The Biblical Fall
is not an event in time.
Time itself is a fallen state,
in which everything tends
toward decay and death.
But in the Incarnation,
divinity is united with humanity,
God with humankind,
and eternity is united with time,
so that time itself is transfigured
and the world is healed.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” as the book Revelation tells us. He is at once the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last (Revelation 1). He who is the firstborn from the dead is the firstborn of creation (Colossians 1). Indeed, Christ Crucified and Risen is the foundation of the world, the beginning and completion of all creation. Lord Jesus, seated on the Throne of Heaven and Earth, declares, “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5). And that includes us.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
The transfiguration of time takes place within time, from the inside out, through the mutual indwelling of time in eternity and eternity in time. John the Elder tells us, “The darkness is passing and the true light is already shining” (1 John 2:8).
We presently find ourselves in that curious transition of what is coming to pass into what is eternally so, and all of creation waits in eager anticipation together with us.
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Romans 8:18-22)
