During WWII General McArthur asked an engineer how long it would take to build a bridge across a certain river. “About three days.” The engineer was told to go ahead and draw up the plans. Three days later McArthur asked for the plans. The engineer seemed surprised. “Oh, the bridge is ready. You can cross it now. If you wants plans, you’ll have to wait a little longer, we haven’t finished those yet.” It is often the case that we think of plans after the fact. After we get done what we wanted to get done, we find out a way we could have done it better. However, this does not happen with God. God’s plan has “all wisdom and understanding.” But we want to know what God’s plan is, don’t we? We want to take a peek at what’s behind the curtain. We want to know if God is like the Wizard of Oz, who was basically a fake, making himself look bigger than he really was, or whether God is actually bigger than He reveals Himself to be. What we have here is nothing short of a peek into God’s eternal purpose. We have seen before that God has lower purposes that He reveals to us. We can see some of the plan that has to do with us. However, what about God’s plan for the universe? What’s in store for the future of the whole world? Here we have a glimpse of God’s eternal plan for the universe.
Firstly, a word about verse 8. You might have noticed that there is a footnote after the word “he” in verse 9. If you look at the footnote, you will see that there is another way of understanding the phrase “with all wisdom and understanding.” Does the phrase go with the lavishing of God’s grace, as the text has it? Or does the phrase go with the revealing of the mystery in verse 9 as the footnote has it? I believe that the latter is the case. So the translation of verses 7-8 should go like this: “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.” In other words, God’s wisdom and understanding is made known by how and when he revealed to us the ultimate plan for the universe.
Now, we must know what this term “mystery” means. It does not mean something mysterious. It does not mean something that only a few people can know. It rather means something that was hidden before, but is now revealed. It means that people cannot find it out unless God reveals it to them. So God’s will for the universe was not known by us (or rather it was forgotten by us), because we sinned. Sin affects the mind. Our foolish hearts were darkened, as Paul says to the Romans. Our thoughts became unclear, and we could not see what God was doing. However, if God exercises His grace upon us, redeeming us from our captivity to the law, as we saw last week, then our hearts have been made new. No longer are we under the power of sin and death. The power of sin and death has been overpowered not only with regard to our actual sin, but also in regard to our minds and thoughts. God can then reveal to us the mystery of His plan such that we can understand what His plan is. This is an inestimable privilege. Maybe you can recall being a small child. Your father has a plan for doing something. You always wanted to find out what that plan is. Your father knew that if he told you everything, you wouldn’t be able to understand. However, he would simplify the language such that you could understand at least a little bit of what he was trying to do. And you rejoiced when you found out what your father was trying to do. You rejoiced because you knew. Our situation with God is much like this. Think of God’s plan as a large tapestry, very complicated. We can only see a small part of the tapestry. And, unfortunately, we are looking at the back side of the tapestry. The back side always looks like one big collection of snarls and loose ends. We think that there is no order at all. However, God will occasionally let us look at the other side for one quick glance. The front side of the tapestry is huge, orderly, and beautiful. What we have here is one such glimpse of the front of the tapestry.
What is God’s plan? God’s plan is to re-unite all things in heaven and on earth in one Head, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the fulcrum of the universe. You know what a fulcrum is, don’t you? It is the balance point in the middle of a teeter-totter. That’s a fulcrum. In the universe, where everything seems like it is being scattered all over the place, and nothing seems to have any order at all, Jesus Christ is the fulcrum that brings order. Sin is disorderly, you see. Sin brings scattering. Sin brings warfare and disunity between God and mankind. Sin is a chaotic force in the world and in our lives. Sin brings all sorts of mess into our lives. Oftentimes we cannot sort it out by ourselves. We cannot even sort out the consequences, let alone the root causes. We need help in this regard. We need Someone to come into our lives and bring the chaos into order, bring unity between God and ourselves where before there was disunity. That Someone can only be Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is uniquely qualified to bring this order into our lives. He came to earth to unite His divine nature with a human nature. This was to bring unity between God and mankind. However, He was made subject to a scattering. His body was taken away from His soul when He died. Death is the ultimate separator. It separates between body and soul. Nothing else can do that. Death therefore is the great scatterer. But Jesus Christ overcame that separator. When He was raised from the dead, His body and soul were re-united. They were gathered together again. That reunion of body and soul in Christ guarantees our reunion of body and soul after death.
