Do you know how many people are
living in the world today? If you don’t know, you can find it in google. It can
give you quite the rough number. But, do you know how many people
have really lived in the world? I am sure that google cannot help you for that.
From the very common skill in
Math and statistics that I have, I would confidently estimate that the number
of human ever living on Earth is greater than any number that you can mention. Disclaimer,
to completely answer my question, do consider counting those who lived before the event of the great flood. Yes, those
who lived in the span of time since Adam and Eve were created to the time when
God told Noah to get into the ark. Exactly, before the first Armageddon fell on
Earth.
God created the universe. And, He
called it “Good.” He loves the world and He considers human as the most
precious one above all His creation. Then, as story goes from there, the human
He trusted corrupted the world and all within it. The human transgression into
sin is so powerful that it has affected not only the human but also all the
good things God has made.
Surprisingly, God still loves the
already corrupted world and the main actors who cause the corruption, the
human. The sin of human cannot cancel God’s love for the world. God’s love is
stronger than the sin. He has strongly emphasized it as written in the bible, “..for
God so love the world..”
When God mentions “The world”, I
believe He means all people who have lived, who are living, and who will live
in the world. God is the Alpha and Omega; the beginning and the ending. Every Word
that comes from His mouth shall relate to that range of eternal time. His Word
shall be applied from the beginning of the creation up to its ending. Can you
imagine now, just how huge God’s love is?
God’s love is like an offer of
friendship. When someone offers you a friendship, either you decide to accept
or to decline it; the person who offers it will remain friendly to you. He will
never force you. And, you must have already known this that a good friend never
forces, and he never needs to force. God is also like that.
Yes, when God died on the cross
to pay the sins of the world, He made Himself as friend to the world. He opens the way for the
world to be reunited with Him. No more blockings since sin no longer counts.
However, there is another stage
above friendship, called partnership. When someone who is naturally friendly
offers you a friendship, he actually offers a partnership. And God is doing it
until now, until His second returning.
What is good about partnership? One
of them is the fact that partners live together. No more loneliness. It is
about human being really human. Well, since
this partnership comes from God, then the situation that comes with is where
you live together with God, the Master of all Universes. What can be better
than that?
The first human; Adam and Eve
lived together with God in the Paradise. The Paradise itself represents the
presence of God. Therefore, a partnership that God gives to those who believe
in Him simply means the restoring of the living-together condition with God. It is the recreation of the experience in the
Paradise in which God becomes the Provider for the human and the human do not
need to worry about anything. It is a situation where human can go to work and find
satisfaction from accomplishing meaningful works that God has also provided for
them. Isn’t it very cool?
These days human work very hard, yet
they hardly find meaning from what they do. They can work and get everything,
but in the end find it meaningless.
Actually, this is the matter that
God wants to address by the partnership that He wants the world to have with
Him. Salvation has secured the access to heaven to those who believe in God. Apart
from that, it also means full access for human to find meaning or purpose to
their existence, being, and work on Earth; to find joy and satisfaction on
Earth. Without knowing or finding
the meaning in what they are doing in life, human will only end up hurting
themselves. And, God does not want that.
I would close with this. There is
so much that the salvation has done in your favor. But there is even more that the partnership with God
will do in your favor (and even for the world).
Trust in Him (again).
John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that
whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
