“For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world,
but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are
believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your
faith and hope are in God.” (1 Peter 1:20–21, NASB95)
As we are looking to swear in a new President, and the old
one is taking his last actions before leaving, there has been a lot of focus on
health care. The President on his way out was behind a plan that was unpopular
to a significant percentage of our population, and now that costs seem to be
rising and other issues remain on the surface, the intensity of the
objection has grown. Now, the new President has promised to put in place a new
plan, but many of the details are yet to be seen. Regardless of the plan, it is
highly likely that just as the previous plan was not approved by the minority
in place at the time, so will the new plan likely not receive approval from the
new minority as roles have changed. All of this seems to emphasize just how
temporary the plans and ideas of man really can be. When our plans are subject
to things beyond our control, or are in conflict with the plans of others, we
realize just how powerless we are in so many areas of our lives.
Eternally speaking we have already been reminded that our
salvation is not a plan of our own making, nor was it a means something that we
could provide. We are saved by the grace of God through the action of the Son
by the work of the Spirit. Our salvation is from God and no one else.
Our salvation is also according to God’s perfect plan. It is
not a result of God going back to the drawing board after realizing that a
first one might have failed. We are reminded from this passage that our
salvation, which is the focus of the previous verses, is according to the
foreknowledge or foreordination of God. God knew our eventual condition before
the condition ever developed, and He knew exactly what He was going to do about
it. He knew all of this perfectly before the foundation of the earth, which
means before man was ever created, placed in the garden, and sinned.
We looked at the Greek work “proginosko” earlier in this
chapter. It encompasses not only the knowledge of all that will happen, but the
perfect control over how it will all play out. He knew absolutely every detail
before there was ever a detail, and He had the perfect answer before there was
ever a need. In the passage it says “He was foreknown.” This is not speaking of
Jesus as someone apart from God that God knew of, but it is speaking of God the
Son’s incarnation to complete the plan for our salvation. Jesus was present in
creation, and we read that all things were created by Him. But until His
incarnation, leading to His death, burial, and resurrection we did not know Him
in a personal way. It was in Jesus being fully God becoming fully man for us
that we came to know Him and to then to know the Father more deeply.
We are in “these last times.” We are in the period between
His birth and His coming again. We are in the time when Jesus has been shown to
us and when we await being with Him for eternity. We are in the time when God’s
plan was revealed in His Son and recorded for us in His Spirit-breathed Word.
We know what He has done, and we are told to look forward with hope and even a
level of understanding to what He will do.
And, as we read in these verses, He did this for us. He did
it for our sake—for all who believe in His Son and who have the great hope of
eternity set before us. The Father sent the Son to die, paying the price for
our sins, and He raised Him from the dead for our sake. Now the Son has
returned to glory and is glorified in His obedience to the will of the Father.
Because of this we have a certain hope that God will keep His promise and bring
us to Him.
In the midst of all of the turmoil surrounding us in our
country this week, we have great hope because our future lies not in the hands
of our President and our leadership, but in the perfectly known and carried out
plan of our God. At the same time, we are instructed to pray for those in
authority over us, submitting to them according to the authority given them by
God.
“First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers,
petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all
who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all
godliness and dignity.” (1 Timothy 2:1–2, NASB95)
We can do this always remembering, “For in Him [Christ] all the fullness of
Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him {Christ] you have been made complete,
and He [Christ] is the head over all rule and authority;” (Colossians 2:9–10,
NASB95)
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