This article, The Plan of God C is the third dealing with this topic and the first in the series, Fundamentals of the Faith.
Birth___1_____Salvation_____2________Death______3________
Review: Phase 1 & Phase 2
The plan of God can be broken down into 3 phases so that we can understand what God is doing at each stage of our lives and what He expects of us at each stage. We have discussed Phase 1, which begins at birth and ends at our new birth. Phase 1 is focused on God bringing us to saving faith in Jesus Christ. First we wonder if God exists and then we ask who He is and how we come into a relationship with Him. When we believe that He exists, He sends the gospel so that we can be saved through faith in the gospel of Christ.
When we believe the gospel, we enter into Phase 2 of God’s plan called the Christian life. From salvation until we leave this life at death, we live out Phase 2 as God’s children and representatives. The focus of this phase is growth from spiritual childhood to spiritual adulthood. In spiritual adulthood we gain the inner strength to faithfully endure the adversities of life by trusting the promises of God. As mature believers we begin taking the adult responsibilities of edifying one another and witnessing to the world by sharing the gospel. The mature Christian receives spiritual blessings in time that equate to eternal rewards in heaven. It is our experience in the eternal state with Christ that is the focus of Phase 3 and the rest of this article.
Phase 3
Phase 3 begins the moment we leave this life through death or rapture and extends throughout all eternity. Phase 3, which is life with God in the next life never ends. This article will discuss what happens when we enter Phase 3. We are immediately transferred to the throne room with Christ, we will experience an evaluation and then we will receive our resurrection body with or without rewards.
Face to Face
God designed us with a body, soul and spirit. The body is a house that holds our soul and spirit. Paul calls it an earthly tent that we will shed at the moment of physical death. When the body dies, the soul and spirit of the believer continue to live. At the moment of death, we are immediately taken to be with Christ.
2 Corinthians 5:6-8 Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord– 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight– 8 we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.
While we remain alive in our earthly body, we are away from the Lord. When we leave our earthly body behind, we go home to be with the Lord. In what form or state we exist at this point is unclear. We have shed our earthly body and have yet to be given a body like Christ. It makes sense that we will be given an interim body of some kind while we wait on the resurrection where we will receive our resurrection bodies. Regardless, our souls will leave Phase 2 and find ourselves face to face with the Lord, waiting on the Judgment Seat of Christ.
Judgment of the Believer
At the moment of the rapture, all Church-Age believers will be gathered together in the presence of Christ. This point in time coincides with the beginning of the Tribulation on the earth, which will last for 7 years. Sometime within this 7-year period, Christ will perform an evaluation of every believer’s earthly life called the Judgment Seat of Christ. This evaluation will examine all of our works as Christians and expose our motivation for the good that we did. Good works performed by the power of the Spirit to glorify God will be deemed as truly good and will render a reward. Good works performed through human ability to promote ourselves will be seen as “human good” and will not be rewarded. This evaluation process is described as a fire where human good will be burned up and true good will remain (1Cor 3:12-15). When this judgment of our works is finished we will receive our rewards that will last for all eternity. Our eternal status will be determined by the way we lived in time, emphasizing the importance of living for the Lord now.
Resurrection Body
Our earthly bodies inherited the corruption of Adam’s sin so they get sick, grow old and die. At death, our perishable body goes to the grave where it decays back into dust from whence it came (Gen 3:19). At our resurrection, we are given a new body that will be like the body Christ received, that is imperishable (Phil 3:21). This body will never get sick, grow old, never hurt and never die. This new body will be physical, able to be touched (Lk24:38-40) and able to eat (Lk24:41-43). It will also have new abilities like the capacity to move through walls (Jn20:26) and the ability to fly (Act 1:9). The resurrection body will be or new home forever and is the mansion Jesus described In Jn 14:2. It will give us the capacity to serve the Lord in the eternal stage that awaits us in the next life.
Summary
God has a plan to bring us to salvation through faith in Christ in the first phase. In the second phase, He changes us into the image of Jesus in our hearts through spiritual growth and offers us the privilege of serving Him with or earthly bodies. As we trust and obey His will in the second phase of the plan, we receive temporal blessings that build eternal rewards. At our physical death, we pass into the presence of the Lord where we will remain with Him forever. It is in this eternal state that we receive our rewards and a resurrection body like His.
These 3 phases of God’s plan give us an outline of our personal history from birth, to death and beyond. This big picture look allows us to know God’s emphasis for each phase of life so that we can align our efforts with His for maximum effectiveness. If you are reading this now, you are most likely in Phase 2 and the emphasis is growth through knowledge and application of God’s word. Be Faithful!
