GOD’S DECREES
Westminster
Shorter Catechism 7
Quest. What
are the decrees of God?
Ans. The decrees of God are His eternal purpose, according to the counsel of His will, whereby, for His own glory, He hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.
Introduction
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God’s
Purpose
It’s a
wonderful thing just to think about the decrees of God. For it gives the
Christian a sense of peace and restful assurance. Think about it, God has an
eternal purpose. For that’s what God’s decrees are, His eternal purpose.
And if God has an eternal purpose, then everything that comes to pass must be
acting according to that purpose. Therefore, what might perhaps look something
like chaos to us is actually the outworking of God’s decrees.
Now, to
be sure, we find it hard to get a handle on the bad things that happen. We have
trouble understanding evil in God’s creation. We have a hard time understanding
suffering, especially the suffering of men like Job. However, though we might
find these things difficult to comprehend, we know that these things
happen because God has decreed them. So, at the end of the day, the Christian
puts his head on his fluffy pillow and goes to sleep knowing that God has
everything under His sovereign control.
The
Christian has the peace that transcends all understanding when he trusts in God
entirely, like a little child trusting his dad. So, when you consider the
decrees of God you are confronted with the fact that everything has
purpose. You might put it like this: If God has foreordained whatever comes to
pass, then what we see happening around us is God expressing His mind! Hence
reality for us today is something that God thought about in eternity. As James
says in Acts 15:18, “Known to God from eternity are all His works.”
Cornelius Van Til says it like this,
God is the creator of every fact. There are no brute facts. Thus God’s thought is placed back of every fact … It follows from this that there is purpose within the universe because the triune God has a purpose for the universe. Every purpose within the universe must, in the last analysis, be referred to God. Without this reference to God, no purpose within the universe has meaning…[1
Let me
mention one of those lines again with emphasis: “There is purpose within
the universe because the triune God has purpose for the
universe.”
So, the
thinking Christian is comforted by the knowledge that God gives all things
purpose. But, not only that, but he is also brought comfort by the fact that
the purpose for the universe and everything within the universe
is God’s glory. The thinking Christian delights in the idea of God the Creator,
Redeemer, and Sanctifier is being glorified. He knows that Man’s chief end is
to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
When the
Christian, like David in Psalm 8, looks at God’s handiwork, even His creation,
he just has to gush forth the words, “O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is Your
name in all the earth!” (Psa. 8:1 & 9). But isn’t it easier to
glorify God when we look at His creation as a block, i.e., in its unity, than
it is when we view it in its plurality?
When we
think, “In the beginning the Triune God, He created the heavens and the earth”
– when we think about it as a whole – we go ‘Wow!’ But then we start to get a
bit bogged down in the seemingly infinite amount of particulars of the heavens
and the earth. We start to lose it a bit when we focus on the many-ness
aspect of the uni-verse, tending to forget about its one-ness, (it’s di-verse-ity
as opposed to it uni-verse-ity). We tend to remember that God has a purpose for
the universe. But we tend to forget that He also has a purpose within
the universe.
You’ll
remember last time when we looked at WSC Q&A 6, which deals with the
Trinity, we saw among other things how the creation reflects the Oneness and
the Many-ness of God. We used phrases to describe this reflection of God in His
creation, such as Unity and Diversity. Well, I put it to you that the
Christian, who seeks to be balanced in his thinking, should seek to keep a
proper balance between the One and the Many principle in creation.
Because
of our finite minds we find it easier to concentrate on the one-ness aspect of
creation as opposed to its many-ness. This, no doubt, is for the simple reason
that it’s easier for the finite mind to handle than the seeming infiniteness of
the diversity in creation. To cut the long story short, thinking Christians tend
not to worry too much about where the creation as a whole is going. We simply
trust in God that He’ll take care of it. But, when it comes to what we see
happening around us, well sometimes that’s a different story – especially if
we’re right in the middle of it!
We begin
to lose it when many things come upon us as one tangled mass.
Or to use the common vernacular, When everything seems to go wrong for us all
at once. I’m saying that we can handle things better one at a time than a
million things at once. I believe this idea is encapsulated in the old adage,
“The Devil is always in the detail.” It’s here, in the detail, in the
particulars, that we may begin to lose our sense of purpose – which is to
glorify God and enjoy Him. Instead of glorifying Him and enjoying Him we tend
to forget about Him and start to worry.
