God

Who can trace the motions of God's eyes in their race? 'He makes the clouds his chariot,' Ps. 104:3, in his motions about the earth, and his throne is in the dark. He walks upon the wings of the wind, his providential speed makes it too quick for our understanding. His ways are mysterious, and put the reason and wisdom of men to a stand. The clearest-sighted servants of God do not see the bottom of his works, the motion of God's eyes is too quick for ours.

Now what greater comfort is there than this, that there is one presides in the world who is so wise he cannot be mistaken, so faithful he cannot deceive, so pitiful he cannot neglect his people, and so powerful that he can make stones even to be turned into bread if he please!

And what a comfort it is to believe this doctrine. If we are poor, or sick, or bereaved, or defamed, how delightful it is to know that it is the Lord, and not man; the Lord and not Satan; a friend and not an enemy; a most tender father and not a capricious master—who thus ordains. David was wise when he said, "Let me fall into the hand of the Lord, and not into the hand of man." Luther said, "Smite, Lord, for you love me." Every child of God may say as much.

God brings about every man's lot, and all the parts of it. He sits at the helm of human affairs, and turns them about in whatever way he lists. "Whatever the Lord pleased, that He did in heaven and in earth, in the seas and all deep places." There is not anything whatever befalls us without his overruling hand. The same providence that brought us out of the womb, brings us to, and fixes us in the condition and place allotted for us, by him who "has determined the times and the bounds of our habitation." It overrules the smallest and most casual things about us, such as "hairs of our head being all numbered;" a "lot cast into the lap." Yea, the free acts of our will, by which we choose for ourselves: for even "the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, as rivers of water."

Nothing befalls you, good or evil, but there is a providence of the infinite eternal first Being in that thing; and therein is God's infiniteness, that it reaches to the least things, to the least worm that is under your feet.

We, indeed, look at things by pieces, we look at one detail and do not consider the relation that one thing has to another, but God looks at all things at once, and sees the relation that one thing has to another. When a child looks at a clock, it looks first at one wheel, and then at another wheel: he does not look at them all together or the dependence that one has upon another; but the workman has his eyes on them all together and sees the dependence of all, one upon another: so it is in God's providence. Now notice how this works to contentment: when a certain passage of providence befalls me, that is one wheel, and it may be that if this wheel were stopped, a thousand other things might come to be stopped by this. In a clock, stop but one wheel and you stop every wheel, because they are dependant upon one another. So when God has ordered a thing for the present to be thus and thus, how do you know how many things depend upon this thing? God may have some work to do twenty years hence that depends on this passage of providence that falls out this day or this week.

It is the discipline of wisdom. He who administers it is the "God only wise." What deep wisdom then must there be in all His dealings! He knows exactly what we need and how to supply it. He knows what evils are to be found in us, and how these may be best removed. His training is no random work. It is carried on with exquisite skill. The time and the way and the instrument are all according to the perfect wisdom of God. The fittest time is chosen, just the very moment when discipline is called for, and when it would be most profitable. The surest, most direct, and at the same time gentlest method is devised. The instrument which will be surest yet safest, most effectual yet least painful, is brought into operation. For all is wisdom in the discipline of God.

Affliction is the expression of paternal love. It is from the deepest recess of the fountain of love that sorrow flows down to us. And love cannot wrong us. It blesses, but cannot curse. Its utterances and actions are all of peace and gladness. It wants a larger vessel into which to empty itself, and a deeper channel through which to flow. That is all. It seeks to make us more susceptible of kindness, and then to pour that kindness in. Yes, love is the true, the one origin of the sharpest stroke that ever fell upon a bleeding heart. The truth is, there is no other way of accounting for affliction but this. Anger will not account for it, forgetfulness will not account for it, chance will not account for it. No. It is simply impossible to trace it to any cause but love. Admit this as its spring, and all is harmonious, comely, perfect. Deny it, and all is confusion, cruelty, and darkness.

It is a marked proof of the wisdom of God that he can so direct all the affairs of the universe as, without need of special action, to accomplish all the events he chooses. All providence, therefore, is general, because operated through general laws. It is also special, because every individual event comes to pass under God's own inspection, and through his own will and work.

We are to measure God’s love not by His providence but by His promise.

