God’s Vision is the grand purpose toward which all of history moves: that all people would come to know Him, be saved, and live forever in His Kingdom. This is the future God is bringing about, and it shapes everything the Church does and everything the believer hopes for. But before we can speak of this future Vision, we must look back to God’s Vision at the beginning — for the future He is bringing about is the recovery and consummation of what He gave in Eden.
1.1 God’s Original Vision — Life in Eden Before the Fall
To understand what God is asking of the Church today, we must first see what He created humanity to be. The opening chapters of Genesis — before sin enters the story — show us the original picture: men and women made in God’s image, given dominion over creation as stewards, set in meaningful work, and walking with God in unbroken fellowship. Eden is not merely the story of where things came from; it is the picture of what God always intended. Everything that follows in this document — the future Kingdom, the Purpose of the Church, the Commission, the Mission, the Gospel itself — is the story of God restoring this original Vision through Christ. If we lose sight of what was given at the beginning, we will misread what God is doing now and what He is asking of us today.
Why God Made Man
Genesis gives several converging reasons.
- First, image-bearing: humans were created to represent and reflect God in His creation, capable of communion with their Maker because they share, in finite form, His relational and moral nature.
- Second, dominion and stewardship: in the very same statement of intent, image-bearing is tied to ruling — man is appointed as God’s vice-regent (a deputy who acts on behalf of a ruler, governor, or sovereign, stepping into their role to manage state affairs or executive duties during their absence) over creation, exercising authority not as owner but as steward.
- Third, meaningful work: work pre-dates the fall; it is a vocation, not a curse.
- Fourth, direct communion with God: the form of his creation — formed from dust, the breath of life breathed into his nostrils — signals an intimacy not given to any other creature.
Genesis 1:26
“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’”
Genesis 2:7
“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
Genesis 2:15
“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.”
Why God Made Woman
In an otherwise “very good” creation (Genesis 1:31), aloneness is the one thing God declares “not good.” Eve is given as a helper suitable for the man — in the Hebrew, ezer kenegdo — language used elsewhere of God Himself helping Israel (Exodus 18:4; Psalm 33:20; Psalm 121:1-2), and carrying no implication of lesser status. She is equal in dignity and image-bearing, with both male and female bearing the image of God. Equal in mandate — both receive the same blessing to be fruitful, fill the earth, subdue and rule. Distinct in nature — formed from his side, not as a copy but as a complement, to stand alongside him in the shared work. And in their union, the basis of marriage and family is established.
Genesis 2:18
“The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’”
Genesis 1:27
“So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.”
Genesis 2:24
“That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”
Their Original Purpose
The pre-fall picture is the original Vision-Purpose-Commission-Mission in seed form — the same pattern that runs through the rest of this document is already present here:
Vision — full communion with God in His presence, in a creation declared “very good” (Genesis 1:31).
Purpose — image-bearing on God’s behalf in the world (Genesis 1:26-27).
Commission (universal) — “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Genesis 1:28).
Mission (particular) — to work and keep the garden (Genesis 2:15); to name the animals (Genesis 2:19-20). Particular work, given by God, exercised personally.
The Vision, Purpose, Commission, and Mission of the Church are not new categories invented in the New Testament. They are the recovery and fulfilment of what God established in Eden.
How They Related to God
Five marks characterise the pre-fall relationship between God and humanity.
1. Direct fellowship. Genesis 3:8 retrospectively reveals that God walked in the garden in the cool of the day — implying His presence was part of the ordinary rhythm of life before sin disrupted it.
Genesis 3:8
“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day…”
2. Conversational engagement. God speaks to them — commissioning them (Genesis 1:28), giving instructions (Genesis 2:15), warning them (Genesis 2:16-17), bringing animals to be named (Genesis 2:19), bringing Eve to Adam (Genesis 2:22). They are addressed as responsible persons, not managed as objects.
3. Trustful obedience. The relationship operated on a single prohibition — with everything else permitted. The structure was trust, not exhaustive regulation.
Genesis 2:16-17
“And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.’”
4. No shame, no hiding. Total openness — with each other and, by extension, with God. There was no self-protective concealment, no false self, no need to hide.
Genesis 2:25
“Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”
5. Worshipful stewardship. The work itself — tending the garden, naming the animals, ordering creation under God’s authority — was an act of worship. Worship was not a separate compartment of life; it was the texture of life.
This is what was given at the beginning. The rest of this chapter, and of this document, is the story of God’s Vision for restoring it — through the gospel, through the gathering of His people into a Kingdom that has no end, and through the renewal of all things in Christ. To understand where the Church is going, we must remember where humanity began.
1.2 The Fall — How It Was Lost
What God established in Eden was lost in a single act of disobedience. The way it happened — and what it cost — matters greatly. The pattern of failure in Genesis 3 sets the scene for how God will redeem family and marriage through Christ in the New Testament. And the consequences of the Fall describe the broken world the Church now ministers within. We need to look honestly at both before we can speak of God’s Vision for restoration.
