Sunday: From the Foundation of the World
Read Revelation 13:8, Acts 2:23, and 1 Peter 1:19-20. How could Christ be considered as “slain from the foundation of the world” (NKJV)?
“All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8, NKJV). What’s crucial here for us is the idea of Christ’s being “slain from the foundation of the world.” Obviously, we must understand this in a symbolic sense (the book of Revelation is full of symbols), because Christ wasn’t crucified until thousands of years after the earth’s Creation. What this text is saying is that the plan of salvation had been put in place before the creation of the world. And central to that plan would be the death of Jesus, the Lamb of God, on the cross.
Read Titus 1:2. What does this verse teach us about how long ago the plan of salvation, which centered on Christ’s death, had been in place?
Image © Steve Creitz from GoodSalt.com
“The plan for our redemption was not an afterthought, a plan formulated after the fall of Adam. … It was an unfolding of the principles that from eternal ages have been the foundation of God’s throne.” — Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 22.
That plan was revealed first to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:15, Genesis 3:21), and it was typified by every blood sacrifice throughout the Old Testament. For instance, while testing Abraham’s faith, God provided a ram to be sacrificed instead of Isaac (Genesis 22:11-13). This replacement typified even more clearly the substitutionary nature of Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross.
Thus, central to the whole plan of salvation is the substitutionary death of Jesus, symbolized for centuries by animal sacrifices, each one a symbol of Jesus’ death on the cross as “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
| Animal sacrifices are gruesome and bloody — that is true. But why is this gruesomeness and bloodiness precisely the point, teaching us about Christ’s death in our place and what the terrible cost of sin was? |
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God does not have a "Plan B". He had "The Plan" right from the start!
Australia has a lot of outback roads. They are hazardous, graded on the never-never, full of potholes and covered with a fine dust the we call bull-dust. In the dry season you can drive on them but when it rains, you cannot move. The roads become part of the great inland sea. If you want to travel on these roads you need a paper map (just in case your electonic one falls victim to the bull dust, a 4-wheel drive with at least two spare tires, a high-lift jack, a
Sat-phone, a recovery strap (or two), a winch, a shovel, a pair of sand skids - ok, you get the message. You need to be prepared. You do not go into the outback without being prepared. There are quite a few markers out there to atest to those who did not prepare.
And do you think that God was any less prepared when he created. If we prepare before we go out into the hazardous outback of Australia, how much more did God prepare before he created a "free-choice" intelligent creation.
That is what is meant when the Bible says of Jesus: "slain from the foundation of the world."
We may not understand all the symbolism used in ancient times, nor all the theological or forensic ramifications of God's plan, but we can be reassured that God is not flying by the seat of his pants with an ad hoc plan made up on the spur of the moment. He wants us to get through the desert!
All because of love
How clearly does this show us that love is a principle not a feeling. God didn't wait until He felt love for us to be willing to sacrifice His Son. He decided, He determined to love His creation even before He created us; before the foundation of the world.
Melea - I say 'amen' to your finding that, as the foundation of the world was laid, His 'Love' was chosen as the governing principle of/for His Creation.
Yes Brigitte! For God is love, and He cannot deny Himself (2 Timothy 2).
Is my name written in the Book of Life? Rev 13:8?
Have my sins been blotted out by the blood of Jesus?
Yes, 1John 1:7-9
Question: If Jesus saw from the beginning that he would be sacrificed and that he would be anguished, how then would he be afraid or believe his father had abandoned him during his time on the cross? Please explain for me
Lorna, He became sin for US. The weight of sins of all of the inhabitants of the world were on Him when He was on the cross. Isaiah 53:5,6,12. Romans 5: 6-12,18,19. When we sin, it separates us from the Father. Jesus felt that he had been forsaken because the Father turns away from sin; Micah 3:4. Our guardian angels turn away from us when we are in the process of doing wrong as well.
I'm not sure that I agree our guardian angels turn away from us when we sin, but if they do, at least God does not. Jesus did not turn his face from Peter when he denied Him, but looked at him with compassion. He also saved him when he doubted and sunk.
I feel it is not so much our sins that separate us from God, but our sinful state which of course leads to sin. Remember there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus and if we do sin, we have an advocate in Jesus.
I feel it is not so much our sins that separate us from God, but our sinful state which of course leads to sin.
Yes Christina. We are not sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners. We were born that way (Psalm 51:5).
So I suppose he knew what he had to go through but because he never knew sin he did not actually know what it would feel like. The burden of sin. Ok I get it. Ok that helps me understand better. Thank you.
Interesting thoughts, Lorna. I believe Jesus did know exactly what it would feel like, being the all-knowing God, but that didn't make it any easier when the time came to actually go through with it!