The Lord God omnipotent reigneth. His government is exercised over inanimate matter, over the brute beasts, over the children of men, over angels good and evil, and over Satan himself. No revolving world, no shining of star, no storm, no creature moves, no actions of men, no errands of angels, no deeds of Devil—nothing in all the vast universe can come to pass otherwise than God has eternally purposed. Here is a foundation of faith. Here is a resting place for the intellect. Here is an anchor for the soul, both sure and steadfast. It is not blind fate, unbridled evil, man or Devil, but the Lord Almighty who is ruling the world, ruling it according to His own good pleasure and for His own eternal glory.

But our God is not only infinite in power. He is infinite in wisdom and goodness too. And herein is the preciousness of this truth. God wills only that which is good and His will is irreversible and irresistible! God is too wise to err and too loving to cause His child a needless tear. Therefore if God be perfect wisdom and perfect goodness how blessed is the assurance that everything is in His hand and molded by His will according to His eternal purpose!

For besides the fact that God, who is supremely good, can make nothing except what is good, if man had been brought forth depraved and evil, God could have had no sufficiently just cause for punishing that wickedness of which he himself would have been the creator and author.

Yes, there is even in ourselves sin and corruption enough, so that there is no need that God should infuse into us either a new or greater measure of wickedness. Therefore, when God is said in the Scripture to harden (Ex. 7:13), to blind (John 12:40) and to deliver us up into a reprobate sense (Rom. 1:28), it is to be understood that God does it by just judgment, as a just judge and avenger.

Though the natural virtue of doing a sinful action be from God, and supported by him, yet this doth not blemish the holiness of God. While God concurs with them in the act, he instills no evil into men. … The physical goodness of the action depends on God, the moral evil on the creature.

However, this is certain, that God doth not infuse it. Souls receive neither purity nor impurity from him, but only their naked essence, and the natural powers and properties flowing therefrom. He doth not infuse any impurity into men; for he cannot be the author of sin, who is the revenger of it. … As a pure and holy God, he cannot infuse any impurity into the souls of men; and as a just and righteous God, he may and doth withhold from, or create them void and destitute of, that holiness and righteousness which was once their happiness and glory.

And just as he that wishes to punish someone by fumigating with a foul smell, sulfur and dung, does not put a foul smell into the sulfur and dung (it already is there), so God, when He punishes sins through the devil and the vessels of wrath with sins, does not put any sin into them, but it is there naturally since the fall in the devil and in men (Eph. 4; Rom. 1).

But He is not the author of the evil dispositions with which that nature is infected at birth. The doctrine of original sin attributes no efficiency to God in the production of evil. It simply supposes that He judicially abandons our apostate race, and withholds from the descendants of Adam the manifestations of his favour and love, which are the life of the soul.

God certainly does not in either case effect or infuse blindness or hardness into the sinner (cf. James 1:13–14), yet neither does he only not take away blindness and hardness, by not circumcising the heart (Jer. 6:10, 26; Acts 7:51), or by not conferring spiritual light to the mind, or softness and malleability to the heart (Matt. 13:14–15; Isa. 6:9–10), but in addition: (1) on account of preceding sins, in a just and holy way, he takes away or diminishes the remnants of wisdom and moral goodness that a sinner has, and also augments and aggravates his original blindness and hardness.

God is said to blind and to harden men not only negatively (by not enlightening and softening) and privatively (by withdrawing his grace whatever it may have been after men have abused it) and permissively (by not hindering), but also positively. Not by bringing in blindness or hardness (which is natural to man), but both objectively by presenting external objects to them which although ordained to another direction by their own nature, yet he knows will be drawn in a different way by their vice; and judicially by smiting them internally with blindness (the light which they abused being taken away or extinguished); and by loosening the reins to their lusts and delivering them up and enslaving them to Satan.

Thus, God is said to harden a wicked man because of his demerits when, being provoked by that man’s impiety, He takes occasion to withdraw granted grace and to do certain things through which He knows that this man will grow worse.

For in those people God did not make the common sins but found them there, as we have noted before. And although God, in his just but to us hidden judgment, does abandon and harden them more and more (Romans 9:18), yet it is they who by their own free choice first become hardened (Romans 11:7) and abandon the benefits of general providence; they abuse God’s longsuffering, as Paul testifies in Romans 1:18, 26, and 28.

As for those wicked and ungodly men whom God, as a righteous judge, for former sins, doth blind and harden; from them He not only withholdeth his grace, whereby they might have been enlightened in their understandings, and wrought upon in their hearts; but sometimes also withdraweth the gifts which they had, and exposeth them to such objects as their corruption makes occasions of sin; and withal, gives them over to their own lusts, the temptations of the world, and the power of Satan.

