Providence
Providence is that continuous agency of God by which He makes all the events of the physical and moral universe fulfill the original design with which He created.
A general providential government and control of God extends over all while not denying the pockets of evil. Thus His providence extends as follows:
Preventive Providence
God by His providence prevents sin which would otherwise be committed. That He prevents sin is to be regarded as a matter, not of obligation, but of grace. For example, Genesis 20:6, of Abimelech, "For I also withheld you from sinning against Me."
We may represent the restraints and suffering by which God mercifully checks the fatal pursuit of sin. Parents, government, church, traditions, customs, laws, age, and disease are all full of the preventive influences. Man sometimes finds himself on the brink of a cliff of sin, and strong temptations hurries him to make the fatal leap. Suddenly every nerve relaxes, all desire for the evil thing is gone, and he recoils from the fearful brink over which he was just now going to plunge.
God has interfered by the voice of conscience and the Spirit. This to is a part of His preventive providence.
At sixty or seventy years of age men are eight times less likely to commit crime than at the age of twenty-five. This could be attributed to a subsiding of passions and/or the fear of punishment. God in some places is not even considered as a preventive measure. The Holy Spirit will raise up with help and healing for all who believe.
Permissive Providence
God permits men to cherish and to manifest the evil dispositions of their hearts. God's permissive providence is simply the negative act of withholding impediments from the path of the sinner, instead of preventing his sin by the exercise of divine power. It implies no ignorance, passivity, or indulgence, but consists with hatred of the sin and determination to punish it.
Directive Providence
God directs the evil acts of men to ends unforeseen and unintended by the evil agents.. When evil is in the heart and will is expressed, God orders its flow in one direction rather than in another so that its course can be best controlled and least harm may result. This is sometimes called overruling providence.
Determinative Providence
God determines the bounds revealed by the evil men do, the passions of God's creatures, and the measures of their effects. Since moral evil is a germ capable of indefinite expansion, God's determining the measure of its growth does not alter its character or involve His complicity with the perverse will which cherish it.
The union of God's will and man's will is such that while in one view all can be ascribed to God, in another all can be ascribed to the creature. But how God and the creature are united in operation is doubtless known and knowable only to God. A very dim analogy is furnished in the union of the soul and the body of men. The hand retains its own physical laws, yet is obedient to the human will. Let's look at how we recognize the veracity of consciousness in its witness to personal freedom, and yet the completeness of God's control of both the bad and the good. Free beings are ruled, but are ruled as free in their freedom. The freedom is not sacrificed to the control. The two coexist, each in its integrity. Any doctrine which does not allow this is false to scripture and destructive to religion.
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Pastor James P. Norman Jr.
Artesian Well Church
6031 Linden Avenue
Long Beach, CA
A general providential government and control of God extends over all while not denying the pockets of evil. Thus His providence extends as follows:
- over the universe at large;
- over the physical world;
- over creation;
- over the affairs of nations;
- over man's birth and lot in life;
- over the outward successes and failures of men's lives;
- over the things seemingly accidental or insignificant;
- in the protections of the righteous;
- in the supply of the wants of God's people;
- in arrangement of answers to prayer; and
- in the exposure and punishment of the wicked.
Preventive Providence
God by His providence prevents sin which would otherwise be committed. That He prevents sin is to be regarded as a matter, not of obligation, but of grace. For example, Genesis 20:6, of Abimelech, "For I also withheld you from sinning against Me."
We may represent the restraints and suffering by which God mercifully checks the fatal pursuit of sin. Parents, government, church, traditions, customs, laws, age, and disease are all full of the preventive influences. Man sometimes finds himself on the brink of a cliff of sin, and strong temptations hurries him to make the fatal leap. Suddenly every nerve relaxes, all desire for the evil thing is gone, and he recoils from the fearful brink over which he was just now going to plunge.
God has interfered by the voice of conscience and the Spirit. This to is a part of His preventive providence.
At sixty or seventy years of age men are eight times less likely to commit crime than at the age of twenty-five. This could be attributed to a subsiding of passions and/or the fear of punishment. God in some places is not even considered as a preventive measure. The Holy Spirit will raise up with help and healing for all who believe.
Permissive Providence
God permits men to cherish and to manifest the evil dispositions of their hearts. God's permissive providence is simply the negative act of withholding impediments from the path of the sinner, instead of preventing his sin by the exercise of divine power. It implies no ignorance, passivity, or indulgence, but consists with hatred of the sin and determination to punish it.
Directive Providence
God directs the evil acts of men to ends unforeseen and unintended by the evil agents.. When evil is in the heart and will is expressed, God orders its flow in one direction rather than in another so that its course can be best controlled and least harm may result. This is sometimes called overruling providence.
Determinative Providence
God determines the bounds revealed by the evil men do, the passions of God's creatures, and the measures of their effects. Since moral evil is a germ capable of indefinite expansion, God's determining the measure of its growth does not alter its character or involve His complicity with the perverse will which cherish it.
The union of God's will and man's will is such that while in one view all can be ascribed to God, in another all can be ascribed to the creature. But how God and the creature are united in operation is doubtless known and knowable only to God. A very dim analogy is furnished in the union of the soul and the body of men. The hand retains its own physical laws, yet is obedient to the human will. Let's look at how we recognize the veracity of consciousness in its witness to personal freedom, and yet the completeness of God's control of both the bad and the good. Free beings are ruled, but are ruled as free in their freedom. The freedom is not sacrificed to the control. The two coexist, each in its integrity. Any doctrine which does not allow this is false to scripture and destructive to religion.
Pastor James P. Norman Jr.
Artesian Well Church
Long Beach, CA
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