God's Sovereign Plan
Ephesians 1:9-10
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Sermon Summary: Paul continues to praise God for His blessings in this next portion of Ephesians 1. This time, it is God's plan that Paul extols. It may seem mysterious, but it is a mystery that has been revealed to us in Christ, and it should bring us great encouragement and comfort. |
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Ephesians 1:9-10
making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
Today we come to one of the more difficult sections of Ephesians 1 in terms of what Paul is trying to say. I like what one pastor I heard this week said. He said that he had read various commentaries and looked at different resources, but none of them were all that helpful. He said that all the materials seem to be just as confusing as the passage is and do not offer any real clarity as to what Paul is saying here.
Believe it or not, I say that to encourage you. We believe the Bible is a book that is usually easy to understand. But from time to time, you come across some things that a little more difficult. I personally appreciate the fact that Paul can often outwit the scholars and Bible elites. It should keep them humble.
While I will admit that there are some difficult things here, I hope that you will also find that there are some things that are certainly beneficial. As we look at them, I hope that you will, at the very least, see that our God is sovereign. He is in complete control and will bring about the things he has planned.
We have been going through chapter one line by line and verse by verse, and in doing so, we’ve seen Paul giving praise to God. We’ve also seen his reasons for this praise unfold bit by bit.
We began back in verse 3 as we saw Paul bless God for every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Then, starting with verse 4, we’ve seen him list out those blessings. First, we were made to praise God for his election of his people. We saw that God made an enteral decree, whereby certain individuals were predestined to receive his grace and forgiveness, and we can praise God for being part of that select group.
Then in verses 7-8, Paul gave praise to God for the redemption that we have in Christ. God not only chose us, but he actively redeemed us from the bondage of sin and death through the sacrificial death of His Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Today we come to verses 9-10 and we are continuing to praise God. This time we are praising him for his whole plan. It is his plan of redemption, or, as our passage calls it, “the mystery of his will.”
Remember that this is all one sentence in the original language, and there’s a sense in which we are continuing to reflect on the redemption that Paul mentioned in verses 7-8. However, Paul sort of broadens the scope of his focus. We see something of the wider ramifications of redemption. This is not just about how God saves us as individuals from sin, but it is about how God governs the unfolding of time. The arc of world history is all about God’s plan of redemption.
As they say, history is “His story.” The redemption we enjoy as individuals is just one tiny aspect of the entire plan of God. And today we get to have something of an overview of that plan. These two verses contain the three basic components of God’s redeeming purposes.
What are those three components? Let me lay them out for you so that you know where we are going today. First, we are going to see that God’s plan of redemption has a personal component to it. There’s a sense in which we can start with our own perception of that plan.
The second thing that our passage tells us is that God’s plan has a historical (or eternal) component. We can talk about what God has been doing throughout time.
And that will lead to the third part, which is the cosmic element. There’s a sense in which God’s plan has implications for the entire universe. To put it another way, God’s plan has a goal. It is leading towards something, the ramifications of which are cosmic.
But let’s begin with verse 9 and the personal component of God’s plan.
I. God’s Plan has a Personal Component
Verse 9 begins by saying that through redemption, God is “making known to us the mystery of his will.”
Let’s break this down. The first thing we need to talk about is what we mean by “the mystery of his will.” We have to clarify what Paul is talking about here.
We often use the word “mystery” in a couple different ways. Sometimes we use it as something that can’t be known. We say something is mysterious in that it is above us and beyond our ability to grasp. This is what we mean when we talk about the Trinity. God is one God, yet he exists in three individual and co-existing persons. How is that possible? We don’t know. But that’s the plain teaching of Scripture. We’ve seen that here in Ephesians 1. We have the Father and the Son. They are distinct, but when it comes to their divine substance, they are one. In the end we say it is true, but it is a mystery that we cannot fully comprehend.
But we also can use the word “mystery” in another way. It can also mean a secret that comes to be revealed. So here it is something that we do understand, it is just hidden from us for a while.
Some of you have read mystery novels. What are they? They are stories in which you don’t know who committed the crime until the very end. The murderer is hidden, but then the detective solves the mystery, and the secret comes to be revealed.
That’s what verse 9 says to us here. God’s will is a mystery in that it was once hidden, but now it is manifest. The cat is out of the bag, so to speak. God’s will is his plan for the world. It was once hidden from us; it was once a mystery. But now you and I have an understanding of what he is seeking to accomplish. That’s because it is no longer a secret. It has been fully revealed to us. Not to just some of us, mind you. This is not something for just the elite. It is now a public secret. It has been revealed to all God’s people.
