1-12 Christ’s Place In God’s Plan
God does not
decide on His plans on the spur of the moment, devising extra parts to
His purpose as human history unfolds. God had a complete plan
formulated right from the beginning of creation (Jn. 1:1). His desire
to have a Son was therefore in His plan from the beginning. He loved
that Son before he was born, just as parents may love a child still in
the womb. The whole of the Old Testament reveals different aspects of
God’s plan of salvation in Christ.
We
have frequently demonstrated that through the promises, the prophecies
of the prophets, and the types of the Law of Moses, the Old Testament
is constantly revealing God’s purpose in Christ. It was on account of
God’s knowledge that He would have a Son that He brought creation into
existence (Heb. 1:1,2, Greek text; “by” in the A.V. is better
translated “on account of”). It was on account of Christ that the ages
of human history were allowed by God (Heb. 1:2 (Greek). It follows that
God’s revelation to man down through the years, as recorded in the Old
Testament, is full of references to Christ.
The
supremacy of Christ and his fundamental importance to God is difficult
for us to comprehend fully. It is therefore true to say that Christ
existed in God’s mind and purpose from the beginning, although he only
came into existence physically through his birth of Mary. Heb. 1:4-7,
13,14, stress that Christ was not an angel; whilst in his mortal life
he was less than angels (Heb. 2:7), he was exalted to a far greater
honour than them seeing he was God’s “only begotten Son” (Jn.
3:16). Christ did not exist as a ‘spirit’ before his birth. 1 Pet. 1:20
sums up the position: Christ “was foreordained before the foundation of
the world but was manifest in these last times”.
Jesus
was the central pivot of the Gospel, which God “had promised afore by
his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his son, Jesus Christ
our Lord, which was made (created by begettal) of the seed of David
according to the flesh; and declared to be the Son of God with power,
according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead”
(Rom. 1:1-4).
This summarizes the history of Christ.
1. Promised in the Old Testament - i.e. in God’s plan;
2. Created as a physical person through the virgin birth, as a seed of David;
3. Due to his perfect character (“the spirit of holiness”), shown during his mortal life
4. He was resurrected, and again publicly declared to be the Son of God by the apostles’ spirit-gifted preaching.
The
Lord Jesus was the promised descendant of Abraham. Mic. 5:2 speaks of
Him as having these very "ancient origins". The same Hebrew term used
there is to be found in Dt. 32:7; Mic. 7:14; Amos 9:11; Is. 63:9,11
with the same connotation. As the Cambridge Bible For Schools And Colleges
comments: "['origins'] refers to his descent from the ancient Davidic
family- cp. Amos 9:11, where 'the days of old' evidently refers to the
reign of David".
The Foreknowledge Of God
We
will be greatly helped in appreciating how fully Christ was in God’s
mind at the beginning, while not physically existing, if we can come to
terms with the fact that God knows all things which will
occur in the ‘future’; He has complete ‘foreknowledge’. God can
therefore speak and think about things which do not exist, as though
they do. Such is the totality of His knowledge of the future. There is
strictly no Hebrew word for ‘promise’- only a ‘word’; so sure is God’s
word of promise of fulfilment. What He says is as if it has happened.
Thus God “speaks of those things which be not as though they were”
(Rom. 4:17). He can therefore declare “the end from the beginning, and
from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel
shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure” (Is. 46:10). Because of
this, God can speak of the dead as if they are alive, and can speak of
men as if they were alive before birth. He can speak of a day coming as
if it has come (Is. 3:8; Ez. 7:10,12).
The
“counsel”, or word of God, had prophesied Christ from the beginning; he
was always in God’s purpose or “pleasure”. It was therefore certain
that at some time Christ would be physically born; God would fulfil His
stated purpose in Christ. The certainty of God’s foreknowledge is
therefore reflected in the sureness of His word. Biblical Hebrew has a
‘prophetic perfect’ tense, which uses the past tense to describe future
things which God has promised. Thus David said, “This is the
house of the Lord God” (1 Chron. 22:1), when as yet the temple was only
promised by God. Such was his faith in that word of promise that David
used the present tense to describe future things. Scripture abounds
with examples of God’s foreknowledge. God was so certain that He would
fulfil the promises to Abraham, that He told him: “Unto your seed have I given
this land...” (Gen. 15:18) at a time when Abraham did not even have a
seed. During this same period before the seed (Isaac/Christ) was born,
God further promised: “A father of many nations have I made you” (Gen. 17:5). Truly, God “calleth those things which be not as though they were”.
Thus Christ spoke during his ministry of how God “has given all things into his (Christ’s) hand” (Jn. 3:35), although this was not then the case. “You have
put all things in subjection under (Christ’s) feet...but now we see not
yet all things put under him” (Heb. 2:8).
God
spoke about His plan of salvation through Jesus “by the mouth of his
holy prophets, which have been since the world began” (Lk. 1:70). The
prophets “have been since the world began” (Acts 3:21 RV). Because they
were so closely associated with God’s plan, these men are spoken of as
though they literally existed at the beginning, although this is
evidently not the case. Instead, we can say that the prophets were in
God’s plan from the beginning. Jeremiah is a prime example. God told
him: “Before I formed you in the belly I knew you; and before you came
forth out of the womb I sanctified you, and I ordained you a prophet”
(Jer. 1:5). Thus God knew everything about Jeremiah even before the
creation. In like manner God could speak about the Persian king Cyrus
before the time of his birth, using language which implies he was then
in existence (Is. 45:1-5). Heb. 7:9,10 is another example of this
language of existence being used about someone not then born.
In
the same way as Jeremiah and the prophets are spoken of as existing
even before creation, due to their part in God’s plan, so the true
believers are spoken of as existing then. It is evident that we did not
physically exist then except in the mind of God. God “has saved us, and
called us with an holy calling...according to his own purpose and
grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began” (2
Tim. 1:9). God “has chosen us in (Christ) before the foundation of the
world...having predestinated us...according to the good pleasure of His
will” (Eph. 1:4,5). The whole idea of individuals being foreknown by
God from the beginning, and being ‘marked off’ (‘predestinated’) to
salvation, indicates that they existed in the mind of God at the
beginning (Rom. 8:27; 9:23).
In
the light of all this, it is not surprising that Christ, as the
summation of God’s purpose, should be spoken of as existing from the
beginning in God’s mind and plan, although physically he could not have
done so. He was “the lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev.
13:8). Jesus did not die then literally; he was the “Lamb of God”
sacrificed about 4,000 years later on the cross (Jn. 1:29; 1 Cor. 5:7).
In the same way as Jesus was chosen from the beginning (1 Pet. 1:20),
so were the believers (Eph. 1:4; the same Greek word for “chosen” is
used in these verses). Our difficulty in comprehending all this is
because we cannot easily imagine how God operates outside of the
concept of time. ‘Faith’ is the ability to look at things from God’s
viewpoint, without the constraints of time.
