Only two people lived before the Fall. This means only two people have ever eaten food at its best, with their capacity to taste at its best.

The great wine Christ made and served at the wedding of Cana was a foretaste of that best of wines he will provide for us on the New Earth. Even in this cursed world, Scripture is filled with more feasts than fasts. Who created our taste buds? Who determined what we like and what we don’t? God did. The food we eat is from God’s hand. Our resurrected bodies will have resurrected taste buds. We can trust that the food we eat on the New Earth, some of it familiar and some of it brand-new, will taste better than anything we’ve ever eaten here.

Food isn’t just functional. We could get nourishment, after all, by mixing everything together in a blender, with no regard to color or texture or taste. Food is also for our enjoyment—not only its consumption but also its preparation and presentation. Shouldn’t we expect boundless creativity in these as well? (If you’ve seen the marvelous movie Babette’s Feast, you know what I mean.)

Reformer John Calvin wrote, “If we consider to what end God created foods, we shall find that he wished not only to provide for our necessities, but also for our pleasure and recreation. . . . With herbs, trees and fruits, besides the various uses he gives us of them, it was his will to rejoice our sight by their beauty, and to give us yet another pleasure in their odours.” [1]

We won’t “need” fine meals; we don’t need them now. But we enjoy them now for the same reason we’ll enjoy them then—because God made us to enjoy them and to glorify him as we eat and drink (1 Corinthians 10:31).