The Redemptive Reason
Passage: Ephesians 1:9b-10
“…according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, 10that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth-in Him..…”
Why has God done so much for us? Why has He blessed us with every spiritual blessing, chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world, made us holy and blameless, predestined us to adoption as His children, redeemed us through His blood, and lavishly given us forgiveness, wisdom, and insight according to the infinite riches of His grace?
God redeems men in order that He might gather everything to Himself. It is His purpose that He enjoy the benefit and result of His work, and of the work of His blessed Son. This is not to say that we, as the redeemed, don't benefit from that work, we surely do, but the primary aim of God is that He gather and enjoy all whom He has redeemed. The time of that gathering will be the millennial kingdom, which will be an administration suitable to the fullness of the times. When the completion of history comes, the kingdom arrives, eternity begins again, and the new heaven and new earth are established, there will be a summing up, or gathering up, of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things upon the earth. Jesus Christ is the goal of history, which finds its resolution in Him. The paradise lost in Adam is restored in Christ.
At that time, “at the name of Jesus every knee [will] bow of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and … every tongue [will] confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10-11). Christ will gather the entire universe into unity (see Ps. 2; Heb. 1:8-13). At the present time the universe is anything but unified. It is corrupted, divided, and splintered. Satan is now “the ruler of this world,” but in that day he “shall be cast out” (John 12:31). He and his demon angels will be thrown into the pit during the Millennium, released for a short while, and then cast into the lake of fire for all eternity (Rev. 20:3, 10).
When every trace of evil has been disposed of, God will establish an incomparable unity in Himself of all things that remain. That is the inevitable goal of the universe. It is this toward which the universe is moving, slowly, to be sure, but moving nonetheless.
Macbeth pessimistically declared that history is “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” (Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.5.19). Humanly speaking, he was not far wrong. Apart from the wisdom and insight God provides His children, such a hopeless conclusion is inescapable. But history belongs to God, not to the puny plans of man or the perverse power of Satan. History is written and directed by its Creator, who will see it through to the fulfillment of His own ultimate purpose-the summing up of all things in Christ. He designed His great plan in the ages past; He now sovereignly works it out according to His divine will; and in the fullness of the times He will complete and perfect it in His Son, in whom it will forever operate in righteous harmony and glorious newness along with all things in the heavens and things upon the earth.
You and I must acknowledge this, and keep it in mind as we interpret the things that go one around us and seek to figure out our place in and our response to those events. We ought to avoid one of two extremes. First, we need to avoid the pessimism that human beings, when the perceive themselves as being out of control of their fate, lapse into and which can destroy life. We need to avoid that pessimism we mentioned and that Shakespeare illustrated for us in Macbeth.
Yet, we must also avoid the kind of unbridled optimism that is unrealistic and that does not acknowledge the reality of what is happening around us. Many Amillennialists and Postmillennialists have this kind of unrealistic view of history. Because they believe that the world will get better and better until the Kingdom fills the earth and the Lord returns in power and glory, some tend to see things through rose-colored glasses and ignore the tremendous indications that the world is going the way the Bible predicts and is headed to ruin and destruction, ultimately at the hand of Christ Himself.
We must balance our understanding that God is moving the world toward its inevitable conclusion, and the optimism of knowing that god is yet working and moving in that world, and will until the last possible moment. We are His tools, instruments in the world, and we must fulfill that role for as long as He desires it, and for as long as He command us so to do. Until He returns, it is our joy, and our task to preach the Gospel and be the instrument of His redeeming and reconciling message to a lot and dying world.