I don't believe Jesus knew exactly what it would feel like to be separated from the Father. I don't even think Jesus could imagine it. It had never happened in eternity past and will never happen again in eternity future.
This makes Christ's sacrifice even more profound in the sense that He was faithful unto death (Revelation 2:10) even though at that moment (Matthew 27:46) He felt his separation from the Father could be permanent.
Let that sink in... Christ was willing to say "goodbye" to life forever if that's what it took for us to spend eternity with God our Father.
We are thus saved by Christ's faithfulness, not ours (Philippians 3:9 NET; Rom 3:22 NET; Gal 2:16 NET; Eph 3:12 NET).
Hello Lorna,
Anytime one enters into relationship with another thinking being, he should count the potential cost of that action. I think this is especially true of marriage, but even more so of conceiving children. Since God’s creation is founded on his love, and love can only be expressed by beings who have free will, scripture reveals that that Love would be the willing guarantor of that relationship to the death. (Philippians 2:5-8.)
Love counted the cost and “for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2.) That is why he must ever be the intense focus of our faith.
Richard
Good question, Lorna. Perfect love casts out fear, and if anyone ever embodied perfect, self-sacrificing love, it was Jesus. I do not believe that He was afraid of either suffering or death. I'd say it was the sheer superhuman agony of His separation from the Father, on account of bearing our sins, and the sense that this separation would be eternal, that forced from His lips that agonizing cry!
In the words of Ellen White:
My feeling is that His human side was fully human, while He wa fully God, as well, of course. So, as a man He agonized and was afraid and so on.
Reply to Lorna ...
Jesus was concerned he would fail in his mission, under his suffering and troubled mind.
He had to present a perfected life that would be acceptable for all mankind, to be acceptable to enter into God's presence aka behind the vail that obstructed his presence to mankind.
The vail was torn in the temple as a witness to Israel and gentiles as they understood in the scriptures the change of access to the Father.
John 20:17, John 14:6
Shalom 🙏
There is no mention of a "Roman Cross" in the "Sanctuary Services." Just simply "Animal Sacrifices" period! In the "Daily Ministration" there was a morning lamb sacrificed and an evening one (every single day morning and evening and only in the first compartment of the temple.) Then on the "Passover first part of the year feast" there was also a lamb but the second compartment of the temple was not involved. Then, about the middle of the year, there was the second yearly feast "The Day of Atonement" and here there was a bullock and a goat that was sacrificed and here the last compartment of the temple was involved and "Only the High Priest" went in to sprinkle the blood of these two animals. And still no "Roman Cross" was symbolized here at all.
I agree. I don't believe the death on the cross was part of the foundational plan of salvation. Jesus had to die, but the method was not as crucial. If the Jews had not rejected Him, he may have died another way.
At Jesus' "Triumphal Entry on a Donkey," EGW says in her book "The Desire of Ages," in the chapter "Thy King Cometh," that Abraham would have said there that this was "King Melchizedek, King of Peace." King Melchizedek met Abraham with "Bread and Wine," after Abraham's victory freeing his nephew Lot from the hands of the King of Sodom, etc. Then Abraham gave King Melchizedek, who was also High Priest of God, his tithe from his spoils of that military victory. Had the Spiritual Leadership of Jesus' day accepted this as fact, they would have crowned Jesus as King of Israel then. Then there would have been no Roman Cross for Jesus, but then Jesus would have done His "Last Supper Feast" six months later at the Feast of the "Day of Atonement" without the bullock and goat but just "Bread and wine" like King Melchizedek did with Abraham several thousand years in the past. Then Jesus would have allowed Himself to bleed at the altar of sacrifice in the then standing temple, and bled for the sin of the world then, and three days later would have taken back His life and started His Kingdom of Grace then and there.
Hi Christina. The wooden cross is highly significant to what happened and why. The Jews hated crucifiction because thousands of them were crucified by the Romans.
Moreover, the Jews knew perfectly well what "hanging on a tree" meant (Deuteronomy 21:22-23). Anyone who was "hung from a tree" (crucified) was considered cursed by God.
Remember, Jesus predicted that He would rise after 3 days (Matthew 16:21; Mark 8:31) and, I suspect the Jewish priests believed that it would be impossible for that to happen if Jesus was cursed by God (Galatians 3:13).
Lorna, He became sin for US. The weight of sins of all of the inhabitants of the world were on Him when He was on the cross. Isaiah 53:5,6,12. Romans 5: 6-12,18,19. When we sin, it separates us from the Father. Jesus felt that he had been forsaken because the Father turns away from sin; Micah 3:4. Our guardian angels turn away from us when we are in the process of doing wrong as well.
We don't have to kill an animal to cover our sins anymore! We have to meditate on the sacrifice of Jesus, and how much love He demonstrated for all humanity on the cross, without any blame. That is much easier, but it also takes effort!