Walking Through Westminster, WCF 3.4

Westminster Confession of Faith 3.4

"These angels and men, thus predestinated, and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished."

Summary

Because God’s foreordination must be sure and certain, there must be a definite number of men and angels elected to eternal life, as well as eternal punishment. The words of Christ must be true, “Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition”. (John 17:12b) The number of men and angels elected to eternal life can never be changed, whether increased or decreased. This doesn’t mean that the numbers cannot appear to fluctuate. When the gentiles heard the preaching of Paul in Antioch, they were converted to the Lord and born again. But we see that this isn’t a matter of people who were formerly not-elect suddenly becoming elect through grace, but rather “as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.” (Acts 13:48) And, on the flip side, any who for a time appear to be regenerated, but are lost in the end, were never truly born again, as the apostle John says, "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us." (1 John 2:19)  In spite of appearances, God has so foreordained all things that none of the elect can ever be lost, nor can any of the reprobate ever be saved. Their numbers are fixed by the predetermination of God.

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Walking Through Westminster, WCF 3.3

         Westminster Confession of Faith 3.3

     "By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death."

 Summary

 

      If God has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass, then by necessity He has to have foreordained the eternal destiny of all things, including men and angels. All men and angels are either foreordained by God to everlasting life or everlasting death. He executes this foreordination by decree. God decrees it to be so, and it must therefore be so. He does not do this arbitrarily, but for the manifestation of His own glory, which is the express purpose for which all things were created in the first place. Romans 9, along with other scriptures, deals with this issue thoroughly: “What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?” God will be glorified in and by both the just punishment of sinners outside of Christ and by the merciful forgiveness of sinners in Christ. God does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ez 18:32). He is not vindictive in His foreordination, nor does He do it sinfully. As stated in WCF 3.1, God does not violate the will of wicked men, even in His foreordination to eternal punishment. God foreordains the elect to eternal life and the reprobate to eternal destruction, and He does so in such a way that their will is in no way violated or forced.

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Walking Through Westminster, WCF 3.2

Westminster Confession of Faith 3.2

"Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions; yet has He not decreed anything because He foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions."

Summary

      God knows all of reality and, because He is all-knowing, He also knows all potential realities. He knows everything that is and everything that could be. Yet His foreordination of all things is not based on His foreknowledge of all things. In other words, God does not look down the corridors of time, see what is going to happen, and then decree that it will happen. Rather, God foreordains all things that will come to pass because of His own good pleasure. This is another way of saying that God is in no way bound in His decrees. Particularly in the question of election to salvation, this is an important point. Arminians, Pelagians, and others who deny the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation imagine that, when the Bible speaks of God’s foreordaining people to salvation (Eph 1:11), what it really means is that God looked down the corridors of time, saw the faith that certain people would have in Christ, and on the basis of that foreseen faith, chose them to salvation. On the contrary, God’s election to salvation is based entirely on His own free love and grace, and not on His foreknowledge of faith.