This
week my theme seems to revolve around God’s plan “that we should be holy and blameless before him.”[1]
While bygone centuries may have left people wondering how he would do this, we
who live in this last hour between Jesus first and second comings have the
advantage of the completed word of God, the Bible.
Here
is a general outline of what God has done, is doing, and will do, to fulfill
his timeless plan to have a people who are “holy
and blameless” in his sight.
God’s
first step in this plan was to create man in his own image and likeness.[2] Obviously,
if we were created like him, we would be as holy and blameless as him. So far,
so good.
However,
when Satan lured man into sin, fulfilling God’s warning that if we ate from the
forbidden tree we would die, there had to be a solution to the sin-problem in
order to have people who were holy and blameless.
The
next step in this process was to create a people that were God’s own covenant
nation, and give them a law that was holy and blameless. The law was contained
in Ten Commandments. It was written in stone. Do this and you will live; fail
to do this and you will die.
Because
man was already sinful, and the laws of God were impossible for sinful men to
perform, God surrounded the Ten Commandments with a multitude of sacrifices and
offerings that were aimed at teaching reverence for God, and providing
forgiveness for sin. The result was that man now had opportunity to demonstrate
whether we could be holy and blameless through our own performance. It did not
take long to see that this would not accomplish what God had planned. The
centuries of living by the Ten Commandments proved people guilty of sin. God
needed another plan.
Before
the beginning of time, God had already accommodated all that sin would do to
ruin his initial creation. While he was grieved by Adam’s sin, he was not
surprised by it. Neither was he stumped by it. Once man could see that sin had
to be dealt with, and once we saw that no perfect “ten” of laws could take away
our sin, we were ready to receive the gift of God, that God would do one
hundred percent of the work to make us as holy and blameless as he wanted us to
be.
The
work of Jesus Christ in salvation is God’s plan. Through this work of the
Triune, sin is propitiated, paid for, taken away. The wrath of God against our
sin is finished, just as Jesus said on the cross. Now God has the legal means
of making people righteous by faith in a way that we could never be righteous
by works. Jesus has cleansed us of sin and unrighteousness so that we can now
serve the living God without fear, and without punishment.
At
the present time, God is applying the work of his Son to the lives of those he
adopts as his sons so that we can become as holy and blameless as his Son. This
work continues from “one degree of glory
to another”[3]
until that day that we are fully restored to the image of God as God intended
from before the beginning of creation. As Jesus’ good friend John wrote, “Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.”[4]
While
this is such a brief summary of God’s grand work of making a creature that was like
him “in true righteousness and holiness,”[5] it
is food for thought and praise as we consider how God will carry on to
completion not only what he started in us, but what he planned before time
began.[6] He
has already done enough that we can be certain of what remains to be fulfilled.
And so, I gladly echo these beautiful words of praise to our great God and
Savior:
Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great
joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our
Lord, be glory, majesty,
dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.[7]
© 2014 Monte Vigh ~
Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise
noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible,
English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway
Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)
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