Total Recovery: The Eternal Purpose and the Apostolic Vision (Part 3)

Part 3: The Reason - Why does God include us in His Plan?

We’ve been looking at God’s great plan for total recovery in Jesus. But why does God include us in His plan for His Son? The reason the Bible gives is ‘His good pleasure’ (Eph. 1:9). That means the reason God includes us in His plan isn’t found in us, but in Him. And that’s very good news for us indeed, for it means that God’s plan doesn’t depend on us. It doesn’t depend on how good we are at being good. And His plan isn’t destroyed by how bad we are either.

You see, God wasn’t sitting around waiting to see how we’d turn out before coming up with His eternal purpose. No! He had included us in His great plan even ‘before the foundation of the world’ (Eph. 1:4). That means He chose us in Christ before we could ever have managed to do anything good or anything bad, and so our inclusion doesn’t depend on our efforts. It’s not down to our works, our talents or our goodness.

Instead, God’s plan rests solely on ‘His good pleasure.’ And that means He includes us because He wants to! He’s not obligated because of something in us or something that we’ve done. Not at all!

In fact, Ephesians is very clear about us. We were ‘dead in trespasses and sins’ (Eph. 2:1), ‘sons of disobedience’ (Eph. 2:2) and ‘children of wrath’ (Eph. 2:3). There wasn’t something brilliant about us that made God have to include us in His plan! But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)’ (Eph. 2:4-5). God saves us and includes us in His plan because of His great love for us and His magnificent grace!

That’s His good pleasure – His love, His grace.