Articles
What It Takes to Be Saved 1
What It Takes to Be Saved 1
Mike Willis
Over the next several weeks, I will be writing under the heading of “What It Takes to Be Saved.” I invite you to follow this series of articles that addresses God’s plans and provisions for human redemption. The series is divided into two parts: (1) God’s Part and (2) Man’s Part. We begin with God’s part of human salvation.
GOD’S PART
Before God ever created the universe, He already had made plans to save mankind from his sins. The Scriptures speak of God’s “eternal purpose that He has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph. 3:11). Before the foundation of the world, God was already at work to save mankind through His Son, Jesus of Nazareth (2 Tim. 1:9).
God determined to create the heavens and earth and all that is in them. Since God is eternal, He existed prior to the creation of the universe. He is separate from the universe and not a part of it, in the sense that pantheism imagines. (Pantheism is the doctrine that the universe as a whole is god and that there is no god but the combined forces of the universe. God is not the sum total of all the parts of the universe. He is the universe’s Creator.)
God existed before and separate from the universe. The first verse of Genesis affirms God’s separate existence from the creation that He made: “In the beginning, God (who already existed, mw) created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1).
The affirmation that God is omniscient means that He knows all things (1 John 3:20). He is perfect in knowledge (Job. 37:16). God’s omniscience enabled Him to know that the man whom He created would commit sin, i.e., violate His commandments (1 John 3:4). Therefore, He put in place a plan to redeem mankind from sin before He created the universe and mankind.
God’s plan to create and then to redeem man whom He created is manifest as early as the Garden of Eden when God sought out the first couple who had sinned by eating the forbidden fruit. He confronted man with his sin. He did not turn His back on man and walk away leaving him to deal with the consequences of his sin by himself. He was present when Cain planned to kill Abel and warned Cain about the danger of giving in to sin: “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it” (Gen. 4:7).
So God’s plan to save mankind from his sin existed before the creation of man. To redeem mankind from his sins was always a part of His divine purpose in creating mankind.