Jesus
brings God’s purpose down to a level to which we can easily relate when He says,
“Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the
ground apart from your Father’s will. But the very hairs of your head are all
numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matt.
10:29-31). So, we see that God has decreed from all eternity where and when a
sparrow will fall to the ground. And from all eternity He has decreed how many
hairs you will have on your head.
Look! God
has had it all worked out since forever. You and I don’t even notice a hair
falling out of our head… Hang on, I’ll start again, you and I don’t even notice
when a sparrow dies. A wee bird dies in some dark forest somewhere in the
middle of nowhere and God, as it were, thinks to Himself, “All things are going
according to My plan.” How does God know it’s all going according to His plan? Well,
it’s because He has decreed all things that happen from before the foundation
of the world. All things – all things that come to pass have purpose, because
all things work according to the counsel of God’s will.
So we see then that it is God who gives creation, and everything taking place in it, purpose, i.e., meaning. Remove God from the equation and you unlock the dead bolt of purpose and open the door to let in despair. So, thinking-Christians find a great deal of comfort in what the Bible teaches about what God has decreed or determined to do from all eternity. They know He’s working all things together for good, because He has decreed to do so. To quote the first couple of lines of an old hymn, God is working His purpose out, as year succeeds to year.[2]
God’s
Program
If a
person has a purpose for something, then he also must have a program.
Funk and Wagnalls Standard Desk Dictionary says.
Program – 1. A performance or show, esp.
one given at a scheduled time on TV or radio. 2. A printed announcement or
schedule of events, esp. one for a theatrical performance. 3. Any prearranged,
proposed, or desired plan or course of proceedings.
If we take any of those the Dictionary definitions of the word program we could apply it to God’s decrees. Take the first one: A performance or show, esp. one given at a scheduled time on TV or radio.
So, the
projector room is in eternity. Is the projector projecting onto the
canvas of TIME? No, even time itself is being projected! And the movie we’re
all watching is HISTORY. Vick Lockman, to help us understand what we’re looking
at, quotes these three verses of Scripture: “All things were made by Him…” John
1:3; “I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass…” Isaiah 46:11; “I act and
who can reverse it?” Isaiah 43:13 (NAS).
So, back
to our dictionary definition: The performance or show we’re watching, i.e.,
history was scheduled by God in eternity to be shown in time.
And what
about the second dictionary definition of the word “program”? A printed
announcement or schedule of events, esp. one for a theatrical performance.
How about we use what the Apostle John wrote about Jesus to illustrate this, “And
truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are
not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus
is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His
name” (John 20:30-31).
The Older
Testament is the printed announcement that the Messiah, the Christ, was
coming to lay down His life for His people and set up His kingdom throughout
all the earth. The Gospels and the Book of Acts are the printed record of some
of these events, i.e., Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension, the
beginning of His kingdom Come. And the Epistles and so forth explain in great detail
the meaning of these events, as well as announcing to us things still to come.
But to sum it up, Jesus began announcing His kingdom by saying: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe the Gospel” (Mark 1:15). What is the Gospel, if it is not an announcement of something, even Good News? But when was the Gospel or the “Good News” formulated? Well, you’d have to say that the Gospel was prepared in the “newsroom”, the Good News Room, of eternity, wouldn’t you? For Revelation 13:8 speaks of “…the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”
This
“Lamb” is Jesus Christ who was slain in space and time over 2,000 years ago at
Calvary. The Apostle Peter speaks of the same Lamb in these words, “…with the
precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. He
indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in
these last times for you…” (1 Pet. 1:19-20). Hang on to that, Jesus was foreordained
before the foundation of the world to die for our sins.
Now,
let’s hear the Catechism again: The decrees of God are His eternal purpose,
according to the counsel of His will, whereby, for His own glory, He hath
foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. So, the Bible then, is the printed
announcement or schedule of events, for Christ’s performance on the world
theatre.
And, what
about our third dictionary definition of program? Any prearranged, proposed,
or desired plan or course of proceedings. Did God in eternity arrange and
propose a desired plan or course of proceedings? Well, He arranged for His Son,
the Word, to become flesh. As Paul says to the Galatians, “But when the
fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman…” (Gal.
