God's Secret

The whole universe saw the creation of our blue planet called earth. It must have been an exciting time in eternity. The population of the heavens, beyond our vision, was probably horrified when Adam and Eve fell from the grace of the Almighty. However, our God had a mysterious plan of redemption just waiting for the right time. This plan was put into place on earth through several years of our history but Paul claimed to have the final revelation. This is how he explained it in one of his letters:  I was chosen to explain to everyone this mysterious plan that God, the Creator of all things, had kept secret from the beginning. God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display his wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was his eternal plan, which he carried out through Christ Jesus our Lord. Eph 3:9-11 (NLT) The purpose of God’s mysterious plan, was to reveal His wisdom through a church which is the body of Christ. Our original reaction to this fact may be to question it. It’s true…we reveal God’s wisdom as part of His church.  

Many people today look at the local church and all they see is a mess made by all the people who are trying to run things their own way. But that’s not what God is looking at. The Almighty sees His Son, the redeemer, and the price Jesus paid for His family. The Bible says:  For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And the ransom he paid was not mere gold or silver. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but he has now revealed him to you in these last days. 1 Peter 1:18-20 (NLT) Peter explains to us that Christ our savior has been revealed and what a huge price He has paid for His body the Church. When we walk up to our local church, the cross should remind us of the enormous price paid by Jesus. Whatever has happened to us because of other believers does not alter the price that was paid 2000 years ago for our freedom. It is our duty not to allow the people who mess-up to diminish our love for the body of Jesus.

 Because of this great price we are expected to behave as a servant of our Lord. This might seem difficult to us, except that there is another part of God’s secret. Paul explains in this passage: God has given me the responsibility of serving his church by proclaiming his entire message to you. This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past, but now it has been revealed to God’s people. For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory. Col 1:25-27 (NLT) How amazing.  Not only did Christ pay the price to redeem His Church but now He lives in us to show us the path to Heaven. Righteousness is the path to Heaven and with Christ in us the Church is getting ready to advance to the next world. Like Paul, we have the responsibility of serving the Lord’s Church in righteousness. None of us is going to Heaven alone. We all go as a group and serving the Church is the same as serving Jesus Christ. The local church that serves Jesus is a part of the body of Christ.

The fact is we need a good local church. We want to live with the body of Christ forever and it is time we learn to care for our brothers and sisters. God does not have a collection of bodies, families, temples or churches. He only owns one Church and here is a description of it: You are members of God’s family. Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. We are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord. Through him you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his Spirit. Eph 2:19-22 (NLT) It is important that we understand that only “together” are we the body of Christ. Someday Jesus will come for His Church and both the dead and the living Christians will rise to meet Him. Every single member of the Church, from the first to the last Christian on earth, will leave together. There is a silly old story about the person who was not ready to go with the Lord so they tell Jesus they will wait for the next group to go. This is ridiculous because there is just one group.

God has one secret plan and it is all centered on Jesus Christ. Because we have the Bible available today like no other time in history we should all know this great secret of God. Every Church member should have a desire to bring others into the family. The rewards for serving God cannot be described. In spite of our weakness the Lord really wants us to join with Him. Paul gives us this wonderful look at God’s motivation: Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. Eph 1:4-5 (NLT) The Church gives God great pleasure. This is something that every believer should want to be part of. Through Jesus Christ we all have a chance for Holy immortality. Let us seek to be the best part of the body and to live a wonderful eternity with our Savior. Remember all of Heaven is watching the church in order to observe the wisdom of the Almighty.