God’s Eternal Decree

If it's true that God has the power to intervene and He has the right to intervene, but He doesn't intervene, the obvious question is, why not? If God does not intervene, it's because God chooses not to intervene. Everything that happens—the birth of a baby, a tsunami, cancer, every hair that falls from our head—is God in charge of all of that? What about salvation, for example? Some say that He's ordained everything and is in charge of every detail.

There are others who say, no, that God leaves many things up to us. Welcome to Renewing Your Mind. I'm Lee Webb. This week we're continuing our look at one of the most precise and comprehensive statements of biblical Christianity. The Westminster Confession of Faith was published in the mid-17th century, and it continues to help Christians understand and defend what they believe. Here's our teacher, Dr. R.C.

Sproul. We're going to rush ahead now in our study of the theology of the Westminster Confession and move right on to chapter 3. And chapter 3 is entitled, Of God's Eternal Decrees. And before we look at each of the individual segments of that, let's just say that that word decree is a word that we are familiar with to some degree. Every Christmas we read the Nativity story in the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke, and we read, and a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. And that was the historical occasion for Joseph and Mary returning to Bethlehem, and that's why Jesus was born in Bethlehem because both Joseph and Mary were under the domination of the Roman Empire and were subject to imperial decrees. Now a decree is a law that is enacted by some great authority such as a king or an emperor or so on.

We remember the famous play made into a movie that was called Anna and the King of Siam, otherwise known as The King and I, where Anna goes to Siam and she tries to teach the king some certain things, but he was used to exercising absolute authority over his subjects. And when he would give an edict or a decree, he would say, so let it be said, so let it be done, until he met Anna, and Anna would undo his decrees and find out that his decrees weren't all that sovereign in the final analysis. We also remember in the ancient world of the concept of the law of the Medes and the Persians, where once the law was enacted or decreed, it was without revocation.

It could no longer ever be abrogated, couldn't be changed. Well, those are ways in which we hear talk of decrees or edicts that go out, but when we talk about the decrees of God, we're talking about those things that God has sovereignly declared to be from all eternity, wherein He manifests His sovereign will by which He decrees that certain things would indeed come to pass in space and time. And whatever God decrees absolutely from all eternity, as the Bible would say, must needs come to pass, so that whatever He decrees will certainly happen and come to pass. Now in dealing with this business of the decree of God, we read in section 1 of chapter 3 this somewhat provocative introduction, where it says, God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass, colon. Don't forget that there's a colon there.

Don't gasp so deeply that you overlooked that colon because as much pressure or pain as the beginning of this statement may give you, let me promise you that after the colon there is some relief in sight. When we come to this portion of the confession, my favorite story about it has to do with the first time I ever taught the Westminster Confession. It was in a seminary many years ago, about 25 years ago, and we were dealing with chapter 3. And the week before I had announced to my students that I would be taking up the eternal decrees the following week. And so when I got the class, there were about 150 students crammed in this lecture hall.

I normally had 100 students in this class. And now the class was increased by some 50 percent because the students that were taking the class went out and dragged all their friends, and particularly their Arminian friends, and brought them to the seminary to hear the professor argue for eternal decrees. And so when I read this opening statement that God from all eternity by His most wise and holy counsel did freely and immutably, that is unchangeably, ordain whatsoever comes to pass.

That means that God decreed from eternity every single thing that ever happens in this world. And so I had these students assembled there, and I said, how many of you agree with this? And about 100 students raised their hand. Now remember, this was at a Reformed theological seminary. If I had been in any other seminary, I would have been lucky to get 10 people to raise their hand. But as it was, it was a Reformed seminary, so they had already been brainwashed somewhat into the tenets of the Reformed faith, and so they raised their hands.

They said, yeah, we believe that God eternally decrees whatsoever comes to pass. But there were 50 students who didn't raise their hand. So I went to the next question, and I said, all right, how many of you would describe yourselves as atheists?

Nobody raised their hand. And that's when I went into my Lieutenant Colombo thing, you know. It's just one thing I don't understand here, you know.

Do you mind if I ask you a personal question? I said, I asked you a minute ago if you believe that God ordains whatsoever comes to pass. You didn't say yes. I ask you if you're an atheist and you still don't say yes, how can that be? I said, because if God does not ordain every single thing that comes to pass, God is not sovereign over everything that comes to pass. And if God is not sovereign over everything that comes to pass, don't you understand God is not God? And if you don't believe that God is sovereign over everything that comes to pass, you don't believe in the God of Christianity, nor do you believe in the God of Judaism, nor do you believe in the God of Islam. Because this statement here at the beginning of the third chapter of the Westminster Confession has nothing in it that's unique to Reformed theology or to Calvinism or anything like that. It's not even uniquely Christian. It is a statement that goes hand in hand with full-bodied theism. If God is God, then He would have to be sovereign over everything that He creates and everything that takes place in history, following Augustine's qualification here, at least in some sense. And I think where we struggle with this statement is that we're struggling with the word ordain.

What do we mean? What does the Confession mean when it says that God freely, unchangeably does ordain whatsoever comes to pass? He ordains it.

