From All Eternity For His Glory

 By Pastor Benjamin Glaser - Posted at Thoughts from Parson Farms:

The Electing Love of God For Men and Women

Good Morning!

Today’s lesson is the first example of what I would call the “expansive nature” of the Larger Catechism. It’s not just that the WLC contains more stuff than the WSC, but the WLC is interested in broadening our understanding of what each of the parts of our faith means for our faith in total. Having studied the attributes of God and how the Trinity operates within itself the next step in the learning process is to see the way Jehovah works in His creation to do His will and as we see in the Q/A for this week the questions themselves almost take up our space:

Q. 12. What are the decrees of God?

A. God’s decrees are the wise, free, and holy acts of the counsel of His will, whereby, from all eternity, He has, for His own glory, unchangeably foreordained whatsoever comes to pass in time, especially concerning angels and men.

Q. 13. What has God especially decreed concerning angels and men?

A. God, by an eternal and immutable decree, out of His mere love, for the praise of His glorious grace, to be manifested in due time, hath elected some angels to glory; and in Christ hath chosen some men to eternal life, and the means thereof: and also, according to His sovereign power, and the unsearchable counsel of His own will, (whereby He extends or withholds favor as He pleases,) has passed by and foreordained the rest to dishonor and wrath, to be for their sin inflicted, to the praise of the glory of His justice.

Q.14. How does God execute his decrees?

A. God executes His decrees in the works of creation and providence, according to His infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of His own will.

I know we spend a lot of time in these helps defining words, but it is good for us to know what some of these theology words mean so that we can help others (especially children and those young in faith) understand their God. The first term worth looking at is “decree”. At first that does not seem like something that needs specified. When Luke says, “And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.”

We know and can comprehend what happened.

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