The Big Picture of the Bible: Chapter 03 The Eternal Plan

3 THE ETERNAL PLAN The Bible begins with the God who was pre-existent before the creation of our physical universe. . We are told in the Bible that God had this plan of redemption before He ever created mankind (Eph 3.11; 1.4). Why would this be so? It has to do with “free will.” Free will simply means the ability to choose one’s own moral actions without any interference or compulsion. It makes logical sense that if God were going to create a free moral agent-a being that could choose to do right or wrong from its own volition–He would have prepared a plan in advance as to how He would react or handle the result of mankind’s choices. This plan of redemption is God’s planned reaction to the free moral choice of mankind to sin (break God’s laws). So why did God create man to start with, or even bother with the creation of a physical universe? We cannot get inside the mind of God, so we are restricted to what He has revealed about Himself to His creation (Job 26.14). What God has revealed is that He has purposed to have spirit beings in heaven that choose to love and worship Him out of their own choice. Before God created our physical universe, He had created spirit beings (called angels) in another dimension (called heaven) that had chosen (free moral agents) at some point to sin against God. He subsequently cast them out of heaven (2 Pet 2.4: “God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment’). It was after this, that He created the dimension in which we live (a physical universe) and spirit beings (us), and placed us inside physical containers (our bodies). Just as many computers are labeled with the famous “Intel Inside,” each of us should be labeled “Spirit Inside!” It is this spirit, created in the image of God, that separates and distinguishes mankind from the animal world (Gen 1.27: “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them’). As spirits, we are placed in these temporary physical containers in order to train our bodies (spiritual and physical) to love, serve, and worship Him for His glory. Continued by book author Kenneth W. Craig