Q.7 // What are the decrees of God?
A // The decrees of God are his eternal plan, according to the purpose of his will, by which, for his own glory, he has foreordained whatever comes to pass; yet in such a manner as to be in no way the author of sin.
Psalm 33.11; Isaiah 14.24; Acts 2.23; Ephesians 1.11-12
Q. 8 // How does God carry out his decrees?
A // God carries out his decrees in the works of creation and providence.
Psalm 148.8; Isaiah 40.26; Daniel 4:35; Acts 4.24-28; Revelation 4.11
God is sovereign. We use this phrase to describe His all-powerful nature, but what does it mean? It means that everything that happens fits into His eternal plan.
The decrees of God refer to His plan for everything that would happen in history. God does not just have a potential plan, a hope of what will happen. He hasn’t just set an end that He is trying to corral all things into. He is fully in control of His plan at all time, so much so that it was all written before anything was created (Ephesians 1.4).
This brings up a few questions. The first is: what about free will? How could God plan everything to happen and yet give human beings a legitimate choice of good vs. evil? the way this is often phrased is: wouldn’t this make people nothing more than puppets?
The second major question that has to be addressed is where sin came from. How did a perfect plan created by a perfect God include such an imperfect detail? Is God the author of sin?
The difficulty with these questions is that the Bible does not answer them in the way that we would like. Instead it gives us a number of statements that we must hold regardless of whether or not we can fit them together. These include:
- All things are foreordained by God (Acts 2.23).
- God ordains according to His will not in reaction to human action (Ephesians 1.11).
- God does not cause anyone to sin (James 1.13).
- God gives people the ability to obey or reject Him (Genesis 2.16-17)
- His entire plan is for His glory (Isaiah 43.7).
Any ‘answer’ we come up with has to contain all of these truths; theologians have written books trying to bring it all together. I could try to explain the theological concept of concurrence and some would have fun trying to connect all of the pieces. Instead, I think the most important part of this is to understand that God’s plan is written for His glory. He is working in creation and unfolding history so that we will know and worship Him. God is working in creation and in the events of the world to tell the story of His goodness. Ephesians 1.9-10 tells us that God is: making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
We have this life to struggle through the mystery of His will, but the mystery is meant to point us to Jesus and the redemption of all things. What is and what has been will only make complete sense when all is restored. I look forward to that day.