God created man to fulfill heaven’s purposes here on earth through a life of 
communion with Him. When the disobedience of man separated him from God, He sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ to die on the cross of Calvary and reconcile humanity to God.Now just like God visited the first man and woman in the garden of Eden, His Presence is promised in the communion of His saints, the Church of Christ.Through the unique and intimate relationship of the individual and the Church of Christ with God, He wants to establish His kingdom and His will on all earth as it is in heaven!
‘In the beginning’ God placed the man He created in the Garden of Eden. It was a place planted by God intending to provide everything man needed for an abundant life. But more than all, in the cool of the day, the Lord God would come and have fellowship with man in that paradise (Ge2:8,15; 3:8).God had great plans for man. Through him, He envisioned the fullness and reign of the whole earth! He commissioned man to fill the earth and then establish a government of righteousness and truth that could accommodate His good purposes for mankind.
Biblical ‘koinonia’ is communion, fellowship, giving and receiving, exchanging, complementing, supporting, fulfilling. It is the empowerment to fulfill God’s purposes on earth as in heaven. This is true both in man’s intimate relationship with God and with one another. Christianity is not meant to be another religion but an intimate communion- relationship with the Living God and an invitation to become part of the family of Christ, His body, the Church.
Jesus said ’This is eternal life to know You the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent’ Jh17:3. Knowing God does not refer to a rational knowledge but rather to an intimate relationship of experiencing and growing towards one another till really becoming one. It is a relationship of a person with the unseen God of the same standard that the Son of man, Jesus Christ, experienced and demonstrated with His Father and disciples, here on earth’; ‘that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You…’ Jh 17:21 and ‘I in them and You in Me…’ Jh 17:23.
It is a relationship that can be best illustrated with the intimacy of a husband and a wife where the two become one, culminating in the marital act. Actually the biblical Hebrew expression for this level of relationship would be that ‘the husband knew His wife’ (Ge 4:1) or that the two had (koinonia: Greek for) communion with one another. That most intimate relationship in the God-fashioned institution of marriage, is the one that leads to the birth of life as God intended it, which is the biological purpose of all men.God has a purpose for and through the life of every individual born on earth. Either they perceive it and fulfill it or not, He always has it. He never intended that somebody would hang around vain, without purpose, or even lead a life of minor importance. Vanity is a great sin because it is missing God’s purpose, losing the target for which God called man forth. ‘Sin’ literally means ‘to miss the target’ in Greek.
Not only God has a purpose for every (hu)man but He has many purposes, many plans through the lives of every individual. It’s up to us to stretch out to heaven, to perceive them, to conceive them in the Spirit and birth those things that were there before time began, the plans of God for the world through our lives that lead to a life of tremendous fulfillment. Those are the things ‘no (carnal) eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him’! 1 Co 2:9. Many people wander around trying to find fulfillment and purpose, wasting their lives without the knowledge of the true meaning of life ‘to the full’, that is found in Jesus . Many Christians, on the other side, run around trying to find somebody or something to tell them what is God’s will for their lives. Others are caught up in intense activity and works assuming that the more they do the better they can please God… while the majority of Christians has exchanged the essential God-intended, vivid and exciting relationship with God, with ‘going to Church’, a duty, a routine, a ‘ritual’… Going to Church as a part of our relationship with God and His Son is essential. But this will never be the final purpose in a healthy relationship with God. It is non optional ‘means’, an empowerment of vital importance (He 10:25) for what He really called us into!
There is only one sure way to understand and embrace God’s purpose for man’s life and this is to know God Himself! Accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, is the exclusive way through which man can be saved, and then grow spiritually through an intimate, ‘koinonia’ relationship with Him. Only spiritual people can understand the things of God.
