The promises of the new covenant Jesus secured for all His true disciples are available to all.  Gaining them for oneself requires a decision, a commitment.  While they are offered to all, these gifts are gained only by those who give all their living over to Jesus. To those who no longer seek their own living but seek only the life of Christ in them.

In the final hours in which Jesus hung dying on the cross we discover the scope of this the gift of restored union with Himself.  In His brief conversation with the thief on the cross, Jesus explained this intimate fellowship with God in a most powerful way. 

“One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

This is an incredibly powerful statement made by Jesus.  He responds to the condemned man’s request with the greatest answer a Jewish person possibly could hope for.  Its greatness lies in the meaning of the word, “paradise.”

The word used by Luke here is of Persian origin and meant a park or royal garden.  In fact, some translations render this word in the passage as “the garden.”  In Jewish tradition, which is the context for this exchange, it was synonymous with the Garden of Eden.  It conjured up an image of the restoration of original perfection.  The point in this metaphor was the return of God’s people into intimate union and communion with God.

If you remember, the first man, Adam, was given a spirit within Him by God, one that would connect with the Spirit of God Himself.  This is what separated humans from the animals, for by this implanted spirit man became a living soul with the capacity to interact intimately with our God.

Humans were given this spirit so that they might be inhabited by our God, joined into union with Him.  The Tree of Life in the Genesis account represents the very life of Christ, of which they were invited to partake. 

Adam chose instead to go his own way in life.  He directly disobeyed his God and ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  This disobedience and open rebellion was a monstrous and treacherous rebellion that separated Adam and Eve from the divine life of God.     

This rebellion set the course for all humanity that followed them.  Because of it, if we remain apart form our God we are inherently destined to live life on our own.  We think we know right from wrong, and we think we can make a life on our own.  Sadly, the life we can make on our own is barely a shadow, a sad caricature of the divine life we were meant to share with our God.

Christ’s death on the cross erased the barrier that Adam’s rebellion erected.  His resurrection restored the opportunity to live in union with our God.  We can now partake of His divine nature every moment of every day.  The Jews did not know how this would happen, but they knew that it was their greatest hope. 

And in this simple exchange, Jesus told this condemned man that he was about to gain that hope for His own eternal future.  This day he would be with Jesus in the paradise he and every Jew longed for.  He would be restored into union with His God, the first of an entire New Covenant race!  What an enormous gift of hope!

What an enormous gift of hope for us today!  Amazing as this is, it gets better.  We do not have to die first to gain the gift.  This union with our God is restored to humans immediately, in this life.  When we choose to receive it, we return to the life offered to Adam so long ago.  As Paul described it, it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us!