Jesus – The Living Plan of God

J. Dan Gill

These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything must be fulfilled which is written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms. Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. — Jesus to his disciples (Luke 24:44, 45).

Jesus not only speaks God’s word, but also uniquely fulfills it. This man is the living embodiment of the plan of God. God’s great plans for humanity and our planet were foretold in words the Father spoke to the prophets of old. From the  beginning, the center and focus of all of those plans was a man who would be born in time. That man was Jesus — God’s Messiah — his true human son.

It is Jesus who ultimately reveals and fulfills God’s plans for humanity. From birth to death, he was living out the words that God had spoken to the prophets ages before. In his resurrection, being taken up into heaven and seated at the right hand of God, this man was and is the living word of God. God’s master plans for the redemption of human beings and of our planet have become reality in him.

We see this again in God’s new covenant. Aspects of the covenant Moses gave the people was engraved on stones. However, God’s new covenant is embodied in a man, Messiah Jesus (Isa. 42:6; 1Tim. 2:5; Heb. 8:6,7). It is by trusting in the person of Jesus that we participate in YHWH’s great and final arrangement with humanity (John 3:16). Jesus and his teachings are the means by which human beings may enter into and be part of God’s new creation (Eph. 2:10). In the Messiah we find the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promises (2 Cor. 1:19, 20). The hope of unending life — life in the age to come — is in him (Rom. 5:17). God’s plans for redemption and a new creation have become reality in this man. He was the plan of God — the word of God — in the flesh.

Gill, J. Dan (2016). The Living Plan of God. In, The One: In Defense of God (pp. 140-141). Nashville, TN: 21st Century Reformation Publishing.