Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life
Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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Christ Is God
Chapter 46 – The First Step of God’s Journey Through Christ
We are prepared now to better appreciate the means which God took His journey.
Before taking His first step, God planned it all. He thought everything through…from beginning to end. Then He documented that plan. All this was before He did anything else.
The Old Testament gives us an analogy to this process when it describes the planning and building of the temple in Jerusalem. The planning occurred during the reign of King David, and the building was constructed during the reign of his son King Solomon.
1 Chronicles 28:11 Then David gave to his son Solomon the plan of the porch of the temple, its buildings, its storehouses, its upper rooms, its inner rooms and the room for the mercy seat;
1 Chronicles 28:12 and the plan of all that he had in mind, for the courts of the house of the LORD, and for all the surrounding rooms, for the storehouses of the house of God and for the storehouses of the dedicated things;
This description goes on at length, cataloging the thoroughness of David’s planning. All Solomon had to do was follow his father’s plan.
Similarly, long before the temple was planned or built, God the Father planned His creation…and then left them for His Son to execute that plan. We do not know what form those records took, but we do know that whether it was the scrolls of antiquity or the digital devices of modernity, mankind has always had one way or another to preserve information. Surely God is not less resourceful than humans.
(Keep in mind during this discussion that the Son would also be known as the Word, the angel of the LORD (YHWH), Messiah, Christ, Jesus, the Lord, the good Shepherd, and many other names and titles. Each name or title was revealed in its own time.)
Step one of the plan was for God to beget His Son, which He did by becoming His Son. In similar fashion, the Son would one day become flesh in the womb of Mary.
In other words, God – by dying to Himself – transitioned to be the Son of God. That is, God died to Himself, and then lived anew – much like an acorn becomes an oak tree. The acorn disappears…but it is still there…in the tree.
In His death, God transitioned from the consciousness of God to the consciousness of the Son. God had made the plans, but the Son now had the plans. Since the Son was “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) and existed in “the form” that approached “equality with God” (Philippians 2:6). Even so, there was never any wavering on the point that the Son was subordinate to the Father in terms of authority.
Thus from one end of the Old Testament to the other – and even in the New Testament up to Jesus’ resurrection – it was the Son of God that the Israelites were beholding. This only begotten Son was living out the plan of His Father.
John 1:18 No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.
That two beings – God and Christ – had preceded all of creation was not revealed until after Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. Old Testament believers saw only one God…and it was the Son acting on behalf of, and in the name of, His Father.
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