Deuteronomy 29:29 “The
secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed
belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this
law.”
Reading
a commentary of the Will of God, I read that Martin Luther, the driving
personality of the Protestant Reformation, made several distinctions that we
continue to follow today. One of these is the distinction between God hidden and
God revealed. Luther’s desire was to convey a specific truth with this
distinction, namely, that if we are to know the Lord, the Lord must reveal
Himself to us. But in revealing Himself, God does not reveal everything there
is to know about Him. He keeps part of Himself hidden, whether because we could
not comprehend what He keeps hidden or because He simply chooses to exercise
His sovereign freedom and not tell us certain things.
Deuteronomy
29:29 provides the essential biblical teaching that underlies this distinction.
In this passage, Moses tells the Israelites that there are some things that are
secret and belong only to “the Lord our God.” Certain realities are for our
Creator—and only our Creator—to know. At the same time, God has condescended to
mankind in order to reveal to us certain truths about His character and
plan. These truths are for us to know forever. This passage indicates that the
Lord has two wills—one hidden and one revealed. God’s hidden will (also known
as His decretive will, will of decree, or absolute will) includes all that He
has ordained. His will of decree establishes every event in history, every
thought and intention of every person, everything that ever happens. This will
extends even to the ordination of evil, for the Lord works out everything
according to the counsel of His will (Ephesians
1:11). Importantly, not everything that God ordains in His hidden will is
in itself pleasing to Him. Considered in themselves, He hates the evils He
ordains, but He ordains them in order to overcome evil and achieve a greater
good that does please Him (Romans 8:28).
God’s
revealed will is also known as His Will of precept or preceptive Will. This Will
tells us
what the Lord finds pleasing. Chiefly, the revealed Will of God is His moral
law. When Scripture calls us to do the will of the Lord, it is this Will that
is in view. We cannot know His hidden Will, except in retrospect. We can look
back in history and know what was part of the Lord’s hidden, or decretive, Will
up until this point because God’s decretive Will always comes to pass. Whatever
happens in history manifests what He ordained in His sovereign but hidden Will.
Yet we are not called to seek out this hidden Will, which we cannot know in advance anyway because God hides it from us. Instead, we are to live by what the Lord
has revealed in His preceptive Will. As we obey His commandments, we please our
Creator.
The
distinction between God’s hidden Will and His revealed Will gives us a great deal
of freedom. We do not have to worry about His hidden Will, because we cannot know
it anyway. But as long as we seek to obey His revealed Will, we may freely do whatever
is in accordance with this Will. If, for example, we are presented with two choices
for work and both of them do not entail sin, we can choose whichever job we
like better without worrying that we are displeasing the Lord. We have free
Will.
In
Christ, Brian
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