by narrating a story from creation to new creation, with a consistent hum of exile and return in between, the Bible gives us an intentional narrative that overlays and explains all of history. So the history of the cosmos is not just one random thing after another, on its way to cosmic conflagration, wherein nothing truly matters in between. Rather, the universe, from beginning to end, is the intentional theater of redemption, written by its divine Author. And we are living today in the last chapter of that grand narrative; the last chapter of a story that will certainly end with our homecoming to God! This should give us tremendous perseverance and confidence to endure the race set before us.

Stories have quite an effect on us. Stories cause us to imagine another setting and another time than our own. And if the story is well organized (easy for the audience to follow) and has a satisfying conclusion, then it also has an orienting effect on us when we read, hear, or see it. Perhaps you’ve read a good story recently and thought how well all the pieces hold together and how you always knew where you were in the developing plot. Equally, perhaps you have recently read a book whose narrative was disjointed, even chaotic. The former made you feel secure and clearheaded in its pages. The latter left you dizzy and maybe even anxious when reading. Either way, at some point you had to put the book down and turn your attention again to “the real world.”

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