I think this is the most beautiful thought any Christian could ever have … that even before a single blade of grass began to grow God had put into action a plan to redeem your soul.

In the vastness of eternity, - within the Council of the Sovereign triune God, - the plan was conceived to purchase your redemption.

God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit considered the means and the way by which you would be saved. They did this in eternity.

God’s mind and His will were at work when nothing else was yet in existence … and He considered what He would purpose for His creation.

As They sat in the eternal Council the Second Person in that Holy Trinity was given a very particular commission.

It consisted of an agenda that would mean Him laying aside, - for a short time, - some of the characteristics of His eternal Sonship.

For example, He would cease to be omnipresent, and; His knowledge would be limited … (we’ll come back to this).

In God’s eternal purpose all His hopes and plans were placed upon the shoulders of Christ as the Mediator.

As Mediator … Christ would be the prophet (bringing infallibly and uniquely God’s Holy Word)

As Mediator … He would be the priest Who would intercede on behalf of the people.

He would be the King, the Head and Saviour of His Church.

God, in His eternal purpose, planned for Him to be the heir … and that someday He would judge all those who have ever lived.

This was the grand purpose that the Father had for His Son!

God chose a people, - a remnant, a peculiar people, an Elect, - to be saved … and God chose the way by which He would save them …

As the Confession says, “the Son engaged in time (as distinct from eternity) to redeem, call, justify, sanctify and glorify them.”

That was God’s eternal purpose … Eph. 1:5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6  To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. 7  In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.

Friends, it was God’s eternal purpose to save you … and to see the fulfilment of His eternal purpose we look to Christ and …

I said a few moments ago that the eternal purpose would mean Christ laying aside, - for a short time, - some of the characteristics of His eternal Sonship.

Now, He was only laying aside some of the characteristics … and not the character! … That’s very important!

Christ did not cease to be any less God when He took upon Himself human flesh.

It simply meant that for a time He would be a Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief … that He made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men (Phil. 2:7).

Christ became no less God in His eternal purpose!

He didn’t go through a ‘character change’. He remained totally Divine … but when He put on human flesh the restrictions that applies to all of us applied to Him also … except in one area, - He was without sin. He did not have the sinful nature His earthly mother had, or Joseph, or His half-brothers and sisters.

He lost nothing of the character and nature of His Godhood.

When He stood and talked to the sinners in the streets and roads of Galilee … He was there because it was the eternal purpose of the Godhead that the eternal Person in Christ had been planned to be there.

Everything down to the last detail had been ordained of God. In His 32/33-year lifespan everything that God had purposed for Him to do … He did.

They tried to stop Him, hinder Him, attract Him away … but Jesus told them, Jn. 6: 38  For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. 39  And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. 40  And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.  

The eternality of the Person of Christ has often been attacked.

There is an old heresy called Socinianism; it teaches (basically) that when the work of God the Father had become ‘completed’ (as in the OT) the work was carried on by God the Son, Who, - when His work was finished, - passed it on to God the Holy Spirit.

Another heresy known as Adoptionism teaches that at His baptism Jesus became the Son of God and at His death (“It is finished) He ceased being the Son of God and returned to being an ordinary man.

But no … it was because of an eternal purpose that God sent His Son into this world and His Son never ceased to be an eternal Person.

Something else that also needs to be said, - especially in today’s society … Because He has saved us and has become personal to us He is not  a ‘chum’ or a ‘pal’ with whom we can take liberties, - He is totally and absolutely, first and foremost, the Almighty Sovereign King of kings, jealous for His Name and jealous for His glory.

Do you know what concerns me? It is those folk who say they are saved and yet offer very little proof that they know God ... because they don’t demonstrate the priority for Christ they ought to have. He is merely an afterthought and a postscript.

He doesn’t feature very much in their plans.

No, I don’t understand when they try to tell me they are saved … because the teaching of the Bible is that when you are saved your life is committed to Christ and all you do and seek to do is for Him.

When you realise that Christ came and died for you on the cross, then you realise something of the enormity of the plan He drew up to save you.

In God’s plan and purpose He sent Christ with “the two whole, perfect and distinct natures, the Divine and the human” and they “were inseparably joined together in one Person”. Christ is “very God of very God”!

His Divine and human natures were not joined in such a way that one ‘fused’ into the other; no, they remained absolutely separate … remaining truly 100% God and truly 100% man.

Only with this consistency and these characteristics could Christ be commissioned by the Divine Council to become the only Mediator between God and man. … His eternal Purpose, Person …

The Confession says “He was sanctified and anointed”. This was His ‘commissioning’.

When He left Heaven and entered into the womb of Mary and was born in the stable … He was placed there by the purpose and plan of God.

Joseph could never have produced in Mary what the Holy Spirit did. The entrance of Christ into this world had the seal of God’s approval upon it … otherwise, it never would have happened!

He entered into time only for the purpose of saving His people, Mt. 1:21 thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.

To die for the sinner He Himself, - in accordance with the eternal pleasure of the Godhead, - … He Himself had to be sinless. God would accept no greater price to be paid for sin but the spotless, sinless Lamb. … That was God’s eternal pleasure!

Christ came as the Mediator because from the Fall in the Garden in Eden Christ alone was the only sinless Person to enter into this world.

He has no equal. There is no-one who comes even close to Him!

It is why the formula of good works doesn’t appease the wrath of God because it took a Sacrifice from Heaven to achieve that!

… Consider it also … that even before Christ was sacrificed on Calvary He had already sacrificed by entering into this world.

Walk along dirty laneways as the farmer herds his cattle …

Walk through the muck and gutters of a field soaked in the rain … look at your feet, - they’re filthy; consider then how God the Son, - used to the perfection of Glory, - came into this sinful world … but He did it for God’s eternal pleasure … He did it to go to the cross of Calvary and there to die for your sin.

He is Christ the Mediator. There is none other. It was His eternal purpose to save you and He came to ‘bridge the abyss’ that sin had created between God and man.

Wide, wide as the ocean, high as the Heaven above;
Deep, deep as the deepest sea is my Saviour’s love.
I, though so unworthy, still am a child of His care;

In order to achieve His eternal purpose He commissioned and sent His Son, - the eternal Person. … Nothing less than perfection would achieve the goal of God … and perfection, - the only Person to have been born into this world and not touched by sin was Christ … and so it was that God’s eternal plan continued unstoppable.

Yes, His eternal plan, - His eternal purpose, - was totally dependent upon Christ.

(“Ah no, it depends upon whether we put our trust in Him or not!”) … No, it doesn’t! There are no everlasting obstacles or barriers to God’s eternal purpose, - He knocks them all down! He wipes them all out!

Nothing of what He created, - nothing in this world, - can hinder or stop the plans He has for Christ to be the Mediator of God’s own people.

This is what the Council in Heaven commissioned Him to do … and He did it willingly, - as the Bible says … Eph. 1:11 according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.

… Eph. 3: 20 Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, 21  Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.