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Nesher Tracts
God's Greatest Glory
"But
as for you, you thought evil against me, but God meant it for good, to
bring to pass as it is this day, to save many people alive."
(Genesis 50:20).
God ordains all things that come to pass. Not a sparrow falls to the
ground without a specific decree from God for it to happen (Matthew
10:29). Even the very hairs of our head are all numbered (Matthew
10:30). Where the sparrow falls, or the hair lies, is decreed by God,
as
is what happens to it afterwards. Extrapolate the ordination of one
sparrow or one hair to the working of the entire universe, and we can
just begin to get some idea as to how all-powerful, all-knowing and
almighty God really is. This is the God that all men are duty bound to
worship. He is the only God worthy of worship. Any other god who falls
short of this is merely a figment of men's own imaginations.
"Thou
thoughest that I was altogether such an one as thyself"
(Psalm 50:21).
Because God ordains all things that come to pass, and because God is
perfect, we must conclude that all things that come to pass are working
together for good (Romans 8:28). The greatest good is God's glory. He
is the all-powerful, all-knowing, almighty God worthy of worship, so He
must get all the glory. No glory should ever go to a lesser creature
such as man, or gods who are figments of men's imaginations.
Not only
do all things that come to pass work out to God's glory, but God so
ordains everything that it all works out to His greatest glory.
He
cannot work out anything to a lesser glory, otherwise He would be less
than perfect. For example, if there were, say, ten different ways to
get from A to B, God would be bound to choose the one way which would
lead to His greatest glory. He could not choose to come to pass any of
the other nine ways. Extrapolate this concept to all possible events
that could happen in the universe, and all interconnections between all
events, and we just begin to get some idea of how God works all things
to His greatest glory. There is only one path God can ever ordain, and
that is the sequence and interconnection of events that actually come
to pass, which is always what is to His greatest glory. All other
theoretically possible ways, God will not ordain to come to pass,
because it will not be to His greatest glory.
All this is very straightforward so far. However, before we can really
come to believe this, there seems to be two insurmountable problems in
the way:
(1.) The first one is the argument that, if God is in control of all
things, then that just turns rational creatures with a will of their
own, like angels and men, into robots. If we are forced to do what God
decrees we do, and cannot choose to do anything else, how can God
account us responsible for our actions? God has endowed rational
creatures with a free will, and although the will of man has now, after
the fall of Adam, lost all ability to do good (sin is the second
problem which we will come to later), the choices men make are fully
theirs, despite the fact that God has decreed them, as He indeed
decrees all things. This might seem a difficult concept to grasp at
first, but God is not only in control of all events and interconnection
between events, but the wills, desires and affections of men as well.
This fact just goes to show how even greater God is. Again, we only
begin to see this when we start to contemplate it.
(2.) The other seemingly insurmountable problem is that of sin. If God
is in control of all things, then how is it that there is so much evil
in the world? Surely evil cannot come from God? Well, sin has
come into
the world, i.e. God has ordained it to come to pass, so we must
conclude that this is because His greatest glory can only be served by
its presence. But sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression
of the law of God. This fact presupposes the existence of rational,
created beings with positive laws having been given them by God. Sin
cannot exist in God alone because He is not a created being, neither is
He under any law. As soon as God created rational creatures and gave
them positive laws, at least the theoretical existence of sin (i.e.
their breaking these laws) came into being.
Consider the following examples of evil acts:
(a.) Adam eating the forbidden fruit brought all mankind into an estate
of sin and misery. But God ordained this, as He knew it would be to His
greatest glory in the end (which Adam did not and could not know). Only
by there being a fall into sin can there be a plan of redemption, which
would glorify God far more than if there had been no fall (and
therefore no plan of redemption) at all.
(b.) The crucifixion of Christ was at the hands of wicked men, who
shall
be duly punished for their wickedness; but only by the crucifixion of
Christ could God's plan of redemption be brought about. "Him
being
delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have
taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain." (Acts
2:24).
These wicked men had no idea of what God's plan was, but had their own
selfish motives for crucifying Christ, so they are culpable and God is
not.
(c.) Similarly, we can extrapolate this concept to the holocaust of
World War II, suicide bombers etc.
Indeed every sin against God's commandments, God ordains to His
greatest glory - otherwise He would not have allowed it to come to pass
in the first place. He
frustrates many a plan in men's minds.
So we now see how even greater God is. Not only is He in control of all
events, all interconnection between events, the wills, desires and
affections of all rational creatures, but all sinful acts and thoughts
of men as well.
Finally, it could be objected that if a wicked act, e.g. the
crucifixion of Christ, comes to pass, and as it therefore must be to
God's greatest glory; then why should such acts be called wicked and
men punished for them, when, after all, God's greatest glory is being
served by
them?
"Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?"
(Romans 6:1).
Well, the answer lies in the fact that God is all-knowing and
all-powerful, therefore He knows what to decree, and indeed has the
power to decree it - all events that come to pass being only ever
worked out by Him to His greatest glory. Men and other rational
creatures are neither all-knowing nor all-powerful. They can neither
see the future nor powerfully make sure that anything they decide to do
can come to pass anyway. God can always frustrate them if what they
intend is not to His greatest glory. So, because men are not capable of
knowing or effecting what is to God's greatest glory, God has given
them another rule to live by instead of the rule of "whatsoever comes
to pass." The rule of life given to men is the moral law, which is
summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments. This is always
our rule
of life. However, on many occasions, e.g. the crucifixion of Christ,
God does not actually decree what is in keeping with the moral law to
come to pass, but what is a transgression of it (i.e. sin). This, only
God has the right to do, because only He can see when it is best to
decree what is (to men) evil, for the purpose of leading events to His
greatest
glory in the end. Men can never see or know this. God is perfectly
just in consequently judging men for breaking His commandments, even
though God
might actually decree oftentimes for their actions to come to pass -
for His greatest glory.
So we see that our rule of life is the moral law, which we are duty
bound to keep; whereas God's rule of life is His greatest glory, which
He is bound to decree. We cannot begin to fathom how God's greatest
glory should come about. But that does not mean that we should not:
(1.) Begin to realise all this, and therefore see how great God is.
(2.) Love God's holy law and live our lives in the light of it, and it
alone.
(3.) Give God all the glory in all things and "cease from man
whose
breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted of?"
(Isaiah 2:22).
(4.) Realise that God's greatest glory may be (and often is) displayed
through unpleasant experiences for ourselves - indeed, even eventually
our
death. We have no right to believe that God will not bring on us
unpleasant adversities; but when they come, we have the comfort of
knowing that they are all working out to God's greatest glory, because
He has brought them to pass. Therefore, we need never fret, in any
circumstance, knowing
that God is always glorified to the greatest possible extent in all
things that come to pass.