Eve — Listening to the Wrong Voice
The serpent comes to Eve, not to Adam. His opening — “Did God really say…?” — invites her into a theological debate that was not hers to have alone. The command had been given directly to Adam, before Eve was even formed (Genesis 2:16-17). The right move was to defer: to her husband, to whom the word had been entrusted; or to God Himself. Instead she engages, and three failures unfold.
First, she listens to a voice that contradicts God. The serpent questioned God’s authority and character — “God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God” (Genesis 3:5) — and she does not break off the conversation.
Second, she mishandles God’s Word. She adds “neither shall you touch it” (Genesis 3:3) to the original command. Whether through unclear teaching she received or her own embellishment, the word is no longer held with precise care.
Third, she takes, eats, and gives. The temptation moves through three doorways — what looked good for food, what was pleasing to the eye, what was desirable for gaining wisdom (Genesis 3:6, echoed later in 1 John 2:16) — and at each door she does not turn back. Then she gives to her husband. The first temptation is matched by the first sin, and then by the first leading of another into sin.
Paul names Eve’s failure as deception (1 Timothy 2:14). She was genuinely persuaded. That does not excuse her, but characterises the failure differently from Adam’s. The protection she should have had — her husband standing beside her on God’s Word — was absent.
Genesis 3:1
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, "You must not eat from any tree in the garden"?’”
Genesis 3:6
“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.”
1 Timothy 2:14
“And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.”
Adam — Neglectful Leadership
The line often read past: “She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it” (Genesis 3:6). Adam was present the whole time. He had heard God’s command directly. He was not deceived. And yet:
He did not intervene. He did not step between his wife and the deceiver. He did not remind her of God’s Word. He stood silent while the foundational covenant was being undermined right beside him.
He did not lead. The covering that should have come from him — “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23) — gave way to passive co-presence. Leadership was abdicated, not exercised.
He listened to his wife instead of to God. God names this explicitly in the curse pronounced over him (Genesis 3:17). Adam reversed the order. He took his cue from her rather than from God, and led his household into ruin by following rather than leading.
He then blame-shifted. When confronted: “The woman you put here with me — she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it” (Genesis 3:12). He accuses his wife and, by implication, God Himself.
Scripture lays the covenant responsibility for the Fall at Adam’s feet, not Eve’s. Sin entered through Adam (Romans 5:12). In Adam all die (1 Corinthians 15:22). His failure was not deception but conscious abdication — and as the head of the household, he bore the weight.
Genesis 3:17
“To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, "You must not eat from it"…’”
Romans 5:12
“Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—”
The Pattern for Family Governance — Reversed and Redeemed
The Fall is the dark mirror of what God intended marriage and family to be. Every major New Testament passage on family order reads back through Genesis 3.
Adam abdicated where he should have laid down his life. Eve led where she should have stood under his covering. The serpent worked from outside; both failed inside. This was not how it was meant to be — and this is what Christ comes to restore.
Paul anchors his teaching on order in the church explicitly in the creation and the Fall (1 Timothy 2:13-14): Adam was formed first; Adam was not deceived. The two facts together carry weight.
Ephesians 5:22-25 then sets out the redeemed pattern: wives submit to their husbands as to the Lord; husbands love their wives as Christ loved the Church — sacrificially, giving Himself up for her. The husband’s leadership is the costly leadership Adam refused to give. The wife’s submission is the trusting submission Eve set aside when she went into theological debate alone. Both are restored in Christ — but the shape of the restored family is the conscious reversal of the failure at Eden: the husband listening to God and leading sacrificially, the wife trusting and supporting under his covering, both submitting to Christ as Head, both confronting the deceiver together rather than separately.
1 Peter 3:7 sums up the husband’s part: to honour his wife as an equal heir of God’s grace. His leadership is real — but it is service, never domination. Domination is exactly what the Fall introduced: Genesis 3:16 names “he will rule over you” as part of the curse. So the pattern is simple — headship was designed as loving service, the Fall twisted it into ruling over her, and in Christ redemption restores it to what it was always meant to be.
1 Timothy 2:13-14
“For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.”
Ephesians 5:22-25
“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church, His body, of which He is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her…”
What Changed — The Consequences of the Fall
The consequences of the Fall unfolded immediately, and unfold still. Five marks of the broken relationship now stand where the five marks of fellowship at Eden once stood — echoing, and reversing, what was given.
1. Shame and hiding replaced openness. The same humans who “felt no shame” (Genesis 2:25) now sew fig leaves together to cover themselves; when God walks in the garden, they hide among the trees. Honesty before God gives way to fear, and fear to concealment.
