Q. 7. What are the decrees of God?

A. 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.

Q. 8. How doth God execute his decrees?

A. God executeth his decrees in the works of creation and providence.

What are the decrees of God? Today the doctrine of God's decrees receives short shrift in most evangelical churches. Modern translations of scripture rarely use the term, so many people think that the idea is unbiblical. Yet many passages of scripture talk about God's counsel, God's foreknowledge, and otherwise mention decisions which God made "before the foundation of the world" (Mt 25:34; Jn 17:5; Rom 8:29-30; Eph 1:4; 2 Tim 1:9; 1 Pet 1:20; Rev 13:8; 17:8). Question Seven of our Shorter Catechism explains that "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." This is more fully expounded in our confession: "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" (WCF 3.1).

God's decrees--or foreordination--is not exactly equal to predestination, because predestination deals explicitly with salvation. Foreordination has to do with everything else in God's creation and providence. In other words, the Confession does not teach a strict double predestination, but predestination to salvation, and foreordination to damnation. This is precisely why it teaches that God has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.

We see this in the book of Lamentations. After the fall of Jerusalem, a Jewish author, possibly Jeremiah (the text simply doesn't say), sang his lament over the Holy City. False prophets had said for generations that God would never bring destruction to Jerusalem--his holy city. But Lamentations understands the truth: "Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come? Why should a living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins?"

Many have suggested that God simply permits whatever may come to pass, as a general decree in which God declares that he will put his stamp on whatever the creature does. This does not fit what Lamentations says, because it suggests that either God does not know what the creature will do, or else God is unable or unwilling to prevent things which he does not want. But Lamentations says that it is from the mouth of the Most High that both good and bad come. Zacharias Ursinus, the author of the Heidelberg Catechism, has some good comments on the true understanding of "permission." It is not that God is merely indifferent, or suspends his providence when he permits evil, but rather:

"It is a withdrawal of divine grace by which God (while he accomplishes the decrees of his divine will through rational creatures) either does not make known to the creature acting what he himself wishes to be done, or does not incline the will of the creature to render obedience, and to perform what is agreeable to his will. Yet he, nevertheless, in the meanwhile, controls and influences the creature so deserted and sinning as to accomplish what he has purposed." Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, p153.

Therefore, God "directs all things, both good and evil to his own glory and the salvation of his people" (p151). In this way, God is not the author of evil, but yet he does decree it and ordain it for his glory and our salvation. The problem of the origin of evil cannot be resolved here. All God has revealed is the solution for evil--the cross of Christ.

Yes, God has foreordained every event, from the beginning of creation through the end of history, but this does not destroy the liberty of the creature, but establishes it. "What?" you say, "This is theological gibberish!" But isn't that what Lamentations says? After all, after saying that the decree--the command of the Lord--is what brings all things to pass, the lament goes on to say, "Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the Lord! Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven: 'We have transgressed and rebelled and you have not forgiven.'" The fact that God ordains all things, brings hope. Because that also means that God has the power to forgive. If God is in control of all things, then we need to align ourselves with him.

Because consider the heart and soul of the doctrine of the decrees. We are predestined in Christ. This is critical. It is not that we are simply predestined by some abstract decree, which in some fatalistic, arbitrary way yanks us into the kingdom of heaven. Rather, we are predestined in Christ. Jesus Christ (the one who as God made the decrees in the first place) brings the plan of God into history. In him there is no abstraction. His incarnation, his death, his resurrection, his being seated at the right hand of the Father on our behalf ensure that we cannot think abstractly about the decrees of God.

