“The original homeland of man might well have been named Immanuel.
God was with man, man’s dwelling-place was God’s dwelling-place.
That was the greatest glory of paradise and the supreme and ultimate blessedness of human life.
The covenant servant had been created for friendship and fellowship with his Lord.
He was qualified for this holy communion by the nature with which God’s creating hand endowed him.
And he found to his delight that his transcendent Maker was not a god far off, but the immanent Immanuel.
Man did not have to make a long pilgrimage to come to God’s dwelling.
There was no great wilderness to pass through, no perilous ascent on high or journey down into the depths was necessary to find God.
For man was by creation’s arrangement a house-guest at home in the house of God.”
–Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 60.
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