A few days ago, I was scrolling through Facebook and came upon a post that said that Jesus was God’s “Plan B”. After audibly yelling at the screen “No He is Not” and explaining to my wife why I am yelling at an inanimate object, I began to rant about how this line of thinking is completely opposite to the God that we follow. In Revelation 13, the Scriptures refer to Jesus as the Lamb of God and make the distinction that “the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.” (Revelation 13:8b). The plan that Jesus was to come to Earth and die on the cross for our sins was the plan all along, “from the creation of the world”. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” and God had already planned that Jesus would have to be sacrificed to save each and every one of us (Genesis 1:1). Even before the sun, the stars, the plants and animals and, yes, before Man was ever formed in the dirt, Jesus was the plan.
How much more amazing does this make God? Our God knew he would create us, give us free will, we would choose to disobey him and he would have to sacrifice His son, a part of himself, to save us. Knowing all of that He still “created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). This is why we can see the idea of Jesus woven all throughout the Old Testament. A few years ago, I read a book called The Miracle of the Scarlet Thread by Richard Booker. In the book, the author shows how Jesus and the sacrifice at the cross is threaded throughout all Scripture. Since reading the book I now ask myself, while reading the Bible, how does this show Jesus and what He did for us. Trust me, when you start asking this question the Old Testament has a whole new flavor and will give you a deeper understanding of who God is.
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.
In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.
Ephesians 1:3-14
I do not usually include such a large section of Scripture but this has to be the one of the most concise as well as detailed description of Salvation in the Bible. Here again the Scriptures tell us that Jesus had been the plan for us since before the creation of the world but it goes a step further by telling us that salvation, sonship and even the will for each of our lives has been predestined since the beginning. Here, as in all Scripture, God had the solution before there was a problem. Jesus was never a “Plan B” rather He was “The Plan”.
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