#19 Estrangement and the Father’s Plan for Family
Humanity was created for communion with God but became estranged through Adam’s exile from Eden—a spatial and relational separation symbolized by eastward movement away from sacred space. This estrangement, inherited by all humans, frames sin not as the root problem but as the consequence of being spiritual orphans. Redemption is not primarily legal pardon but adoption—restoration to God’s family. Scripture emphasizes that not all are children of God by default; adoption into God's household comes only through faith and rebirth. The gospel begins with the Father's love, not law, and its ultimate aim is not moral improvement but restored relationship—a return home from exile, where humans are no longer the prodigal race but beloved sons and daughters.
TRANSCRIPT:
"This light, momentary affliction is preparing an eternal weight of glory for us beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the unseen" (2 Corinthians 4:17–18, ESV).
In a post-materialistic world filled with immense spiritual noise, we're here to uncover the ancient Near Eastern context of the Bible to recover the truly mystical faith of our spiritual forefathers. Welcome to the Biblical Re-Enchantment podcast, where we bridge the gap between the ancient Hebrew story and modern insights. I'm Anthony Delgado, your host for this journey into the often overlooked mystical dimensions of the Bible.
This is episode 18, titled Estrangement and the Father's Plan for Family. We'll be looking specifically at the family motif of Scripture for the next handful of episodes and segments. I want to provide in this episode some insight into God's intention to create a faithful family for Himself, and how humanity became estranged from God after Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden.
Humankind is Estranged from God (Adam’s Exile from God’s Presence)
Let’s begin by talking about humankind as estranged from God. Specifically, we're talking about Adam's exile from the garden—Adam's exile from God's presence.
Genesis 3:24 says that after the fall, Adam was driven east of Eden, barred by cherubim and a flaming sword. There was this eastward movement when Adam left the garden. East is important. In Scripture, east symbolizes separation from sacred space or from God's presence. Adam's exile marked a movement from paradise—from the mountain of Eden or the mountain of God—downward into the wilderness, into the lowlands of the earth.
East represents this descent from the mountain of God into the cosmic lowlands—the wilderness, the chaos, the undeveloped part of the earth. If you look at Ezekiel 28:13–14, a passage that has classically been considered to refer to the serpent in the garden, Ezekiel writes:
"You were in Eden, the garden of God. You were on the holy mountain of God."
You can see how Eden, this garden where God placed Adam and Eve, is said to be on top of the holy mountain. We’ll talk more about ancient cosmology—specifically ancient Near Eastern cosmology—as we get into this, and we’ll see how the significance of that mountain plays out. But for now, I want to focus on this eastward descent out of Eden and down into the wilderness.
We see something similar with Cain. Genesis 4:16 says that Cain also went out from the Lord’s presence and settled east of Eden after murdering his brother Abel. We see this again in the narrative of Abraham and Ishmael. Ishmael was sent to the east (Genesis 25:6), away from the covenant family of God being built through Abraham.
You see it in many places. Babylon, the place of Israel's exile, actually lies due east of Jerusalem. So when the Jews were exiled from Jerusalem and from Judea, they moved eastward into the wilderness as they settled in Babylon among the Babylonians.
Eastward movement in the biblical narrative consistently symbolizes distance from divine presence.
You can also see this illustrated in Solomon’s temple. If you look at diagrams of it, you'll see that the entrance to the temple—like Eden, and not accidentally—lays on the east side. As the priest enters into the temple courts, and then into the holy place, and finally into the most holy place, there's this movement westward into the Holy of Holies. It's a progression of coming nearer to God as they enter the temple to perform their cleansing rituals and sacrifices.
We get this image—and you see it in The Chronicles of Narnia as well—that there's always a “further in,” a reaching into the nearness of God. That becomes a westward movement toward God. But there's also a “further up” motif, because ancient temples were typically constructed with stairways ascending into each successive region. So it's not just moving westward, but upward—closer to where God is. Temples become artificial holy places, and as you move westward and upward, you're entering into the nearness of God.
Adam's expulsion, then, is an eastward and downward movement—down the holy mountain and out into the wilderness. He's moving further away from God. As he exits the gates of Eden, with the cherubim placed there, Adam is exiled from the presence of God. This is not just a spiritual expulsion; it’s a spatial expulsion.
We could also say it's a covenantal expulsion—a relational shift in his connection to God. And there’s a priestly aspect as well. If we see the dominion mandate in Eden as Adam’s priestly duty—to care for creation within the garden—then in losing that connection to God’s presence, Adam also loses his priestly role. He's cast out from the garden, from this temple, no longer able to serve in sacred space.