However, Christ’s resurrection is more than that. Christ’s resurrection also brings together everything in the universe back into harmony with God. Now, two things must be said to qualify this statement. Firstly, not everyone will be saved. Though Christ’s work has started the process, it will not be completed until the Final Day of Judgment. Many will be left out of that Great Unity. They will be left out not because God is harsh, but because of their own sin, and because of their desire to bring disunity into the world. So this is not a statement that means that everyone will get to heaven. The second thing that must be said is that we need to see this Great Unity with the eyes of faith. We cannot see Jesus right now. We cannot see how He is working in the world right now to bring all things into union. We simply must trust that He is doing so. He is efficiently and graciously running the household of heaven such that all His sheep will come home to live and reign with Him forever.
So, do you resist this union with God, this union with Christ? Do you not see that union with Christ means all the things we have already seen in this first chapter: it means holiness and blamelessness by the grace of God; it means redemption through Christ’s blood, paying the ransom to set us free from the law’s demands; it means the forgiveness of our sins; it means the lavish bestowal of God’s grace upon us. Come to Him, and know this union. Come and see what God your Father is doing. Come and see that having everything re-united in Christ is the best thing that could ever happen to the universe; and it is the best thing that could ever happen to you.
Secondly, how do you view your life’s work here on earth? Hudson Taylor had definite convictions about how God’s work should be done. We can make our best plans and try to carry them out in our own strength. Or we can make careful plans and ask God to bless them. “Yet another way of working is to begin with God; to ask His plans, and to offer ourselves to Him to carry out His purposes.” Do you ask God what His plans are for your life? Is that your starting point? Do you try to fit yourself into God’s plan, or are you busy trying to fit God into your plan? Whose plan is better, yours or God’s? Our plans inevitably involve scattering and disunity, because we are inherently selfish creatures who care not for the well-being of other people, nor for the glory of God. Our plans inevitably come into conflict with other people’s plans, and they come into conflict with God’s plans. We need to surrender our own plans. We need to realize our own idolatry. We idolize our own plans, because we idolize ourselves. We need to recognize that God’s plans are so much better, infinitely better.
So how can you know what God’s plans for your life are? Well, you must talk to God. This is called prayer. You cannot find out what God wants for you unless you pray to Him. This does not mean that God is going to zap you with a special revelation. Lots of people say, “God is just telling me to leave my wife and children.” God does no such thing. God directs us by opening and closing doors. If God wants you to plant wheat and not corn, He will open and close those particular doors. If He wants you to share your faith, He will open that door to you. God uses our prayers to sharpen our senses to see those open and closed doors. We must talk with God in prayer. This often means more than our usual prayer that seeks to look learned in front of others, and is really directed at other people, rather than God. It means that we pour out our hearts to God, and surrender our wills to God. “Thy will be done,” not mine.
Secondly, we must read our Bibles. God will never, ever show us a door that contradicts His written Word. That is the other problem with someone who claims that God has revealed to them to leave their family. God directs us specifically not to leave our families. God’s providence never contradicts His written word. Sometimes it might look that way, but we must be discerning. We must have our senses trained by long and detailed study of God’s Word, such that we can tell if something is a temptation to do wrong, or a door opened by God. God’s will for us is part of this grand plan to re-unite all things in Jesus Christ. Nothing that God directs us to do will ever conflict with that. This is His overarching purpose for the universe. So God’s plans are better laid than the engineers constructing the bridge for General MacArthur. They were laid from before the foundation of the world, as we have clearly seen here in Ephesians 1. God is not a great cosmic fake. He is the Lord of heaven and earth, Who has raised up Jesus Christ from the dead, in order to bring back unity of purpose in the world. Let us study to conform our will to God’s glorious will. We will not find that His plan is terrible, or that it lacks joy. As a matter of fact, joining with Christ will be the instrument God uses to turn us into what we were always meant to be. God is going to win the battle with chaos anyway. He has already given the knock-out blow in Christ’s resurrection. Be on the winning side.
Green Baggins 