By Elizabeth Prata
Before I was saved, the whole Jesus thing was pretty mystifying to me. It seemed so complicated, and weird, too. I mean, the blood and everything. [shudder]. And I definitely did not agree with the doctrine of sin, that notion that I was a bad person from birth and that I did or said or thought wrong things? Come ONNNN, man. I’m a nice person, not one sin in me. Not like that person over there. Or there. Or there…
The thing I thought was most weird was Jesus. I used to wonder, God must be pretty lame to keep trying things that don’t work. Humanity was created and then right away, fell into depravity. They got so bad that He sent the flood. Then He tried the temple and the Law and that didn’t work. So finally He sent Jesus, hoping that would stick. I’m not kidding. Before I was saved, and the scales fell from my eyes, that is what I thought.
I never knew that Jesus was not first born 2000 years ago.
Therefore it is of particular joy to me that I revel in verses that illustrate that Jesus was from the beginning. He wasn’t non-existent then born on that cold night in Bethlehem when the angels proclaimed His arrival to the shepherds. He was with God from the beginning.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.” (John 1:1) How lovely to reflect the same language God used in Genesis 1: “In the beginning…”
“I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began.” (Proverbs 8:23).
As Matthew Henry says, “The Son of God declares himself to have been engaged in the creation of the world. How able, how fit is the Son of God to be the Saviour of the world, who was the Creator of it! The Son of God was ordained, before the world, to that great work. Does he delight in saving wretched sinners, and shall not we delight in his salvation?” How wonderful that Jesus was anointed from the beginning to do the great and monumental work of saving humanity.
“And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” (Colossians 1:17).
Other versions say “in Him all things hold together.” He is not only before all things in honor and grandeur, but He is before all things in existence. Before the sun, before the earth, before the stars were made…He was, and is and is to come!
He is our timeless Jesus, who was before Abraham, before John (His forerunner), who was part of God’s plan since the beginning to redeem humanity to His bosom. Far from being a series of stumbling lurches toward the end of time, God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are progressing in an orderly plan that is unfolding with humanity as its central work. His justice prepared this plan. His love has sustained this plan. His grace permeates this plan. His longsuffering has kept this plan. And in the end, His wrath will execute this plan.
THIS is the God I fully hurl myself toward, lovingly and fully, submitting to His attributes and His incomprehensible foreknowing. He knew I would. He knew that on the appointed moment I would become His. It was His plan all along.
He was since the beginning. You may be coming late to the party, but you still have time until you draw your last breath to become a knowing participant in His plan and to be saved from your sins by repenting of them. His love never fails.
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:12-13).
the-end-time.org 