An Eternal Plan
After the Fall, God was not obliged to save us. But He did so anyway. Moreover, this decision—which was extremely expensive for Him—was not an afterthought.
Read Ephesians 1:4; Colossians 1:26, 27; 2 Timothy 1:8, 9; and Titus 1:2. What do these texts us about when the plan to save us was instituted?
The New Testament reveals several things about the mystery of God.
First, it was formulated before the “foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4, NASB). This implies that long before humans fell into sin the Godhead had created a plan to deal with that calamity.
Second, this divine mystery was “kept hidden for ages and generations” (Col. 1:26, NIV). Not only was the plan configured in advance but it was also determined that it would be put into effect at a particular moment. Therefore it remained hidden within the Godhead for ages.
Third, the mystery is specifically identified with Christ (Col. 1:27). This refers to the mystery of the person of Christ, His ministry, death, resurrection, and mediation on behalf of a sinful human race. It is fundamentally the good news of salvation through Christ, the Christian gospel (Eph. 6:19).
Fourth, this mystery is more precisely defined as God's purpose in Christ “to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ” (Eph. 1:10, NIV). The plan was to restore, in and through the person of Christ, the cosmic harmony that was ruined through sin. The effectiveness of this process is already visible in the unity of Gentiles and Jews in the church (Eph. 3:6). Fifth, the mystery secretly formulated within the Godhead before the creation of the world has now become known through the coming of Christ into human history.
| Even before the foundation of the world, God’s plan was to save the world, each one of us included. What hope can you draw, for yourself, from the amazing truth that God’s plan was to save you even before you existed? |
No comments:
Post a Comment