The Hand of God

Loraine Boettner D.D.:

The Reformed theologians logically and consistently applied to the spheres of creation and providence those great principles which were later set forth in the Westminster Standards. They saw the hand of God in every event in all the history of mankind and in all the workings of physical nature so that the world was the complete realization in time of the eternal ideal. The world as a whole and in all its parts and movements and changes was brought into a unity by the governing, all-pervading, all-harmonizing activity of the divine will, and its purpose was to manifest the divine glory. While their conception was that of a divine ordering of the whole course of history to the veriest detail, they were especially concerned with its relation to man’s salvation. Calvin, the brilliant and systematic theologian of the Reformation, put the matter thus:

“Predestination we call the eternal decree of God, by which He has determined in Himself, what He would have to become of every individual of mankind. For they are not all created with a similar destiny; but eternal life is foreordained for some and eternal death for others. Every man, therefore, being created for one or the other of these ends, we say he is predestinated either to life or to death.”

Knowledge

John Stott:

Knowledge is indispensable to Christian life and service. If we do not use the mind that God has given us, we condemn ourselves to spiritual superficiality and cut ourselves off from many of the riches of God’s grace.

Unfathomable Love!

We know that God is; the Bible says that only fools deny it (Psalm 14:1). We know that all we are and have come from God’s hand. Do you acknowledge it? James Montgomery Boice writes:

I have spoken of “common grace” in the sense that God’s genuine affection has been poured out upon all persons regardless of who they are or what wrongs they may have done. As Jesus said, God “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45). Common grace? Yes! But in another sense, it is not at all common. It is most uncommon. It is extraordinary, and it leads us to the most uncommon or extraordinary love of all. We find it in Romans 5:6-8: “At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

It is “while we were still sinners” that God has done everything for us. Here is love at its fullest. It is while we were still sinners and, in fact, oblivious both to the extent of our sin and to the uncommon kindness of God toward us in all things that God sent his own son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to die for us.

Moreover, God goes to the unheard of length of commending his love to us by this fact. The word commend (KJV; “demonstrate,” NIV) is used in two ways in the New Testament. It sometimes means “to establish, prove or make certain.” In this sense the death of Christ certainly “proves” God’s love for us, the meaning the NIV translators have favored. But “prove” is a cold word. It has the temperature of algebraic axioms and corollaries. It seems remote. The other use of “commend” is “to recommend or set forth in such a manner that the matter appeals to the heart.” This surely is the fullness of the meaning here. The death of Jesus Christ proves the reality and demonstrates the nature of God’s unfathomable love. But more than that, it commends it to us in such a manner that we will repent of our sin–which left unrepented of keeps us from God – and instead leads us to embrace Jesus Christ as our own personal Savior.

Have you done that? If not, notice that the word “commend” is in the present tense rather than in the past tense. That is, it is not merely a past happening that today may be forgotten. It is a present reality, as much a force today as it has ever been. It is today – right now – that God is commending his deep and genuine love to you by Jesus’ death. (“Common Grace”)