We can’t support and execute a plan if we don’t know it. We can’t align with one worldview while also holding to a competing one. Ultimately our lives must follow a single plan, and we had better hope we don’t make a mistake.

Our passage from 1 Corinthians this week pointed out how often our idea of wisdom is so different than God’s. “God chose the foolish things of the world… God chose the weak things of the world… God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things…” (1Cor 1:27-28). The fascinating part is, God’s plan to choose lowly and plain people like us - the not very wise, powerful, or noble -  was not just a plan He imposed on us, the sinners, but this was the plan He applied to His own Son, the God-Man.

God, when He thought of the very best plan that would bring Him the most glory (with His infinite wisdom and knowledge, with every option, resource, and possibility at His fingertips), His brilliant plan was…to send Jesus as a baby to a young unknown couple to be born in a manger. He was born in a more vulnerable state than any of us. Most of us were at least born in a hospital or at home, where things were clean and any necessary supplies were readily available. He did not have a notable upbringing. In fact, not much is even known about it. His public ministry was only three years long. When we think of any of the spheres of influence God has placed us in, whether at work, at home, or in our community, three years does not seem long enough to make a significant difference. We typically see growth and change in families, churches, and businesses more in terms of decades and generations. Jesus never lobbied for an influential position in politics. He had enthusiastic but ill-equipped followers, and even more enemies. He lived as a nomad with no place to call home, landed in an illegal midnight trial that turned into his execution overnight with no media attention or recourse, his life ended at the age of 33. We would grieve for anyone who would die so young and for the many more years that could have been.

If we were to come up with a plan for how God would save the world, how He would love His people and redeem them, would we choose this scenario? Or would we look for a grander entrance, with a more international platform, more years and more opportunities to reach more people? Instead, this was God’s plan A, God’s best way: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:5-8).

What God’s plan produced was real wisdom. Not the worldly wisdom that gives a lot of hopeful promises, that has a lot of strings attached, that is ever-changing and never fully arriving at a destination. His wisdom actually produced. It accomplished. It is a finished work. In Christ we now possess the righteousness of God. We now have an inheritance. We now are judicially and legally fully justified and adopted. Jesus has been highly exalted. It is past tense. Nothing is hanging in the balance for potential collapse and failure.

Therefore, we can and must take confidence in God’s plan that He applied as equally to His Son as He did to us. We see so many problems within us and around us, and often feel helpless to bring about the change that would be right and good. We lack wisdom, we lack influence, we lack power and position. Yet, that was the plan all along. As the passage from Philippians says, we need to have this mind that was also Christ’s - to be emptied, to be a servant, to be humble, to become obedient to the point of death. What a relief this can be, to know that whatever station of life we find ourselves in, that is exactly where God has us for now, and Jesus was as lowly, or even more so than we are. He continues to be the example for us to follow even in this, not commanding and ordaining something from afar. He is a High Priest that can sympathize.

This is not a mistake; this is the plan. Our job is simply to be faithful in all the little things, and if He wills to bring bigger responsibilities, to be faithful in those too. What is being accomplished by this plan? We have no reason to boast in ourselves. It is not of us or our cleverness. Our wisdom is not information, but a person, Jesus Christ. And with Him, He has given us all things. This is how He gets all the glory, and we get all the joy in Him.

Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.