I am not convinced that Paul meant anything specific when he used the words “wisdom,” “knowledge,” “judgments” and so on. But for the sake of our thoughts this morning, I’d like to apply them to certain specifics. As people who have experienced God’s saving grace, we join with the Apostle in his awe and his praise. I am taking 6 thoughts from these verses and adding one of my own to create the outline for this message.
What was God’s purpose in saving sinners? For a period, thousands of times longer than the existence of the universe, Jehovah was absolutely alone. And unlike most of us, that was perfectly acceptable with Him. He needed nothing more than just Himself – Father, Son and Spirit. But then for reasons which man will never understand or even know, God chose to create the universe. With the lack of anything else, I will say that He undertook to create in order to bring Himself glory. But as generally understood glory is a relative thing; something is glorious as compared to something else which isn’t. And since God was already infinitely glorious and yet entirely alone, my argument falls apart. Nevertheless – not only did God choose to create, but He also chose to permit sin, marring that creation. Unlike the theology of many, I don’t believe that sin caught the sovereign, omniscient God by surprise. And at the same instant that He chose to permit sin, the Lord also chose to redeem many of those sinners. Because man is finite and limited, we all think lineally – one thought following another as in a parade. But we must remember that God is not limited like that, and His thoughts are not sequential. The complete design of creation, salvation and re-glorification was instantaneous, as if that is even an appropriate word. That “instantaneous” plan is at the pinnacle of all divine wisdom.
Generally speaking, we never use the word “wisdom” in a negative sense. Is it wise to snort cocaine, smoke pot, chew tobacco or commit adultery? Absolutely not. Wise choices are good choices, right choices, uplifting, edifying choices. Wisdom is understanding what true, right, righteous and lasting, and acting upon those things.
Should we change the definition when it comes to the wisdom of God? We don’t have words with which to do it, if we wanted to. When Paul referred to God’s wisdom, it was to something which was right and righteous, beneficial to Himself, glorious, permanent and perfect. The things of which Paul has been writing in the last eleven chapters have been all of these things and more. The whole scheme of salvation, from permission of sin, through to the election and salvation of many, to their ultimate glorification, has been infinitely wise and divinely perfect.
And that brings us to the word –
Laying aside for the moment the fact that everything has occurred either by the effectual or permissive decree of God …. Laying aside that fact, God knew beforehand of the approach of Satan toward Eve in that first day of sin. He foresaw what would happen when Satan occupied the body of that serpent. He knew about Eve’s offer to her husband, and of course the Lord could have prevented it. God knew about Adam’s sin, not withstanding the way that He came into the garden that evening. He knew that Adam had spiritually died and that he had been irreversibly corrupted by his sin. He foresaw that both Cain and Able, and later Seth, were all sinners. He knew about the wickedness of the days of Noah, and of the wickedness of Ham and Canaan. We could take a walk though the ages, and continue to speak about the Lord’s perfect knowledge.
But here is the thing: this diving knowledge was not brought about by observation. As I have said before, the Lord has never ever learned anything. The mind of God is not a bucket into which a million facts were added until it was completely full. And we cannot dive to the depths of the knowledge of God. We cannot mine out the wealth of that knowledge. “O the DEPTH of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” As difficult as it is for the saints to grasp, and as impossible as it is for the unsaved, God’s knowledge of these things is based upon His sovereign control of every event. Well then, how can God permit sin without being responsible for it? I can’t really answer that, because I haven’t heard a humanly logical explanation. But I believe that it is true, because that is the declaration of the Word of God. Within the human justice system, to know about an upcoming murder and yet to do nothing, makes the person with that knowledge a criminal accomplice. But that rule does not apply to God. “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.” But if God did not know about the rise of sin, and if he didn’t know about all the subsequent sins, then He is not omniscient and therefore He is not God. I would rather glorify God by saying that I don’t understand, than to diminish God’s glory by saying that He didn’t understand.
