From eternity past, Christ was preparing to carry out His “goings forth” from eternity into time, and God blessed us, the believers in Christ with the spiritual blessings in the heavenlies before the foundation of the world! Hallelujah!
The Bible is a very special book; it tells us not only of the history of the creation, the history of man’s fall, and the history of the children of Israel (the chosen people of God) and the history of the church, but it tells us, in particular, the history of God.
The Bible is the autobiography of God; it was written by God through many writers in a span of many hundreds of years, and it reveals to us what is the history of God with man and among man in the Old Testament, and the history of God in man in the New Testament.
We may be more impressed with the outward human history, and we may pay more attention to the outward things and events, but the most intrinsic and important events are the ones in the divine and mystical realm, the history of God.
The Bible doesn’t tell us of every single thing that happened in the history of man or in the history of God, but it tells us what God wants us to know concerning the history of man and the history of God.
In particular, the Bible reveals the divine history within the human history in considerable detail, and in the New Testament, in particular, we see that God’s history is becoming our history for He is in union with us.
God is not only Almighty, all-powerful, and self-existing and ever-existing; He is not only the Creator of all things, but He is revealed in the Bible to be the God who wants to be in union with man.
The history of God as revealed in His word is not merely what God has done and is doing for His people; the history of God becomes the history of man because God and man enter into an organic union, and the divine history is taking place behind the scenes in the human history.
What God has done in eternity past is a preparation for His move to be in union with man.
It is most likely that God has done many things in eternity past, but what the Bible reveals is what is crucial to the history of God with man and in man; He has prepared all things, He has predestinated us, He has chosen us, He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing, and He has made an economy to carry out His heart’s desire.
It is quite inspiring to see how God moves not only among man but also in man and to see how He desires to enter into an organic union with us so that our history becomes intertwined with His history, and His history becomes our history.
In Eternity Past the Divine Trinity held a Council concerning the Death of Christ and Christ’s Goings Forth
According to Acts 2:23, Christ was delivered up by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God to be put to death on the cross.
This counsel must have been determined in a council held by the Divine Trinity before the foundation of the world (see 1 Pet. 1:20; Rev. 13:8).
The Lord’s crucifixion was not an accident in human history or an afterthought; it was not merely God trying to remedy a situation that was really bad but rather, it was a purposeful fulfilment of the divine counsel determined by the Triune God.
Christ was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was manifested in the last times for our sake, and He as the Lamb of God was slain from the foundation of the world.
This is quite amazing, for according to these verses we see that God in His Divine Trinity must have held a council in eternity to make the determination concerning the crucial death of Christ for the carrying out of God’s eternal economy.
For Christ to be delivered into the hands of lawless men and be nailed to the cross and killed through them, as we see in the Gospels, was altogether according to the counsel and foreknowledge of God in eternity past; it was not an accident or a coincidence, neither was it an afterthought.
God has planned that Christ would die for man according to His foreknowledge to carry out His economy. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit held a council, a conference, in eternity to make the determination concerning Christ’s death according to and for the fulfilment of God’s economy.
God made an economy, and Christ came to accomplish God’s economy; for this, Christ had to die an all-inclusive death.
Furthermore, as Micah 5:2 indicates, Christ was preparing to carry out His “goings forth” from eternity into time to be born in Bethlehem as a man. Wow!
Many hundreds of years before the Lord Jesus was born, God foretold through the prophet Micah that He will step forth out of eternity and into time to be born as a man in a particular city, Bethlehem.
Christ’s incarnation was part of His goings forth.
So in eternity, He was preparing to go forth into time; even from eternity past He was preparing to step on the bridge of time, become a man, live a perfect human life, die an all-inclusive and all-terminating death, resurrect to become a life-giving Spirit and produce the many believers in Christ, and be ascended to the heavens to be enthroned as Lord of all.
The Lord’s incarnation, His coming to be a God-man and bring God into man and man into God, was not at random; every detail – the place and time of His birth, the parents He had, and everything was according to God’s foreknowledge and predetermined arrangement.
The incarnation of God to be a man was part of His goings forth from eternity; in eternity past, Christ – the second of the Divine Trinity – was preparing to step forth on the bridge of time. Hallelujah!
Before the incarnation of Christ, God moved not in man but among men and with men; He could not yet be in union with man organically, for He had to go through a process to become the Spirit to be joined and mingled with man’s spirit.
So in the Old Testament, God moved among me, His Spirit inspired man, and He gained some men who would cooperate with Him for His move among men and with men.
This was God’s indirect move; the Old Testament reveals God’s indirect move among men and with men, and the New Testament reveals God’s direct move in man.
God’s eternal economy cannot be seen directly in the Old Testament, for He did mainly things indirectly to prepare for the day that He could come to do the direct work.
Hallelujah, today we can be part of God’s direct move, for we can live in union with God, and His history becomes our history, and we can write God’s history in man today!