Genesis 3:7-8
“Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”
2. Blame-shifting replaced honest fellowship. Adam blames Eve, and implicitly God. Eve blames the serpent. The first conversation after sin is a conversation of deflection — and the broken pattern has run through every human relationship since.
Genesis 3:12-13
“The man said, ‘The woman you put here with me — she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.’ Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’”
3. Marriage became a struggle for control. The partnership of Eden becomes contested. Some commentators read the word “desire” in the curse alongside Genesis 4:7, where sin’s desire is to master Cain — that is, the wife will seek to rule, and the husband will dominate. The pre-fall marriage of mutual delight becomes the post-fall marriage of contested control. This is the broken pattern that Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 3 set out to redeem.
Genesis 3:16
“To the woman he said, ‘I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.’”
4. Work itself was cursed. The vocation that was given as worship in Eden becomes toilsome. Thorns and thistles. Sweat. And death looming over every productive act — humanity, made from dust, returns to dust.
Genesis 3:17-19
“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
5. Exile from God’s presence. They were driven out of Eden. The way back to the tree of life was barred — guarded by cherubim and a flaming sword. The original Vision, given freely, was now placed beyond reach.
Genesis 3:23-24
“So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.”
God is a God of justice and of law. This is not arbitrary; it is constitutive of who He is and of how existence itself holds together. Righteousness and justice are the very foundation of His throne (Psalm 89:14). The created order itself runs on law: the physical laws that hold the universe together, the moral laws that hold human life together, the conscience God wrote into every person made in His image. Without law, existence does not continue; it disintegrates. We see this even now — when laws are abandoned, when truth gives way to deception, when life is no longer honoured, chaos and death follow. The same principle operates at the deepest level: sin is not merely personal failure, it is a tearing of the moral fabric of reality.
Psalm 89:14
“Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; love and faithfulness go before you.”
Sin cannot remain in the presence of holiness. The God who is utterly pure cannot tolerate wrongdoing (Habakkuk 1:13). Where sin is, His holy presence cannot remain in unbroken communion. The prophet later puts it plainly: “your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you” (Isaiah 59:2). The fellowship of Eden was not an automatic right — it depended on the integrity of God’s order. Once that integrity was broken, separation followed by necessity, not by arbitrary decree.
Habakkuk 1:13
“Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing.”
The just penalty for sin is death — and that is what we deserved. The warning given in Eden was specific and clear: “for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Genesis 2:17). In the strict reckoning of justice, Adam and Eve should have died on the spot. That would have been just. That is what they deserved. Justice alone would have ended the human story right there.
Romans 6:23
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The exile was God’s severe mercy, not His abandonment. In the moment of just judgement, God moved in mercy. He did not strike them dead. He clothed them — slaughtering an animal to cover their shame, the first foreshadowing of the substitutionary death that Christ would one day fulfil (Genesis 3:21). And He drove them out of the Garden, away from the tree of life. To remain in their fallen state, eating from the tree of life, would have locked them in that broken condition forever (Genesis 3:22). Justice was served — humanity was put outside, and the death sentence began to run its course in their bodies — but the execution of final judgement was withheld, and the door for redemption was left open.
Genesis 3:21
“The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.”
The Holy Spirit withdrew from permanent indwelling. The unmediated fellowship with God that Eden had known — the Spirit’s presence that filled and animated humanity from the inside — was no longer theirs. The Spirit who had hovered over the waters of creation (Genesis 1:2), the breath of God that had been breathed into Adam’s nostrils (Genesis 2:7), no longer dwelt within them. From this point on in the Old Testament, the Spirit comes upon prophets, kings, and craftsmen for particular tasks (Numbers 11:25; 1 Samuel 16:13; Exodus 31:3), but does not dwell within humanity as He did in Eden. Outside the Garden, in the broader cursed creation, God’s presence was now mediated rather than direct — near, but at a distance.
God did not abandon humanity — He kept reaching. What followed is the long story of the Old Testament. From outside the Garden He kept reaching: through Noah, through Abraham, through Moses, through the law, through the prophets, through the kings, through the tabernacle and the temple where He chose to dwell again in mediated form among His people.
Time and again, God established covenant; time and again, in their freedom, men turned away. Sin and the deceiver kept their grip; generation after generation fell into the same kinds of failures we saw in the Garden.
The Old Testament is honest about this. God’s people often did not learn. They worshipped idols, oppressed the vulnerable, listened to the wrong voices. More than once, God’s anger nearly consumed them outright. But His love kept persisting.
At the cross, justice and mercy met without compromise. Through it all, the promise spoken in the curse held firm. From the moment the Garden gate closed, Genesis 3:15 was already pointing forward — to the offspring of the woman who would crush the serpent’s head. Through Israel — a people often unfaithful but always carried — God preserved the promised line.
