To The Praise – The Aim Of God’s Election & Predestination
Passage: Ephesians 1:6
“…to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. …”
The Westminster Confession says that the chief aim of man is to glorify God. It understates the case. This is the chief end of all things. Nothing exists or happens that will not, in some fashion and to some degree, bring glory to the name and reputation of God.
In computers, things function logically. One process often takes precedence over another process. My email program, for example, examines the title lines of every email that I receive, and, based on rules that I have set up, moves the email to a given folder. This gets rid of the junk mail (at least some of it) that I receive by automatically and logically moving it to the deleted items folders without my intervention. I never even have to see the email if I don’t wish to. The rules function in an order, the order I set up. Rule number one executes, then rule number two, etc.
However, there is a drawback. If rule number one deletes a message, then rule number two never gets the opportunity to affect that message. If I have rule number one set delete every message from Joe, then rule number two won’t ever get the opportunity to even see messages from Joe, because they will be deleted before rule two ever executes. This is called precedence.
The glory of God functions in a similar fashion. God never does anything in “simple mode” that is, He never does anything for one reason. He is a complex being and does all that He does for reason and motivations that satisfy all of His character and serve all of His purposes. However, if there is one, overriding “rule” that takes precedence and governs all that He does, it is the “rule” concerning His glory.
Ultimately, God does what He does because of His glory. He desires that His creatures see His character and praise Him for it. He does things for other reasons as well, but this is the over-arching motivation in all that He does. It is the supreme “rule” for His conduct. All that God does serves His greater glory. All that we do and all that happens in the creation ultimately serves that “rule” as well.
We have lost sight of this in our present mindset. But men in ages past knew it well. They called this, among other things, the “Providence” of God. Our founding Father in this country believed that God worked in History to show Himself to people and bring them cause for praise and worship. They called this His providential hand. The understood that all that happens in history in the created world happens as a result of the active and deliberate counsel of the Almighty God and they weren’t shy about voicing that understanding and building it into their view of the world. It is present in both our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. The writings of many of the Founding Fathers are simply full of references to their dependence upon the Providence of God to sustain and move forward the cause of liberty. What a healthy world view!
The aim of God’s election and predestination of His people was that the act of doing so, of working salvation in this fashion, be a testimony to and facilitator of the praise of His glory! God’s decree (His “secret” or unknowable workings) and His Providence (His visible and knowable workings) work together to accomplish His plan and to bring glory to His Name!