And that ties into the beginning of verse 9. Paul says that God is “making known to us the mystery of his will.” Paul’s saying, “We were once in the dark. We were once completely oblivious to what God was doing. But now we get it. And the reason why we get it is because God has revealed it to us.”
This is why I say there is a personal element to this redemptive plan. The plan would never make sense to us if God had not first opened our minds to it. We wouldn’t have had a clue, except that God exerted his power upon us and caused this information to be understood intellectually and spiritually.
Don’t forget that the point of all this is that God is sovereign. Yes, it is personal in that it involves us, but it is not something that we came to grasp on our own. This was not understood because we had some keen insight or because we were really good detectives who were able to figure out the mystery. We comprehend it only because God has taken away our blindness to it.
So, if you want to talk about our salvation, this is one way you can look at it. Salvation is not only what God does for us, but also what he does to us. There is a renovation of our hearts and minds that occurs. We go from being blind and ignorant to being able to see and understand.
This is an expression of our depravity. In our sinfulness, and because of the fall, our minds do not function the way they should. This is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians that the natural man cannot understand the things of the Spirit. This is why he says in Romans 1 that we are futile in our thinking. Later on in the book of Ephesians he will say that, apart from Christ, we are darkened in our understanding (4:18).
In order to comprehend spiritual things, we need a special act of the Holy Spirit. In order to know the Lord, our spiritual blindness needs to be taken away. God must reveal himself to us.
Truly understanding history isn’t merely about reading the right books or grasping certain facts taught by a college professor. It’s something much more supernatural. And that’s why we can praise God. It is because God has revealed that secret to each and every one of us.
So there you have it. When it comes to God’s plan, Paul first notes how it has a personal component. But, as he elaborates, you notice that he then talks about how God’s plan has a historical component.
II. God’s Plan has a Historical Component
Look at the next part of verse 9. Paul says that God has made “known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time.”
Now, if you have a different translation, you’ll probably have some different wording. But here are some things you can observe. God’s plan started all the way back before time began. “Plan” refers to God’s purpose or his intention, his divine decree. God purposed or decreed that his will would be made known and that his plan would come to pass.
But notice the next part: “which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time.” Now our English versions struggle here because the original language is very difficult to translate. It is somewhat tricky to transfer the correct meaning into our language. I will even admit that the ESV might not be the very best translation on this point. However, the men who worked to put it together were trying to help us understand it. And in that regard, they didn’t do a terrible job.
The Greek uses the word oikonomia, which is a word from which we get our word “economy.” It literally refers to a person who is a manager of a home or a business. Economics has to do with the business world or the management of finances. It comes from this idea of an oikonomia, someone who manages the affairs of the house.
You ladies can be thought of as oikonomias. You manage your households by taking care of the kids, making sure that the home stays tidy, and putting everything in its proper place.
That is what this verse is saying about God. God is the manager of history. When it comes to the fullness of time, he is the oikonomia. He is managing how time rolls out. All that happens in this world - all that happens in time - is being governed by his almighty hand.
So we can say that he has a plan for the fullness of time. All that takes place in this world is under his sovereign care, so that whatever happens comes about as a direct result of his management of the earth’s affairs. Thus, in the end, he is accomplishing all his purposes. Everything that he aims to achieve will be fully attained because he has not only planned it, but he is managing every aspect of it. History is his arrangement of events, and so he causes the fullness of the times.
Now, think about how this affects your view of history. There is a quote that is attributed to various sources. Some attribute it to an advertisement that circulated in various papers in the early 1900s. It goes like this: “History is just one darn thing after another.” Another quote is attributed to Henry Ford. Ford said, “History is bunk.”
That’s the way many people view history. It is just bunk. It’s a dismal chain of events that occur. History is one wretched thing after another, and we are doomed to suffer through it.
This is the modern view of things. This is the conclusion of an evolutionary view of the world. History is not going anywhere. There’s no divine being behind the events that are occurring. Life is just happening. You wake up. You go to work. You hit your thumb with a hammer. You bang your head on something as you are standing up. Some foreign power drops bombs on your neighborhood. You have dinner. You go to sleep. And you wake up tomorrow to suffer through it all over again.
And really, who cares who signed the Declaration of Independence? What’s the big deal about Pearl Harbor or the Scottish Killing Times? History is bunk.
