Written when I was seventeen

This is the ultimate Plan: that we are loved by the great Lover through the most perfect plan of salvation.

And part of the plan is that receiving this salvation is not up to us, ("So receiving God's promise is not up to us. We can't get it by choosing it or working hard for it. God will show mercy to anyone He chooses." Romans 9:16) In light of all the Word tells us about this it is evident that Romans chapter nine hits the center of this idea by telling us that we have either been destined to be objects for glory, or objects for wrath, and that it's all according to the ultimate plan of a perfect display of love for the chosen Elect, who are the objects for glory, ("Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, and another for common use? What if God, although wiling to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon Vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us." Romans 9:21-24) It's not about how He wanted "perfect love" through giving us the choice of whether to choose Him or not. No, that's shallow thinking and not a word from the Bible supports it in light of how the Word itself says things like, "And now that you have found God (or, should I say, now that God has found you.)" (Galatians 4:9) And how about comparing the idea of free-will to verses like Psalm 40:6, Jeremiah 24:7, 32:40, Ezekiel 14:9, and 1 Kings 22:23? It seems to me like every Christian has been taught that we choose Him, and that all that happens in the world at the hands of man was man's own free-will. What happens when teaching like that infests the Church is that we butcher, we murder, we throw in the trash the glory of the incredible plan that God has set up for the Elect. He brought us as low as we could go so that He could magnify His great love for us by then bringing us as high as we could go. This couldn't be done without sinful natures in us and all around us, and that couldn't be done without Lucifer's fall as well as man's.

This Plan is a love story- the best love story that could ever be. And this was the Plan for us: to be rotten through and through with the rot of sin and stench of spiritual death, wicked and repulsive, utterly detestable, thoroughly corrupt, without one thing good in us but everything evil... and then to be found out by the Eternal Heart, made as clean and pure as freshly fallen snow, blameless, spotless, holy, Sons and Daughters of God, clothed in Righteousness, and made one with the only begotten Son of God who is God Himself, being given God's very own Spirit and divine nature, (2 Peter 1:4). We have a place in the One seated at the right hand of the Father and the privilege of suffering for Christ, of displaying His love to others, and of not only participating in the abasement of His enemies, but also that of judging the world and the angels, (1 Corinthians 6:2-3). And did you know that the angels live to serve the Elect? "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation?" (Hebrews 1:14)

The Bible makes this ultimate plan as clear as day to the ones whom God has awoken spiritually to the depth of their depravity and to the height they are given in Christ. A greater love story shall never be written or lived out, for it is the very best that God's infinite power can accomplish. It is the one love story, the only love story, and it shall continue into eternity.