The Decree Part I
FOR MY FIRST WORDS I WOULD LIKE TO SAY THAT OUR SUBJECT FOR this morning towers over us like the peak of an enormous mountain. This is a heavy one. After reading all I’ve written, I believe you’ll see why I went to two parts. Even in two blogs I can but hope to touch the hem of God’s garment in my understating of “The Decree.” There is much I confess I do not know about “The Decree” of God. There is much, I suggest, human beings cannot know. Much of this subject is just God’s business. I cannot help but think of Isaiah 55:8-9, as I often do when I realize I am dealing with thoughts higher than I. But touching the hem of God’s garment is intellectually achievable and it is, I think you’ll agree, is a glorious thing and we can be thankful for…
NAS Isaiah 55:8-9 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. 9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.
LORD, HELP US TO COMPREHEND WHAT WE CAN COMPREHEND of this grand doctrine of Your Word…
THIS BLOG IS IN MANY WAYS A CONTINUATION OF A PREVIOUS BLOG: “Chosen by God,” as well as a prelude to a coming blog on “Predestination.” All of these deep subjects are expressions of God’s sovereignty, His sovereign will, and His sovereign ways of dealing with His creation – in other words, His business…
“SOVEREIGN,” YOU WILL REMEMBER, IS THE WORD WE USE TO REFER TO THE fact that God is in complete and uninterrupted control of His creation. Sovereign means that God is the supreme and unchallengeable Ruler of all things – including every human being and every situation – and that He has absolute authority over all things. Authority means that He has the right to His universal rule. He can do as He wishes and answer to no one…
NAS Ephesians 1:3-4 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love
HERE AT THE BEGINNING, LET ME POINT OUT A BEAUTIFUL TRUTH concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe Jesus is Lord, that is He is God. In order to be God, One has to be eternal. He had to have existed before creation. Look at your Bibles again: it says that God chose us “in Him,” that is, in Christ, “before the foundations of the world.” if you think that through for a moment you will see that Jesus then existed along with God the Father in eternity before creation. That means He is eternal. That means He is God…
THE PHRASE “BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD” LEADS US INTO this week’s study of “The Decree.” I could have called this blog “Before the Foundation of the World”…
“’BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD’ DENOTES THE TIME of the election.” – Hoehner…
THAT IS A QUOTE; WE MIGHT QUESTION THE USE OF THE WORD “TIME,” since there was no “time” as we know it before the foundation of the world. Time as we know it did not exist until God created the world of space and time. And yet, I don’t want to be critical. I know well that in talking of the things of God we must often resort to a kind of language of accommodation in order to communicate all but inexpressible things…
LET ME GIVE YOU A COUPLE OF STATEMENTS TO KEEP IN YOUR THOUGHTS as I attempt to communicate the great doctrine of the “The Decree.” One statement is that time exists as a part of eternity. In the sense of time as we know it, eternity is timeless. The other statement, which is another way at coming at this difficult topic, is that eternity is outside time. Scholars use both perspectives to discuss their relationship. I prefer the former, that time exists within the limitless horizons of eternity…
YET ANOTHER WAY OF CONSIDERING THE SUBJECT OF ETERNITY IS the approach our English dictionaries take. They say that eternity is a seemingly endless or immeasurable amount of time…
MY AMERICAN HERITAGE COLLEGE DICTIONARY SAYS THAT TIME IS a nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future, a duration. That is, of course, only one connotation of the word time. My dictionary had 14 connotations in all. Bottom line: it’s difficult for us human beings to put our minds around the concept of time, let alone eternity…
NAS Isaiah 55:8-9 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. 9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.
BUT THE BIBLE TELLS US IN EPHESIANS 1:4 THAT IN ETERNITY BEFORE TIME was, God made some decisions and formulated a plan. Those decisions and plan constitute what theologians refer to as “The Decree.” One of those decisions by God was that He would choose some people to form His body of believers on earth. He did this “before the foundation of the world”…
THE WORD “FOUNDATION” IS AN INTERESTING WORD IN ITS GREEK ORIGIN… The Greek word is καταβολη, (ka-ta-ba-lay). It is a compound word consisting of κατα (ka-ta), which basically means down, and βολη, (ba-lay), meaning throw. A foundation is literally something that is thrown down (1. the act of laying someth.. down, with implication of providing a base for someth., foundation. – BDAG). Readily connected with the idea of founding is the sense beginning…
NAS John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
THE VERBS IN THIS UNFORGETTABLE VERSE ARE ALL IN THE IMPERFECT tense. The imperfect tense denotes continuous action in the past. This fact strongly implies – if not proves – that before the beginning, God already was. God does not have a beginning; He created the beginning…
AND BEFORE THE BEGINNING, PAUL SAYS, WE WERE “CHOSEN BY GOD.” Our human, three-dimensional minds can only go so far on that thought. The beginning is hard enough to comprehend; before the beginning is all God’s business…
AND YET, HE IS GRACIOUS ENOUGH TO TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT IT in verses like Ephesians 1:4. For example, we can know that before the beginning there was God, and that He was already doing something for us…
WHEN YOU PONDER EPHESIANS 1:3-4 – I MEAN WHEN YOU REALLY THINK it through, you see that these two verses clearly tell us who God is and who we are. It is not an exaggeration to say that these two verses – when properly studied through and thought out – comprise the entire Christian life…
NOW LET US CONSIDER THE WORD “DECREE.” What exactly are we talking about when we use the word?…
A “DECREE” IS DEFINED IN OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES AS an authoritative order having the force of law; it is the judgment of a court… The verb form of decree means to ordain, establish, or decide by decree…
THE WORD ITSELF IS FOUND OFTEN IN THE BIBLE. It is used 41 times (BibleWorks search on the noun), 40 times in the O.T.… The N.T. occurrence is one which you are familiar… KJV Luke 2:1 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.