We do not have an explanation for evil in scripture. We do, however, have a solution. In Acts 4, the apostles and believers in Jerusalem are rejoicing in the power of God: [Read Acts 4:24-28] Jesus was predestined to die according to God's own plan. This does not remove human responsibility--after all, Herod, Pilate, and the people are all blamed for his death--but it does show that the cross was decreed by God. We can never say that God does not foreordain evil. The crucifixion of Jesus, the most evil act since Satan's rebellion, was predestined by God. And yet the crucifixion of Jesus was also the free act of Herod, Pilate, and the people. As Peter says in Acts 2:23: "This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men." This is indeed the way that the scriptures speak of salvation. All of salvation is rooted in Christ. Even faith is a gift (Eph 2:8-9). The work of salvation is the gracious work of God. Yet the act of faith which we ourselves make--the confession of sin which we humbly make before God, begging his forgiveness--these are free actions. God does not force us to make them. But still we believe in irresistible grace. God woos us to himself, but his wooing always works--for those he called, he also justified, sanctified and glorified--in Christ (Rom 8:28-30).

Indeed, Paul's answer to the overly-curious is indeed the only one possible: "Who are you O man to answer back to God!"

We stand before a God who is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth. His knowledge, wisdom, and being are original, uncreated, and absolute. Our freedom and sovereignty must always be understood as a limited freedom and sovereignty under the absolute and unconditional freedom and sovereignty of God. Therefore, no matter what position you take in the attempt to explain sin and evil, God must always be regarded as sovereign. Even those who say that God limited himself when he created man--giving man absolute freedom outside of God's freedom and sovereignty--even this view makes God the ultimate cause of evil, because by giving man this autonomy, God "started the ball rolling" toward sin.

But this faulty understanding of God's decrees also undermines the role of ultimate and proximate causes. To say that God is not the ultimate cause is to say that man (or Satan) is. This would mean that man's sinful and wicked actions are outside the sovereignty of God. But then, how do you deal with Ephesians 1:11? Can God be said to work "all things" according to the counsel of his will, if man has a region of sovereignty which God cannot (by his own self-limitation) touch? This God must deal with a power in the universe (man's absolutely free and sovereign sinfulness) that he has no control over. In order for God to save man he must take away the freedom which he gave man, by yanking him out of the mess which man's freedom got him into! In this view, for God to regain control over man, and conquer man's sovereign sinfulness, he must violate and revoke the freedom which he gave to man. This view makes freedom into a curse, because it forces God to take away his gift of freedom in order for him to save us! We are left with the choice between freedom to sin, and bondage to God. Scripture presents the opposite alternative. True freedom is obedience to God, and bondage comes only when we attempt to set up our own autonomy and freedom outside of God's freedom and sovereignty. Bondage comes precisely because we cannot escape from God. It is because God is the free and sovereign Lord of the universe that we find ourselves in shackles when we try to deny this reality. Therefore, we must affirm that God has foreordained sin, yet not in such a way as to make God the author of sin, or to remove the validity of the will of man, or to eliminate the validity of second causes.

This doctrine does not violate the will of the creature, because it affirms that our wills make valid choices. Abraham Kuyper once said that God cannot force anyone to believe in him. That is because salvation does not operate by force; he works in people's hearts so that they freely choose to obey--or he leaves them to their own wicked hearts so that they freely obey the lusts of their sinful natures. It is not merely a matter of foreknowledge, but God truly foreordains these events. How? Not merely by abstract decree, but also through the outworking of history. God's decrees cannot be placed in time, they are eternal, and therefore transcendent--yet they are worked out in an organic history of redemption. The reason we can understand this is Jesus Christ. In him the eternal decrees of God became flesh, and the abstract became concrete. So, yes, all individual events are foreordained--but what is an individual event? When does an event start? Or when does it stop? When I finish preaching this sermon, what happens to the event? It did not begin with my speaking, but with my sermon preparation this week. But that was not the beginning, either. Because this sermon is bound up with discussions with friends and reading and study but no, not even there, because those "events" were based on past events and debates which occurred long before I was born. And the "event" of this sermon is not complete until you digest it. Indeed, this sermon is a part of a story that began in the eternal decree of God, and will not end until the consummation--which itself is just the beginning of a new story. Don't think about the decrees mechanistically. Did God foreordain me to wear a blue shirt or a red shirt? It's not as though God sat down before the foundation of the world and said, "I hereby decree that on October 27, 2002, Peter Wallace will wear a ?? shirt" When we say that God has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass, we are confessing that God is in control of everything. The whole story of humanity is the story that God has decreed.