God knew that Paul would be saved that day on the road to Damascus, because He loved Him, He knew Him, He chose Him, and He chose to save him, all when the plan of salvation was decreed in eternity past. And the same is true for every one of us who are children of God today. When God permitted Adam’s sin, the Lord knew of your future salvation. In fact, He knew you in the sense that he loved you from the moment He determined to permit your birth. “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!”
And, of course, this is an extremely difficult aspect of our deliverance from sin. A gentleman and I were talking the other day about the difference between the Ceremonial and the Moral Law of God. Much of what we read in Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy were laws given specifically to Israel – part of which was to mark them as God’s nation and God’s ambassadors. But contained in those books are other laws which were in existence long before Moses came along. The Ten Commandments – the Decalogue – codified laws which had been around since creation itself. And they are only the tip of the Moral Law iceberg. In fact, it would probably not be incorrect to say that they were in effect before there were human beings to either keep or break them.
The conclusion of those Moral Laws was that when men did break them, they would pay with death. Those Moral Laws can be summarized or illustrated in the first law that God gave to Adam. “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” As you all know very well, this is often repeated throughout the Word of God, because it is important. “Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.” “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” “The wages of sin is death.” We come into this world “dead in trespasses and sins.”
“Ah, but Jehovah is a merciful God and as such can deal with this sin and judgment problem,” people say. Yes, that is true, but the mercy of God is misdefined by enormous numbers of sinners in this world. They somehow think that mercy means that God can overlook man’s sin problem. He can’t. Yes, there are things that God cannot do, and denying His own holy nature is one of those things.
But at essentially the same time that God chose to create, permit sin, and to save certain sinners, the Lord also determined to put the judgment for those sinners upon Himself; that is, upon the Lord Jesus, the Second Person of the God-head. “How unsearchable are his judgments?”
Maybe it is my weakness of mind, or perhaps it is the weakness of the whole human race, but no one has been able to explain to me why God chose to judge Himself in order to save my soul. Jehovah didn’t need saints to make Him more glorious than He was before creation. He didn’t need to put billions in Hell and however many in Heaven, in order to make Him a greater God. I cannot explain either His wisdom or His judgment in this regard. All that I can do is bow my knee with Paul and say, “To Him be glory for ever.”
Perhaps we could apply this word to the providential way that the Lord leads each individual to Himself. Look at Paul, for example…. Why and how did his parents move to Cilicia, to raise their son among the Greeks and Romans there. Was that important to his later ministry as the Apostle to the Gentiles? And then as a young student he returned to the city of his forefathers and studied at the feet of the greatest rabbi of his day. Young Saul became a leader of a synagogue of foreign Jews in the city of the Hebrews. And there he came under the mental and spiritual assaults of the Christian – Stephen. When he and his friends couldn’t find an answer to the scriptures and arguments of Stephen, they became accomplices in his murder. This was something which apparently weighed heavily upon his sin-sick soul, until the day of his salvation. But prior to that, Saul became the chief arm of the priests in their attacks upon the saints of God. I believe that we can see the hand of God preparing his heart for the mortar and pestle of the Holy Spirit’s conviction.
And most likely, in the case of each one of our lives we can see the miraculous way of God. For those of you who were raised in Christian homes, perhaps the points are not so dramatic, but your birth and your parents are a part of that divine providence. And then for people like me, there were still my parents. There was a form of Christianity, which gave me a respect for the Bible. There was the instilling of a certain degree of morality, and the resultant recognition of sinfulness. Then came God’s introduction of certain people, and through them a clarification of the gospel. There was Judy and her family, their church and their pastor. Finally the Lord brought all the pieces together, just as he did to Saul of Tarsus, just outside Damascus. In some ways, the way of God was as natural as putting one step in front of another or following our nose. But then in other ways looking back on it all, it was absolutely miraculous, yet without a single miracle.
Part of the chapters which lead up to these verses, express man’s complete helplessness in this business. First, he is spiritually dead in trespasses and sins. Ah, but he does have physical life for a few years. But that physical life, no matter how well spent it might be, doesn’t have any righteousness in it. There is nothing that any man can give in exchange for his immortal soul. There is nothing that any of us can do to restore life to that part of us which was born dead – our spirits. There is nothing which man can give to God before the Lord gives to that man.
