The decrees of God

This week's questions

What are the decrees of God? 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.

Question 7

How doth God execute his decrees? God executeth his decrees in the works of creation and providence.

Question 8

Questions 4 to 6 taught who God is (last week); Questions 7 and 8 turn to what he does. They speak of his eternal decrees and of the two works that carry them out in time, creation and providence: creation in Questions 9 and 10 next week, providence in Questions 11 and 12 the week after.

One eternal purpose

The catechism speaks of decrees and calls them one eternal purpose. God does not revise his plans as events unfold. "I declare the end from the beginning, and from ancient times what is still to come," he says through Isaiah (Isaiah 46:10). The first proof text says that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4); the next sets that choice within his plan for everything, and gives the catechism its very phrase:

In Him we were also chosen as God’s own, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything by the counsel of His will

Ephesians 1:11

‘For his own glory’ takes us back to Question 1. As our chief end is to glorify God, so all his purposes aim at his glory. The English minister Matthew Henry calls the Spirit's sealing of believers the first-fruits of holy happiness, and writes, "For this we were made, and for this we were redeemed; this is the great design of God in all that he has done for us" Matthew Henry. God's glory and our joy do not compete. The last proof text speaks of God making the riches of his glory known to the vessels of his mercy (Romans 9:22-23). God's decree concerning salvation, election, comes in Question 20 (week 11).

‘Whatsoever comes to pass’ means everything. What, then, of sin and evil? The Westminster Confession puts three safeguards in the very sentence that confesses it:

God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain 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.

Westminster Confession 3.1

Second causes are the creaturely causes God works through, such as human choices, rain and wind; his decree does not erase them but gives them their place. At Pentecost Peter said that Jesus "was delivered up by God’s set plan and foreknowledge," and that his hearers had put him to death (Acts 2:23). God's purpose does not lighten their guilt, nor does their guilt undo his purpose. So Paul can say that "God works all things together for the good of those who love Him" (Romans 8:28).

The God who carries out his decrees

Question 8 says that the decree is no blueprint in a drawer: God carries it out in creation and providence. The elders in heaven sing:

Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things; by Your will they exist and were created.

Revelation 4:11

Even Nebuchadnezzar, once humbled, owned that God works his will in heaven and on earth, and no one can restrain his hand (Daniel 4:35). The Larger Catechism calls the decrees "the wise, free, and holy acts of the counsel of his will" Larger Catechism, Q. 12, executed "according to his infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will" Q. 14.

Christians have explained this teaching in different ways. The Reformed confess that God ordains all things while creatures act freely and answer for what they do, and that God did not decree anything because he foresaw it WCF 3.2. The Wesleyan tradition, and those who follow the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius, teach that God preserves and governs all things so that nothing happens by chance, but that he wills and performs good acts and only permits evil ones, and that he foreknows our free choices Arminius, Declaration of Sentiments. The sixteenth-century Spanish Jesuit Luis de Molina sought to hold providence and freedom together through God's ‘middle knowledge’, his knowing what each free creature would do in every possible situation Molina, Concordia. The Lutheran Formula of Concord confesses election to be grace from first to last, and denies that anyone is predestined to damnation Formula of Concord, Art. 11. All of them reject both blind fate and blind chance.

The Confession calls predestination, within the decree, a "high mystery", to be handled "with special prudence and care" WCF 3.8. "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us" (Deuteronomy 29:29), and no one has been his counsellor (Romans 11:34). It is given not to feed curiosity but to humble, steady and move us to praise. The Reformed Faith course's God's decree and predestination and the Christian Doctrine course's Providence go further; see also Is God in control? and What is predestination?

To ponder this week

Where is it hard for you this week to believe that God's purpose holds, and what does Joseph's word say to it? Long after his brothers sold him, Joseph told them: "As for you, what you intended against me for evil, God intended for good" (Genesis 50:20). Write that one thing down, and each day this week put it into your Father's hands in a short prayer.

Practice