One of the most significant places I see it is all the way back in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve have just disobeyed God. They have broken the heart of the One who created them. They have lost the perfect intimacy with Him that they once shared. To them, this is the end of the story. But, God's judgment is drenched in mercy:
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. (Gen. 3:22-24)
Think for a moment of what could have happened if Adam and Eve ate of the knowledge of the tree of good and evil and then ate from the tree of life. Now that they'd eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, their eyes have been opened to sin. They could never go back to how it once was. But imagine if, with their new knowledge of good and evil and their now sinful hearts, they ate the tree of life and lived forever. There would never be an end to what sin had ruined. They would be trapped without end in those sinful bodies.
Yes, God sending them out of the Garden was a demonstration of the broken relationship between Creator and creation. But, it was also God's merciful plan to withhold Adam and Eve from trapping themselves in their sinful bodies for all eternity. God didn't want it to be that way. He sent them out of the Garden knowing that it would cost Him his very life to bring them back in. But, He knew that if they stayed in the Garden, there would be no end to the pain and brokenness.
And then, after years and years of God's people waiting and wandering and hungering and doubting, the promised Rescuer found Himself in a garden, asking that this cup might pass from Him. This cup of the burden of the world. This cup that was filled with the raging bitterness of sin. This cup that was filled the day the Garden was emptied.
And He drank the fullness of the cup. It wasn't a last ditch effort to try and fix this problem. This was His plan from before He formed the earth. God Himself was the only way for humanity to enter back into the captivating beauty of the Garden. And as painful as it was to watch the people He created walk in such darkness and pain, He knew that when they entered back into the Garden, they would be all the better for having been away from it.
He knew that because we have been walking in the devastation of injustice on this earth, we will delight all the more in the perfect justice that we will finally see before His throne for all eternity; because we have experienced the pain of death, we will understand the breathtaking beauty of unending life all the more; because we have known evil, we will know good in a way that we never could have any other way.
And there lies a major difference between the angels and God's redeemed people; yes, the angels will worship God for all eternity. Yes, the angels live before the face of God and are amazed at His glory. But, they will never understand grace because they've never known sin. They've seen it from a distance, but their hearts have never been broken by it in the same way ours are by living in a sinful world. We can worship God in a way that the angels can't because there are facets of His character that they have not experienced.
1 Peter 1 talks about the living hope we have that is tested by the fire of trial, the salvation that the prophets waited in anticipation for that we now have, and how we have been bought with the blood of the Lamb. Right in the middle, it says that these are "things into which angels long to look." (1:12)
They will never know the fire of trials that refine our hearts and the indescribable anticipation of one day being released from these sinful bodies and a sinful world to finally worship this God as He fully deserves. They worship Him because He is worthy and are blinded by His brilliant glory. But, they don't know what it's like to be blinded from seeing His glory.
I am thankful for God's merciful judgment that made the hope of relief from sin possible. I am thankful to know His grace because of knowing sin. And I anxiously await one day seeing Him for who He really is and for the memories I will have of sin that will serve as even deeper reason to praise Him for what He has rescued me from.
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