But we teach that the action of God and of men sinning is the same, according to material being, but not according to moral being. … But truly the action of God and of men is not the same according to moral being; because God acts justly from all four causes, while he punishes the Church through sinning instruments; but the action of the instruments is morally unjust and vicious. … But we teach that God is not the cause of the malice, although he is the cause of the act.

We thus see that there is no inconsistency in attributing the same act to God, to Satan, and to man, while, from the difference in the end and mode of action, the spotless righteousness of God shines forth at the same time that the iniquity of Satan and of man is manifested in all its deformity.

The almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness of God, so far manifest themselves in His providence, that His determinate counsel extends itself even to the first fall, and all other sinful actions both of angels and men (Rom. 11:32–34; 2 Sam. 24:1; 1 Chron. 21:1); and that not by a bare permission, which also He most wisely and powerfully bounds, and otherwise orders and governs (2 Kings 19:28; Ps. 76:10), in a manifold dispensation to His most holy ends (Gen. 50:20; Isa. 10:6–7, 12); yet so, as the sinfulness of their acts proceeds only from the creatures, and not from God, who, being most holy and righteous, neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin (Ps. 50:21; 1 John 2:16).

We believe that the same good God, after He had created all things, did not forsake them or give them up to fortune or chance, but that He rules and governs them according to His holy will, so that nothing happens in this world without His appointment; nevertheless, God neither is the author of nor can be charged with the sins which are committed. For His power and goodness are so great and incomprehensible that He orders and executes His work in the most excellent and just manner, even then when devils and wicked men act unjustly.

And this is the decree of reprobation, which by no means makes God the Author of sin (the very thought of which is blasphemy), but declares Him to be an awful, irreprehensible, and righteous Judge and Avenger thereof.

Since the precept about not coveting is general, it ought to be extended to all depraved and inordinate concupiscence, original and habitual as well as actual—whether this is determinate and voluntary or still indeterminate and only titillating. This is true in order that the perfect purity and holiness of the lawgiver may be noted (which will suffer not even the smallest taint of depraved concupiscence in man, but demands righteousness and holiness of every kind).

Observe the holiness and perfection of God's law, which forbids the first motions and risings of sin in the heart. The laws of men take hold of actions; but the law of God goes further—it forbids not only sinful actions—but sinful desires.

Such motions are not consistent with the holiness and purity which God demands from us and the required perfection of loving God with the whole heart and all the strength; therefore they cannot but be depraved and lawless (anomoi).

That the great God purposed and designed an union with himself of those whom in a special manner he had set himself to love; and that this union is the deepest and furthest design of his heart, of any he hath toward them, or the whole creation. The full demonstration of his manifold wisdom and power moved him to make a variety of persons, things, yea, of worlds; but then his goodness and his love moved him to reduce out of that variety an all out of every sort, as a pledge of his respect to all, unto an unity again, and that with himself; and this union is the top perfection of all his works, as that, John 17:23, ‘I in them, and they in me, that they may be made perfect in one.’ It is the perfection of the creature, whereof the unity of the three Persons is the pattern, and the perfection of God’s design.

Let us oft think of this nearness between Christ and us, if we have once given our names to him, and not be discouraged for any sin or unworthiness in us. Who sues a wife for debt, when she is married? Uxori lis non intenditur. Therefore answer all accusations thus:—'Go to Christ.' If you have anything to say to me, go to my husband. God is just, but he will not have his justice twice satisfied, seeing whatsoever is due thereunto is satisfied by Christ our husband. What a comfort is this to a distressed conscience! If sin cannot dismay us, which is the ill of ills and cause of all evil, what other ill can dismay us?

Here, speculative theologian, the discussion is not about the will of good pleasure, of which it is written, 'Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did he in heaven and in earth,' and that 'no one can resist his will.' That is plain, because we see that not all men come to the knowledge of the truth. Rather, the discussion is about the will of sign, by which God sets before all men the precepts of salvation and the doctrine of the Gospel. It is charged against those who refuse to come to the knowledge of the truth and refuse to be saved, of which it is written, 'How often would I have gathered thy children, and ye would not.'

Marginal note: “God wills all men to be saved by the will of sign, not by the will of good pleasure.”