In contrast to that, we (as Christians) understand that history has incredible meaning and purpose. It is valuable because it is the record of God’s actions in this world. It is a testimony to what the Lord has done and is doing to accomplish his purposes. Life isn’t one dumb thing after another. It is the cumulative expression of the God of Scripture who is working out the intricacies of his grand plan. History is not bunk; it is the careful administration of the One who is building his kingdom and providing the intimate care that his people need.
You might look at the Roman Empire and think that it was composed of a bunch of bloodthirsty men fighting with each other. But according to God, it was the fullness of time for the coming of God’s Son. God had put those Romans in place and woven together every aspect of their world so that it would be the perfect place for Christ to live, die, rise again, and so that the message of the Gospel might be propagated throughout the world.
That’s the way we should look at history. We can see how France and England thew out all their Protestants and how those men and women came to America. We can see how God created a nation that would eventually become one of the greatest missionary-sending countries in history.
Paul wants us to understand that we view history in a way that is radically different from the rest of the world. We view history as the grand work of a sovereign administrator. And not only is God controlling earthly affairs, but he is also making all things subservient to the ultimate restoration of the cosmos.
And that is the third element of our passage. God’s plan has a personal component in that it touches our lives and our understanding. It has a historical element in that He is the one causing everything to unfold exactly has he has determined. And, as we see in verse 10, it also has a cosmic component in that it is leading to the restoration of the entire cosmos.
III. God’s Plan has a Cosmic Component
God has made know the mystery of his will, which is what? His will (or his plan) is to “unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”
So you see, history has a purpose. It has a goal. There is an endpoint and a climax toward which all of history is heading. Here again, you understand something about history. History is linear.
This is in contrast to a lot of other views of history, particularly those who view history as cyclical. Think of Buddhism and Hinduism and many other types of religions. They view history as a circle that keeps repeating itself. You are born, you live, you die. Then it happens all over again. You are reborn and you live and die again. In this view, life is just like the changing of the seasons. Spring turns to summer and summer turns to fall and winter. Then it all happens all over again. So it is just a never-ending circle.
Christianity has what is called a linear view of history. It is not a vicious cycle that will never end. It is unfolding in such a way that it will eventually culminate in the grand purpose of God.
That endpoint is defined as the uniting of all things in Christ. What exactly does that mean? The idea is that things are brought to a new order because they are united and made whole.
Now, when the verse says, “unite all things,” the Greek word here is an interesting one. It is a word that comes from the realm of mathematics. Literally, we could translate it the “summing up” of all things because it has to do with addition.
In the Roman world, when you did addition, you did it vertically. We always put our answers at the bottom. We put the numbers in columns, draw a line, and write the answer at the bottom. In the Roman world, they put the answer at the top. And so it was a “summing up.”
But what do you do when you do addition? You take a bunch of random numbers and unite them together. You gather them all into one so that you have something complete. This is the grand total or the full expression of what is stated here.
Paul is saying that this is what happens in history. God has all this stuff that he’s doing in the world, and there is going to be a time when it all comes together. The grand total of his acts in history will be that his people from all throughout history are gathered together as a single body. All the earth will be brought into one final order.
Think of it this way. Because of sin, this world is in disarray. This world suffers. There is constant pain and disorder. But Christ brings new order. Salvation is, so to speak, the ordering of life.
Some of you may even testify to this in your own life. You might say that before you came to know the Lord, you life was in disarray. It was, in a sense, very chaotic because you lived in sin. But after you came to know the Lord, things change. Your life “got on track.” That’s a way of saying that there was a new order.
Think too of the initial creation story. God created the world, but it kind of sounds like it was a formless blob. Over the next few days, God spoke and brought order to the world. He separated the light and the darkness and gave some order to it. He separated the waters and created two new sections: the heavens and the earth.
The task of man was to subdue the earth and fill it. Man’s job was to continue the process of bringing more order to the planet. But Adam fell into sin and the ordering became much more hectic.
When we think of what God is doing now, we must understand that he is continuing to accomplish his ordering of the earth. At some point, Christ’s redemption will come to a head. Sin will be dispelled, and God will bring order to the world once and for all. All things will be gathered together and united as a final testimony to the saving work of Christ.
That’s why we can say that God's plan has a cosmic element. Not only will you and I experience redemption, but the whole created order will experience it. The entire universe is going to be freed from the pain of sin that now afflicts it, and we will live in a world that is completely restored.
