The genius of the biblical story is what it tells us about God himself:

a God who sacrifices himself in death out of love for his enemies;

a God who would rather experience the death we deserved than to be apart from the people he created for his pleasure;

a God who himself bore our likeness, experienced our creatureliness, and carried our sins so that he might provide pardon and reconciliation;

a God who would not let us go, but who would pursue us—all of us, even the worst of us—so that he might restore us into joyful fellowship with himself;

a God who in Christ Jesus has so forever identified with his beloved creatures that he came to be known and praised as “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:3).