God’s Purpose to Redeem
This coming Sunday, we will have a Reach Sunday. Reach Sundays are a focused opportunity to see and hear what God is doing in the broader kingdom (to the ends of the earth). One of the reasons that we take specific time to consider the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20) and God’s work around the nations is because it is both essential to our mission as a local church and it is core to God’s nature and character. Below is an excerpt from Evangelical Convictions that helps us to understand God’s nature and purposes to redeem.
…
God Has Purposed from Eternity to Redeem
“God chose us in him before the creation of the world.” And it’s not just in Ephesians that Paul speaks like this. In 2 Timothy 1:9, the Apostle confesses that God “has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.” Or consider Titus 1:2 where Paul speaks of “the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time….” Even before the first sin spoiled the good world that he had made, God knew what he was going to do. He had created human beings in his own image, so that the eternal Son of God would be able to take humanity into himself and to enter into our world and become incarnate as a human being like us. This was part of God’s eternal purpose. From eternity God purposed more than just the incarnation of Christ. He also willed his death, for the Bible speaks of Christ as “the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world” (Rev. 13:8). The Lamb was slain to redeem a people who would be God’s very own, a people redeemed to know him, to love him and to serve him forever (Titus 2:14; 1 Pet. 2:9; cf. 1 Chron. 17:21). There is a great mystery here, but the central point of it all must be this: the gospel which has impacted our lives does not begin with us. We are not Christians, we do not share in the very life of God, because of our efforts to seek him out. It is not because of our cleverness or our goodness or our religiosity that we are adopted into God’s family. No, the gospel that has come to us and saved us begins with God. He loved us before we ever thought about loving him: “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight” (Eph. 1:4). “This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time” (2 Tim. 1:9). So we believe that God has graciously purposed from eternity to redeem a people for himself (cf. also 2 Tim. 1:9; Eph. 1:11; Eph. 3:10; Rom. 8:29-30).
God Acts with Limitless Knowledge and Sovereign Power
Certainly, among Evangelicals there are various ways of understanding how this electing purpose of God plays out in human history, and various views, including both the Arminian/Wesleyan and Reformed versions, with their different conceptions of the mysterious interplay of the human and divine wills, are acceptable within the parameters of our EFCA Statement of Faith. While affirming God’s sovereignty, we believe that sovereignty never minimizes human responsibility. And while we are morally responsible creatures, making significant choices to obey, rebel, believe, etc., and are rightly held responsible for our actions, we can never make God absolutely contingent upon our wills. However we may formulate the notion of human freedom, we affirm that nothing can thwart God’s gracious purpose. We believe that God has limitless knowledge and sovereign power, ensuring that he will bring that purpose to fulfillment. His exhaustive foreknowledge includes even the future acts of human beings, even future acts regarded as “free” acts, and his omnipotence entails that nothing is outside his sovereign will. He “who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will,” Paul writes (Eph. 1:11). The Lord himself declares: “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please’” (Isa. 46:10). This is not a deterministic fatalism of the sort expressed in Islam, but the outworking of the gracious will of a personal God. Our heavenly Father is working for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose (Rom. 8:28). Our response is not simply submission to an impersonal Power but faith and trust in a loving Father.
God Will Redeem a People for Himself
God’s redeeming purpose in Christ is not simply to save individual sinners, but to save a people—a community of believers united in Christ. Beginning with his covenant with Abraham, God purposed to bring blessing to all nations (Gen. 12:2-3; Gen. 18:18; Gen. 22:18; Gen. 26:4; cf. Ps. 72:17; Isa. 2:2). Now, through the gospel of Jesus Christ, that new people is coming into being (cf. Eph. 2:11-22). “Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all,” Paul writes (Col. 3:11). John pictures this new people in its heavenly glory as “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and befoe the Lamb…. and they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb’” (Rev. 7:9-10). The creation of this new people, uniting Jew and Gentile into one new body, is “according to [God’s] eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph. 3:11). This purpose of God is now ours to embrace as we seek to make disciples among all people. In so doing the church becomes an outpost of that new people God is creating in Christ—a sign to the world anticipating the kingdom that God will finally bring to pass in the new heaven and the new earth.
God Will Make All Things New
As the Creator of all things, God’s gracious purpose is not only to redeem a people for himself to live in some ethereal and immaterial state. He has revealed his intention to restore his fallen creation, or, to use the language of the Book of Revelation, “I am making everything new!” (Rev. 21:5). The final, glorious state is described in the final chapters of the Bible as “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21:1), a place where “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Rev. 21:4). Paul speaks of creation itself waiting in eager expectation for that glorious day when the dead are raised and “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:19-21). There God will dwell with his people forever. God is great, and God is good. In his grace and in his power, he is both willing and able to save what has been lost and to restore what has been spoiled. Through his knowledge of all things, he will act in a way that one day will be understood to be perfect wisdom. We are to pray that his will be done on earth as it is in heaven, and we can be assured that it will be. At the climax of human history as we know it, he will remove the barrier between heaven and earth, and all his creatures will proclaim him the King of all creation.
God Will Act for His Own Glory
And to what end does God act? Ultimately, all that God does is for his own glory. This is the highest end, the summum bonum, the final good, for the glory of God himself is the end for which all things exist. All creation is to display God’s power and majesty, and human beings, especially, as those created in his image, redeemed and being conformed into the image of his Son, are to reflect his holy and loving character in the world he has made. As this is done both individually and corporately, it brings God glory! We must never forget that the gospel is finally not about us but about God and his glory. In his wisdom, this gospel is ours by God’s grace through faith, not by works, so that no one can boast (Eph. 2:8-9; cf. 1 Cor. 2:28-29), and God alone will receive the praise. One day John’s vision will be realized, and “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them” will sing: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, forever and ever!” (Rev. 5:13).[1]
[1] EFCA. Evangelical Convictions, 2nd Edition (pp. 49-54). (Function). Kindle Edition.