Good things can come out of bad things.
Isn’t God awesome? Out of the most destructive and dark episodes of our lives, He can bring forth good results. What Satan intends for our destruction; God turns it for our good. That is His daily victory in our lives. That we are alive and able to joyfully praise and love Him, in spite of everything that Satan tried in order to keep us dead and quiet.
In the Desire of Ages, pg. 25, Ellen White writes these victorious and life-giving words: “It was Satan’s purpose to bring about an eternal separation between God and man; but in Christ we become more closely united to God than if we had never fallen. In taking our nature, the Saviour has bound himself to humanity by a tie that is never to be broken. Through the eternal ages He is linked with us. “God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son.” (DA, pg. 25)
There is incredible depth of reality in this quote. For the sake of respecting the limitations that I have in this letter, I will make a brief list of all the things God resulted for our eternal good out of the terrible moment we call “the Fall”.
White says Satan purposed “to bring out eternal separation between God and man”, but…:
- Jesus took “our nature”. To show the universe of in love He was with humanity, He didn’t simply come down and rapture us to Heaven… He got in our shoes, and skin and bones and disease and rejection… and death. He made sure we knew that no matter what would happen in our present state, we
- Through the incarnation, the initial relationship God had with humanity in Eden is exponentially increased. Thanks to Jesus, we are “more closely united” than before! We are now “bound by a tie” that is so beautiful, so clear and so unarguably and undoubtedly beautiful, that it can “never be broken”. While humanity, along with the universe, may have had, in a terrible exercise of free will, have room to doubt the character of God, Jesus wipes those doubts clear out of the picture forever! This is why Paul is able to confidently say that “nothing and no one can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:39).
- The hymn ‘Blessed Assurance’ begins with an often flown by sentence that says: “Jesus is mine”. Ellen White shows us here that God’s love for us wasn’t simply shown in the saving of Jesus, but also in the giving. God “gave” us his Son. Jesus’ is humanity’s firstborn, big brother, redeemer and ruler. He is God’s greatest gift to humanity. Thus, He becomes our assurance that death does not have the last word but that life, and life eternal, will.
Every time that you feel the weight of sin and the brokenness of this world is too strong to fight and too heavy to overcome, remember that Jesus is more yours now than He was in Eden. Remember that Him being yours means His perfect life, his perfect surrender and his perfect hope is yours. And remember that, because Jesus is yours: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” (John 10:27-28).