Well, let's look at it this way. If God knows that tonight after class I'm going to go out and rob a store, well certainly would He know in advance that I was going to do that? Yes. We already have established that God knows in advance what we're going to do. Well, if He knows in advance what we're going to do, does He have the power to stop me, to intervene? Certainly. If I were determined immutably that I was going to go rob that store, and God was determined immutably that He was going to stop me, would He have the power to stop me?

Of course. He raises kingdoms up. He brings kingdoms down. I had a recent presidential election in the United States of America, and I said in the final analysis, God is the one who will cast the deciding vote. Because if God decrees that a certain candidate is going to be elected president, guess what, folks?

That candidate will be elected president. Now, some people actually say that, yes, God has the power to intervene and stop us from committing this crime. But then the real question is, does He have the right to intervene to stop us from doing evil?

What would you say? There are a host of professing Christians who say God can't intervene because it would be unethical for God to intervene to stop a sinner from committing sin because it would be unethical for God to do anything to violate the freedom of the creature so that even though God may want to stop this evil from happening, His hands are tied because it involves the exercise of freedom by the creature. Now, if it's a hurricane, He can intervene and stop the hurricane because He's not violating anybody's will at that point. And so there are those in the Arminian camp who say that God is morally unable to stop and intervene, and that's why things go bad. Well, I think as the sovereign ruler of all creation, not only does He have all power, but He has all authority, and He has the authority to trump the will of the creature any time He so desires. And He can stop you from committing that sin if He desires with impunity. It's certainly His right to monitor and restrain the activity of His creatures. He is sovereign.

The creature isn't. So I say if it's true that God has the power to intervene, and He has the right to intervene, but He doesn't intervene, the obvious question is why not? If God does not intervene, it's because God chooses not to intervene. He chooses not to exercise His power or His authority in such activities. And in light of the fact that He has that power and has that authority and could intervene if He so desires, and if He doesn't choose to, then in so far as He doesn't choose to, He has decided that this should come to pass. So in a certain sense, He has ordained it, because if He hasn't ordained it, it couldn't possibly come to pass.

Again, as my favorite illustration, if there's one maverick molecule running loose in this universe outside the sphere of the scope of God's sovereign control, power, and dominion, we have no reason whatsoever to believe any future promise that comes to us from His Word, because that one maverick molecule could be the impediment that would prevent God's will from coming to pass. For one of a nail, the shoe was lost. For one of the shoe, the horse was lost. For one of the horse, the rider was lost. For one of the rider, the battle was lost.

For one of the battle, the war was lost because of one lousy nail. But God's sovereignty extends to the details, to every grain of sand on the seashore, every star in the sky, everything that takes place in this world. It happens because in some sense from all eternity He has ordained it. Now if you object to that, then you have to say either God doesn't know what's going to happen or He has no power over what happens or He has no authority over what happens.

You take any one of those positions and you have marched triumphantly outside the Christian faith into a form of atheism. Now having said that, let's get the relief we need from what follows from the first sentence and what follows from the colon. Yet so, that is God ordains whatsoever comes to pass, yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

Now what does that mean? Again, one of the things I marvel at in the Westminster Confession is the amazing verbal precision. Each word, you can tell, is chosen with such great care. That's one of the reasons why I hate to just slide over this in an abrupt or quick manner.

There's too much here. Now let's look at it again, that God ordains things in such a way that first of all God is not the author of sin. Now I'm going to introduce another word maybe you've never heard of, but I hope you have. It's the word a priori. How many of you have heard the term a priori?

Okay, maybe just a third of you. It's a technical term that's used in philosophy, and it refers to those things that are known before experiencing them. A priori knowledge would be knowledge that you're born with. It's innate, or it's knowledge that you can deduce the two and two or four without ever seeing two apples and two apples.

You have to make up four apples, but it's a formal truth. It comes before experience. And what's called in theology the biblical a priori, that is the first foundational principle about God, a non-negotiable, clear and distinct idea about God, an idea about God that must never be negotiated. It's an a priori.

It's the boss principle here. And the idea that is the biblical a priori is that God is not the author of sin. God does not sin.

You don't ever negotiate that. People ask me, did God ordain the fall? I say, of course He did. Oh, well doesn't that make Him the author of sin?

No, it doesn't. God ordained that creatures would sin, and His ordaining that they sin is not a sin. He Himself does not commit a sin. The creatures commit the sin, and they're responsible for that. But the point I want to make here is God never sins.

He does all things well. There's no shadow of turning in His being. So that whatever He decrees from all eternity, immutably, whatever He ordains should come to pass, does not involve Him as a sinner.

Now that's easy to say intellectually, but a lot of people struggle with this. You know, the Rabbi Kushner writes the book, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? And the answer to that is they don't, because there aren't any good people by the biblical definition.

The real question is why do good things happen to bad people? That's the real mystery, the mystery of divine grace, that God would tolerate our rebellion, that God would tolerate our ongoing sin and challenging of His authority. Every time we sin, we challenge His right to be God and exalt ourselves over Him. Why doesn't He just snuff us out?