This is just another reason for us to praise God, one more spiritual blessing in the heavenly places that we get to celebrate. We bless God because he has a plan. He is working out the details of that plan all around us. And the best part about it all is that we get to know that plan, we get to participate in that plan, and we get to look forward to that plan’s full realization.
making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
Today we come to one of the more difficult sections of Ephesians 1 in terms of what Paul is trying to say. I like what one pastor I heard this week said. He said that he had read various commentaries and looked at different resources, but none of them were all that helpful. He said that all the materials seem to be just as confusing as the passage is and do not offer any real clarity as to what Paul is saying here.
Believe it or not, I say that to encourage you. We believe the Bible is a book that is usually easy to understand. But from time to time, you come across some things that a little more difficult. I personally appreciate the fact that Paul can often outwit the scholars and Bible elites. It should keep them humble.
While I will admit that there are some difficult things here, I hope that you will also find that there are some things that are certainly beneficial. As we look at them, I hope that you will, at the very least, see that our God is sovereign. He is in complete control and will bring about the things he has planned.
We have been going through chapter one line by line and verse by verse, and in doing so, we’ve seen Paul giving praise to God. We’ve also seen his reasons for this praise unfold bit by bit.
We began back in verse 3 as we saw Paul bless God for every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Then, starting with verse 4, we’ve seen him list out those blessings. First, we were made to praise God for his election of his people. We saw that God made an enteral decree, whereby certain individuals were predestined to receive his grace and forgiveness, and we can praise God for being part of that select group.
Then in verses 7-8, Paul gave praise to God for the redemption that we have in Christ. God not only chose us, but he actively redeemed us from the bondage of sin and death through the sacrificial death of His Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Today we come to verses 9-10 and we are continuing to praise God. This time we are praising him for his whole plan. It is his plan of redemption, or, as our passage calls it, “the mystery of his will.”
Remember that this is all one sentence in the original language, and there’s a sense in which we are continuing to reflect on the redemption that Paul mentioned in verses 7-8. However, Paul sort of broadens the scope of his focus. We see something of the wider ramifications of redemption. This is not just about how God saves us as individuals from sin, but it is about how God governs the unfolding of time. The arc of world history is all about God’s plan of redemption.
As they say, history is “His story.” The redemption we enjoy as individuals is just one tiny aspect of the entire plan of God. And today we get to have something of an overview of that plan. These two verses contain the three basic components of God’s redeeming purposes.
What are those three components? Let me lay them out for you so that you know where we are going today. First, we are going to see that God’s plan of redemption has a personal component to it. There’s a sense in which we can start with our own perception of that plan.
The second thing that our passage tells us is that God’s plan has a historical (or eternal) component. We can talk about what God has been doing throughout time.
And that will lead to the third part, which is the cosmic element. There’s a sense in which God’s plan has implications for the entire universe. To put it another way, God’s plan has a goal. It is leading towards something, the ramifications of which are cosmic.
But let’s begin with verse 9 and the personal component of God’s plan.
I. God’s Plan has a Personal Component
Verse 9 begins by saying that through redemption, God is “making known to us the mystery of his will.”
Let’s break this down. The first thing we need to talk about is what we mean by “the mystery of his will.” We have to clarify what Paul is talking about here.
We often use the word “mystery” in a couple different ways. Sometimes we use it as something that can’t be known. We say something is mysterious in that it is above us and beyond our ability to grasp. This is what we mean when we talk about the Trinity. God is one God, yet he exists in three individual and co-existing persons. How is that possible? We don’t know. But that’s the plain teaching of Scripture. We’ve seen that here in Ephesians 1. We have the Father and the Son. They are distinct, but when it comes to their divine substance, they are one. In the end we say it is true, but it is a mystery that we cannot fully comprehend.
But we also can use the word “mystery” in another way. It can also mean a secret that comes to be revealed. So here it is something that we do understand, it is just hidden from us for a while.
Some of you have read mystery novels. What are they? They are stories in which you don’t know who committed the crime until the very end. The murderer is hidden, but then the detective solves the mystery, and the secret comes to be revealed.
That’s what verse 9 says to us here. God’s will is a mystery in that it was once hidden, but now it is manifest. The cat is out of the bag, so to speak. God’s will is his plan for the world. It was once hidden from us; it was once a mystery. But now you and I have an understanding of what he is seeking to accomplish. That’s because it is no longer a secret. It has been fully revealed to us. Not to just some of us, mind you. This is not something for just the elite. It is now a public secret. It has been revealed to all God’s people.