In the fullness of time, that promise was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, God’s redemption plan for mankind. The death that sin justly demanded was paid in His body, so that the mercy that had stayed God’s hand in Eden could finally come to its full and lasting form. The Spirit who had withdrawn would be poured out again on all who believe (John 7:39; Acts 2). The exile that began at the Garden gate would, through Him, be reversed — and the long recovery of everything that was lost would begin.
Genesis 3:15
“And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel.”
To see the Kingdom of God, one must be born again of the Spirit. Jesus says it directly to Nicodemus in John 3:3-5: one must be born again — born of water and the Spirit. To believe in Jesus is to be born again. The believer is given a new nature, a new birth, a new identity in Christ — the new creation has come (2 Corinthians 5:17).
What was lost in Eden is, in real measure, given back: shame is gone, replaced by the righteousness of Christ; condemnation is gone for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1); forgiveness prevails. And the Spirit who hovered over creation, who was breathed into Adam, who withdrew at the Fall, now dwells once more — not upon the believer occasionally, but within the believer permanently.
The believer’s very body becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit, sanctified by Christ. This is the Church age — the time in which we now live. The recovery the cross secured is the believer’s actual present condition.
The full consummation still lies ahead, when Christ returns and the new heavens and new earth restore everything fully — but the Spirit indwells now, the new birth is real now, and the believer today walks in what Adam walked in before the Fall, and more: for now we walk under the finished work of the cross, with sin dealt with once and for all.
John 3:3
“Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
2 Corinthians 5:17
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
Romans 8:9
“You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you.”
1 Corinthians 6:19
“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?”
Pentecost was the historical event of the Spirit’s return. Just before His ascension, Jesus instructed the disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the gift the Father had promised — the baptism with the Holy Spirit that He had spoken of often. He told them that when the Spirit came they would receive power to be His witnesses to the ends of the earth.
Ten days later, on the Jewish feast of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was poured out on them: tongues of fire, the sound of a violent wind, the believers filled with the Spirit. Peter, preaching that day, explained the event by quoting Joel’s prophecy of the Spirit poured out on all people, and announced that the same gift was now available to anyone who repented and trusted in Christ.
What Eden had known, and what the Fall had withdrawn, was now restored — and more securely than before: the Spirit now indwells the believer through faith in Jesus, for the whole of this age.
Luke 24:49
“I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
Acts 1:4-5
“On one occasion, while He was eating with them, He gave them this command: ‘Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’”
Acts 1:8
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Acts 2:1-4
“When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.”
Acts 2:17-18
“In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.”
Acts 2:38-39
“Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off — for all whom the Lord our God will call.”
By the Spirit, the Church would do greater things than Christ did alone. Jesus said this Himself, on the night He was betrayed, before His arrest and crucifixion. Whoever believes in Him, He said, would do the works He had been doing — and would even do greater things — because He was going to the Father (John 14:12).
This is not a claim about quality. Jesus’ works were all-powerful, divine in nature, and no human work surpasses His. It is a claim about reach and quantity. During His earthly ministry Jesus walked the roads of Israel and ministered across only a few short years.
The Church — Spirit-filled, multiplied across every nation and across every generation since Pentecost — would carry the gospel and the works of the Kingdom to the ends of the earth. The Spirit who once worked through one Man now works through millions of believers. The “greater things” are not greater in glory but greater in number, in scope, and in geographic reach. The Church is Christ’s body on earth, His ambassadors carrying the invitation of the Kingdom to every corner of creation.
John 14:12
“Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”
The Church lives between two kingdoms — ambassadors of heaven on the ground of earth. Jesus told Pilate plainly that His kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36); and yet He taught His disciples to pray for the Kingdom to come “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). The two are held together in the Church age. The Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near in Christ; it advances now through His Body on earth; and it will be consummated when Christ returns as King.
The Holy Spirit who now indwells every believer is the Kingdom’s appointed governor — the very Spirit of heaven, sent from the Father, residing within those who belong to Christ, guiding the Church as it serves a King who is presently enthroned in heaven and will one day return in person to reign (Acts 1:11; Revelation 19:16). We are not citizens of this world made temporarily comfortable. Our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20). We are ambassadors of another Kingdom, sent into this one (2 Corinthians 5:20).
The work of the Church in this age is to carry the Gospel of Jesus Christ — to change hearts and minds, to draw people from one kingdom into another, and to live now as the firstfruits of the Kingdom that is coming in full. One day Jesus will return as King of kings and Lord of lords. Until then, His Church serves Him here — bringing heaven to earth, person by person, until He comes.
Matthew 6:10
“your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Acts 1:11
“Men of Galilee, they said, why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven.”
Philippians 3:20
“But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
The next section sets out God’s Vision in light of what was given in Eden and what was lost in the Fall: salvation for all who will come, and the gathering of His people into a Kingdom that has no end.