By Riley Nelson
The gospel plan of salvation given to us by God shows the beauty of God’s design and plan for His creation. When man was created and placed in the Garden of Eden, God’s beautiful plan of creation was completed. Man giving in to Satan turned this beautiful scene into a wicked and ugly one. Sin caused God’s crowning accomplishment; man, to go from a childlike innocence to that of guilt ridden fearful beings. When God came looking for them, they hid themselves. God could have killed man then and there and would have been just in doing so, but His love and compassion for man showed forth. He chose to send the Redeemer to earth for all of mankind. Jesus was called so because of His mission on earth, “And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21).
When we study how people in the first century obeyed the gospel, we see the beauty of God’s plan concerning man’s salvation. In the book of Acts we find several accounts of how people became Christians. It can be seen that they were not all at the same place in their spiritual development as they were taught what to do. Some already believed Jesus was the Son of God, yet had not turned from their old ways to follow Him. Such were those on the day of Pentecost, as when they asked Peter what they had to do to be saved, they already believe Jesus was the Christ from listening to Peter’s sermon. This is why he told them to “repent and be baptized for the remission of their sins”. Others such as the Ethiopian noble man (Acts 8) had to be taught about Jesus.
Next week we will look more closely at the beauty of God’s plan of salvation.