Cream of Bacon Soup

    Rachel was cutting out coupons the other day and came across Campbell’s new cream of bacon soup. Cream of bacon soup!? When I heard that, I thought, “Why haven’t we thought of that before!?” Could you imagine being the man or woman who woke up one morning and said, “Wow! Cream of bacon soup!” We’ve had cream of chicken soup. Cream of mushroom soup. Cream of broccoli soup. We even have cream of celery soup; why, I don’t know. But why hasn’t mankind ever thought up cream of bacon soup until 2018? Who thought up cream of asparagus soup before they thought of cream of bacon soup?

    You know, man could not have and did not imagine God’s plan of salvation. When you look at religions created by man, you see that man thinks to pay for the penalty of sin, you have to flagellate yourself. Think about the religions of the world: Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism. These and other religions teach that to atone for sins, you must be punished; you must punish yourself. Even in America, when man thinks up his own “plan of salvation,” it comes out to something like trying to “balance the scales” of justice. As long as your good works outweigh your bad works, you can be saved. That’s man’s idea of salvation.

    The problem is that you will never know if your good works “outweigh” the bad. If one commits murder, how many poor people does he have to feed before he atones for the murder? You can never know. This illustrates what man imagines when he thinks up a “plan of salvation.”

    Which illustrates how unique the real plan of salvation is. It is outside of man’s thinking and imagination. No wonder the apostles had trouble accepting everything Jesus was teaching them. A crucified Savior? God in the flesh, taking upon Himself, the sins of man? Who could have thought of that?

    Paul dealt with this type of thinking in 1 Corinthians 2:1-9: “And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory; but just as it is written, “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, And which have not entered the heart of man, All that God has prepared for those who love Him.”

    Let us be thankful, very thankful, for the plan of salvation as God has revealed it to us through the Spirit’s words (1 Cor. 2:10-14) and not ever change one item in it. It reveals God’s wisdom.

Paul Holland