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Divine Providence 1. 1.
GOD who, in infinite power and wisdom, has created all things,
upholds, directs, controls and governs them, both animate and inanimate,
great and small, by a providence supremely wise and holy, and in
accordance with His infallible foreknowledge and the free and immutable
decisions of His will. He fulfills the purposes for which He created
them, so that His wisdom, power and justice, together with His infinite
goodness and mercy, might be praised and glorified. 2.
Nothing happens by chance or outside the sphere of God's
providence. As God is the First Cause of all events, they happen
immutably and infallibly according to His foreknowledge and decree, to
which they stand related. Yet by His providence God so controls them
that second causes, operating either as fixed laws, or freely or in
dependence upon other causes, play their part in bringing them about. 3.
Ordinarily, in His providence, God makes use of means; yet He is
free to work without them, to give them efficacy above what they normally
possess, and even to work contrary to them, at His pleasure. 4.
God's almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness
are so far-reaching and all-pervading, that both the fall of the first man
into sin, and all other sinful actions of angels and men, proceed
according to His sovereign purposes. It is not that He gives His
bare permission, for in a variety of ways He wisely and powerfully limits,
orders and governs sinful actions, so that they effect His holy designs.
Yet the sinfulness involved in the actions proceeds only from angels and
men and not from God who, being most holy and righteous, neither is nor
can be the author or approver of sin. 5.
God, who is most wise, righteous and gracious, frequently allows
His own people to fall for a time into a variety of temptations, and to
experience the sinfulness of their own hearts. This He does in order
to chastise them for sins which they have committed, or to teach them
humility by revealing to them the hidden strength of evil and
deceitfulness remaining in their hearts. His purpose is also to cause them
to realize their need to depend fully and at all times upon Himself, and
to help them to guard against sin in the future. In these and other
ways His just and holy purposes are worked out, so that all that happens
to His elect ones is by His appointment, for His glory, and for their
good. 2 Chron.
32:25,26,31; Rom. 8:28; 2 Cor. 12:7-9. 6.
God, as a righteous judge, deals otherwise with wicked and ungodly
men. He awards them blindness and hardness of heart for their sins.
He withholds from them the grace which might have enlightened their minds
and exercised their hearts, and in some cases recalls the gifts He had
bestowed upon them. Also, He sets them in situations which their
evil hearts seize upon as opportunities for sin. In other words, He
abandons them to their own innate corruptions, to the temptations of the
world, and to, the power of Satan, with the consequence that they harden
themselves by the use of the very means which God employs for softening
the hearts of others. 7.
God's general providence reaches out to all creatures, but in a
very special way it is directed to the care of His church. All
things are controlled providentially for the good of the church. [Previous Chapter] [Next Chapter]
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