What is the plan of God?

From the beginning, God has had a single plan for human history, first revealed in Genesis 3:15 as the promise of a Redeemer who would crush Satan and rescue fallen man (Gen. 3:14–15). Christ's death “according to the Scriptures” fulfilled that plan, which the Old Testament had pictured all along (1 Cor. 15:3–4). Though God's plan is constant, its revelation is gradual and progressive, unfolding differently across the dispensations (Heb. 1:1–2). The plan is also personal: each believer has, in the book's words, “a personal destiny in His plan,” a race that requires “individual orientation to and pursuit of the plan of God,” carried out through grace, not self-will. Satan's strategy in the unseen spiritual war is to move believers “out of line with the plan of God” through pressure, accusation, and suffering; staying oriented to grace and the Word is how a believer stays inside it.