Heaven
“Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had made” (Genesis 2.8- NLT).
Heaven is the presence of God. Hell is the absence of God. People can give human descriptions of Heaven, using our five senses, but really Heaven is more than a place, it is a Presence. God is the embodiment of all that is good, so Heaven is the extension of this goodness around all of creation. The first Heaven in which humans lived was Eden, the Garden of God. However, we used our free will to sin, and because of that sin, God’s glory around us was replaced with our shame. We could no longer stay in God’s presence, His Heavenly Garden, anymore. God knew His children would fall from grace, so His redemption plan through Jesus Christ was already in place. It was a tree that caused us to sin, so it would be a tree that Jesus would hang on to pay for our sin debt. It took the glory of the Tree of Life to replace the shame caused by the Tree of Knowledge. Because of the Finished Work of Jesus Christ, we have Heaven, or the Presence of God, inside of us. Our shame is lifted, and we have God’s glory around us once again.
“The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree” (Acts 5.30 ESV).
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