The Greatest of all Gifts

The plan for our redemption was not an afterthought, a plan formulated after the fall of Adam.  It was a revelation of "the mystery kept secret since the world began."  Romans 16:25.  It was an unfolding of the principles that from eternal ages have been the foundation of God's throne.  From the beginning, God and Christ knew of the apostasy of Satan, and of the fall of man through the deceptive power of the apostate.  God did not ordain that sin should exist, but He foresaw its existence, and made provision to meet the terrible emergency.  So great was His love for the world, that He covenanted to give His only-begotten Son, "that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."  John 3:16.

This was a voluntary sacrifice.  Jesus might have remained at the Father's side.  He might have retained the glory of heaven, and the homage of the angels.  But He chose to give back the scepter into the Father's hands, and to step down from the throne of the universe, that He might bring light to the benighted, and life to the perishing.

By His life and His death, Christ has achieved even more than recovery from the ruin wrought through sin.  It was Satan's purpose to bring about an eternal separation between God and man; but in Christ we become more closely united to God than if we had never fallen.  In taking our nature, the Savior has bound himself to humanity be a tie that is never to be broken.  Through the eternal ages He is linked with us.  "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son."  John 3:16.

The work of redemption will be complete.  In the place where sin abounded, God's grace much more abounds.  The earth itself, the very field that Satan claims as his, is to be not only ransomed but exalted.  Our little world, under the curse of sin the one dark blot in His glorious creation, will be honored above all other worlds in the universe of God.  Here, where the Son of God tabernacled in humanity; where the King of glory lived and suffered and died,--here when He shall make all things new, the tabernacle of God shall be with men, "and He will dwell with them and they shall be His people and God Himself shall be with them and be their God."  And through endless ages as the redeemed walk in the light of the Lord, they will praise Him for His unspeakable Gift,--Immanuel, "God with us."