God designed the human eye to see things in perspective. Without this ability objects would be two-dimensional. They would have height and width but no depth. We would be unable to differentiate between things up close and things distant because in size they would look the same. When we were children we drew or painted naturally, in a naïve style, until we were taught how to draw things in perspective.
God is before, through and beyond time, and eternity has no starting-point, horizon line or vanishing point. Without the Lord Jesus Christ, who is “the image of the invisible God,” we would be incapable of perceiving God’s will, much less doing it. So, to enable us to gain a perspective on His divine plan, God set a scriptural starting-point in the expression, “From the beginning (or foundation) of the world.” All future events were foreknown by God before the beginning of time.
From our limited span of time we can grasp things only by seeing them from the divine perspective (Romans 8:28-30). We do not know what’s up ahead, but God does! “Known unto God are all his works, from the beginning of the world.” (Acts 15:18)
Time is a road on which we walk and along which things happen that were not foreseen (unless prophetically revealed). God “created us in Christ” for good works (deeds), knowing we would “walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). Peter did one such good work at the Beautiful Gate of the temple while on his way to worship (Acts 3).
God foreknew in eternity the works we would do during our lifetime. We need to walk every day in a trusting way, aware that our time here is limited to about 80 years, and that there is nothing we can do we can do to ‘make things happen’. But we can be ready, spiritually, to grasp opportunities that appear along the way; and we know that a crowded road is likely to have more opportunities than an uncrowded one.
Jesus lived only to do the will of his Father. What to us would be a lifetime of ministry was compressed into three-and-a-half very active years. Jesus saw the road he was predestined to walk on from God’s perspective. He knew that what he would do in time had been predetermined for him in eternity. So too have our works for Jesus.
The Christian life is not a time of stress-driven works but a time of spirit-led productive activity. Enjoy it!