4:4). As the Apostle John says, “He was in the beginning with God” (John
1:2). And then, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld
His glory…” (John 1:14).
And why
did the Word become flesh and give Himself as a Lamb to be slain? Well, among
other things, it was to redeem a people chosen by the Father in eternity. As
the Apostle Paul says to the Ephesians “Just as He chose us in Him before the
foundation of the world… having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus
Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of
the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. In Him we
have the redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to
the richness of His grace … having made known to us the mystery of His will,
according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself…” (Eph. 1:4-9 contracted).
So, we
see then that we, the redeemed, were chosen by God before the foundation of the
world. We were predestined according to the good pleasure of His will for His
own glory. We were redeemed through the shedding of Christ’s blood. And that
God had purposed to make known to us the mystery of it all. This “making known”
is of course the announcing of the Gospel.
The
theologian Charles Hodge says it like this, “The Gospel … has definite meaning
in the Scriptures. It means the announcement of the plan of salvation though
Christ, and the offer of salvation to everyone who believes.”[4]
So, the
Gospel then, is the announcement of God’s proposed and prearranged desired plan
of salvation. The theologian Louis Berkhof puts it like this, “The Gospel is
nothing but the revelation of the Covenant of Grace.”[5]
So, we
see then, that the Gospel is not something God made up as He went along. It’s
not as if God said, “I wish I’d known that that slippery serpent was going to
deceive Eve! If only I had thought about it beforehand that Adam – and all
Mankind in him – was going to rebel against Me!”
God
decreed these things to happen. Whatever comes to pass comes to pass because
God foreordained it. That’s what Westminster Shorter Catechism Q&A 7 is
teaching us. Perhaps the verse that sums up all of this the best is Romans 8:28,
“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to
those who are the called according to His purpose.”
It’s God
who’s working all things together for good. And it’s all for those who are “the
called according to His purpose”. Therefore, God has a purpose from eternity.
And we are the called according to that purpose, which comes to pass in space
and time.
In this
fascinating subject of God’s decrees, let us mention another couple of related
things. God doesn’t announce all His decrees to us. The Scriptures are
His revealed will. However, God also has a secret, i.e., what the theologians
call God’s “Decretive Will.” “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but
those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that
we may do all the words of this law” (Deut. 29:29).
We don’t know His decretive will because we don’t know what’s going to happen moment from moment. If we knew we were going to crash the car we wouldn’t have driven it – that kind of thing. There are everyday events that are going to happen of which we have no knowledge, at least not until after they have happened. In simple terms, we only know God’s decretive or secret will after it has happened (but even then, we know only in part, not exhaustively!) God foreordains whatever comes to pass. Therefore, if you want to know His decretive will, wait till after it happens!
Conclusion
Our
Catechism answer informs us that God has foreordained whatever comes to pass
for His own glory. There’s a verse of Scripture in Numbers in which the Lord
says, “But truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the
LORD…” (Num. 14:21). And Solomon says, “Blessed be the LORD God, the God of
Israel, who only does wondrous things! And blessed be His glorious name
forever! And let the whole earth be filled with His glory” (Psa. 72:18-19). And
Isaiah and Habakkuk both say, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge
of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.”
The hymn
writer Arthur Campbell Ainger has put this thought into verse: God is
working His purpose out / As year succeeds to year; / God is working His
purpose out, / And the time is drawing near--- / Nearer and nearer draws the
time--- / The time that shall surely be, / When the earth shall be filled /
With the glory of God, / As the waters cover the sea.
Much,
much more could be said about God’s Decrees. We didn’t even really get into the
doctrine of election! But, be encouraged, our God is working out His Eternal
purpose. Everything is going according to His program.
“For His
dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom is from generation to
generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; He does
according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the
earth. No one can restrain His hand or say to Him, ‘What have you done?’” (Dan.
4:34b-35).
[1] Greg L Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings
& Analysis, (Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, Phillipsburg, New
Jersey, 1998), 357-8.
[2]
Arthur Campbell Ainger, 1841- 1919.
[3]
Vic Lockman, The Westminster Shorter Catechism with Cartoons, (Yreka,
California, 1996)/
[4] Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. 3, (Eerdmans,
Grand Rapids, Michigan, Reprint 1981), 550.
[5] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, (The
Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, Scotland, Reprint, 2000), 279.
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