Have you ever contemplated that before time began God had you on His mind? Not only that but His love for you was so great that even though you lived dead in your transgressions and sins (Ephesians 2:1), and totally separated from God, our heavenly Father, in eternity passed, formed an incredible cosmic rescue mission with you in mind.
I love how Billy Graham phrased this great plan of redemption: “God undertook the most dramatic rescue operation in cosmic history. He determined to save the human race from self-destruction. He sent His Son Jesus Christ to salvage and redeem it. The work of man’s redemption was accomplished at the cross.”1
In perhaps one of the most wonderful sections of Scripture we see both the initial timing of the rescue plan (before the creation of the world) and the method (the blood of Christ) as well as the results (that we become holy and blameless in His sight).
If you have never read about this cosmic rescue plan or only casually read over (Ephesians 1), I challenge you to read and re-read these amazing verses below. I don’t know about you but whenever I read this portion of the Bible I am blown away by not only the rescue plan, but by how special I must be to God, that He would predestine me for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ!
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.” (Ephesians 1:3-10).
My friends, God loves you so much, that while He won’t violate your free will, He has done everything, including the death of His own Son, to woo us back to Himself. Picture it this way. God is infinitely holy and our sin filled lives have caused a cataclysmic separation from His presence. As a result of this impossible separation the only thing an infinitely holy God could do to bridge this gap was to provide an infinite level of love – enter Jesus Christ! For you see while God’s holiness demands payment for our sin, His love offers pardon!
May we not try to fully comprehend how a rescue plan of the magnitude of Calvary, could be fashioned before the creation of the world, but instead just bow before our great God and accept His free gift of salvation through His son Jesus Christ!