That is the sad situation of mankind apart from God, and that is why, at least in part, there is sadness at this time of year. We want to go home, but we cannot get there due to conditions that seem out of our control. The greatest tragedy of life is that so many who long for home never get there.

The First Advent of Jesus Christ fulfills the longing for Eden

Paul wrote to the Galatians and clarified Genesis 3:15 with one sentence about Christmas, the birth of Jesus:

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons (Galatians 4:4-5).

Advertisement

The fulfillment of Genesis 3:l5 is the birth of Jesus Christ. Just as promised, He came, from woman to redeem those who are under the curse of the law. Remember, the first covenant is the covenant of works — keep the law and you will live in Eden; violate it and you are banished and face death. Those who are without Christ are under that law. But the covenant of grace says that God will send One who will crush the head of the serpent and redeem those under the law.

Craig Barnes, in his wonderful book Searching for Home, said it very well.

It is only those who know they are lost who are waiting and hoping for a Savior to lead them to the right place. Home.3

In the advent of Jesus, in His keeping of the law, in His substitutionary death on the cross, the curse was broken. The law was kept. The punishment was taken. And Jesus' last words summed up the cosmic struggle and fulfilled the divine intent:

"It is finished."4

Jesus is God's grace to us. Jesus is the way home.

So there is a longing. That is the eternity God has placed in your heart — to be fully restored with God and to be home with Him. However, the longing is confused by sin. We cannot get home, we cannot identify or come to terms with the longing, much less fulfill it ourselves. We must have help to fulfill it. Jesus is the fulfillment. He is our way home.

If this passage has provoked you to come to terms with that ache, that longing inside, we invite you to do what so many others stranded in the winter of life have done — receive this Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Acknowledge the emptiness, reject and repent of the temporal and sometimes even superstitious ways that we seek to fill the longing, and ask Him to come into your heart.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled (Matthew 5:6, NIV).