The 4 Gardens of the Gospel

Once upon a time, a man was given a garden. A garden of beauty and perfection, where joy was complete and overflowing, and in the midst of which, the Creator walked with man in union, glory and holiness, face to face. It was upon this garden that God, in all His holiness and divine splendor, could look with His all-seeing eye, and say with His voice of infinite glory and power: “It is very good.” All of creation – from white-capped waves to snow-capped mountains to petal-capped flower, from leviathan to lily, from dust to man in whom was breathed the breath of life, God savored as a single, reverberating, glory-filled echo of His goodness and majesty. It is finished, He cried, and on the seventh day He rested.

Finished indeed was the garden, but not the story. Who knows how long the stretch of time was between when God said, “It is very good” as He made man like Him, and when the serpent hissed, “Did God really say?” and man attempted to make Himself God, but it probably was not very long (Genesis 3).

In a single act of cosmic treason, the core of unity with God was shattered, our sinless perfection gutted, our race fallen and our souls enslaved. The garden in which God walked, upon which He looked with His all-seeing eye, now emitted a constant assault to His infinite holiness – a continual groan under the weight of sin as if the ground itself could feel the unfathomable pain and burden of the divine curse (Romans 8:22). Man, naked before the throne of God, could not hide himself from His presence (Genesis 3:8-11). But God, in His mercy clothed them with the innocent that was slain (Genesis 3:21), and with His judgment, He gave a promise of hope and mercy: This isn’t finished yet. There’s another garden coming (Genesis 3:15).

The Garden of Gethsemane

4,000 years later, in another garden, Jesus Christ, truly God and truly man, knelt before His Father upon the cursed earth, and prayed as drops of sweat and blood streamed down His face and body (Matthew 26). The cup of suffering would not pass. He, the truly innocent, would swallow every drop of divine wrath that had been pent up against the sins of those given Him.

In this garden, He beheld a Cross before Him. He saw the immeasurable pain that was awaiting Him. Here would be the culmination of His suffering in human flesh. In the body of true man, He had the nerve endings for the nails to pierce, the back for the whip to flay, the actual heart to pump real blood through real veins as it gushed from torn flesh.

He had a beard to be cruelly torn from His face, and ears to hear the false accusations, the mockery, the savage cries to crucify their Covenant Redeemer. He had a scalp to be punctured with thorns, and a physical frame of bone and muscle and tissue and nerves to be mangled and torn.  He had flesh to rip, around which the flies could swarm, and skin to be flayed, upon which the wooden cross would press, and lungs to be crushed, which the weight of His own body would suffocate.

Above all, He had a true soul – a true soul to feel the weight of God’s wrath which had been stored up against all the sins of His people since the beginning of time to the end of time, which would now funnel upon perfect innocence in the death you and I deserved to die.

The serpent would be crushed, sin would be punished, the curse satisfied, justice made complete. In the holy courtroom, with the crime of cosmic treason, the sentence of divine wrath would be fulfilled in God’s perfect Son. The sin would be charged to Christ’s account, and His righteousness imputed to ours. The gavel would fall and pronounce Him guilty, so that it may fall and proclaim us justified.

He would no longer cry Abba, Father but Eloi, Eloi – My God, my God, that we might call Abba, Father. He asked in unfathomable agony: Why have you forsaken me? that we might cry, Immanuel, God with us! He pled with pity in the midst of His pain: Father, forgive them that we might say I am forgiven. And with a loud voice He proclaimed with His last breath: It is Finished.

It was finished indeed. But the story wasn’t over yet. There was another garden coming.

The Garden of the Resurrection

Three days later, there was a garden full of tombs. Many of them were filled, stones sealing the stench of stiff, decomposing bodies. Some of them were empty, awaiting the corpse that would one day be laid within. There was one tomb, however, that was no longer marked with death past or future. The stone no longer sealed the opening. The body that had been within was no longer stiff and lifeless. For Christ had risen and was alive.

The truly punctured flesh had risen in glorious victory over the grave. The heart pumped blood once more through veins into a living body. The collapsed lungs filled again with new air, never again to be empty. The tomb lay then as it lies today – empty! And in this is all our hope. The Gospel, the good news, is worthless unless it centers on a Cross upon which our Savior was nailed, a tomb in which He was buried, and from which He came forth alive again. If there is not an empty tomb, our faith is worthless and we are still in our sins. Why? Because as on the cross, Christ cried It is Finished, and in the Resurrection God proclaimed It is Finished Indeed! 

Christ’s historical resurrection from the dead stands alone in history. Men had been raised, resuscitated before this, but not resurrected. A week before, Christ had called to a dead Lazarus “Come forth!” and in the corpse life had sprung again. But Lazarus is dead right now. His body has rotted away. And though his soul is with His Lord and Savior, his body has stiffened, and stunk, and begun to decompose not once, but twice. He was raised yes, but this temporal life relinquished again to mortality.

But Christ was resurrected and it is because of His resurrection that Lazarus’ body will not stay in the ground. And neither will ours. In vain did death forbid Christ to rise, for the wages of sin had been satisfied, losing not only its sting but its power. If in Christ we have died, then in Christ we have also risen to be raised again on the last day. Here was a glorious garden. The promised garden. The garden around which every garden looked forward to or back. And because of this garden, there is another garden coming.

The Garden of Restoration

Matthew records that when Mary first saw Jesus, she thought at first He was the gardener (John 20:15). Her eyes were not yet opened to see that He was the True Gardener – the Gardener that had died to restore the Garden, and not only to restore it, but to bring one better than there was before.

In this garden of resurrection, there would be no serpent, no tombs, no death, no pain and no tears (Revelation 21:4). There would only be the fruits of Christ’s victory, as all His saints, in perfect righteousness – His perfect righteousness, stand with boldness before the Holy God, justified. This God, in love, met all the requirements His law demands in His perfect Son. In the first garden, was the second garden promised, the third proclaimed and the last expected. As we look back to the centrality of the Gardener in all of history, we look forward to the final garden which He has prepared for us.

It is all of Christ. It is all of grace. It is all for us.

He is risen! He is risen indeed!