What is God's plan of redemption?

Long before sin came into the world, God had the means to deal with it, and to bring blessing to sinners. Of this the Apostle Peter tells us, “Ye were redeemed…with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you” (1 Peter 1:18–20). The whole plan of salvation and redemption was in God’s counsel long before the need arose. How this magnifies the love and wisdom of our God.

Not only had God plans to bring into the world His own Son to deal with the question of sin, but those who were to be blessed, through His work of redemption, were chosen “in Him before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4); and the divine purpose was that “we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.” We were chosen in Christ to be like Christ, and with Christ, sharing His own place before the face of the Father, and to be holy in nature, blameless in character, like God Himself, and be before Him in love. How wonderful are the thoughts of God, and how rich His grace.

All God's purposes, from everlasting, had reference to Christ; and no effort of the enemy could possibly interfere with those counsels: yea, his efforts only tended to the display of the unfathomable wisdom and immovable stability thereof. If the "Lamb without blemish and without spot" was "foreordained before the foundation of the world," then, assuredly, redemption must have been in the mind of God before the foundation of the world. The Blessed One had not to pause in order to devise some plan to remedy the terrible evil which the enemy had introduced into His fair creation. No, He had only to bring forth, from the unexplored treasury of His precious counsels, the truth concerning the spotless Lamb, who was foreordained from everlasting, and to be "manifest in these last times for us."

It is very encouraging for us surely, that, since God is good and everything He does must therefore be good, every eternal thought of His must be carried out and fulfilled. He is love, and all His thoughts are thoughts of love; and by His ways He carries out His thoughts. When He began to work all His counsels were formed. During the history of His operations nothing was added and nothing needed to be revised. From the outset He has gone on quietly and steadily, carrying out His original intention; making everything to serve His purpose — the fall of man, the entrance of sin and death, and the murder of the Christ: For everything fallen and unfallen has to serve to the perfecting of the end He has in view. If the objects of His counsels were helpless sinners, He found for them an eternal redemption. The work that met the deep need of our souls is the basis upon which the counsels of His love shall be fulfilled.

Reconciling God to us is quite unscriptural in expression and thought. No act of dealing could change God's mind, either in nature or in purpose; but He acts freely in what is before Him according to that nature, and in bringing about that purpose; and though His mind be not changed, yet the meeting, satisfying, and glorifying His righteousness, is according to that mind and the imperious claim of His nature and authority — is necessary in the highest sense, that is, according to that nature. His holiness too is involved in reconciliation. Reconciliation is the full establishment in relationship with God according to His nature and according to the nature of that which is reconciled. It now acts in redemption and a new nature, and, as regards all around us, a new state of things, so that it is more than reestablishment. It is re-established inasmuch as the old relationship was broken and forfeited, but it is not the returning to that but the establishing a new one which has the stability of redemption and is the accomplishment of the purpose of God. Still it is a bringing back into the enjoyment of divine favour that which had lost it. This reconciliation is twofold in scripture — of the state of things, and of sinners. Thus in Colossians 1 all the fulness was pleased to dwell in Him, "and, having made peace by the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things to himself; by him, whether they be things on earth or things in heaven; and you, that were sometime enemies and alienated in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblamable and unreprovable in his sight." The force of the word is evident from the first case. Then there is no question of changing the disposition of the reconciled things, because the purposed reconciliation spoken of in verse 20 refers to all created things as to the vast majority of which no such change can take place. It is the bringing of the whole created scene of heaven and earth into its true order and right relationship with God, and to its right standing and condition in that relationship.

All things were made by Christ and for Christ. All things are to be gathered together in one in Him, and to be reconciled - all to the eternal fulness of God - all that is in heaven and earth. The result is purposed before the foundation of the world, but in the world, in the creatures, responsibility has come in - we are guilty and all is defiled. But it was all ordained before the world to our glory. Christ has perfectly glorified God morally, and brought out what He is as nothing else could have done. Redemption and grace have a glory, and that through perfect separation from evil, and perfect obedience of Man in the midst of evil, which is all its own. Done for us, we have a part in the glory which belongs to it - the glory of God - are the first-fruits of it - the inner circle round the blessed and glorious Centre in which God is displayed in Christ. Then all things will be gathered round as a redeemed and reconciled Creation to the praise of His glory - the glorious result of the hidden wisdom ordained before the world to our glory. Then Christ will be displayed as the Power as well as the Wisdom of God.

