Adam was called to guard and keep the Garden. This certainly included his need to protect his bride from the temptations of the evil one. When Jesus entered into his sufferings on the cross, he did so with His bride—the church—with him there in the Garden. As Adam should have warned Eve to “watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation” (Matt. 26:41), so Jesus warns his bride—the Church—to do that very thing. There is a striking parallel between the events of the two Gardens—Eden and Gethsemane.

The Scriptures tell us that the Son of God began His sufferings in a Garden and brought them to a close in a Garden. That is an absolutely amazing display of God’s wisdom. After all, Jesus is the second Adam undoing what Adam did and doing what Adam failed to do (Rom. 5:12-21; 1 Cor. 15:47-49). He is the Heavenly Bridegroom, entering into his sufferings in a garden for the redemption of his bride, the Church. He is the Heavenly Gardener, giving himself to the cultivation of the souls of his people through his atoning sacrifice and continual intercession.
When he hung on the cross, Jesus spoke of glory under the name of “Paradise”—an evident allusion to the paradise in which our first parents dwelt and the paradise from which they fell. He is the second Adam who, by the shedding of his blood, secured the new creation. As we consider the double entendres of the fourth Gospel, we come to those specifically concerning the biblical theology of the second Adam in the Garden. Consider the theological significance of the following two Garden settings in which Christ carried out the work of redemption.
1. Jesus began his sufferings in a Garden in order to show that he came to undo what Adam had done.
In his soul-stirring book, Looking Unto Jesus, Isaac Ambrose explained the theological significance of the Garden motif in the gospels—both with regard to the beginning of Christ’s sufferings in the Garden of Gethsemane and at the end of his sufferings in the Garden where his body was laid to rest in the tomb. Concerning the first of these symbolic gardens, Ambrose suggested:

“Jesus went forth with his disciples over the brook Kidron, where there was a garden [John 18:1];” many mysteries are included in this word, and I believe it is not without reason that our Savior goes into a garden…Because a garden was the place wherein we fell, and therefore Christ made choice of a garden to begin there the greatest work of our redemption: in the first garden was the beginning of all evils; and in this garden was the beginning of our restitution from all evils; in the first garden, the first Adam was overthrown by Satan, and in this garden the second Adam overcame, and Satan himself was by him overcome; in the first garden sin was contracted; and we were indebted by our sins to God, and in this garden sin was paid for by that great and precious price of the blood of God: in the first garden man surfeited by eating the forbidden fruit, and in this garden Christ sweat it out wonderfully, even by a bloody sweat; in the first garden, death first made its entrance into the world; and in this garden life enters to restore us from death to life again; in the first garden Adam’s liberty to sin brought himself and all of us into bondage; and, in this garden, Christ being bound and fettered, we are thereby freed and restored to liberty. I might thus descant in respect of every circumstance, but this is the sum, in a garden first began our sin, and in this garden first began the passion, that great work and merit of our redemption.[1]

Since “a garden was the place wherein we fell…therefore Christ made choice of a garden to begin there the greatest work of our redemption,” Jesus is the second Adam. It is fitting, therefore, that his work of undoing all that Adam did should begin in a Garden. Charles Spurgeon drew out this same observation, stating:

May we not conceive that as in a garden Adam’s self-indulgence ruined us, so in another garden the agonies of the second Adam should restore us. Gethsemane supplies the medicine for the ills which followed upon the forbidden fruit of Eden. No flowers which bloomed upon the banks of the four-fold river were ever so precious to our race as the bitter herbs which grew hard by the black and sullen stream of Kedron.[2]

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After waiting to see if the 2023 synod might accommodate churches with different views, Sherman Street Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids led the way to the exit. In its resolution it wrote: “Our policy of full inclusion is settled, as is our determination to allow space for a variety of views and to embrace the resulting tension.”

(RNS)—At least two dozen churches in the Christian Reformed Church of North America are in the process of severing their ties with the denomination over their disagreements with its increasingly rigid stance on sexuality.
Four Michigan churches have already sent resolutions of disaffiliation to a regional geographic body called the Classis Grand Rapids East, stating that they intend to leave. Leaders of an additional five Michigan churches, also in the regional body, said they were drafting their letters, which should be received by the classis’s next business meeting.
Outside of Michigan, 15 more churches are also planning to exit the denomination, which comprises some 1,000 churches in the U.S. and Canada.
The exodus is part of a larger sorting of Christian congregations across Protestant denominations over the past 30 years as a growing number of churches have opened their doors to full membership of LGBTQ members.
In June, at its 2024 churchwide meeting, known as a synod, the Christian Reformed Church instructed LGBTQ-affirming congregations to repent, retract any divergent statements and comply with the denomination’s prescribed beliefs on sexuality. Church leaders who spoken or advocated for LGBTQ affirmation, including pastors, elders and deacons, were placed on a limited suspension.
The crisis dates back to 2022, when the denomination accepted a report on human sexuality that recommended codifying its opposition to LGBTQ sex by elevating it to the status of confession, or a declaration of faith. At the synod later that year, the delegates voted to do just that.
After waiting to see if the 2023 synod might accommodate churches with different views, Sherman Street Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids led the way to the exit. In its resolution it wrote: “Our policy of full inclusion is settled, as is our determination to allow space for a variety of views and to embrace the resulting tension.”
The church had already reallocated its financial giving or “ministry shares” away from the denominational entities as a first step, said the Rev. Jen Holmes Curran, the co-pastor. Instead, it donated to nonprofits that work with LGBTQ people experiencing religion-related trauma.
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Many of us love and fear our friends and family more than we love and fear God. We’re more afraid of becoming enemies with our loved ones than becoming enemies with God. 

Some of your supposedly Christian friends have recently said they are members of the LGBTQ community. That’s becoming increasingly common. However, an even bigger number of your supposedly Christian friends have become LGBTQ allies.
You already know that. But do you know why?
There are, of course, several reasons why many professing Christians are embracing LGBTQ ideology. Satan has devised many schemes to lead us into apostasy. With that in mind, although all people who support LGBTQ ideology do so for the same reason: sin—people can commit the same sin from different temptations.
As I’ve alluded to, one of the reasons why many professing Christians have become allies with LGBTQ people is because many of their friends and family have become members of the LGBTQ community.
Studies show that this is statistically the biggest reason why people become LGBTQ affirming. For instance, a 2013 study from Pew Research Center shows that 32% of Americans changed their minds on gay marriage because they “know someone who is homosexual.”
When a loved one says their sexual sins are an intrinsic part of who they are, they’re suggesting that if we do not love their homosexuality or transgenderism—then we do not love them. That is a powerful, manipulative argument that many parents, siblings, and friends do not have courage or integrity to resist.
Many of us love and fear our friends and family more than we love and fear God. We’re more afraid of becoming enemies with our loved ones than becoming enemies with God. Therefore for every person who becomes a member of the LGBTQ community, many more of their friends and family will become LGBTQ allies.
In a sense, familiarity breeds acceptance. Our culture knows that.
In a leaked video about Florida’s Parental Rights In Education bill, an executive producer at Disney said they had a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda.” Since people are more likely to become LGBTQ allies when they know and love others who are members of the LGBTQ community—influential institutions in our culture like Hollywood, mainstream media, social media, and academia have created an agenda to produce favourable LGBTQ representation to make us more accepting of LGBTQ ideology.
Therefore the most popular movies, TV shows, and books today feature characters and storylines designed to normalize LGBTQ sexuality. Knowing this, my wife—Annie Sey—has created a service called Library 4 Littles to help parents protect their children from deceptive books that indoctrinate them.
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