Although Satan has a cleverly thought-out plan, God has a divinely wrought-out purpose! God’s purpose antedated Satan’s plan. God’s purpose anticipated Satan’s plan. God’s purpose annulled Satan’s plan. God’s purpose was formed in the eternity of the past and reaches into the eternity of the future. “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.”

Christ Jesus was the One through whom God’s purpose was to be fulfilled. He constantly spoke of Himself as one who had been sent from Heaven by the Father to do the Father’s will, not His own. He did not belong to earth but Heaven and was here only to fulfill a special mission.

John 6:38, 40

³⁸ “For I came down from Heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me.

⁴⁰ And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”

Jesus renounced any part in, or relationship to, the satanic system called “the world.”

John 17:16

“They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”

John 14:30

“For the prince of the world cometh: and he hath nothing in me.”

In fact, He declared that this satanic system had an unchangeable attitude toward Him — that of unrelenting hate, which would ultimately expend itself in crucifying Him.

John 15:18

“If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you.”

John 15:20

“Remember the word that I said unto you: ‘The servant is not greater than his lord.’ If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.”

There is nothing in Scripture to indicate that God makes any attempt to change or convert “the world.” The Lord Jesus frankly acknowledges that “the whole world lieth in the evil one” (1 John 5:19) and is under Satan’s control.

God’s purpose in Christ is to call men out of the world: to emancipate them from love for the world, and even to crucify them unto the world and it unto them.

John 15:19

“If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because . . . I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.”

1 John 2:15

“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”

Galatians. 6:14

“But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”

To the spiritual mind, Scripture makes unmistakably clear God’s purpose in this age. It is to call out individuals, here and there, from all nations, kindreds, peoples, and tongues, who, through faith in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross, become a very part of Him and He of them. This living organism He calls His body, the Church.

Colossians 1:18

“And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.”

Christ’s purpose in this age is to call out of the world and into union with Himself those “chosen in him before the foundation of the world,” who become a holy, heavenly people fit to be members of the body of which the holy Christ in Heaven is the Head.

Ephesians 1:4

“According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.”

Ephesians 1:22-23

^22 “And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, ²³ Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.”

1 Corinthians 12:27

“Ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.”

From God’s viewpoint, “the world” and “the Church” are exact opposites. “The world” is a vast organization of the whole mass of unbelieving mankind under Satan’s leadership. “The Church” is an invisible organism of all true believers under Christ’s Headship. These two are in conflict on the earth and are pitted against each other as the instruments of Satan and of Christ in their attempt to get and keep possession and control of men.

How does God win a response to His appeal to men to come out of the world and into fellowship with Christ? Does He have an associate in this task? We shall see in future writings that this is the work of the Holy Spirit who kindles life anew in the human spirit and then comes Himself to dwell in it.

Ezekiel 36:26-27

^26 “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you…

²⁷ And I will put my Spirit within you.”

Romans 8:9

“But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so it be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.”

Source: “Life on the Highest Plane” by Ruth Paxson

Dear Lord, thank You for revealing Your purpose for this age. I pray You will give each reader a heart to receive this truth and respond to You.