Before The Foundation of World

By Tammy Lacock

“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 1:4 KJV)

In this week’s podcast, Warren Litzman’s goal is to make clear that there is only one true gospel to us and for us today, although two gospels are currently circulating in the world.

Only Apostle Paul was raised up by the resurrected Christ to bring us the true gospel for today. Therefore, it’s important to dive into the Apostle Paul’s epistles to understand this gospel. There’s no better place to start than in Ephesians 1:4 where Paul says the gospel for us today was planned by God before the world was created, which also means before He began Israel and before Christ’s earthly ministry.

Paul’s gospel is one of grace. In fact, he coins the phrase “dispensation of grace” as the period of time we are living in now (Ephesians 3:2). Paul’s gospel of grace is simple. Before the foundation of the world, God’s plan was to have children—new creatures in Christ, by His Son’s death, burial, and resurrection. God chose every human to be in Christ. There is nothing we can do to be saved because Christ did the work on the cross. We need only to believe (Acts 16:31). There’s no gospel to Gentiles in the Old Testament or before Paul’s epistles. When Israel rejected Jesus Christ as their Messiah, Christ told Paul to take this new gospel of grace to the Gentiles. However, man has commingled the gospel of law, given to Israel—referenced in four-fifths of the Bible—and Paul’s grace gospel. After Christ’s death and resurrection, Peter and the apostles were still preaching Christ’s kingdom message of salvation by faith and works, which Paul calls the gospel of circumcision. The same Christ Paul speaks of in God’s plan “before the foundation of the world” raised up Paul—and only Paul—to bring humanity a new gospel, that of uncircumcision. This gospel overrides the law gospel in this dispensation of grace.

By God’s grace, we were chosen to be in Christ. Warren Litzman’s purpose and calling has been to explain to believers exactly what the Apostle Paul means by this. The moment we believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, by His death and resurrection, the sin-nature (passed down to us through the curse of Adam by Satan) has been literally uprooted within our spirits and replaced by God’s incorruptible Seed, Christ, making us one spirit in Him. This is what it means to be born again.

“But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.” (1 Corinthians 6:17).

Paul calls this the “revelation of the mystery” because until Christ revealed this new gospel to him, it was a mystery (Ephesians 3: 3-7). Yet, he tells us, it was in God’s plan before the foundation of the world. Let us not be confused. Christ literally living in every believer is the only gospel for today. This was the only way God would finally complete His plan to have His bona fide children, with His divine nature, living in His house and loving him back. Not by our works, but by the perfect love of His Son in us.

By His grace, His very life within us, we are saved and reconciled to Him.

“For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.” (Romans 5:10-11).