That's the real question. But God Himself does not sin. Now it goes on to say that in His ordaining whatsoever comes to pass, violence is not offered to the will of the creatures. Now, one of the biggest misunderstood concepts in the whole wide world is the biblical concept of the human will, and there's a section on the free will that we'll look at in greater detail later. But the idea we have in our culture of free will is an idea that was born in paganism has nothing to do with the biblical view. The idea of free will that we use in our discussion is that a human being has the power equally to move to the left or to the right for the good or to the evil with no controlling bias in his heart, where the Bible makes it very clear that from the day of the fall onward by nature, we are slaves.

We're enslaved to our own wicked desires, and the heart is only wicked continually. Now when I choose sin, it's not because God is forcing me or coercing me to sin. I'm choosing what I want, and insofar as I am choosing what I want to do, I am free.

I'm free to do what I want. I'm free to exercise my slavery to my own wicked inclinations, not because God is violating my will where I want to do righteousness and God comes down and twists me and forces me to do sin and then punishes me for it. Now, that's what the authors of the Confession are saying here, that when God ordains that such and such a thing comes to pass, He doesn't do it in such a way that violates the will of the creature. It wasn't like Judas had only idealistic, altruistic motives in mind when he betrayed Jesus, but God made him do it, made him act against his own inclination.

No, no, no, no, no. That's like saying that God forced Satan to go after Job when in fact that's all Satan wanted to do was to get after Job, and God had protected Job. God had put a hedge around Job. And then when Satan asked to be able to go after Job, God removed the protection. But it's not like the devil only wanted to do benevolent things for Job until God forced him to act against Job.

No. God doesn't coerce the human heart to do evil. That's the point of the Confession. He doesn't need to, to bring His will to pass. He has a bajillion options of sinners out there who will serve His purposes for Him, just like the brothers of Joseph who intended evil for Joseph out of their jealousy. They acted, but God was over above their jealousy, working in and through their sin to bring redemption to Israel so that even in their wicked desires and their wicked choices the sinners were acting out what God had foreordained without God coercing them.

That's the idea. And it goes on here to say, nor is the liberty or contingency of secondary causes taken away. Now that gets into some distinctions that we're going to have to take some time on in our next session so that we can understand it. Because obviously when we talk about God's foreordaining whatever comes to pass, people are going to say, well, why should I be involved in evangelism? Why should I be involved in prayer? If God ordains everything that comes to pass, who cares about what we do? Well, there's the nut that has to be cracked open at the end of there that it doesn't eliminate secondary causes, because God not only ordains the ends that He ordains from eternity, but He ordains the means to that end. He has not only dictated from eternity that you would be saved, but He has ordained how you would be saved through the means of the preaching of the Word. God has chosen the foolishness of preaching to save the world.

He didn't need to do it that way. But He works through people. He works through things in this world to bring His eternal purposes to pass. And we'll look at that more deeply, God willing, in our next segment. And we hope you'll join us for that message tomorrow. Knowing that God is in charge and that nothing will happen apart from His perfect sovereign decree, bring safety and comfort to the believer.

Dr. R.C. Sproul has been our teacher today here on Renewing Your Mind with a message from his series on the Westminster Confession of Faith. And I do hope you'll return all this week as we continue airing messages from this series. We recently republished Dr. Sproul's teaching on the Westminster Confession as a newly revised edition of a book titled Truths We Confess. It's a helpful study companion for you as you explore what the Confession has to say. For your donation of any amount today, we would like to send you a hardbound edition of the book.

You can give your donation online at renewingyourmind.org, or one of my colleagues will be happy to take your call at 800-435-4343. Today's message is an example of why so many of you find Dr. Sproul's teaching clear and helpful. We received a call recently from Karen, and I'd like for you to hear what she had to say. I discovered RC, Renewing Your Mind, and the Ligonier Ministry resources maybe six months ago. And I just fell in love with the resources that are available for free through the app and the website. And I listen for hours every day of the week, hours and hours.

I've listened to probably everything that's available many times over, and I just can't get enough of them. I share them with friends and family. I share them on the web. I'm so grateful for the resources, because they are changing me inside slowly, helping me to become a better Christian, a better person, and I just want to say thank you for that. And we thank Karen for sharing those thoughts with us. You know, without the faithful financial support of friends like you, we would not be able to make these resources available here on the program and on the app. If you're not already one of our ministry partners, may I ask you to prayerfully consider joining this special group of people who give a monthly gift of $25 or more? RC has said many times that our ministry partners are the backbone of our mission, to proclaim the holiness of God to as many people as possible. So we do hope to hear from you.

Our number again is 800-435-4343. Well as we consider God's sovereignty, how should we think about prayer? If God is in charge of everything, why does He invite us to pray? The power that's in prayer is a secondary power.

Its ultimate power rests in God. But God is pleased to bring His purposes about through prayers. He doesn't need those prayers. He can work without those prayers. But He's pleased to work in and through those prayers. I hope you'll join us for Tuesday's edition of Renewing Your Mind.