February
28, 2001
Reading
“According to the
counsel of His will” (11)
The words of our text are all that Born Again Christians need to know and accept in order to weather the storms of life, to enjoy the security of their faith and to hope for an eternity in the presence of their God.
All that we have, are and will possess in the future is the result of the eternal counsel of the Godhead. This Divine counsel, held between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, designed all things that pertain to eternity, the creation of the heavens and earth and most importantly, the plan of salvation.
In case we become a little proud of our standing in Christ, the apostle reminds us that our salvation and everything pertaining to it, is “according to the good pleasure of His will” (5), and “according to His good pleasure” (9) and “according to the counsel of His will” (11) and it is all “to the praise of His glory” (12). The gospel preached today in many churches offers the sinner a certain amount of credit in his own salvation. How many times do we hear that God is offering us salvation and that we must accept Jesus to be saved? I have searched the scriptures for some conformation of this concept and have come up empty handed. Where is the message of repentance? How often do we hear that we are sinners and that salvation is ours only as God forgives our sin and accepts us? He is the One who does the accepting, not the sinner. To some this is a minor issue, but it is a belief that has been inserted into our preaching by the father of deceit himself. Satan works hard to take glory away from God and this is exactly what he has accomplished by deceiving us into thinking we actually had something to do with our salvation.
It was in the counsel of God that our salvation was planned. It was there, in every detail, that God designed the plan “that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ” (10).
What I do read in the scriptures is that “He chose us” (Eph:1:4) not that we chose Him; that “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure” ( Eph 1:7-9) – redemption and the forgiveness of sins is the result of His grace and for “His good pleasure”; It is “according to the counsel of His will,” (Eph:11:12), not according to whether we decide to choose Him, and it is all “to the praise of His glory” (Eph 1:14).
It is very clear that the purpose
of our salvation is for the praise of His glory and
according to His good pleasure. What, then, is the message to the unsaved if it
is not “you must accept Jesus as your Savior?” Surely it is the same message
that Peter and the early church preached, “Repent therefore and be converted,
that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from
the presence of the Lord” (Acts
When did you last hear a sermon on repentance and the need for sinners to fall on their face before Almighty God and plead for His forgiveness? Salvation is the result of conviction by the Holy Spirit, not whether we think we should accept Christ because we want to escape hell. I think it is time for the church to return to scriptural teaching and realize again who chooses whom and who accepts whom.