Why is it that our all-knowing God asks questions? In the beginning, when our first parents ate the forbidden fruit, God asked them, “Where are you?” (Gen 3:9). This is God’s very first question in Scripture, and it sets the stage for the rest. God meets them in a garden, the place where they dwelled and walked together. He asks for them, seeking them out. Of course, God doesn’t ask questions because he doesn’t know the answer. Like any good teacher, he asks questions so that, as we try to find the answer, we end up learning something.

Most of our questions communicate a desire to find something: a truthful answer, a lost object, another person. God’s first question to Adam is similar. In his case, he is looking for us. The question itself teaches us the consequence of Adam’s sin: separation from God. If Adam were already with God, he wouldn’t ask where he is. Sin and its consequences elicit this first question, beginning the story of our salvation: God desiring to bring us back to himself.

In the fullness of time, God sent his Son to save us from this separation. Continuing the loving pedagogy we saw in Genesis, Christ begins with a question for his disciples: “What are you looking for?” (John 1:38). It communicates the same desire to find something, but God has switched gears. In Genesis, God was looking for man. Now Christ asks man if he is looking for God. It’s as if Christ reverses the question so that he may reverse our separation from him. God’s first question searches for Adam, but the New Adam wants us to search for him too.

The questioning continues. In the Garden of Gethsemane, we see how God draws us back to himself: through betrayal and death. Our first parents were disobedient in the Garden of Eden, but God planned to restore this obedience in another garden. As Judas and the guards approach Gethsemane, Jesus asks them the same question as before, “Whom are you looking for?” (John 18:4). It still communicates a desire, and even in the face of his passion Christ’s question still teaches us. As he draws us to himself, his question has changed from “What are you looking for?” to “Whom are you looking for?” The God who longs to be with us is not an abstract thing, but a person. He is a real man who knows and loves us. This man endured the death that was ours so that we might live forever with him. He longs for you, and he wants you to long for him.

God’s desire for our salvation culminates in yet another garden, asking the same question from Gethsemane after his Resurrection. As Mary Magdalene looked for Jesus at the empty tomb, placed in a garden, he asked her a familiar question: “Whom are you looking for?” (John 20:15). The question coming from the glorious risen Lord shows us the same glory that awaits us. All of the preceding questions culminate in this moment. While man strayed from God in a garden, salvation is won for us in a garden. While God first looked for us when we turned away, we now return to look for him. Our searching rests in the person of Christ, risen from the dead, with the gift of unending joy. From Eden to the Resurrection, we have been searching for answers to God’s questions. The answer is nothing other than our God, whose questions have drawn us to himself.  

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Image: James Tissot, Jesus Looking through a Lattice (public domain)