GOD AND HIS ETERNAL PLAN

BIBLE COMMENTARY

THE NEED TO KNOW GOD AND HIS WORD

The Bible is the most precious book in the world because it is God’s own revelation of Himself and of His eternal plan for mankind. Every person who has come to faith in Christ has been placed inside that great plan. For this reason, every Christian must make it his or her lifelong aim to understand the Scriptures clearly and fully. Only then can we live in a way that truly honors God and fulfills the purpose for which He saved us (Ephesians 4:1).God Himself commands us to keep growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18). This is not an optional suggestion; it is a clear order from the Lord. From the first day we believe until the day we see Him face to face, we are to go forward—learning more, understanding more, knowing God more. The knowledge God wants us to have is not only about Jesus (though it begins there); it is knowledge of the whole Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who are perfectly one (Colossians 2:9; John 17:3). It is not enough to know a few facts about God. He calls us into a deep, living, growing relationship with Himself. God has chosen to make Himself and His plan known. He has hidden nothing that His people need to know. He spoke to the prophets, and by the Holy Spirit He caused every word to be written down so that we can read and understand (Amos 3:7; 2 Timothy 3:16-17). The whole Bible is God’s gift so that we may know Him truly. How we must study God’s Word. Two things must always go together when we open the Bible: Earnest prayer that the Holy Spirit will open our eyes and teach us (Psalm 119:18; Ephesians 1:17-18). A firm decision to accept only what the Bible itself says, nothing more and nothing less.

Without prayer, our minds stay dark. Without the Scripture alone as our authority, we easily wander into error. Why this knowledge is a matter of life or death. Jesus said, “This is eternal life, that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). Knowing God is not something extra for very serious Christians; it is the very heart of salvation itself. To stop growing in the knowledge of God is to stop moving toward fuller eternal life. Love naturally wants to know the one it loves.

When a child loves his parents, he wants to know them better. When a husband and wife truly love each other, they never stop learning about each other. The same must be true of our love for God. If we say, “I love God,” but we seldom open the Bible to learn who He really is and what pleases Him, our love is not yet what it should be (Hosea 6:3).The way we treat the Word of God shows the true condition of our heart toward God Himself. If God truly sits on the throne of our affections, we will pursue the knowledge of Him more eagerly than any earthly thing.

When we know God better, two things always follow: We love and worship Him more purely. We learn how to love and serve people the right way (Mark 12:30-31; Psalm 119:105).

Therefore, let every Christian take this to heart: Growing in the knowledge of God and of His eternal plan is not optional. It is God’s command. It is the proof of true love. It is the path to eternal life.

THE MYSTERY OF GOD IS NOW BEING REVEALED

God has not left His children in darkness about Himself or about His great plan for the world. Everything we need to know has already been written in the Bible. Yet the full meaning of many prophecies and mysteries was sealed until the proper time. The Lord told Daniel, “Shut up the words and seal the book until the time of the end” (Daniel 12:4, 9). Jesus said that the secrets of the kingdom of God are given to His disciples to understand, but to others they remain hidden (Matthew 13:11; Luke 8:10).That appointed time has now come. The Bible teaches that the “last days” began when Jesus Christ was born into the world (Hebrews 1:1-2). From God’s point of view, “one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). Since the birth of Christ, the world has entered the third “day” of the Lord, the third millennium. We know that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day. In the same way, it is reasonable and scriptural to expect that the return of Christ and the resurrection of His people will take place during this third day in God’s calendar. No one knows the exact day or hour (Matthew 24:36), but the general season has been shown to God’s children so that we will watch and be ready. This is also the time when the Holy Spirit is opening the eyes of faithful believers to understand more and more of the mysteries that were once sealed. Why many Christians still do not understand. Many believers say, “God is so great, how can ordinary people ever understand deep things about Him?”

This sounds humble, but it is not true humility. It is an excuse for laziness and disobedience. When God says His thoughts are higher than our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9), He is not telling us to stop trying to know Him. He is telling us to stop trusting our own human wisdom and to depend completely on the Holy Spirit who searches even the deep things of God (1 Corinthians 2:10-12).The Holy Spirit Himself is the Spirit of wisdom (Proverbs 8:22-30; 1 Corinthians 1:24). He inspired every word of the Bible, and He is willing to teach every child of God who truly wants to learn. God gave us the Scriptures for exactly this purpose: that we may know Him and be strengthened in faith all the days of our life (Colossians 3:10; 2 Timothy 3:16-17). What we must do now are to pray earnestly every day for the Holy Spirit to open our eyes and to study the Bible carefully, comparing Scripture with Scripture, never adding human ideas, then obey what we already understand. This is the only way more light will be given (John 7:17). Live watching and ready, because the third day has already begun, and the Lord’s coming is near.

The mysteries of God are no longer locked away. They are being opened to every believer who loves the Lord, loves His Word, and is willing to seek with all his heart. Let us therefore give ourselves wholeheartedly to knowing God and His plan while there is still time. The night is coming when no one can work (John 9:4). Today is the day to seek the Lord with diligence and joy.

GOD IS SELF-EXISTENT AND ETERNAL

Before anything was made, God already was. There was no time, no space, no matter, nothing existed except God Himself. He is the beginning of all things and needs nothing outside Himself to exist. He is eternal, without beginning and without end (Nehemiah 9:5; Psalm 90:2). He is the only God Who truly is (Isaiah 43:10). His power has no limit, His wisdom has no boundary (Isaiah 40:28; Job 12:13), and above all, His very nature is love and peace (1 John 4:8, 16). From all eternity, God has existed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God in three Persons. The Word that was with God and was God became the Son, Jesus Christ (John 1:1-2, 14). The Wisdom and Spirit of God has always been the Holy Spirit (Proverbs 8:22-30; Genesis 1:2).

Long before the first angel or the first star, the Father loved the Son, the Son glorified the Father, and the Spirit filled and moved in perfect fellowship. This is the God we worship, the only One worthy of all honor.

We should remember that believing in this Almighty God is never only words or thoughts. True faith changes the way we live every day. Because God has shown us Who He is, our lives must show that we really believe it.

God is Light: Therefore His children must walk as children of light (Ephesians 5:8), as an example for the world. We must live in a way that clearly shows what is good and what is evil. People who do not know God should be able to look at our lives and see the difference. When God calls us to live purely and honestly, it is His way of testing whether we truly believe He is Light.

God is the First and the Only: Therefore He must have the first place in our lives. If we say “God is first” but money, success, pleasure, or another person actually rules our time and heart, then our faith is not real. Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment” (Matthew 22:37-38). Anything less is not true faith.

God is Almighty: Therefore His children must learn to control themselves by His power. Anger, wrong desires, lazy habits, careless words, these things should grow weaker in us because God’s strength lives in us. Paul wrote, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). When we keep giving in to sin, we are living as if God is weak.

God is Love: Therefore His children must love the way He loves. We do not love only people who are easy to love. We love our enemies, we forgive those who hurt us, we give even when it costs us—this is the love that comes from God (1 John 4:7-11). Love that follows human feelings and human rules is not the love of God.

In other words, the same qualities that belong to God from eternity must begin to appear in the daily lives of His children. If they do not appear, we are not yet believing in the true God, we are only believing in an idea about God. May the Holy Spirit help every believer to look honestly at his or her life and ask: Does my way of living prove that I truly believe God is eternal, almighty, light, and love? If the answer is not yet clear, today is the day to turn to Him, ask for His power, and start living the truth we say we believe.

(to be continued)