God has a programme. Its foundation lies in the great redemption work accomplished by His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, when at the consummation of the age of man’s testing He appeared, a Man amongst us men, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself (Heb. 9:26). Its climax will be reached when that same Jesus appears in glory to assert God’s rights, and establish His kingdom

The gospel of the glory of the blessed God comes forth to meet the sinner in his need, showing how all his guilty state has been met for God at the cross. The Holy Ghost works in him, bringing the joy of what Christ has done for him into his soul and linking him up with his risen Head in glory, the divine plan being not only to clear him from the effects of the fall, but to go back to the original created position and transfer him from the earthly to the heavenly order. If we ponder this carefully, we shall see how in the wisdom of God He uses man's failure to effectuate His own purpose, and in recovery, brings him back not merely to where he departed from, but to a place marked out by Himself in the counsels of eternity.

On the cross Christ’s precious blood was shed to lay the foundation of the reconciliation of all things (Col. 1:20). Even now true believers in the Son of God have been reconciled to God, but the day is surely coming when the whole universe will be in right relations with the God who created it. Every hostile being in earth and heaven will be removed from every seat of authority in which they are found in opposition to God, and Christ will fill all for God’s glory. The foundation of that eternal scene where all will be for the pleasure of the Godhead was laid in the blood of the cross of God’s Son, so that the new creation will shine in the gory of redemption, according to the eternal purpose of God.

Everything. — "Thou hast put all things under his feet" was the statement of the psalmist. He has therefore interests wider than those connected simply with humanity. He has to do with created things as well as with His intelligent creatures. By His almighty power all things were created, so we read in Colossians (1:16). Through Him God made the worlds, is the statement of the writer of our Epistle (1:2). Now since it was through Adam's fall that this creation became involved (though not willingly, Rom. 8:20) in dire consequences, the fruits of it; and has groaned under them, and still groans; are men and women, descendants of Adam, to get relief, and this creation never? Such is not the purpose of our God. Deliverance for it will come. But how, when, and why will that be brought about? Redemption by power will effect it (Eph. 1:14). That is the how. When things in heaven and things on earth shall be reconciled to God (Col. 1:20), then will begin the dawn of creation's deliverance, but only to be fully accomplished in the eternal state, sin then being wholly put away from it by virtue of Christ's death. That is the when. For this it waits, but waits in hope (Rom. 8:20-21). And John in Patmos heard expression given to that hope, as every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and upon the sea, and all that are in them broke forth in praise when the Lamb took the book to open the seven seals thereof (Rev. 5:13). Later on, when the Lord returns in power to reign, creation will array itself in joyous attire, and testify of its gladness (Psalms 96:11-12, 98:7-8), His return being the prelude, and the sure prelude, to its full and final deliverance.

Theologians in general quite overlook Eph. 1:10, God's purpose in Christ for an administration of the fullness of the times; which is to head or sum up all things in Him, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth — in Him in Whom we too were made to have lot or inheritance; for we are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. Here we learn in the dogmatic teaching of the great apostle, and not only in parable or prophecy, that God will put the entire universe heavenly and earthly under Christ; and that we shall share it with the Heir of all things in that day of glory. This is neither the present time of gathering the heirs, nor the eternal state, when it will be no longer a question of His government; but having put down all enemies He gives up the kingdom to Him Who is God and Father, that God may be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28). Hence, as a groundwork for it, we hear in the companion Epistle to the Colossians that all the fullness was pleased in Him to dwell, and through Him to reconcile all things to itself, having made peace by the blood of His cross — by Him the things on the earth and the things in the heavens (Col. 1:19-20). For it is to be on the basis, not of His creative rights only, or of His incarnation, but of the reconciling work in His death.