And that ties into the beginning of verse 9. Paul says that God is “making known to us the mystery of his will.” Paul’s saying, “We were once in the dark. We were once completely oblivious to what God was doing. But now we get it. And the reason why we get it is because God has revealed it to us.”
This is why I say there is a personal element to this redemptive plan. The plan would never make sense to us if God had not first opened our minds to it. We wouldn’t have had a clue, except that God exerted his power upon us and caused this information to be understood intellectually and spiritually.
Don’t forget that the point of all this is that God is sovereign. Yes, it is personal in that it involves us, but it is not something that we came to grasp on our own. This was not understood because we had some keen insight or because we were really good detectives who were able to figure out the mystery. We comprehend it only because God has taken away our blindness to it.
So, if you want to talk about our salvation, this is one way you can look at it. Salvation is not only what God does for us, but also what he does to us. There is a renovation of our hearts and minds that occurs. We go from being blind and ignorant to being able to see and understand.
This is an expression of our depravity. In our sinfulness, and because of the fall, our minds do not function the way they should. This is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians that the natural man cannot understand the things of the Spirit. This is why he says in Romans 1 that we are futile in our thinking. Later on in the book of Ephesians he will say that, apart from Christ, we are darkened in our understanding (4:18).
In order to comprehend spiritual things, we need a special act of the Holy Spirit. In order to know the Lord, our spiritual blindness needs to be taken away. God must reveal himself to us.
Truly understanding history isn’t merely about reading the right books or grasping certain facts taught by a college professor. It’s something much more supernatural. And that’s why we can praise God. It is because God has revealed that secret to each and every one of us.
So there you have it. When it comes to God’s plan, Paul first notes how it has a personal component. But, as he elaborates, you notice that he then talks about how God’s plan has a historical component.
II. God’s Plan has a Historical Component
Look at the next part of verse 9. Paul says that God has made “known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time.”
Now, if you have a different translation, you’ll probably have some different wording. But here are some things you can observe. God’s plan started all the way back before time began. “Plan” refers to God’s purpose or his intention, his divine decree. God purposed or decreed that his will would be made known and that his plan would come to pass.
But notice the next part: “which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time.” Now our English versions struggle here because the original language is very difficult to translate. It is somewhat tricky to transfer the correct meaning into our language. I will even admit that the ESV might not be the very best translation on this point. However, the men who worked to put it together were trying to help us understand it. And in that regard, they didn’t do a terrible job.
The Greek uses the word oikonomia, which is a word from which we get our word “economy.” It literally refers to a person who is a manager of a home or a business. Economics has to do with the business world or the management of finances. It comes from this idea of an oikonomia, someone who manages the affairs of the house.
You ladies can be thought of as oikonomias. You manage your households by taking care of the kids, making sure that the home stays tidy, and putting everything in its proper place.
That is what this verse is saying about God. God is the manager of history. When it comes to the fullness of time, he is the oikonomia. He is managing how time rolls out. All that happens in this world - all that happens in time - is being governed by his almighty hand.
So we can say that he has a plan for the fullness of time. All that takes place in this world is under his sovereign care, so that whatever happens comes about as a direct result of his management of the earth’s affairs. Thus, in the end, he is accomplishing all his purposes. Everything that he aims to achieve will be fully attained because he has not only planned it, but he is managing every aspect of it. History is his arrangement of events, and so he causes the fullness of the times.
Now, think about how this affects your view of history. There is a quote that is attributed to various sources. Some attribute it to an advertisement that circulated in various papers in the early 1900s. It goes like this: “History is just one darn thing after another.” Another quote is attributed to Henry Ford. Ford said, “History is bunk.”
That’s the way many people view history. It is just bunk. It’s a dismal chain of events that occur. History is one wretched thing after another, and we are doomed to suffer through it.
This is the modern view of things. This is the conclusion of an evolutionary view of the world. History is not going anywhere. There’s no divine being behind the events that are occurring. Life is just happening. You wake up. You go to work. You hit your thumb with a hammer. You bang your head on something as you are standing up. Some foreign power drops bombs on your neighborhood. You have dinner. You go to sleep. And you wake up tomorrow to suffer through it all over again.
And really, who cares who signed the Declaration of Independence? What’s the big deal about Pearl Harbor or the Scottish Killing Times? History is bunk.
In contrast to that, we (as Christians) understand that history has incredible meaning and purpose. It is valuable because it is the record of God’s actions in this world. It is a testimony to what the Lord has done and is doing to accomplish his purposes. Life isn’t one dumb thing after another. It is the cumulative expression of the God of Scripture who is working out the intricacies of his grand plan. History is not bunk; it is the careful administration of the One who is building his kingdom and providing the intimate care that his people need.