THAT, OF COURSE, IS THE DECREE THAT PLAYED A PART IN THE BIRTH of the Lord Jesus…
THE GREEK USED IN LUKE 2:1 IS δογμα (dog-ma)… 1. a formal statement concerning rules or regulations that are to be observed – BDAG. Another lexicon (Friberg) defines the Greek word as an opinion, a (public) decree. This Greek word is obviously where we get our English word “dogma.” A dogma is a code of belief, a creed, a system of tenets. You can see that the meaning of our English word for “decree” is very close to the meaning of the word in the Greek…
IN THE O.T., THE FIRST USE OF THE WORD “DECREE” IS FOUND IN… NAS 2 Chronicles 30:5 So they established a decree to circulate a proclamation throughout all Israel from Beersheba even to Dan, that they should come to celebrate the Passover to the LORD God of Israel at Jerusalem. For they had not celebrated it in great numbers as it was prescribed.
A FAMOUS USE OF THE WORD “DECREE” IN THE O.T. IS FOUND IN… NAS Daniel 9:25 “So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress.
THE HEBREW WORD HERE AND OFTEN THROUGHOUT THE O.T. IS דבר (da-var)… It literally means word. The noun form is used almost 800 times in the O.T. It is a common Hebrew word that is translated in a wide variety of ways, including command, thing, and act…
BUT THE DECREE WE ARE TALKING ABOUT TODAY IS NOT THE SAME AS the decrees that are mentioned in the O.T. There is a similarity, but “The Decree” of Ephesians 1:4 encompasses a much larger field of reference…
SOME SCHOLARS POINT OUT THERE ARE ACTUALLY SEVERAL “DECREES” in Scripture, not one. Suffice it to say, however, for the benefit of our purposes, speaking of but one, all-encompassing decree is quite all right…
THE WORD “DECREE” IS NOT FOUND IN EPHESIANS 1:4… Someone might understandably ask, “if the word ‘decree’ is not found in our passage, then how do we know Paul is referencing ‘The Decree’?” The answer is that the “The Decree” is a theological word. Theological words often are not specifically found in Scripture. The word “Trinity” is the best example. “Trinity” is the theological term that theologians apply to the scriptural teaching that God exists in three Persons. I am not saying three Gods, as you should know; I am saying there are three Persons with in the Godhead. One God, three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit…
BUT, IN ALL FAIRNESS, I MUST MAKE IT CLEAR THAT NOT ALL AGREE that God did indeed determine a sovereign decree before the foundation of the world. The fact that the word is not used in Scripture is no small problem to overcome. As a Greek and Hebrew teacher who teaches proper methods of Bible study, I would normally be the first to object to such a blog as I am presenting this morning. Theologically speaking, a universal decree as I am suggesting is mainly the product of Calvinism. Many Baptists do not subscribe. The subject of God’s dealings before time as we know it began is exceeding deep and complex. I approach it humbly. I know I could be wrong in my overall perception of “The Decree”…
AND YET, I WOULD CONTEND THAT THERE HAD TO HAVE BEEN SOMETHING resembling “The Decree” I am presenting this morning. This world and its events were planned by God before the world began. We can confidently know that from direct and indirect statements found in the revelation of God in His Word. I am tempted to go so far as to say that Scripture demands there have been a Decree. Some may object to the word “decree” itself. I would respectfully say to them, OK, come up with another, better word…
BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD SOMETHING HAPPENED, something was decided, a plan was formed by God… If we are to name that something, I suggest the word “Decree” is a valid term…
IF WE DIDN’T USE THE WORD “TRINITY,” THEN WHAT TERM SHOULD WE USE? “Triunity” would most probably be the choice of most scholars. If we didn’t use the word “decree,” then what word should we use to describe all that God did “before the foundations of the world”?…
THE THEOLOGICAL TERM “THE DECREE,” WHILE NOT BEING FOUND IN V. 4, does have a direct connection to the Greek word boulh, (bou-lay), whose meaning is very close to what Paul is talking about in v. 4. It is, in fact, the Greek word from which we can legitimately authenticate our theological word “decree.” The Greek word boulh, (bou-lay) is found in v. 11, which I hope you remember is part of Paul’s introduction…
NAS Ephesians 1:11 also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will,
“THE COUNSEL OF HIS WILL” IS, IN ESSENCE, “THE DECREE.” “The βουλη, (bou-lay) of His will”…
ASIDE FROM “COUNSEL,” boulh, (bou-lay) IS DEFINED AS “PURPOSE,” “DECISION,” and “plan.” That’s what “The Decree” is…
“THE DECREE” IS the divine purpose, a divine plan based upon the divine decision made by the will of God. βουλη , (bou-lay) is the Greek word that accommodates the determinative will of God. The word “decree” referring to a universal sovereign predetermined plan of God may not be in Scripture, but βουλη , (bou-lay) is, and it occurs in the context of Ephesians 1 which deals with the deep things God determined before the foundation of the world…
GOD HAS A DESIROUS WILL AND A DETERMINATIVE WILL… His desirous will is the dimension of His will that He desires or wishes to be accomplished. His determinative will is that dimension of His will that He purposes to be accomplished. God’s desirous will can be ignored or rejected. It may happen; it may not. But His determinative will cannot be ignored or rejected. If God determines something to happen, it will happen…
THAT, I THINK YOU MIGHT AGREE, IS A GOOD PLACE TO END PART I… I hope you will think on these deep things, as I intend to…
– Professor Thomas A. Rohm
