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 which is according to a Baptist flavor.
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Chapter 6.1: “…which God was pleased, according to his wise and holy counsel to permit, having purposed to order it to his own glory.”
Whenever we attempt to consider the whys of the world that we live in we can run into many difficult parts in our search for a sustainable, soul-satisfying answer. Concise phrases such as this can help. They’re why I’m a confessional guy. And they don’t come lightly by the way. It takes great knowledge to speak truth briefly. Reader, only partial answers to the deepest questions can be found in anything created. God alone (knowing him through his word) can answer. We must go to God. If God is the unmovable Creator of all things, wise, loving and all powerful then the only satisfying answers to the big questions about why things transpire, be they questions about either good or evil, must be found in him. Adam and Eve sinned, but why would God “do this to himself” with his creation ever since? He is omniscient and wise in all of this, right?! Yes, we high jacked the plane and crashed it, and we’re guilty for it, but such was the plan of almighty God. We see from Genesis 3 the veiled prophecy of a plan that would take thousands of years to be realized in Jesus. Or we could ask questions about why Satan exists. He wreaks havoc. Yet he cannot sustain himself. The devil is God’s devil. We saw this clearly with Job (Scripture’s likely oldest book). He is not God’s “yang”, reader, and he didn’t create hell along with everything else. Hence, though we know a little bit about the fact that Lucifer corrupted himself it’s in God his sustainer alone that I must find the answer to why the devil persists to this day if my answer is to be fully reconciled or sustained. God must have a purpose for the devil existing, and that purpose must be good. Why did the omnipresent God not tell Eve, “don’t listen to him”? God must will the devil to exist. Yet he is in no way evil or forcing it anywhere. All answers to such questions that I find outside of God are only partial answers; I must find my answer in God, and not in anything created.
I can no more find an answer to eggs apart from the first created chicken than I can a sinner or devil without God. I simply must go to God.
Here in this section we see God’s plan over the Fall. He purposed it. When we remember this we can breathe a sigh of relief…finding our answer in God and his good plan. God’s world isn’t spinning out of control. He purposed the Fall. I have no problem with the word “orchestrated.” Adam and Eve made their free will choice. They made the wrong choice. We all lost freedom with them. Yet God’s purpose on this planet was the exaltation of his name over death through the Cross that killed it. SIN had to come. He ordained it to. It was his “wise counsel”. It will be to his eternal glory. Those who work hard to love that will understand it. Jesus in his full mercy display on Calvary is the surety of his full glory yet still in many ways to be seen.
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