The Gospel

God had something amazing in mind.
It was a paradise.
And the people who populated it were going to be awesome!

He made those people an awesome place to hang out.
Interestingly, He constructed for them a behaving environment.
It would function on its own. It would changing, creative, and interactive.
And, it would be subject to the consequences.

It was a perfect environment for people.
Because people were made to be changing, creative, and interactive, too.
They would reason, and dream, and choose.

Unfortunately, not everything they would choose would be good.
One bad choice introduced a series of bad choices.
As people reproduced, they also reproduced their propensity for bad choices.

Before that first bad choice, God had a plan--a destiny--for His people.
He would lavish upon them the richness of His love.
They would be heirs to all that He had.

After that first bad choice, God came up with a new plan.
At first, He simply cut them off from eternal life, to save them in the long term.
Then, He worked out a way to restore them to the original destiny.
He worked out a way to purify them, and make them rightful heirs again.

This new plan involved Jesus.
This new plan was their salvation.

Before the first bad choice, Jesus didn't have to die.
After that first bad choice, and all those that followed, there wasn't much of a choice.

But, it wasn't like God set out to kill Jesus.
It wasn't as though He set His people up to fail from the beginning.
It wasn't like He made any of it happen.

Sin was not part of the plan.
Sin was not the dream God had for His changing, creative and interactive world.
But, sin was what happened to it.
And the Gospel is what He did about it.

__________________
I quit religion.

sin has purpose.

Before God created the first anything, He had a plan.

He only has one plan, that is all He needs.

He planned the beginning to the end because He is wise enough to foresee the result of each action He took. Therefore the answer to everything is a part of the plan.

When God created man he knew man was going to “fall”. That was included in the plan and was first introduced in Gen. 3:15 with the promise of One who would take back what the devil “stole”.
The One being Jesus.

The following scriptures help give us a picture of God’s Plan.
They are scriptures that deal with ‘Before the foundations of the World”.

Mt 13:35 Lk 11:50 Eph 1:4 Heb 9:26 Rv 13:8
Mt 25:34 Jn 17:24 Heb 4:3 1Pet 1:20 Rv 17:8

I will review your Scripture with the intention of communicating that I accept the truth in these Scriptures and still totally disagree with your conclusion about what they are telling us.

I will do so respectfully, without ignoring anything the Scriptures tell me.

If I miss something, point it out to me.

I might sound argumentative, but I'm really just wrestling with this to find and accept the truth.

Give me a bit to post the Scripture-by-Scripture response, then I invite you to give me feedback.

God bless.

__________________
I quit religion.

Mt 13:35 – yes, this mentions the foundation of the world, but I don’t see how Jesus speaking parables about a Kingdom that predates the earth is relevant. Maybe you could explain…

Mt 25:34 – The preparation of the Kingdom, as I said in my OP, was the original plan. There is no association between the salvation that had to be worked out after the fall and the preparation of the Kingdom, thus this statement actually supports my OP.

Lk 11:50 – Yes. Prophets have been dying since the foundation of the earth. Tragic. I agree. Not sure how it applies, though. Maybe you could explain…

Jn 17:24 – Yes. The Father loved Jesus before the foundation of the world. I agree. In fact, seeing here that the Father loved Jesus, it would be kind of messed up if, back then, the Father was like, “Yep, I totally love you, Jesus, but I’m going to orchestrate this whole system with people that hinges on me getting you killed. I sure hope that isn’t a problem.”

Eph 1:4 – Yes. Before God made the world, He chose us to be holy and blameless. This supports my OP.

Heb 4:3 – The author here is comforting his/her audience and encouraging them of the promise that they will enter God’s rest, which is being associated with the time God is said to have rested during the foundation of the world described in Genesis. I love and agree with this passage, and find no conflict in it with my OP.

Heb 9:26 – Here, the author is associating Jesus with the established human priesthood, and he/she is making the point that, while human priests have to enter in every year, Jesus need only enter in once. Note that this verse mentions the foundations of the earth as a general reference meant to include all of history. The very says nothing about God’s plan, and does not extend the time period to before the foundation of the world, and thus not to a time before the fall.

