This lesson book covers the subject of God’s full salvation. What does God’s full salvation mean? Why do we need to be saved? From what and into what are we saved? Why does God want to save us and why can He alone save us? How does He save us and what do we have to do to be saved? This is a long list of questions to consider. This book will answer all these questions and tell you more about God’s salvation. In this first lesson we want to cover something that you might never have heard before, something that happened in eternity past.
The book of Ephesians tells us that before God created anything, when He was all alone, He had a good pleasure, a heart’s desire. According to this good pleasure, He made a plan, a will. The Bible calls this “the purpose of the ages,” or “the eternal purpose” (Eph. 3:11). God also made an arrangement or a way by which He could fulfill this eternal purpose. The Bible calls this arrangement God’s economy or God’s dispensation (1 Tim. 1:4; Eph. 1:10; 3:2). So, the Bible reveals to us that in eternity past God had an eternal purpose according to His good pleasure and an economy or a means to fulfill that purpose.
What is God’s good pleasure? It is simply what pleases Him and makes Him happy. All that God has done has been according to this good pleasure, just as you and I do things according to what pleases us and makes us happy.
What is God’s eternal purpose which is according to His good pleasure? God’s eternal purpose is to have a group of people, a corporate man, created in His image and likeness. God desires this man to be filled with Him as life in order to express Him and have His dominion to represent Him. This is God’s eternal purpose because it was planned by God before time began and will never change.
And what is God’s economy or His way to fulfill this purpose? God’s way to gain such a corporate man is by dispensing Himself into man as life. Without dispensing Himself into man, His purpose can never be accomplished.
But, before He could do so, Satan, God’s enemy, came in to deceive man and to inject his own sinful life and nature into man. Through this, man fell into a pitiful condition, full of sinful acts and a sinful nature which ruined him for God’s great purpose.
God, however, cannot be defeated! Though man fell and God’s plan was frustrated, God still loved man and would not be moved from His purpose. So, God took action to save man in order to accomplish His eternal purpose. This action is His full salvation.
See Compendium of God’s Full Salvation (LSM),
Chapter 1, I. A.
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