Does this sound fatalistic? It doesn't to me, but only because of Christ. Jesus Christ is the guarantee that this world is not merely a machine, running down to an impersonal end. It is here that the immanence of God in Christ puts an end to our deterministic fears. We are not dealing with an impersonal fate, but with a freely electing God. His creatures are free, because He is free. His creatures are free in much the same way that He is free, except on a finite and created scale, not an infinite and uncreated scale. Just as he is free to be Himself, so are we. True freedom is not, of course, freedom to choose between right and wrong. If that is the definition of freedom, then God is in bondage because he can only do what is right. True freedom is to the freedom to be yourself, the freedom to be the person that you were meant to be. Why else does the Scripture teach us that freedom in Christ is true freedom? Because it is only there and then that we will truly be what we were meant to be. We will glorify God in the New Creation because we will be non posse peccare, not able to sin, as Augustine says, yet truly and really free. In Christ.

Why then is God not morally responsible for his creatures' actions? Because we have rebelled against him. We refused to obey him, we, you and I, spat in his face. It is a mystery. How could Adam, who was good, and was surrounded by the wonder and beauty of God's good creation, rebel against God? Push it one step back--how could Satan do the same thing? Scripture never answers this question but it does give the solution.

Jesus Christ.

The one who decreed all things, though not morally responsible for the actions of his creatures, has taken the guilt and sin of the rebellious creature upon himself. The solution to the problem of evil is Christ. The cross is our guarantee that God is not the author of sin, but of salvation. It is here that we encounter one of the most awesome statements of scripture that the death of Christ was itself predestined by God: "This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, You crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men" (Acts 2:23).

In short, when we say that God has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass, we are saying that nothing can happen outside the freedom and sovereignty of God. He is the ultimate cause of all things. Every individual event is foreordained--but not as an individual event. God sees every individual event as a part of one organic whole. We cannot, because we are finite, and worse, fallen. Yet after saying this, we also know that this doctrine establishes the reality and importance of human freedom and responsibility. We saw when we asked "what is God?" that we resemble him. We have being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth. But while he is infinite, eternal and unchangeable, we are finite, temporal, and changeable. Likewise, just as God has freedom and sovereignty, so also do we. In fact, I would argue that without the eternal sovereignty and freedom of God, there is no freedom and sovereignty at all--and especially none for man. To say that there is something in this world which has its origin in a source other than God, is to say that there is another God. Evil is not a thing. It is the opposite of good--the opposite of the will of God. How did man (or Satan) choose evil? I do not know. How could a good creature, surrounded by the goodness of God, untainted by sin, choose to disobey? I cannot fathom it. But it happened. God foreordained it, but he was not the author of it--as the Larger Catechism says (Q21): "Our first parents being left to the freedom of their own will, through the temptation of Satan, transgressed the commandment of God in eating the forbidden fruit; and thereby fell from the estate of innocency wherein they were created." It is their sin, by the freedom of their will, but permitted by the wise and holy counsel of God for his glory. And recall what Ursinus says about "permission"--it is a permission rooted in what God intends to accomplish, not a mere giving in to man's foolish ways.

From reading Scripture, we know that God is the free and sovereign Lord of the universe, who has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass, but we also know that he does not do violence to the will of the creature, and rather than remove the liberty and contingency of second causes, he does indeed establish them. The answer to the decrees of God must always be viewed in light of the cross. It is only in God's redemptive acts, surrendering his life for ours in Christ, that we can see the meaning of the decrees. If all you learn from this is that the decrees of God can only be seen in light of redemptive history--that the two come together in Christ--then I will be content; because Christ is the heart and soul of the decrees.

Copyright © 2003 Peter J. Wallace