Mayor used to be one of my kids’ favorite games. They created an imaginary world, complete with jobs, families and community responsibilities. They staked out areas of the basement as their homes and businesses. They cut up hundreds of slips of paper as currency. It was a glorious, wonderful mess.
You’ve probably known kids to play let’s pretend, making up scenarios and responses as they go along. Sometimes it’s a pretty accurate reflection of “real” life, and sometimes it’s complete nonsense. But at the beginning of the adventure, there’s always some divvying up of roles. You were the mom last time; it’s my turn. Or I have a store and I have to work a lot.
Now imagine for a minute that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in heaven, before the grand adventure of the world began, had a conversation about who would do what. And Jesus said, “I’ll be the Savior.”
Jesus chose to be the Savior. Now, I don’t really understand how omniscience works. At no point is God unaware of some piece of knowledge or information and that’s more than I can wrap my head around. But I do know that Jesus chose His role – it wasn’t forced on Him. In full knowledge of what it would entail – accusation, betrayal, crucifixion – He chose love for you at great cost, even before He chose to make you.
“Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.” Ephesians 1:4 MSG
God is not at the mercy of our actions or our circumstances. He’s not scrambling to adjust or pivoting to respond. He is steadfast. His plans and purposes are eternal – from before the beginning He loved us and desired good things for us and chose to do all that would be necessary to make it happen. It pleases Him to be the Savior because He wants us to be saved.