Reflections on the Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. 23 Aug 14 began a perhaps unbroken, orderly, and personal journey through my favorite written confession of faith. This will be my personal reflections on this beloved written codification of the Christian faith according to a Baptist flavor.
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CHAPTER 2
Paragraph 2: “in his sight all things are open and manifest, his knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature, so as nothing is to him contingent or uncertain…”
God’s gaze can see what even we can’t. His eyes behold everything. There will not be a word that needs to be spoken by us at our judgment to be certain that he has all the facts. There will be no disagreeing with God on that day. The justice of God will be unquestionable even by those condemned in it. That doesn’t mean they won’t hate it, it just means no one will be able to say it’s wrong or question the rightness of it. God is good. His judgments are good. Psalm 9:8; Acts 17:31.
This part of the creed reminds us of what Jesus once said: “But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment,” Matthew 12:36. God sees it all. He knows it all. Dear reader, without the justification of God, how could you ever hope to come out of that judgment well? There is a thrill in knowing you’re justified. It’s not that we’re “innocent.” By nature we’re not. What we are who are in Christ are those pronounced “not guilty.” There is a thrill in the certainty of this. I pray you know it. I invite you to repentance. Acknowledge your sins before the Lord and look to the cross for your salvation.
When they say in the confession, “his knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature” and then continue with “…so as nothing is to him contingent or uncertain” what they’re really doing is affirming the same reality in two parts. God’s knowledge of things is not contingent. There’s not a plan A/plan B as if God doesn’t know what’s ahead. It comes to us in that way. Choose this, God says, and I’ll do this. Choose that and then I’ll do that. We need this because we’re not God. Our decisions are real, but God does not need our works to know what’s ahead. There is far too much predictive prophecy in the Bible to ever wonder if God is contingent. In movies today alternate realities are fun for us. We imagine that there are streams of reality in our time travel and how our actions alter it. This is science fiction. The science of faith reveals that to God knows all things in an unalterable manner, and that such knowledge is his alone.
Rest assured that God is not blindly anticipating what he thinks will happen with you. I pray that brings you comfort.
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