Ephesians 3:11-12

Day 24

“This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him.” Ephesians 3:11-12

The Eternal Purpose
God works for the purpose of His own glory.  The entire work of God throughout creation and human history directs our attention to His eternal purpose.  His purposes at times elude our understanding but He is working toward this end.  Consider this from Tim Keller’s book, The Reason for God. 

“When a Russian cosmonaut returned from space and reported that he had not found God, C. S. Lewis responded that this was like Hamlet going into the attic of his castle looking for Shakespeare. If there is a God, he wouldn’t be another object in the universe that could be put in a lab and analyzed with empirical methods. He would relate to us the way a playwright relates to the characters in his play. We (characters) might be able to know quite a lot about the playwright, but only to the degree the author chooses to put information about himself in the play. Therefore, in no case could we ‘prove’ God’s existence as if he were an object wholly within our universe like oxygen or an island in the Pacific.  Lewis gives us another metaphor for knowing the truth about God when he writes that he believes in God ‘as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.’ Imagine trying to look directly at the sun in order to learn about it. You can’t do it. It will burn out your retinas, ruining your capacity to take it in. A far better way to learn about the existence, power, and quality of the sun is to look at the world it shows you, to recognize how it sustains everything you see and enables you to see it.”

“Here, then, we have a way forward. We should not try to ‘look into the sun,’ as it were, demanding irrefutable proofs for God. Instead we should ‘look at what the sun shows us.’ Which account of the world has the most ‘explanatory power’ to make sense of what we see in the world and in ourselves? We have a sense that the world is not the way it ought to be. We have a sense that we are very flawed and yet very great. We have a longing for love and beauty that nothing in this world can fulfill. We have a deep need to know meaning and purpose. Which worldview best accounts for these things? Christians do not claim that their faith gives them omniscience or absolute knowledge of reality. Only God has that. But they believe that the Christian account of things – creation, fall, redemption, and restoration – makes the most sense of the world. I ask you to put on Christianity like a pair of spectacles and look at the world with it. See what power it has to explain what we know and see” (pp. 122-23).

Christianity provides the lens through which the creation and salvation explain the nature of God.  The reason creation and salvation explain the nature and purposes of God is that God designed the universe and salvation with the intent of self-disclosure.  God is a God of revelation.  God’s self-disclosure and the revelation of His attributes are the purpose of sending Jesus Christ into the world.  God authored creation and then wrote Himself into the story in order for us to truly understand His nature.  Before the creation of the world, this was God’s intent.  “This was in accordance with His eternal purposes which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Suggested Prayer:  God, Your ways are not our ways, and Your thoughts are not our thoughts.  I praise You for Your plan to glorify Yourself through creation and salvation.

Ephesians