Paradise Lost

Jesu Juva

Genesis 3                                                     

February 22, 2026

Lent 1A                                  

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        It’s the most awful chapter in the entire Bible.  Genesis chapter three is where real life ends, and death begins.  God’s perfect creation crumbles. St. Paul neatly summarizes it all in today’s epistle:  Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. We can’t even imagine a world before Genesis three—a perfect world with no sin and no death.  Every trip to the hospital—every trip to the cemetery—every murderous massacre—is a bleak reminder of the evil unleashed that day in Paradise.

        Where was the Lord when all of this was going down?  We are a full nine verses in before the Lord makes an entrance.  Where was the Lord when the woman began talking theology with the serpent?  By the time the Lord arrives the damage has already been done.  Forbidden fruit has been consumed.  Shame and sin have taken hold.  Adam and Eve had departed on a deathward descent that would eventually deposit them deep down into the dust from whence they came.

        And by the time the Lord finally shows up and says something, He sounds a little pathetic.  Especially when you consider how majestic the Lord sounded up to this point, in Genesis.  There He’s all, Let there be light, and let us make man in our image, be fruitful and multiply.  He warned the man about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and He gave the man a wife—a helper fit for him.  God spoke with gravitas. At His speaking, it was done.

        But now, after the Fall, the same God sounds weak, impotent, and pathetic.  What are God’s first words in the freshly fallen world?  Where are you?  The almighty, all-knowing, all-powerful God is now reduced to asking, Where are you?  Adam and Eve were hiding from God—trying to get comfortable their scratchy, new, fig-leaf underwear.  And God knew that, of course.  His question, “Where are you?” is what the study Bible calls a “rhetorical” question.  The Lord only asks it for the effect of asking it.

        Where are you?  So, what is the effect of that question?  What does that question tell us?  Well, when the Lord asks, “Where are you?” it first of all speaks a word of Law—of the distance that now separates God from His people.  Up to this point, Adam and Eve had known God as He wished to be known.  They were perfectly happy in Him.  They were made in His image.  There were no secrets, and no misunderstandings.  It was the perfect relationship.  But now, there’s distance.  Now there’s fear, shame, anxiety.  The image of God was lost.  Everything is different now.  Sin has ruined it all.  That one, little question speaks volumes:  Where are you?

        What else do you hear in that question?  There’s more than just condemnation.  That question also expresses a yearning—an invitation for His wayward children to come back to Him—as in, Where are you?  I miss you.  You matter to me.  I want you to come home. 

These are God’s very first words right after the fall into sin, and as such, they set the theme from that moment on until the end of time.  God wants His children to be with Him—not separated, not distant, not damned—but home with Him.  And if they do not come home, God will find ways to come into their world to bring them home.  He will send patriarchs and matriarchs, judges and kings, prophets and poets, and in the fullness of time, His one and only Son.  This little question, Where are you? it marks the first moment of our God’s great mission of love:  to seek and to save the lost.

        Where are you?  Our God is still asking. . . and seeking.  Where are you?  Where are you in relation to your Creator?  To what satanic schemes have you fallen prey?   To what temptations have you succumbed?  In what sweet, forbidden fruit have you indulged?  What sin are you hiding from God and others?  In what area of your life does sin persistently and repeatedly distance you from your Creator and drive you into hiding—causing you to cover your tracks?  When and where does it become most necessary in your life for God to humble Himself and bend down, and ask that pathetic, little question: Where are you?

        That question led to more questions—a terrible interrogation: What have you done?  Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? Did you do the one thing I warned you not to do?  Why interrogate the suspects when they were as guilty as sin?  What was it God wanted to hear?  What response was He hoping for?  It certainly wasn’t the finger-pointing and blame-gaming and buck-passing and excuse-making He heard from the man and the woman. 

No, I suspect what the Lord was fishing for, what He longed to hear from Adam and Eve, was something along the lines of, I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess unto You all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended You and justly deserved Your . . . punishment.  But I am heartily sorry for them and sincerely repent of them.

        The Lord did not hear those words from our first parents; but He has heard them from you.  And that confession of yours is not based on some shallow promise to do better next time—or even to try harder—but you based your confession on the mercy of God, and for the sake of the bitter sufferings and death of God’s beloved Son, Jesus Christ.  He is the woman’s offspring sent by God to crush the head of Satan.  He is the one first promised in Genesis chapter 3.  He is the reason that God goes looking and asking and seeking after sinners.  He is the one who finds you and who separates you from your sin by bearing away your sin on the tree of the cross.

        Jesus on the cross is the sign of God’s love for you—and it’s so pathetic.  He humiliates Himself—makes Himself powerless and impotent and weak.  God never looks as pathetic as when He’s hanging from the cross.  And He suffers it all because He can’t bear the distance between you and Him.  He knows where you are—knows where you’ve wandered—knows the hell you’ve created for yourself.  And He comes to bring you home again.

        Where are you?  You are baptized; you are “in Christ.”  He bears away all your sin in His bloody death; and He gives you His perfect obedience as a free gift of grace.  Where are you?  You are baptized.  You are in Christ.  You are not lost—not homeless.  And most importantly, you are not beyond the grasp of His nail-scarred hands.  For there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ.  Nothing can separate you from His love. You are clothed—not with fig leaves of your own making—but in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.

        And His searching, saving love has found you right here.  Where are you?  You are right where you need to be—right where God Himself promises to save the lost, the hidden, and the hiding.  The God who loves you is searching for you.  That search began in Genesis chapter three.  It continues here today.  And the search will not be over until you are safely in your Savior’s arms, enjoying resurrection life that never ends.

        In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.