The cherub at the gate is not just guarding God’s throne; he is a symbol that the sanctuary of God is now closed off to humankind. This is where we get the separation between God and man that we talk about when we discuss the fall. It’s not my favorite term, but I would refer to it as the rebellion.
Many people will say "the fall," but we get this cherub at the gate, and he's a symbol that the sanctuary is closed off to humankind. You could also say that he’s the veil over the most holy place—that now Adam cannot enter into sacred space, into the holy place to commune with God. That affects all of humankind.
We would also say that all humankind is estranged in Adam. Adam is identified as God’s first son in Luke 3:38—or at least His first human son—and he also becomes the first estranged human son. It’s like this: because of Adam’s exile, all humans who come from Adam are also born outside the garden. I know there are arguments out there suggesting that other humans existed on the earth before Adam and Eve were placed in the garden—sometimes pointing to clues in the biblical text, other times to the anthropological record.
And I think that’s all well and good, but I would encourage you to emphasize where the story is. The natural flow of the story in Genesis is the creation of all humankind out of Adam. If you need to read that more mythologically, that’s fine. But we need to emphasize the story that now, in Adam, all humankind is estranged. Every human is born outside the garden because that’s where Adam went—and that’s where he and his wife Eve had their children.
Think about it this way: if your family immigrated to the United States ten or more generations ago, you probably don’t identify much with your ethnic lineage anymore. You might say, “Oh, I’m Italian” or “I’m Korean” or whatever it is. You have a kind of ethnic memory, but in your daily experience, you primarily see yourself as American. You may not even have family members who remember the old country.
And that’s kind of what we’re experiencing as humankind. We are born spiritually east of God’s presence. We’re outside sacred space. The wilderness is our home. It’s what’s normal to us. We may have some memory of who we’re supposed to be in God—and I do think we do—but we’re outside the sacred space. We don’t really experience it. The wilderness and the city of man, built out in that wilderness—that’s where we live, that’s what we understand, that’s what we do.
So the image of estrangement is not fundamentally about guilt or sin. It’s relational and positional alienation. And we’ll be talking more about that as we go on.
You might look at Ephesians 2:3, where Paul says we are “by nature children under wrath, like the rest of humankind.” That “children under wrath” language is important, and we’ll unpack that more later. It emphasizes that we are not children of God in the way we are meant to be.
The phrase “like the rest of humankind” should signal that Paul has more in mind than personal eschatology. Personal eschatology refers to our individual eternal state—what happens to you after you die, your soul's destination, the resurrection of the body, and the eternal kingdom. But Paul is thinking here about the eschatology of humankind—the end or telos of humanity as a whole.
He sees our eternal state as sourced from humankind’s shared experience in Adam. That shared experience is one of exile—estrangement from God. We are not His sons. We are not His children. So we should see humankind as spiritually exiled in Adam long before any individual chooses sin. We are born into this exile.
Redemption, then, is not about pardon for sins. It’s not primarily a legal matter. What we need is presence. It’s a location issue. We need to ascend the mountain—westward and upward—into the presence of God. We need to get back into the garden. That’s the goal of redemption. And therefore, humanity’s problem, while it does include legal elements, is not primarily legal—it’s fundamentally familial.
Yes, Christ’s kingship involves legal aspects, and we’ll talk about that. But one of the dominant images in Scripture is familial. As we look at the birthing of humankind as sons of God, what we see in Genesis 1–3 is that humans were created for communion with God. But in Adam and Eve’s rebellion, they leave the garden and are cut off from God.
This is why there’s a persistent human longing for home. When you study human history and observe religious expressions and the pursuit of things beyond the physical world, you see that humans are looking for something more. They're longing for the sacred space they were made to inhabit.
This is what we’re getting here—we’re seeing a longing for home. The human problem, again, isn’t first that we’re sinners—though that is a problem—but that we are orphans according to Adam’s rebellion. We are sinners, but we are sinners because we’re orphans. We aren’t orphans because we’re sinners. We need to get that ordering right.
We’ve been cast away from our Father’s house, just like Adam. And again, I think we know that. I think that’s why you see a longing for home.
Perhaps it’s better to see ourselves, if I can use the image of the prodigal son for a moment, as the prodigal who left our Father’s home in search of our own personal sovereignty. If you’ve followed my teaching for any time, you know that I explain that as fundamental to the serpent’s deceit—offering Eve a sense of personal sovereignty in rejection of Yahweh’s sovereignty.
