What was God thinking when He created Adam? As He stooped to form each limb, each finger, each toe, what did He feel? As the Creator molded eyes, ears and lips, what did He think about? When He considered the future, what did He hear and see?
If I truly believe that God is transcendent over time as well as immanent in time and if I truly believe that His omniscience is over all of actual history, not what may be history, then surely He saw Adam disobey.
And much, much more than that.
He saw all of human rebellion. He knew of each sinner, their sins and their sin’s effect on other sinner’s. He heard each lie, saw every evil act. Each generation’s wars, genocides, forced marches, and atrocities, He surely saw. He knew about hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, and tornadoes and the people trapped, mangled and killed by them.
He knew Abraham would father a nation that He would call His own, but that they be ever running away from Him, even as the man He now bent over would.
He saw His own Son, the very Word by Whom all creation holds together and the radiance of His glory, sent into this very sin-hardened world for the very purpose of being killed by faithless corrupt people—people He was now forming with His own hand.
He knew the Church, the second people He would call to Himself from many nations, the oft squanderers of the grace He would give them.
Still He knew more. And thus my theology is not complete unless I admit and cherish one more step.
When forming Adam, the Lord knew of me. He knew how I would shake my fist at Him and declare “Unfair!” He knew my rotten idols that I would cling to, return to, worship and rot myself with.
Yet, seeing all of this, God still bent over the dust He had formed and breathed life into it. We did not deserve to even begin as a species. In this first act of grace toward man, God gave man physical life and a soul. Both of these, we would take and tear apart, our own and others.
God knew more than the world’s sin and He is more than all knowing—He is also all wise and all powerful. Sin did not blind Him or confuse Him or frighten Him or weaken Him.
He knew He would give His Son to once again breathe life into His creation. What we turned back into dust at the Fall, He would not keep as dust. He would call me His child, pay my numerous sins with His immeasurable grace and create in me a new heart. The Creator knew that every such new heart would, by His empowering, seek to praise Him, and that in that recreation He would be glorified.
Knowing all this and able to accomplish such an end, His good and holy and perfect will was well pleased to give Adam that very first breath.
Thus, grace was given from the very beginning.
Hallelujah!
