God was never lonely. He did not created mankind because something was missing in His life. Perfect love abounded in the trinity from eternity past. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit existed in a triune of divine equality and incredible love for one another. Each one completely God and yet one in unity. Their desire to create mankind grew from a longing for a family to share this love with.
God is love and being perfected in love, He created humans with free will. He chose us and in His love He gave us the right to choose or reject Him. God in His foreknowledge was aware it would not take long for sin to creep in and destroy what He wanted to create but choose to do it anyway. The fall did not catch God off guard. Jesus wasn't an afterthought. He was not the backup plan when sin destroyed God's creation. Jesus was the solution to the problem long before it existed. "He [Jesus] was chosen before the creation of the world..." ( I Peter 1:20 ).
Since Jesus was the solution, the lamb slain before the foundation of the world, God went forward with His plans for family by speaking the world into existence. The word He spoke was Jesus. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made" ( John 1:1-2 ).
Creation was complete in seven days, and then God rested. "By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done" ( Genesis 2:2-3 ). He didn't rest because he was tired from creating, He rested because it was finished and there was nothing left to make. Jesus created everything with the ability to reproduce itself so that when it was finished He would never have to create anything again.
In the same fashion as creation, it is Jesus who holds the universe in place by His word. "The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word…" ( Hebrews 1:3 ). Jesus built the world and Jesus upholds, maintains and propels it by His word. Jesus illustrated God's nature to us in creating the world out of His desire for a family, then letting us choose Him.
The paradise of the garden didn't last long. Sin crept in and destroyed it while deadening our ability to fellowship with God as He created us to do. God knew this would happen and this is why Jesus was chosen before the foundation of the world to be our sin substitute. ( I Peter 1:19-20 ).
Jesus, true to God's nature, entered humanity to bridge the gap between mankind and God. "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. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him" ( John 3:16-17 ). This verse should remove the notion that God is angry at mankind because of sin. In God's love, he sent Jesus to save the world, not condemn it.
Tomorrow we look at Part 3: Our Sins are Completely and Eternally Forgiven