In the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15, Jesus captures both the longing and the hope. The son demands his inheritance early. He basically says to his father, “I don’t want to wait until you die—I want my share now.” He wants to build his own life, to be sovereign. There’s an interesting comparison here to the knowledge of good and evil. Just as Eve desired the knowledge of good and evil, so the prodigal desired to discover for himself what is good and what is evil—how the world works—without his father’s guidance.
So the father gives him his money, and the son goes and squanders it. Everything he thought he knew turns out to be false. He ends up suffering at the hands of a pig farmer. Then he returns to his father’s house, hoping only to be a hired hand. He thinks, “At least my dad treats his workers better than this pig farmer.” But when he returns, he is embraced by the father. He is loved, forgiven, and restored—not as a servant, but as a son.
The father in the story is clearly a picture of God. And this parable is not just a moral tale. It’s hardly even a moral tale. It’s a theological map of the human story.
There’s an aching for return that runs throughout the biblical narrative—a longing that haunts the human heart. A desire, to use the prodigal language, to get out of the pig farm and back into the Father’s house. That’s why Ecclesiastes 3:11 says:
"He has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end."
The exile has left us longing for return, but unable to ascend the mountain on our own. That’s what the writer means when he says we cannot find out what God has done from beginning to end. We don’t know the way back up the mountain. And yet, we long to regain paradise.
The biblical narrative follows this theme of exile and return. We see it again and again. From Adam to Cain. From Babel to Babylon. Scripture traces these patterns of separation from God’s presence, of being cast into exile. Israel’s national exile is patterned after Adam’s spiritual exile. There are strong parallels between what happens to Israel as they are carried into Babylon and what happens to Adam and Eve as they are driven from Eden.
So to reiterate: humankind is estranged from God. You could say this is our nature—but not our created nature. We weren’t created this way. We were created in God’s presence. But in Adam, we receive a new nature—an estranged nature. And that can become confusing as we begin to talk about a newer nature still in Christ. But for now, we can say that by birth, we are estranged from God. We are estranged sons.
Everyone is Not a Child of God (Why We Need Adoption)
If we’re talking about God’s family and Adam as God’s first human son, we have to come to grips with the fact that not everyone is a child of God. Everyone cannot be a child of God. That’s why adoption is such an important theological motif in Scripture. Paul emphasizes this repeatedly: we must be adopted as sons.
It makes no sense to say that everyone is already a child of God. If that were true, what would adoption even mean?
And yet people say it all the time: “Aren’t we all God’s children?” In one sense, perhaps, because God created us. In that sense, all people are His offspring. There’s a shadow of this idea in Acts 17:28:
“In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we are indeed his offspring.”
Paul is quoting a pagan poet there, acknowledging that in a broad, creational sense, all people are God's offspring. But that's different from being His children in the relational, covenantal sense that Scripture describes.
Paul is pointing to the poets of the Greek world who say, “We’re God’s offspring”—because He created us. And that’s only true in a very basic sense. Even a rebellious son—even an estranged son—is still technically a son, right?
If I were ever to reject my son—God forbid—told him to move out, to never speak to me again, and disowned him, wouldn’t he still be my son in a biological and technical sense? And yet, in that situation, he wouldn’t call me “Father,” and I wouldn’t call him “Son.” Now, because of biblical values, I believe that’s a ridiculous thing to imagine. But this is the kind of estrangement we’re dealing with. People are only God's sons in that base, technical way.
Unless we are redeemed, we are not God’s children. Scripture emphasizes this distinction: all are God’s creatures, but not all are His covenant children. We must become His covenant children. We must enter into relationship with God as our Father.
Because of human rebellion, humanity lives in this estranged state—not in obedient relationship to the Father, but in rebellion, out in exile.
Now, someone might say, “Anthony, that’s all well and good, but how can a newborn baby be said to be in rebellion against God? That’s not fair. They haven’t done anything wrong. How could they be born outside of God’s family?”
There’s a lot to be said about God’s mercy in the case of infant death, but I want to set those ethical and moral questions aside for now to stick with the biblical flow of the narrative.
As a point of illustration: innocent children are often caught in the crossfire of human rebellion. Think about the current war between Palestine and Israel. This is the stark reality, and it’s why, in my conviction, we should oppose war on both sides. War is never an acceptable means of conflict resolution. I understand that if someone declares war on you, there's a question of how to respond—but in principle, war is a tragedy.
So these children—caught up in this war—they are where they are simply because of where they were born. It’s that simple. They’re suffering because of who their parents are, who their grandparents were, the people they descend from. That’s just the harsh reality of the world we live in.
In the same way, we are born to Adam. We’re born into the kingdom of Adam. That’s the reality. A child born in the wilderness or in the city of man does not have citizenship in the kingdom of God. They are not God’s children. They are Adam’s children.
