Furthermore, God created us to live eternally. This is because God, the eternal subject partner, wanted to share eternal joy with human beings as His object partners.
Having endowed human beings with an eternal nature, God could not, by the laws of the Principle, simply annihilate them just because they fell. If He were to do that, He would be violating His own Principle of Creation. The only choice left to God is to save fallen people and restore them to the original, pure state in which He initially created them. When God created human beings, He promised to help us accomplish the three great blessings (Gen. 1:28). He declared through Isaiah, “I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it” (Isa. 46:11), meaning that despite the Fall, God has been working to fulfill His promise to us through the providence to restore these blessings.
He sent Jesus to restore us to our original, ideal state, as we can discern from Jesus’ words to his disciples, “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). An original, ideal person is one with God and has realized a divine nature; thus, with reference to the purpose of creation, he is perfect as God is perfect. 2.2 The Goal of the Providence of Restoration What is the goal of the providence of restoration? It is the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven, which in its totality is God’s good object partner and the fulfillment of His purpose of creation.
The center of God’s Kingdom on earth is to be human beings. Although God created the first ancestors with that intention, they fell; hence, His Will for the earth was not realized. Since then, the primary goal of the providence of restoration has been nothing less than to rebuild the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. |