1Pet 1:20 – Yes. The Bible repeatedly tells us that Jesus existed before the foundation of the world. Much of Biblically Christology doesn’t make sense if this isn’t the case. However, the existence of Jesus is not limited to His role as the sacrifice. The Lamb predates his slaughter, no?

Rv 13:8 – Key note here is the use of the negative. For example, when Paul says that love does not envy, he is not telling us what love is, but only what it is not, leaving the rest open to being possible. It is a literary strategy to describe what you can’t really put into words. In this case, the passage mentions that the entire population will worship this guy, and that it is a quality of all of them that their names were not written in the lamb’s book of life since the foundation of the world. What it does not say, however, is that everyone else who is not longer dwelling on the earth, were written in that book since the beginning. It also doesn’t say anything about whether or not those saved prior to this event were only those whose names were in there since the foundation. Those would be assumptions made without support from the Scripture.

Rv 17:8 – Again, only says something about those dwelling on the earth at that time. Does not say anything about those who are not.

__________________
I quit religion.

Originally Posted by cubinity

After that first bad choice, God came up with a new plan.
At first, He simply cut them off from eternal life, to save them in the long term.
Then, He worked out a way to restore them to the original destiny.
He worked out a way to purify them, and make them rightful heirs again.

This new plan involved Jesus.
This new plan was their salvation.

Before the first bad choice, Jesus didn't have to die.
After that first bad choice, and all those that followed, there wasn't much of a choice.

So you think that God messed up when he created man and to fix it he had to come up with Jesus as a plan B?

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Confessional Lutheran Christianity: Christ-centered, Cross-focused.
Biblical, historic, traditional, creedal, confessional, liturgical, monergistic, sacramental, evangelical, catholic, orthodox Christianity.

No.
Nice leap, though.
I can appreciate that.

I think God is so cool that He created something that thinks, feels, and behaves on its own volition, which was His goal because when this thing turned out to like Him and say good things about Him, He would know that this thing really and genuinely meant it.
Then, that thing that was made to think, feel, and behave, did such things in a destructive way. Not a way that was destructive to God, but a way that was destructive to itself.
So, God being as cool as He is, worked out a way to protect the thing, even from itself.

I see no mess up on God's part in that.
Do you?

__________________
I quit religion.

Scripture works in both models. It both talks about God having a plan from beforehand, and God allowing things to run their course and then dealing with what actually happens, of trying things out, of genuinely responding, of going through the same sorts of emotions to events and choices as anyone else: frustration, joy, surprise, excitement,....

It's choice, based on Greek thought as much as anything else, that Christian theology tends to see one of those as "true" and the other as anthropomophic metaphor.

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"Goodness is stronger than evil,
love is stronger than hate,
light is stronger than darkness,
life is stronger than death,
victory is ours through him who loved us."
(+Desmond Tutu)

Hey, ebia!
Nice feedback!

__________________
I quit religion.

Originally Posted by cubinity

No.
Nice leap, though.
I can appreciate that.

I think God is so cool that He created something that thinks, feels, and behaves on its own volition, which was His goal because when this thing turned out to like Him and say good things about Him, He would know that this thing really and genuinely meant it.
Then, that thing that was made to think, feel, and behave, did such things in a destructive way. Not a way that was destructive to God, but a way that was destructive to itself.
So, God being as cool as He is, worked out a way to protect the thing, even from itself.

I see no mess up on God's part in that.
Do you?

Well, you seemed to imply that the atoning sacrifice of Jesus was a patch-up, a plan B if you will, as if God didn't know before he created him that man would fall and would need to be saved, that the Cross was not God's intention from the beginning of time.

God didn't have to make up a plan B. Plan A works just fine, thank you.

Eph 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

__________________
Confessional Lutheran Christianity: Christ-centered, Cross-focused.
Biblical, historic, traditional, creedal, confessional, liturgical, monergistic, sacramental, evangelical, catholic, orthodox Christianity.