Only One God: Part 2

We want to arrive at a rule that we can apply when studying the verses about the Son. Scripture will often describe what God had purposed to do as if it already was. This alone does not prove that the thing that was purposed actually existed. We are not trying to say that God came up with the plan of redemption after the fact. Nor are we trying to limit God's foreknowledge (foreknowledge being God's ability to know things before they happen). There are many verses that prove the opposite. What we are trying to prove is that there is a difference between a plan existing in the mind of God and the thing that was planned actually existing.

We will take three steps to prove this point.

1. What caused the need for redemption and Paul's statement that God purposed redemption before the world was created.
2. A few verses that demonstrate scripture describing what God purposed to do as if it already existed.
3. Applying this to the first verse of John's gospel.

Let's look at what caused the need for redemption. Man had sinned and placed himself under a curse that he could not remove from himself. Every person that has lived or will ever live was under this curse of being separated from God.¹ What the Bible teaches us is that God provided a way for man to be redeemed from this curse. And even more important for our discussion is that this redemption was not something that God came up with after man sinned. It was something that He purposed before the world was ever created.

Paul tells us this in Ephesians 1:4-7.²

Notice the order of these verses. He chose them before they existed and forgave them before they ever sinned. Regardless of what your view on election is (election being God's choice of who will be saved) we can see that God determined this before it happened.

So how does scripture speak of things this way? Well let's look at our next step. There are four verses that we can learn from.

First Paul describes God as:³

Paul is referring to the promise that God gave to Abraham that he would become the father of many nations. At the time of this promise Abraham had no idea how God would fulfill this. We need to be careful of what Paul is NOT saying here. He is not saying that God thought that Abraham had children at that time. God was describing what He had decided to do and it was so sure that He could describe it as if it already was.

Second we have a verse that God tells us.⁴

This applies to our topic because we know that God knew man would sin against Him. He knew what that sin would cause and provided a way for man to be redeemed before it ever happened.

In Revelation 13:8 the KJV translates this verse as the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world.⁵ We must admit that there are different translations of this verse. The words from the foundation of the world can go with the Lamb being slain or with their names being written in the book of life. There is also a similar phrase used in Revelation 17:8 that leads some to believe that it goes with the writing of names. We don't need to decide which way it should be translated because Peter tells us the same thing.⁶

Either way you translate it we can see that there was no lamb that was actually slain before the world was created. The Lamb was slain on Calvary. But it wasn't something that God came up with at the last minute.

He was foreordained before the world was created and showed up on earth at the right time.

God told Jeremiah about what He did before Jeremiah was born.⁷

No one would read this verse and think that Jeremiah was a prophet before he was born. God knew Jeremiah and had a plan for him before he was born. The plan existed in God's mind but Jeremiah did not exist until later. This is helpful to us because it is talking about a person and all Christians would agree on the meaning of this verse.

Now that we have established this rule we can move on to our final step. When looking at the Son we should keep this rule in mind. Those who believe in the Trinity would say that the Son was always with the Father as another person. They would say that John 1:1 is describing that person. We agree that there was something that was in the beginning and that it was God. So our disagreement is not over if the Word was there before the incarnation. It's over if we should call that Word a person. The Son.

Notice that John does not call it the Son. He calls it the Word. The word used in the original is Logos which means a word or speech and can also be defined as the reason behind that word.⁸ From what we can see John is telling us about God's word. How he revealed Himself to man.

John then goes on to tell us what happened. We will cover that in part 3.