Praise You, Lord Jesus, for coming to die for us according to the foreknowledge of God. Hallelujah, it was determined from eternity that Christ would come and die an all-inclusive death for the carrying out of God’s eternal economy! Amen, Lord, we believe into You and we believe in Your death for us on the cross. Praise You for Your goings forth. Praise You for stepping out of eternity and into time to become a man for the carrying out of God’s economy. Thank You for coming not only to be with us but also to be in us – one with us! Hallelujah, we are one spirit with the Lord, and His history has become our history!
God Blessed us with His Divine Life and Nature before the Foundation of the World
According to Eph. 1:3-6, God blessed us, the believers in Christ, with the spiritual blessings in the heavenlies before the foundation of the world.
He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blemish before Him in love, and He predestinated us unto sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.
Before we were born or thought of, even before the foundation of the world, God thought of us, predestinated us, and chose us in Christ to be holy and without blemish.
This is what the Bible says, and this is what we believe; whether we see this or realize this right now, this is a fact.
God blessed us even before the foundation of the world, and in particular, He blessed us with two things: to be holy and to be sons.
He blessed us to partake of His holy nature so that we may be as holy as He is, and He blessed us with His divine life so that we may be sons of God.
He chose us in Christ and He made us partakers of the divine nature, His holy nature.
He not only separated us unto God but also made us different, distinct, from everything that is common.
All things and persons on earth are common; only God is different, distinct from all things, for He is holy, and holiness is His nature.
He makes us holy by imparting Himself – the Holy One – into our being so that our whole being would be saturated and permeated with His holy nature.
He chose us to be holy and without blemish before Him in love; this took place in eternity past.
In time, He came and called us, saved us, and is sanctifying us with His holy nature so that we may have our whole being permeated with God Himself; now we are partakers of the divine nature, and He is making us as holy as He is holy (2 Pet. 1:4).
To be holy is not merely to be sinless, perfect, or pure; it is to be as holy as God is holy in His nature and character, even like God Himself.
Before the foundation of the world, God marked us out beforehand and determined our destiny even before we were born; He selected us before the foundation of the world and marked us beforehand unto a certain destiny.
Our destiny is to be sons of God having the life and nature of God. God marked us out to destine us unto sonship, predestinating us to be sons of God even before we were created. This all happened in eternity past according to the Bible (Eph. 1:5).
In time, He comes to regenerate us with His life and make us His sons, and He grows in us and perfects us to bring us into the full sonship.
As God’s marked-out ones, we have the life of God to be His sons, and we have the position to inherit Him. Hallelujah!
We are partakers of God’s life and nature, and He is sanctifying us to make us sons of God in full, those conformed to the image of the Firstborn Son of God (Rom. 8:29; Col. 1:15) to “sonize” us in full!
All the things that we inherit and enjoy spiritually all the spiritual blessings are of the Triune God – the Father, the Son, and the Spirit – for us to enjoy and inherit, so that we may be one with God and live in an organic union with Him.
Praise the Lord, we were blessed from the foundation of the world, and today we are blessed people enjoying all that God is and has, being partakers of God’s life and nature, until we become the same as Christ in life and nature to be part of God’s corporate expression on the earth!
Hallelujah, God blessed us in Christ with the spiritual blessings in the heavenlies before the foundation of the world! Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ! Hallelujah, God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blemish before Him in love. Thank You Father God for predestinating us unto sonship through Jesus Christ to yourself, according to the good pleasure of Your will. Hallelujah, we are partakers of God’s life and nature, and we will be to the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He graced us in the Beloved! Praise the Lord!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Minoru Chen for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1991-1992, vol. 4, “The History of God in His Union With Man,” ch. 1, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The All-Inclusive, Extensive Christ Replacing Culture for the One New Man (2020 Thanksgiving Conference), week 6, The Universal History according to God’s Economy — the Divine History within the Human History to Fulfill the Lord’s Heart’s Desire to Have the One New Man in Reality.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Though our nature’s fall in Adam / Shut us wholly out from God, / Thine eternal counsel brought us / Nearer still, through Jesus’ blood; / For in Him we found redemption, / Grace and glory in Thy Son; / O the height and depth of mercy! / Christ and His redeemed are one. (Hymns #45)
– O glorious Christ, now as the Spirit / Into our spirit as our life has come, / Made us partakers of God’s nature, / Reconstituting us divine as Him. / In us He’s growing and He’s forming, / Into His image He conforms; / As we’re enjoying all God’s riches, / We grow to fullness, meas’ring up to Him. (Song on, O Glorious Christ in the beginning)
– Blessed be the Lord forever: / Day by day He loads with good, / E’en the God of our salvation— / Spread His worthy praise abroad. / His the goings forth from death, / Every foe He conquereth! / Hallelujah, hallelujah, / Hallelujah, Amen! (Hymns #1100)
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