Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries |
The Doctrine of Divine Decrees. Part 5.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Having decreed, He is bound by His infinite faithfulness and truth to complete what He has begun.
This includes completing the work He has begun in you!
The “free choice of God” is very important because God, from His own sovereign volition, invented free will in two categories of creatures, angels and mankind, so that both categories can choose for or against God.
REV 4:11 “Worthy art Thou, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for Thou didst create all things, and because of Thy will they existed, and were created.”
PRO 16:4 “The Lord has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil.”
The decrees of God are His eternal purpose according to the counsels of His own will whereby for His own glory He has foreordained whatever comes to pass.
“Foreordination in theology is the belief that God has set all events before they happen but not to the extent that He must destroy human freedom, an important part of being created in His image.”
(a) All-comprehensive
(b) Eternal
(c) Perfect
(d) Unchangeable and certain
(e) The free choice of God in eternity past
ROM 6:4 “So we too might walk in newness of life”
EPH 4:1 “Walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called.”
The decrees of God are His eternal purpose regarding you, according to the counsels of His own wisdom and His sovereign will, whereby for His own glory (we are created for His own glory) He has programmed into the decrees all that will come to pass in the function of the human race in history.
Point 3. The principle of the pre-creation reality and lapsarianism.
They are called in theology, the five elective decrees.
Lapsarianism provides the logical environment as well as the logical order for the five elective decrees.
It provides the place for the insertion of escrow blessings for every believer in the portfolio of invisible assets.
By logical order is meant that although the entire decree is one thought in the mind of God, the principle of cause and effect is involved in human perception and in human understanding.
The term lapsarianism refers to the doctrine of divine decrees from the standpoint that man is a fallen being or creature.