The Bible reserves the title child of God for those whom God has adopted into His family through grace—the grace of God exhibited in Jesus Christ. Adoption occurs only through rebirth and redemption. Only those whom God redeems are properly children of God.
Look at John 1:12:
“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”
Believing in His name implies fidelity to Yahweh—to God. As we put our trust in Him, He grants us the right of sonship. But that right is not natural—it is not ours by birth. It doesn’t come from our genealogy. Just because your parents are Christians and call themselves children of God doesn’t mean you are one. You must believe in His name. You must belong to Him.
Adoption is a gift from God. It is an escape from Adam’s kingdom. We are forgiven our rebellion and brought into the kingdom of God. We are adopted as sons and daughters.
Outside of Christ, we may still be God’s imagers—using Genesis language. To whatever degree we reflect God, we do so as His imagers. But we are not His children in the relational and covenantal sense.
Yes, we reflect God. We have a sense of eternity—Ecclesiastes 3:11 affirms that. But we do not have covenantal status as sons and daughters unless we are redeemed.
Scripture uses very specific language to describe the condition of the unredeemed. Jesus says in John 8:44:
“You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires.”
Those under the serpent’s deceit are not children of God. They are children of the father of lies.
If you are not a child of God, then you are a child of deceit. You are a child of Adam. A child of the city of man.
We saw earlier in Ephesians 2:3 that Paul writes:
“We were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
That “children of wrath” language points to the condemnation that rests on the kingdom of Adam—on Adam’s family. This is not merely about broken behavior.
It’s not fundamentally about sinning. It’s about being born into a broken cosmic home. We are spiritual orphans by nature, and therefore we must be adopted by God.
Another way to understand humankind is to look at humanity as the prodigal race. If we return to the analogy of the prodigal son in Luke 15 and take a more cosmic perspective—less individualistic—we begin to see a pattern that transcends one person’s story.
When we read that parable, we often ask, “Am I the prodigal or the elder son—the legalist?” And while there’s value in both lenses, the narrative primarily invites us to see ourselves as the prodigal. And the beauty of biblical symbolism is that it allows principles to expand into cosmic realities and also shrink down into personal ones.
So let’s ask: where do we see the entire offspring of Adam—the human race—in this story?
Humanity was designed for the Father’s house. We were designed for the garden—for paradise. But because humankind rebelled in Adam—the first prodigal—we were born outside the Father’s house, not as insiders but as exiles. Spiritually dead. Destitute.
If it helps, think of Adam as the prodigal who rebelled, but who had children in the wilderness before he could ascend back up the mountain to return to his Father’s house. We are the children—or the great-great-great-great-grandchildren—of Adam. And we were born not into the Father’s house but into the pig farmer’s household. We were born as servants of that house, of that system.
So the problem isn’t simply that we sin. Our fundamental problem is that we are cut off from the household of God. We’re living in the pig farmer’s house—where it’s miserable. And our greatest need isn’t moral improvement—it’s not fixing our sin patterns. Our greatest need is to go home. We need adoption.
Think of it this way: if the prodigal son, while living at the pig farm, decided to become a highly moral person—if he stopped squandering money, stopped pursuing pleasure, and instead became hardworking and generous—that still wouldn’t change where he lived. He’d still be in the pig farmer’s house. He’d still be serving the pig farmer.
And remember: in the parable, the pig farmer symbolizes the devil. So no matter how good he becomes, he’s still a good person living under the rule of the devil. His morality doesn’t get him home.
That’s the key insight: what he needs is not to fix himself, but to leave the pig farm. He needs to start walking home. He needs to ascend the mountain toward the Father’s house. And when he gets there, the Father runs to him, embraces him, puts a robe on his shoulders, kills the fatted calf, and celebrates his return.
Yes, forgiveness is essential. The Father must forgive the son. But forgiveness isn’t the goal—it’s not the finish line. The goal is restoration. The goal is family. The goal is to be adopted again by our Father, God.
To be received back as sons and daughters—that’s the real goal. To be clothed, seated, and celebrated as members of God’s family. That’s what we long for. That’s what we were made for. That’s how we return to the garden, how we return to paradise.
The parable of the prodigal son is one of the best illustrations of the gospel. It’s the good news. But the good news isn’t just that we can be acquitted of our sins in a legal sense. The good news is that we can come home.
Think about this: what happens when a criminal is acquitted? Suppose someone commits a violent crime, is imprisoned for 20 or 30 years, and then released. What do they do? Often, they return to the only life they ever knew. Acquittal doesn’t transform the inner person.