Last Wednesday we read the prayer letter of our missionary Timothy Parrow. Brother Parrow recounted a conversation which he had with a Mexican Roman Catholic in which he said, “God’s true work of grace in the heart of a sinner begins with the spiritual work of regeneration followed by repentance and faith as a result of the effectual hearing of the gospel. Without these basic spiritual activities in an individual’s heart, there is no salvation from the wrath of God.” I completely agree with that statement, and believe it to be the teaching of the Scriptures. God does not recompense salvation to sinners because they have repented of sin or put their faith in Christ. Repentance and faith are spiritual activities performed by those whom the Lord has quickened and enabled
Verse 34 asks two questions: “For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?” There are many people who might think that I am particularly stupid for saying this: But it doesn’t bother me that I can’t answer all of the questions that I am raising this morning. I don’t have to have an explanation for all the things that the Bible says about the subject of salvation. I’m afraid that some people demand those answers because they think too highly of themselves. I do not know the mind of the Lord, and I certainly have not counseled Him on the manner of my salvation.
The other day I was asked to look at the doctrinal statement of a man who is coming to Idaho from Florida to start an independent Baptist church. I became somewhat confused when I read certain portions of his statement, so I e-mailed him. I said, “I see that in your doctrinal statement you say, ‘We believe that repentance and faith are wrought in our souls by the quickening Spirit of God…’ does this mean that the Holy Spirit regenerates dead souls, and they then repent and believe, or do you believe that God responds to the sinner’s repentance and faith by regenerating and saving them? You also say, ‘We believe in God’s electing grace that the blessings of salvation are made free to all by the Gospel…’ Does this mean that you believe in God’s sovereign election of specific sinners?” His reply was what I expected: “In response to your first question, we believe that the spirit quickens the believer upon their belief and repentance. Not before. We believe that only through repentance and a conscious decision to trust Christ will the soul seperated (sic) or dead in sins a (sic) trespass be quickened by the spirit. Secondly, we are not calvinist if that is your question, we believe that because of God’s omniscience he cannot help but know who will be saved but also that salvation is offered to all men not just the elect.” In other words, what the man believes is not what his doctrinal statement says that he believes. He doesn’t really believe that repentance and faith are wrought in our souls by the Spirit of God. And he believes that electing grace is nothing more than God choosing to make salvation to anyone who wants it. In both aspects of his reply he says that God responds to the sinner and recompenses him for his faith and repentance.
Beloved, that man’s answer does not describe Biblical grace. The salvation of God is by grace in the sense that the Lord decreed it, initiated it, carried it out and bestowed it upon those whom He chose without any input by them. Grace is the unearned favor of God; it is a reply or recompense to nothing that man has done. The word “grace” demands God’s election. Verse 35 is a rhetorical question meaning that the answer is obvious and unnecessary. No one has given to God anything and the Lord has never repaid man for anything including that man’s repentance and faith.
Here lays one of the most common errors that people think when considering salvation. I know that I have mentioned it often, but I mention it because it is such a problem. Salvation is not about the sinner; it is about the Saviour. It is not about making us happy; it is about glorifying the Lord. Salvation is of God, it is through God, and it is for God.
Yes, we, the saved, will be blessed for all eternity, but that is only an incidental result. Our eternal blessing continues to contribute to that glory. I know that this is not the way we think; that it is not natural our minds; and that is its problem. But let’s go back to the beginning: Why did God create this universe in the first place? It was not so that you could eventually be born. It was all about Him, even though my mind can’t grasp it very well. Why did God permit sin and then determine to save some of us? It was not so that you could enjoy the blessings of Heaven for eternity. Again, it was for Him.
I don’t know that we have the words necessary to express God’s purpose in salvation – or the ultimate result. The best we can do is employ the common Biblical word “glory.” “To Him be glory for ever. Amen.”