RESTORATION
Bill Hofkins ©
The Greek dictionary, or any English dictionary, will define the word restore:
Return (someone or something) to a former condition, place, or position.
Reinstate, put back, replace, bring back to origin.
Let me ask you a question. Have you ever created any heavens or any earth? Have you formed any seas, mountains, jungles, or fish and animals? If you have, congratulations! I would really like to see it!
If you haven’t, please consider this—someone smarter than us created the heavens and earth that we live in! Someone, other than you, created the birds of the air and the fish in the sea, and all the vegetables and fruit we eat.
We call Him God!
Once He completed creation, he made man in His own Image. Yes, that’s right! He created Adam with the same capacity to think, live and love; just as He does!
Adam was the pinnacle or zenith of creation because he was made in the likeness of our Creator-God.
I don’t think for a moment that Adam and Eve lived in a grass hut in the jungle, or that they walked around like naked Jay-birds. They were magnificent creatures and the capstone of creation.
Didn’t Adam name all the animals? He not only named every species but remembered the names as well. He used one hundred percent of his brain.
Another thing: Religious tradition seems to paint Adam as a normal human fellow, just as we know people today. But God created them to live for eternity, including their physical bodies, which were never meant to wear out and die.
Granted, God made them from the dust of the earth, but there was an eternal quality about their physical bodies. I describe it as living electricity, or glory, saturating, permeating their entire being. They didn’t wear clothes (as we know them), but they were definitely not naked.
They had a supernatural covering that emanated from their spirit, and it glowed with an illuminating radiance. To look at them, you might think you were looking at angels, or God Himself.
Do you remember Jesus while on the mount of transfiguration? His appearance began-to-become like the original creation of Adam and Eve:
And (Jesus)was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. Matthew 17:2
His clothes were not white like wool, or white like snow. It says, ‘white like the light’. Light is the only quality that adequately describes his transformation. Also, his face shone bright like the sun.
Many Christians conclude that at our resurrection, everyone in Christ will receive the same quality or essence in our physical body.
God never meant the Garden of Eden to be a temporary place, but an eternal paradise. How long did Adam and Eve live there before they sinned? Two weeks? Three months? No one knows, but it is certain that God did not make the heavens and earth only to have Adam rebel in a short period of time.
Let’s give God more credit than that, shall we?
God made creation to last! I would be willing to bet that Adam and Eve lived on earth for millennia before they rebelled. Who is to say?
They could have lived a year, or a thousand years. What if they lived a million years before they fell? Who is to say? I just don’t accept the notion that God created them so terribly flawed that they immediately committed high treason in the span of a few short weeks or months.
Here is the Good News
God created Adam and Eve to live in perfect harmony. To have a flawless relationship and fellowship with himself that would last for eternity.
God never intended for Adam and Eve to break their relationship.
BUT THEY DID!
This is what the entire Bible narrative is about:
Fellowship—lost fellowship—restoration unto fellowship.
What Jesus did was restore the relationship that Adam and Eve screwed up! But what quality of relationship can we expect if we receive salvation and return to Him?
Although you were born separated from God, you have the opportunity at your disposal to be restored, and brought back into perfect unity and everlasting relationship with Him.
Receiving Christ Restores
‘RESTORE’ implies a return to an original state after depletion or loss. Therefore, when we receive Christ, we are restored to perfect relationship with God.
Here is an example of restoration back to original state or condition:
Then saith he to the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, like as the other.
Matthew 12:13
If the man with the withered hand never had a normal hand to begin with, how could it be deemed, restored?
To ‘be restored’ would imply the withered hand became normal. Normal meaning, to be as it should have been from God’s original creation.
If he never had a good hand, but it became good, then his hand is restored to the manner in which God originally created our hands.
This illustrates that Jesus not only had the power but the willingness to make the man normal and whole.
Another example of restoration is the blind man who’s eyes were restored. His vision became perfect as Jesus ministered to him.
After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly. Mark 8:25
It is not stated if this man was born blind. But a different man, in John 9, was born blind. The passage does not use the word restore, but it is clear Jesus restored his vision.
And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth…
When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay,
And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.
John 9:1-7
If God created men to have eyesight, but this man was born blind, does it matter if he had sight at birth, lost it, then regained it? Jesus restored his eyesight because it was God’s original intent for him to see. Jesus made it so!
We are Born Blind
In the same way, we are not born with a perfect relationship with God, then lost it, then regained it.
Our parents, Adam and Eve, had the original perfect relationship.
That is how we should have been born, without all the drama and heartache. Without the sin nature and rebellion. Without the need to return to God and need to repent of sin on a regular basis.
Since we are their offspring, it’s as if we are born blind and have no relationship with God at all.
But through Jesus Christ we restore our relationship to normal. We are free to enter heaven and stand before God as if we absolutely, positively, belong there, because we do!
We had NO standing with God, but now we are Sons and Daughters. He restores us to His original, intended purpose.
To restore perfect relationship With God is the essence of redemption.
Abraham’s Bosom
In the passage regarding Lazarus and the rich man, found in Luke 13:19-31, Jesus recounts a righteous soul who dies and enters what we commonly refer to as Abraham’s Bosom.
The location of Abraham’s bosom was somewhere inside the earth. The Apostle Paul describes it like this: (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? Ephesians 4:9
Lazarus was poor and sickly in his life while he lived on earth, but then he was blessed and comforted in the Bosom of Abraham.
The other person in the story, the unrighteous rich man, went to the place called Hades where he was in torment.
Q. Why were the righteous departed held in a place under the earth? Why were they not allowed to enter the place called heaven where the Heavenly Father lives?
God kept them separated because they had to wait for the full restoration.
Jesus had to shed his blood, suffer, die, and be raised from the dead. That is what was required to annihilate the sin nature of man and open the gates of Heaven.
Only then was the treason and rebellion of Adam made null and void.
Ephesians 4:11 says this:
Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. Ephesians 4:8
This is referring to Jesus ascending into heaven after the resurrection and taking every righteous soul in Abraham’s Bosom (including Abraham), and with a triumphal procession, marched them into the eternal presence of the Father.
This illustrates full restoration of every righteous soul returning to God’s presence. Even the righteous dead could not enter the physical heaven without the shed blood of Christ.
But now we who live on earth go immediately into God’s presence when we depart this word. PTL. “We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” 2 Corinthians 5:8
So Adam and Eve alienated us from the Father God, but Jesus restores our relationship with absolutely no snags or strings attached.
If you are not born again,
Please pray this prayer in a simple yet sincere way:
Heavenly Father, I thank you for sending Jesus and that he shed His blood for me. I receive Jesus into my heart right now and take Him as my Savior. Forgive me of all my sins and make me a new creation in Christ. Amen.