And that’s why this distinction matters. That’s why Paul emphasizes in Ephesians 2 that salvation is not by works, so that no one can boast. Redemption is not something we achieve; it’s something we receive—only by the grace of God through Jesus Christ.
This is about coming back to God. The transformation comes after. And yes, we will absolutely talk more about that transformation. But for now, the essential truth is this:
Not everyone is a child of God—only those who have come home to a new household, with God as their Father. And that changes everything.
Why do we call God Father? (Created for Communion with God)
So why do we call God Father? I want to address this in our final point here.
We were created—this is clear in the Genesis narratives—for communion with God. But we can also ask: why did God create family? Why does God even want a family?
Dr. Michael Heiser, in his book What Does God Want?, a short evangelistic work, makes an important observation: the family motif is foundational to God's purpose in creation. And while I would say that the gospel proper is centered on Christ’s victory—His kingship, His conquering of the powers of the world—I agree with Dr. Heiser that the family motif is foundational. It carries deep explanatory power, both for who we become in this life through adoption, and for who we are eternally in our glorified or even deified state.
These different motifs in Scripture—the kingship of Christ, the legal language, the sacrificial imagery—all need to come together. The gospel is bigger than we think. And they must work together to give us a fuller picture of Christ’s work.
Now, God has no need for a family. He possesses what we call aseity—the theological term meaning complete self-sufficiency. He lacks nothing. And yet, He chooses to create human beings. Not out of necessity, but out of love. Like a good father who delights in his children—not because he needs them, but because he loves them.
God creates as an overflow of His love. He is not simply a ruler or a judge—though He is those things. But by nature, He is a Father. That’s how He self-identifies.
Creation, then, is the first act of God’s fatherhood expressed within time. God has sons because of who He is.
As a personal analogy: I have three kids. My wife and I didn’t decide to have children because we felt incomplete. We did it out of love—for each other, and for the children we had yet to meet. I was whole before I married my wife. I was whole before I had children. And yet, my love found a new expression in becoming a father. Similarly, I was whole before marriage, and yet when I met my wife, my love took on a new form in that relationship.
So in the same way, God is fully Himself apart from creation. He would still be God even if He had never created anything—not even the rock He would shape, not even the void He would fill. Apart from all created things, God remains complete, possessing aseity.
But here's the key: He is not God the Father apart from having sons. “Father” is a relational term—it describes not just who God is in Himself, but who He is in relation to others. So He becomes known as Father because He creates sons. The creation of sons is intrinsic to His revealed identity as Father.
Because God is love, and because He identifies as Father, He creates. He creates to have a family.
In a sense, God would not be who He reveals Himself to be—Father—if He had not created humankind to be His sons. This offers us insight into the question so many people ask: “Why did God create the world?” He did so because His love seeks expression. And the way His love is expressed is in being a Father to many sons.
This is why the act of creation reveals God's desire for relationship with human beings. He made humans in His image not just to rule or reflect Him, but to belong to Him—in a familial, covenantal, and relational way.
So the first breath of life into Adam wasn’t just a biological act. It was Adam’s birth into divine communion with the Father.
Now imagine the grief in the heart of God as Adam and Eve walked away—taking their children and all of humankind with them. That’s why God is described in Scripture as “a Father to the fatherless.” This isn’t just poetic. It’s a declaration of His heart. God reveals Himself as a loving Father not just to some, but potentially to all.
In Exodus 4:22, God calls Israel His “firstborn son.” In Deuteronomy 1:31, we read that He carried them “as a man carries his son” through the wilderness. In Hosea 11:1–4, when Israel rebelled, God grieved over them like a father mourning a wayward child.
God disciplines in love. He delivers in mercy—not out of obligation, but as an expression of a Father’s heart for His children.
So the mission of God finds its shape in this idea. John 3:16 says:
“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
This is not about condemnation. This is about love. God sent His Son to bring estranged children home so they would not perish but live eternally.
Jesus is the faithful Son who comes to restore the prodigal race. To bring us back into the Father’s house. That we would no longer be the prodigal race—but the restored race.
So the gospel doesn’t begin with law or wrath—though those motifs exist and matter. The gospel begins with the love of the Father. Long before it uses the language of the courtroom, it uses the language of the living room—of the family table.
The good news of Jesus is fundamentally about family. About a Father’s love for estranged children. About the open door of adoption through Christ.
And we’ll talk more about that.
Thanks for listening to the Biblical Re-Enchantment podcast. We’ll be talking more about the family motif of Scripture in upcoming episodes, so if there are things you wish I had addressed, I probably will in future segments.
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