Editor’s Note: Here’s some good news to consider every time you rise to your feet or have a meal: thoughts from the Understanding the Times rewrite on God’s use of everydayness in redemption.
Some see God as a judge who, after a couple of millennia of contemplation, decides to punish his own son for the sin of humanity. This picture falls well short of the full truth. In scripture God reveals himself as the redeemer buying back his wayward creation. His redemptive nature is seen in the garden when he told the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15, ESV). God took a basic act, standing on our feet, and transformed it into a means of destroying evil. The one who deceived at the beginning will be crushed at the end (see Revelation 12:9).
Consider too the Passover, God’s redemption of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. The centerpiece was a meal of preparation (see Exodus 12), again a basic act, and one Jesus repeated with his disciples (see Mark 14). At the end of all things, Christianity says, the serpent who said “Take, eat” in the garden will be defeated by the Savior who said, “Take, eat” in the upper room. And, to put an exclamation point on it, Christ’s victory will be commemorated with the meal of meals, a wedding feast (Revelation 19:9). God cares about everydayness. It is like him to redeem chewing, swallowing, and digesting, without which life is impossible, to celebrate “making all things new” (Revelation 21:5).