You might look at the Roman Empire and think that it was composed of a bunch of bloodthirsty men fighting with each other. But according to God, it was the fullness of time for the coming of God’s Son. God had put those Romans in place and woven together every aspect of their world so that it would be the perfect place for Christ to live, die, rise again, and so that the message of the Gospel might be propagated throughout the world.
That’s the way we should look at history. We can see how France and England thew out all their Protestants and how those men and women came to America. We can see how God created a nation that would eventually become one of the greatest missionary-sending countries in history.
Paul wants us to understand that we view history in a way that is radically different from the rest of the world. We view history as the grand work of a sovereign administrator. And not only is God controlling earthly affairs, but he is also making all things subservient to the ultimate restoration of the cosmos.
And that is the third element of our passage. God’s plan has a personal component in that it touches our lives and our understanding. It has a historical element in that He is the one causing everything to unfold exactly has he has determined. And, as we see in verse 10, it also has a cosmic component in that it is leading to the restoration of the entire cosmos.
III. God’s Plan has a Cosmic Component
God has made know the mystery of his will, which is what? His will (or his plan) is to “unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”
So you see, history has a purpose. It has a goal. There is an endpoint and a climax toward which all of history is heading. Here again, you understand something about history. History is linear.
This is in contrast to a lot of other views of history, particularly those who view history as cyclical. Think of Buddhism and Hinduism and many other types of religions. They view history as a circle that keeps repeating itself. You are born, you live, you die. Then it happens all over again. You are reborn and you live and die again. In this view, life is just like the changing of the seasons. Spring turns to summer and summer turns to fall and winter. Then it all happens all over again. So it is just a never-ending circle.
Christianity has what is called a linear view of history. It is not a vicious cycle that will never end. It is unfolding in such a way that it will eventually culminate in the grand purpose of God.
That endpoint is defined as the uniting of all things in Christ. What exactly does that mean? The idea is that things are brought to a new order because they are united and made whole.
Now, when the verse says, “unite all things,” the Greek word here is an interesting one. It is a word that comes from the realm of mathematics. Literally, we could translate it the “summing up” of all things because it has to do with addition.
In the Roman world, when you did addition, you did it vertically. We always put our answers at the bottom. We put the numbers in columns, draw a line, and write the answer at the bottom. In the Roman world, they put the answer at the top. And so it was a “summing up.”
But what do you do when you do addition? You take a bunch of random numbers and unite them together. You gather them all into one so that you have something complete. This is the grand total or the full expression of what is stated here.
Paul is saying that this is what happens in history. God has all this stuff that he’s doing in the world, and there is going to be a time when it all comes together. The grand total of his acts in history will be that his people from all throughout history are gathered together as a single body. All the earth will be brought into one final order.
Think of it this way. Because of sin, this world is in disarray. This world suffers. There is constant pain and disorder. But Christ brings new order. Salvation is, so to speak, the ordering of life.
Some of you may even testify to this in your own life. You might say that before you came to know the Lord, you life was in disarray. It was, in a sense, very chaotic because you lived in sin. But after you came to know the Lord, things change. Your life “got on track.” That’s a way of saying that there was a new order.
Think too of the initial creation story. God created the world, but it kind of sounds like it was a formless blob. Over the next few days, God spoke and brought order to the world. He separated the light and the darkness and gave some order to it. He separated the waters and created two new sections: the heavens and the earth.
The task of man was to subdue the earth and fill it. Man’s job was to continue the process of bringing more order to the planet. But Adam fell into sin and the ordering became much more hectic.
When we think of what God is doing now, we must understand that he is continuing to accomplish his ordering of the earth. At some point, Christ’s redemption will come to a head. Sin will be dispelled, and God will bring order to the world once and for all. All things will be gathered together and united as a final testimony to the saving work of Christ.
That’s why we can say that God's plan has a cosmic element. Not only will you and I experience redemption, but the whole created order will experience it. The entire universe is going to be freed from the pain of sin that now afflicts it, and we will live in a world that is completely restored.
This is just another reason for us to praise God, one more spiritual blessing in the heavenly places that we get to celebrate. We bless God because he has a plan. He is working out the details of that plan all around us. And the best part about it all is that we get to know that plan, we get to participate in that plan, and we get to look forward to that plan’s full realization.