God’s Purpose in Christ Jesus

(Ephesians 3:11-13)

One of the most significant changes in the relationship between man and God with the advent and death of Jesus Christ was the ability for everyone who has faith to have direct access to the Father through Jesus Christ.

This is evidenced in the scriptures in these few verses. It is important because we can now have a one-to-one relationship with God, without the need for intermediaries, other than the Son of God Himself.

Ministers, pastors and priests are no longer the intercessors for men and women who come to Christ. But they still have an important role in teaching the truth, preaching the gospel and protecting the flock of God.

God’s Purpose in Christ Jesus

It was never God’s purpose for man that he be confined and bound under rules, regulations and laws. When God created man, he created Adam and Eve to be perfect and without sin as God Himself is perfect. His plan was for man to live with God in relationship with Him as blessed children.

But man chose to listen to the devil rather than God and ushered in the age of sin. As sin increased and things got worse, God destroyed the world by flood, with the exception of Noah and his family. But sin continued with Noah’s descendants and so God chose Abraham giving him the promise of righteousness and inheritance of the promised land.

At the time of Moses, sin had increased to the point where God gave the law to try and put the brakes on sin and to give the people a process for worship through the appointed Levitical priesthood as teachers of the law. The Levites, and in particular the descendants of Aaron as high priests were the intermediaries for the nation of Israel between the people and God.

This process however, was never the plan God had for man. The law was instituted to try to slow down sin and to teach mankind the difference between right and wrong, good and evil and to show what was pleasing to God and what was not. This scripture points to this saying:

11 This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12 in whom we have boldness and confidence of access through our faith in him. 13 So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. (Ephesians 3:11-13)

In Christ Jesus God was pulling His plan back on track to have a people who would choose to do what is good and right in His sight. Through Christ Jesus God opened the way to remove sin totally and completely, and provide the means by which mankind could overcome the drivers of sin in the flesh: the passions, lusts and desires of humanity.

This was the purpose of the Gospel. And by the gospel through faith, we could have access to the grace of God and be reconciled to Him. But even more, through Jesus Christ we could have direct and personal access and relationship with the Father Himself.

Through Jesus Christ the Father now becomes someone close, not a distant all powerful supreme being with whom relationship could not seem possible. Now, in Jesus Christ, we become the children of God and God is our Father and we are one family in Him.

This was and is God’s purpose in Christ Jesus. To create in and through Him a family who will live with God into eternity and choose to worship God as He ought to be worshipped.

Bold and Confident Access

We do not need to shrink back from coming before the throne of God as people did prior to the coming of Jesus Christ.

When we pray we come into His presence and as we hold fast our faith, we can be both bold and confident in all we ask of Him, knowing that He hears us as a Father listens to His children, not as an unapproachable monarch listening to the petitions of constituents or servants.

We no longer come to God through the intercessions of a priesthood of men, but through the heavenly high priest, who is Jesus Christ Himself. And Jesus helps us because He understands our problems, issues, worries and weaknesses. Jesus came to the earth and suffered all the same problems we humans suffer, but He did it without sin and without falling victim to temptation.

It is because Jesus came and subsequently died, being the perfect sacrifice for sin, that we can have this bold and confident access to God the Father.

The one thing that stands between man and God is sin. If we are to ever come and stand before God with confidence, then sin had to be dealt with. No sinner can stand in the presence of God.

So God established a two-pronged attack to enable man to overcome sin and to be able to stand in the presence of God. He needed to deal with sin and He also needed to work with man to overcome the issues in man that lead to sin.

All of this was accomplished in Christ Jesus for it is through Christ that the Father helps man to return to Him.

How God helps us

First, we see the coming of Jesus Christ.

Jesus came and preached the gospel to the people of Israel first in order to show the path by which man could and would be reconciled to God.

And that path was through Jesus Christ Himself. Jesus said, “I am the way!” and so He is. He is the way by which we come to the Father. He also said:

7 So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and robbers; but the sheep did not heed them. 9 I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. (John 10:7-9)

Jesus is the door by which we enter to go into the kingdom of God.

This is a very important analogy for we are moving out of the kingdom of this world of sin, and into the kingdom of God by passing through a doorway. And that doorway is Jesus. It is not a physical door but a spiritual door and we pass through the door by faith.

God sent Jesus into the world to open the doorway between the physical and the spiritual realm so that we could gain entry into the kingdom of God. Prior to Christ coming, this was not possible, but now through faith in Jesus Christ this doorway is open to anyone who chooses to have faith and believe what He taught.

The Bible tells us that Jesus died to set us free from sin and also to set us free from the laws of Moses. It further tells us that we receive this freedom and the free gift of righteousness through baptism into the death of Jesus Christ, when we believe that His death is now our own and that we have died and been resurrected with Him.

So God the Father helps us through Jesus Christ by removing our sin, which stands between God and ourselves, and also by removing the law which continually condemns us as sinners before the Father when we break it. If sin and the law are taken away through faith in Jesus Christ, then we stand righteous before the Father by faith.

But we do not stand perfect because we still have the weaknesses of humanity in our flesh that will lead us astray, and we MUST be perfect as the Father is perfect if we are to live with Him into eternity, as we are told in Matthew 5:48.

But now that we can stand before the Father righteous by faith in Jesus Christ, the Father is prepared to help us to overcome the weaknesses of our human nature to bring us into the perfection that is necessary if we are to live with Him. And again, this door was opened through Jesus Christ.

God does this through giving us the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to make us perfect and to overcome all of the passions, lusts, desires and weaknesses of our human nature so that we can be perfect as Jesus Christ is perfect and as God the Father is perfect. And knowing that this is not a “quick fix” but a long term process, God provides His grace to overlook the mistakes we make as we walk the path to perfection.

Perfecting us so that we return to the state God made man in Adam and Eve is and was always God’s purpose in Jesus Christ.

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