Question 13 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks. “Did our first parents remain as they were created?”

The answer is, “Left to the freedom of their own wills, our first parents sinned against God and fell from their original condition.”

Our first parents did what they were commanded not to do. They ate the fruit. But man’s rebellion in the Garden of Eden did not take God by surprise.

It is hard to get our heads around this, but God created us even though he knew we would rebel and Jesus would have to come to fix it.

The author of Hebrews wrote about Jesus, “who for the joy set before Him endured the cross.” You and I are that joy. Jesus endured the Cross so that we can be in relationship with him.

Every good story has some tension or a struggle in the plot followed by a happy ending. The story of the people of God is no exception. I will repeat the summary of the Bible that I quoted in my post about Question 12, “God made it, we broke it and Jesus came to fix it.

Our first parents created the tension and the happy ending is possible because Jesus endured the Cross. Jesus came to fix the damage that has been done to us and to fix the damage that we have caused in ourselves.