Here’s one of those fifty-cent words we Christians throw around, Omniscient. In other words, God is all-knowing. Since He’s the Alpha and the Omega the first and the last He knows the end from the beginning and everything in between.
All of this brings forward a question that’s a mystery often presented as a conundrum some people pose as a veiled attack against the reality of God.
They ask, “If God knows everything doesn’t that mean He knew Adam would fall even before He created him in the first place? So why do we make a big deal about God making a way for salvation when He created man to fail?” Some even compare this to the fireman who starts a fire then calls in the alarm so that he can become a hero for putting it out.
The biblical answer for this is found in Paul’s rendition of the story of Pharaoh hardening his heart against God found in Romans chapter nine:
For the Lord says of Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth.” Therefore, He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.
You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?” But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?
What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?
That’s it. “Does not the potter have power over the clay?” Remember what we were originally “God formed man of the dust of the ground. Adam was nothing but a clay mannequin until God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” It was only after this that “man became a living being.”
We are the clay. He is the potter. And the fact that He made one “for honor and another for dishonor” is none of our concern. It is the fact that He made a way for the dishonorable to become honorable is what this is all about.
The first work of God for our salvation was His decision that He would make a way for us to become not only reconciled to Him but actually become His children. This is not based on anything we’ve done, will do, or could ever do. It is not because of any good which is in us. It is based solely on the love of God.
This truth gives us perfect security and assurance in our transitory world of sin. For the love of God never fails, never wavers, and is always everywhere dependable, reliable, and ever present. What can the world do to us when we’re safe and secure in the love of God?
Paul expressed this perfectly in his letter to the Romans, “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Though all may be saved not all will be. All of us were born in sin. We carry embedded in our fallen bodies the burden of Adam’s original sin. Then along the way we all contribute to that sin burden ourselves. All these sins were paid for at the cross. All of us can have Adam’s sin as well as every sin we have ever or will ever commit washed away by the blood of Christ’s sacrifice however, not all will avail themselves of this glorious gift.
Look at it this way; if I purchase a brand-new car and I offer it to you. If you accept the gift it is your car. But if you refuse to accept it, it may have been purchased for you, it may be waiting right there in your driveway, but if you don’t accept the gift it isn’t yours.
From the first moment that we confess Christ as our Lord and believe that God raised Him from the dead we’ve walked in the kingdom of God. Our steps may still be visible in the natural world, but we’re walking in the Spirit. Before that, satan held the title deed to our lives. We were born into the line of the first Adam, sold in sin and separated from God. But, once we’re born-again we stand in the line of Christ, the last Adam.
God places us in His family, and He has work for us to do. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”
And since He has work for us to do, He has prepared us for that work. Every gift, every talent, every opportunity we have has been strategically placed in us and in our lives to help us fulfill the mission God has for us. He doesn’t send us on to the battle without equipping us for the fight. We aren’t some kind of busted up, raggedy sinner who just barely scraped in by the skin of our teeth. No! We’re the born-again children of God bought with the precious blood of Christ. In Him we are the righteousness of God.
We’re washed in the blood of the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. Believe it. Confess it. Receive it. Live it. We not only stand blameless before God our Father we stand redeemed and holy in the love of Christ, children of God received before the throne not as one who lived a wasted life of sin, but instead as one set right, accepted, and honored as a member of the Body of Christ, a living stone in the temple of God.
Author: Robert Owens
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2019 Contact Dr. Owens [email protected] Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens or visit Dr. Owens Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
