The divine design

Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).  One of the most critical aspects of living abundantly is to understand your purpose, what God has in mind for you, his design.

My wife and I remodeled our kitchen.  That began with a need to repair some ceiling damage which led to needing to replace the old cabinets.  It wouldn’t work very well if we had just torn things apart and started in one corner of the kitchen building cabinets.  We had to develop a design for what we wanted it to be once it was all finished: electrical outlets, appliance placement, cabinet measurements, countertop, flooring, light fixtures.  All the work we put in led to the finished design.

God has a design for the entire universe.  He has a specific idea of what it will be like.  Everything that he is doing contributes to accomplishing his goal.  Everything that he is doing in your life is part of that divine design.  He has a plan for you.

How do we know what God is planning?  Well, we don’t just try to figure it out.  Please, stop trying to figure out what God is doing with you.  We can’t figure it out.  And we don’t have to figure it out.  God has told us.  He has come right out and told us what he is planning for the universe.  He has told us what his design looks like.  Here it is: Ephesians 1:8b-10 –

“In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth.”

God’s plan is for “an administration suitable to the fullness of times.”  “Administration” means how things are run, the way things operate.  “The fullness of times” means when time has been fulfilled, when history has been completed.  God has a design for how he is going to run things for eternity.  Whatever God does in time, in history, in our lives, is the working out of that plan for eternity.  He is moving everything toward that goal.  Jesus said : “The Kingdom of God is forcefully advancing” (Matt 11:12, 1984 NIV).

God’s design for eternity, the way he’s going to run things forever is this: “the summing up of all things in Christ.”  “Summing up” is the Greek word for writing down an arithmetic equation.  When the Ephesian people added numbers they wrote them in a column like we do.  We put the answer at the bottom of the column.  They put the answer at the top.  All the factors of the problem were gathered under the answer.  This is the divine design: all things, “things in the heavens and things on the earth,” brought together under the Lordship of Jesus.  Everything restored and reunited in a right relationship with Jesus the Messiah, the King.  That’s how God is going to run eternity.

God made creation – the entire universe – a cohesive, harmonious whole to be run by humans expressing his likeness and reflecting his glory.  It’s been disrupted, torn apart, disintegrated by our rebellious self-centeredness, our sin.  That’s why we have religions and philosophies and worldviews without the presence of God.  That’s why we have cliques and conflicts, wars and terrorism, betrayal and revenge, racism and misogyny, liberalism and conservatism.  God plans to get everything back together, unified, integrated.  He has put Jesus in control to bring it all back together and there will be harmony and wholeness forever.  As the Lord promised through Isaiah, “They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (11:9).

Jesus will bring all people into perfect unity.  Revelation 7:9 describes a crowd so large it can’t be counted, made up of people “from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne” of God loudly praising the Lord together.  That’s not just for the future in Heaven.  It’s now.  Galatians 3:28 says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ” (emphasis mine).  God plans to overcome all of the separations we invent, all of the barriers we put up between us, and bring all of us together in peace.  The divine design is for every race and culture and gender and age and financial status and personality to come together in Christ.

His plan is even more personal.  God plans to put you back together.  He has an elaborate, stunning design in mind for you.  He plans to make you complete, integrated, whole in Christ.  Things you have done and things others have done have disrupted you, disintegrated you, pulled you apart.  Jesus is the answer to pull you back together.  The wrong you’ve done that has shattered your soul can be forgiven and the pieces reunited.  The rips in your psychological makeup caused by indifference and abuse can be healed by God’s pure love.  All those directions you’re running, all those irons in the fire, can be unified into a single purpose.  The fears and disappointments and losses that have blown your world apart can be corralled and rebuilding can take place.  God kindly intends to bring wholeness and harmony to you.

We try to do that ourselves, don’t we?  We try to design ourselves.  And we end up looking like a painting by Picasso. When we design ourselves we become distorted, misshapen.  Everything may have a place but not the right place.

When God puts us together, we’ll be different.  The pattern, the model, for what we will be like is Jesus himself.  “When he appears,” John wrote, “we will be like Him” (1 John 3:2).  The transformation of our inner person – our character, knowledge, beliefs, will, and desires – will be completed.  We will be restored to God’s image and be able to rule over creation as his partners.

So set your mind – set your dreams, your goals, your plans – on the beauty and wholeness of Jesus – his likeness is the design that God has in mind for you.

God has a purpose for the design, an intended result for “the summing up of all things in Christ.”  Ephesians 1:11-12 –

“In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.”

God’s purpose for putting creation back together is not just for us.  We have an inheritance in it, we have been given a portion to share in it but it’s not just for our own well-being.  It’s not merely so we will feel better.  It’s not just so we will be free from suffering and pain.  It’s not merely so we will have better self-esteem and be happy.  If we concentrate on those things we’ll continue to be self-centered, and self-centeredness is what rebellion against God and the resulting disruption is all about.

The purpose for God putting us back together is so we will “be to the praise of His glory.”  Our very existence will praise the greatness of God.  What we are and what we do will honor and exalt our loving and powerful Lord.  When God puts you together according to his design you will be to the praise of his glory forever!

Here’s the divine design, God’s plan for the universe, God’s plan for you and me: everything put back together under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  Jesus himself called this the Kingdom of God.  He made it very clear that the Kingdom is present and available for us now.  He taught that the Kingdom is like yeast in dough – it’s gradually moving toward God’s planned goal.  We can and should live by the divine design now.  God putting everything together in Christ is the standard to evaluate all your opinions and preferences.  This is the blueprint to determine your dreams and decisions.  This is the compass for the direction of your life.  This is the anchor for all the confusion and chaos of your problems and responsibilities.  This is the map for all your relationships.  This is the model for your very identity.  This is the framework for abundant life.     

When we remodeled our kitchen, others helped do the work, such as cabinet builders and installers, countertop makers and installers.  But they had to keep to our design.  They didn’t develop their own; they didn’t envision what they wanted our kitchen to look like.  They accepted and committed to – you might even say surrendered to – our plan.  That’s the way we must be with God’s design.  He invites us to join him, partner with him, working to accomplish his plan.