‘The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him…’ 1 Co 2:14. Jesus came to pay the price of man’s sin on the cross of Calvary. God’s love and sacrifice assured that ‘whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life’ (Jh 3:16). Nonetheless, God did not intend just salvation for (wo)man and an anticipation to make it to heaven one day… He invites all into a relationship and a life of eternity that starts right on the day of their decision to accept His Son, Jesus. Eternity begins now, it is a daily walking with God here on earth. It is a ‘life to the full’ as described by Christ and for which He died on the cross of Calvary (Jh 10:10). A life with God is more than ‘surviving’; it is an abundant life of the greatest fulfillment as one discovers and fulfills God’s purposes through his or her life here on earth! As life can be conceived through the intimacy between man and woman, God intended to reveal and implement His plans through human lives by means of intimacy with Him. And as a family can beget far more than one child… so can one conceive so many more than one plan for his life. Those plans are not activity but the ‘…good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do’ Eph 2:10; heaven’s vision conceived by man and birthed through the availability of somebody that says ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’!
In the Old Testament, it was a shame for a family not to have children. Now this was the case for physical children. How much more when it comes down to spiritual children, the fruit of our relationship with God! The psalmist says ‘Like arrows in the hands of warriors are sons born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them…’ Ps 127:4,5. How great is that truth when it comes down especially in perceiving and birthing God’s purposes for eternity through our lives!
Yes, each one of us is called to be a womb of great joy and Good News as He bows down before God and responds like the virgin Mary ‘I am the Lord’s servant’ and ‘May it be to Me as you have said’ Lk 1:38.
God’s plans for our lives are always in respect to eternity and His ongoing salvation plan for humanity. As we relate with Him He will invite us to join Him in contributing to the building of that ‘Ark of Noah’ founded on the cross of Calvary, God’s mercy ‘ship’ bringing Good News and hope to the nations even today, as long as the door is still open, as long as the invitation is still going out… until Jesus comes back. This is the Great Commission!
In a life of communion with God, He wants to invite every individual and every Christian entity to be a unique part in His salvation plan so that others too, may come into that perfect knowledge Jh 17:20 .God’s best portions for the life of the individual are ‘packed and parceled’ in His mission through their lives! God’s will includes more than the salvation of man (Mk 16:15). It refers as well to specific plans, ‘pending’ from the foundation of the world, for the individual and the whole of creation; God’s full purposes for the communities, the cities and the nations of the world. Jesus commanded them to ‘pray’ His will on earth as it is in heaven (Mt 6:10)! Fulfilling God’s purposes for the communities, the cities and the nations of the world, requires the corporal involvement and authority of the Church of Jesus Christ. Jesus commissioned the Church and not an individual to reach ‘to the ends of the earth’ (Ac 1:8). It is the corporal communion with God as ‘in the beginning’, that will empower the fulfillment of man’s mission.
Jesus prayed a strategic prayer of intercession, still valid today, indicating the requirement to be met in order to fulfill the Great Commission both for our communities and the nations of the world: ‘ that they may be made perfect in one; and the world may know that though has sent me’ Jh 17:23. It is in the midst of the complete number of the seven churches of Asia Minor that Jesus appeared walking in glory in Revelation 1:12-16. To each one of those churches He revealed a part of His glorious appearance (Re 2 & 3) but in the midst of them all He appeared complete and glorified!
Likewise, there are things we can achieve through our individual relationship with God but there are others wherefore God requires an agreement (of at least two; Mt 18:20), while He promises His visitation to the group (of two or three ; Mt 18:21).
Our relationship with God is a vertical line that comes to balance in our horizontal relationship with the body of Christ; together they form the cross of Jesus where God exchanged Himself for the world, where He calls us to reconcile the world to God.
It is in this vertical and horizontal relationship that we are fulfilling His unique requirement for God’s love and glory to be revealed to the world through Christ; we are being made ‘perfect in one’ so that the world may be reached with Christ through His Church (Jh 17:23).
Fractions and division are still standing in the way for the Great Commission of the Church towards the nations of the earth to be fulfilled. Christ’s unfulfilled prayer to the Father ‘that they may be made perfect in one’ stands as a challenge to the Church of our generation that wants to see God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven!