Whatever happens in my life is governed by my heavenly Father, in and through my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, by the effectual power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. If God is for me, and nothing can separate me from His love (Rom. 8:31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39), then that includes depression and mental health issues that at times negatively and severely impact me. This past week I have been living on the very edge of a complete mental-emotional nervous breakdown. I live on the edge of tears every day and there are many times when the tears flow freely and uncontrollably. I fully believe and trust that "the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us" (Rom. 8:18). I also believe that "God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose" (Rom. 8:28), and I acknowledge that this faith / belief / trust in His inerrant Word and in His promises is itself a gracious gift from God. So there is a mystical sense in which I know that my depression is not going to be the end or the death of me.
I also believe that my suffering will somehow bring glory to God and bring help and relief to someone else who suffers: All praise to God,
GOD GOVERNS HISTORY
Paul David Tripp traces God's sovereignty over the history of Ruth (cf. Ruth 1:1-4:22), leading to King David, giving us the birth of our future Messiah Jesus: "God doesn't just deliver Ruth and unite her to Boaz but He delivers to this family a son. This son, Obed, will have a son, Jesse, and Jesse will have a son, David, and ultimately out of David will come a son, the Son of David, Jesus." We cannot possibly imagine that these people "just so happen" to meet, to build lives together, and to fulfill prophetic promises apart from the sovereign hand of God--at least, we should not imagine such a scenario, not if we claim to believe in Scripture and in God's guiding hand in all of history. Tripp continues: "Through this little story of hardship and love, God sets things in place [and in motion, that He sustains, and Himself brings about] to deliver something anything but little: the ultimate promise, the Gift of gifts, the Savior, Jesus Christ, through whom God's redeeming love will flow."†
GOD FOREORDAINED FUTURE-HISTORY
If you say that God "foresaw" that these people would meet and build lives together and produce the offspring that God was "hoping" for then you have created for yourself a God who finds Himself in need of His own creation in order to bring about what He desired from eternity past. You have also created for yourself a God who can learn information that He Himself did not possess from all eternity and, hence, your God is not omniscient (all-knowing), because if Your God was all-knowing, then He would have no need of "peering into the future" in order to see what would happen and then foreordain that such would actually happen. In that case, then, there is no foreordination because God passively foresaw what would (perhaps hypothetically) happen and then gave the final say-so. This is not even remotely possible.
Consider the inerrant Word of God: "Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a Man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know--this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan [will, counsel] and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death" (Acts 2:22-23). This word for "foreknowledge" cannot mean "to foresee (what would happen)" because the implication grants us a God that is not omniscient but a God who needs to learn what will happen. That is an impossibility. If God must foresee what would or may happen then He is not all-knowing. This word for "foreknowledge," then, indicates a foreordination. Compare 1 Peter 1:2 with 1 Peter 1:20: "elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father" (1 Pet. 1:2); and Christ being "foreknown before the foundation of the world" (1 Pet. 1:20) as Redeemer.
The word refers not to the Father's foreknowledge / foresight of Jesus, in what He might accomplish, but to the Father's direct foreordination of the salvation of the elect (1 Pet. 1:2) and the foreordination of Jesus as the Redeeming Christ (1 Pet. 1:20). Such is attested to many times throughout Scripture: cf. "For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand [a reference to the sovereign power of God] and Your purpose predestined to occur" (Acts 4:27-28). There is no hermeneutical principle to escape the prima facie meaning here that what occurred then--what occurs now and throughout history--is done according to whatever our Sovereign God has predetermined to occur.
GOD SUSTAINS ALL IN HISTORY
In this case, we find God's power, and purpose, but no reference to His foreknowledge. This is because to add the notion of foreknowledge here would be redundant, given that His purposeful predestination is synonymous with His foreordination or the hand / power of His foreordaining what should occur (rendered at times as His "foreknowledge"). So the statement at Acts 2:23 could be read as "this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan, and the foreordaining hand / power of God." John Calvin states, at this verse, that Peter wanted all the people to know that what occurred in history took place "because it was so determined (and appointed) by God" Himself.
GOD'S METICULOUS SOVEREIGNTY OVER EVERY MINUTIÆ OF HISTORY
God informed Jeremiah: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you and before you were born I consecrated you" (Jer. 1:5). From all eternity God predetermined that Jeremiah was to exist; and his existence would come about through his mother and his father, Hilkiah (Jer. 1:1). Take a glance at the history of Jeremiah's dad Hilkiah, who was among the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of God came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, King of Judah, the thirteenth year of his reign; as well as occurring in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, King of Judah, until the exile of Jerusalem in the fifth month (Jer. 1:1, 2, 3). Are we to imagine that all of these people in these eras "just so happened" to do what they did and to be where they were? Not a chance! (Yes, that was a pun.)
Look at the life and history of Abraham and his forefathers. From Shem (Gen. 11:10) to his son Arpachshad, two years after the Flood (Gen. 11:10), to Nahor, the father of Terah (Gen. 11:24), who fathered Abraham, another Nahor and Haran (Gen. 11:25, 26, 27), we find Terah taking Abraham, as well as his grandson Lot, from the Land of Ur of the Chaldeans to the Land of Canaan, where God met Abraham, and told him to leave his country, his father and relatives, toward a place where He will soon reveal to him (Gen. 12:1, 2, 3). Ten to eleven generations of men and women until we get to Abraham, whose father moved him from Ur to Canaan where God revealed Himself to Abraham, and some of us think this history is not meticulously governed by our sovereign God? Given the eternal immensity of God alone, we are forced to embrace the meticulous sovereignty of God, or somehow suppress God's eternal reality and fashion Him a character and nature that is not biblically accurate for fear of rendering Him the Author of Sin and Evil. This I will never do again. I did it nearly twenty years ago but I will never do so again. To speak of our Triune God as anything less than meticulously sovereign is to harm the character, nature, and aseity of God.
CONCLUSION
If Scripture is true then God does not possess foreknowledge the way we imagine foreknowledge--merely knowing what someone will do before he does it. "My frame was not hidden from You [God my Creator] when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me when as yet there was not one of them" (Ps. 139:15-16 NASB). If this is true then God is sovereign over my depression, over my emotional and mental well-being, and I, by His grace, must learn to trust Him implicitly. God is sovereign over my history (Ps. 139:16), my existence (Acts 17:26, 27, 28), and my eternity (Ex. 32:32, 33; Ps. 69:28; 139:16; Dan. 12:1; Mal. 3:16; Luke 10:20; Phil. 3:20; 4:3; Heb. 12:23 Rev. 3:5; 13:8; 17:8; 20:11, 12, 13, 14, 15; 21:27). If God is sovereign over my depression then His purpose for it will be accomplished. If He brought me to these dark days of grace then He will see me through them. His sovereignty brings me comfort, encouragement, and hope. May He work in me what good this may bring, a humble and empathetic heart, and may He bring Himself praise in the pain, worship through the tears, and glory for His grace.
__________
† Paul David Tripp, Everyday Gospel: Christmas Devotional (Wheaton: Crossway, 2024), December 4.
I also believe that my suffering will somehow bring glory to God and bring help and relief to someone else who suffers: All praise to God,
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. For the more we suffer for Christ, the more God will shower us with His comfort through Christ. Even when we are weighed down with troubles, it is for your comfort and salvation! For when we ourselves are comforted, we will certainly comfort you. Then you can patiently endure the same things we suffer. We are confident that, as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in the comfort God gives us (2 Cor. 1:3-7 NLT).God is sovereign. This is an absolute statement that does not require long exposition. By "sovereign" we mean that He is in control of every event, even a horrifying or sinful or wicked event, that occurs on earth and in the entire universe. Nothing is beyond His control, governance, ability to thwart or power to intervene. Consider God's control of history, including the creation of each individual (Gen. 1:26, 27; 2:7; 5:1, 2; 9:6; Deut. 4:32; Job 4:17; 10:8, 9, 10, 11, 12; 31:15; 33:4; 34:19; Ps. 8:3, 4, 5, 6; 89:47; 95:6; 100:3; 104:30; 119:73, 74; 138:8; 139:13-16; Eccl. 3:11; 12:7; Isa. 17:7; 42:5; 43:7; 44:24; 49:5; 64:8; Jer. 1:5; 27:5; Zech. 12:1; Mal. 2:10; Matt. 19:4; John 1:3; Acts 17:26, 27, 28; 1 Cor. 8:6; Gal. 1:15; Eph. 3:9; Col. 1:16; 3:10; Heb. 3:4; James 3:9; Rev. 4:11), as well as what each individual is to think, say, and do. Consider the life of Ruth.
GOD GOVERNS HISTORY
Paul David Tripp traces God's sovereignty over the history of Ruth (cf. Ruth 1:1-4:22), leading to King David, giving us the birth of our future Messiah Jesus: "God doesn't just deliver Ruth and unite her to Boaz but He delivers to this family a son. This son, Obed, will have a son, Jesse, and Jesse will have a son, David, and ultimately out of David will come a son, the Son of David, Jesus." We cannot possibly imagine that these people "just so happen" to meet, to build lives together, and to fulfill prophetic promises apart from the sovereign hand of God--at least, we should not imagine such a scenario, not if we claim to believe in Scripture and in God's guiding hand in all of history. Tripp continues: "Through this little story of hardship and love, God sets things in place [and in motion, that He sustains, and Himself brings about] to deliver something anything but little: the ultimate promise, the Gift of gifts, the Savior, Jesus Christ, through whom God's redeeming love will flow."†
GOD FOREORDAINED FUTURE-HISTORY
If you say that God "foresaw" that these people would meet and build lives together and produce the offspring that God was "hoping" for then you have created for yourself a God who finds Himself in need of His own creation in order to bring about what He desired from eternity past. You have also created for yourself a God who can learn information that He Himself did not possess from all eternity and, hence, your God is not omniscient (all-knowing), because if Your God was all-knowing, then He would have no need of "peering into the future" in order to see what would happen and then foreordain that such would actually happen. In that case, then, there is no foreordination because God passively foresaw what would (perhaps hypothetically) happen and then gave the final say-so. This is not even remotely possible.
Consider the inerrant Word of God: "Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a Man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know--this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan [will, counsel] and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death" (Acts 2:22-23). This word for "foreknowledge" cannot mean "to foresee (what would happen)" because the implication grants us a God that is not omniscient but a God who needs to learn what will happen. That is an impossibility. If God must foresee what would or may happen then He is not all-knowing. This word for "foreknowledge," then, indicates a foreordination. Compare 1 Peter 1:2 with 1 Peter 1:20: "elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father" (1 Pet. 1:2); and Christ being "foreknown before the foundation of the world" (1 Pet. 1:20) as Redeemer.
The word refers not to the Father's foreknowledge / foresight of Jesus, in what He might accomplish, but to the Father's direct foreordination of the salvation of the elect (1 Pet. 1:2) and the foreordination of Jesus as the Redeeming Christ (1 Pet. 1:20). Such is attested to many times throughout Scripture: cf. "For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand [a reference to the sovereign power of God] and Your purpose predestined to occur" (Acts 4:27-28). There is no hermeneutical principle to escape the prima facie meaning here that what occurred then--what occurs now and throughout history--is done according to whatever our Sovereign God has predetermined to occur.
GOD SUSTAINS ALL IN HISTORY
In this case, we find God's power, and purpose, but no reference to His foreknowledge. This is because to add the notion of foreknowledge here would be redundant, given that His purposeful predestination is synonymous with His foreordination or the hand / power of His foreordaining what should occur (rendered at times as His "foreknowledge"). So the statement at Acts 2:23 could be read as "this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan, and the foreordaining hand / power of God." John Calvin states, at this verse, that Peter wanted all the people to know that what occurred in history took place "because it was so determined (and appointed) by God" Himself.
For this knowledge alone, that the death of Christ was ordained by the eternal counsel of God, did cut off all occasion of foolish and wicked cogitations [acts of thinking deeply, contemplating], and did prevent all offenses which might otherwise be conceived. For we must know this, that God decrees nothing in vain or rashly; whereupon it follows that there was just cause for which He would have Christ to suffer. The same knowledge of God's providence is a step to consider the end and fruit of Christ's death. For this [understanding is gained by] us by and by in the counsel of God, that the just was delivered for our sins, and that His blood was the price of our death.Are not all things, even my depression and mental health issues, governed by the sovereign hand / power and predestination / foreordination of God? How could it be otherwise? God is not in need of anybody (Acts 17:24-25). God so meticulously planned the future-history of each and every single person ever to exist that He "made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God [though they did not, cf. Rom. 3:10-17], if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him [and they did not, cf. Ps. 53:1, 2, 3], though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist" (Acts 17:26-28a). Calvin adds that, "here [at Acts 2:23] is a notable place touching the providence [and sovereignty] of God, that we may know that as well our life as our death is governed by it." When someone wants to argue that God does not foreordain whatsoever comes to pass, but merely foreknows and foresees what is to happen, Calvin rightly answers back: and, indeed, it is true that God [foreknows]
this thing or that thing before [beforehand], for this cause, because it shall come to pass; but as we see that Peter teaches that God did not only foresee that which befell Christ but it was decreed by Him; and hence must be gathered a general doctrine; because God does no less show His providence [and sovereignty] in governing the whole world than in ordaining and appointing the death of Christ. Therefore, it belongs to God not only to know before things to come but of His own will to determine what He will have done [what actually shall occur]. This second thing did Peter declare when he said that He [Christ] was delivered by the certain and determinate counsel of God. Therefore, the foreknowledge of God is [nothing else] than the will of God, whereby He governs and orders all things.This is the only correct interpretation of all that occurs in the earth, from my reading of God's Word, for we cannot have a God who merely and passively foresees what shall occur apart from His eternal counsel and will. If God cannot learn then God cannot foresee what shall occur in order to inform His eternal counsel and will. Otherwise God is dependent upon temporal beings for His eternal knowledge. That is not even remotely possible. No one can instruct Him (1 Cor. 2:16). No one can add to His eternally-exhaustive knowledge (Job 21:22).
GOD'S METICULOUS SOVEREIGNTY OVER EVERY MINUTIÆ OF HISTORY
God informed Jeremiah: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you and before you were born I consecrated you" (Jer. 1:5). From all eternity God predetermined that Jeremiah was to exist; and his existence would come about through his mother and his father, Hilkiah (Jer. 1:1). Take a glance at the history of Jeremiah's dad Hilkiah, who was among the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of God came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, King of Judah, the thirteenth year of his reign; as well as occurring in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, King of Judah, until the exile of Jerusalem in the fifth month (Jer. 1:1, 2, 3). Are we to imagine that all of these people in these eras "just so happened" to do what they did and to be where they were? Not a chance! (Yes, that was a pun.)
Look at the life and history of Abraham and his forefathers. From Shem (Gen. 11:10) to his son Arpachshad, two years after the Flood (Gen. 11:10), to Nahor, the father of Terah (Gen. 11:24), who fathered Abraham, another Nahor and Haran (Gen. 11:25, 26, 27), we find Terah taking Abraham, as well as his grandson Lot, from the Land of Ur of the Chaldeans to the Land of Canaan, where God met Abraham, and told him to leave his country, his father and relatives, toward a place where He will soon reveal to him (Gen. 12:1, 2, 3). Ten to eleven generations of men and women until we get to Abraham, whose father moved him from Ur to Canaan where God revealed Himself to Abraham, and some of us think this history is not meticulously governed by our sovereign God? Given the eternal immensity of God alone, we are forced to embrace the meticulous sovereignty of God, or somehow suppress God's eternal reality and fashion Him a character and nature that is not biblically accurate for fear of rendering Him the Author of Sin and Evil. This I will never do again. I did it nearly twenty years ago but I will never do so again. To speak of our Triune God as anything less than meticulously sovereign is to harm the character, nature, and aseity of God.
CONCLUSION
If Scripture is true then God does not possess foreknowledge the way we imagine foreknowledge--merely knowing what someone will do before he does it. "My frame was not hidden from You [God my Creator] when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me when as yet there was not one of them" (Ps. 139:15-16 NASB). If this is true then God is sovereign over my depression, over my emotional and mental well-being, and I, by His grace, must learn to trust Him implicitly. God is sovereign over my history (Ps. 139:16), my existence (Acts 17:26, 27, 28), and my eternity (Ex. 32:32, 33; Ps. 69:28; 139:16; Dan. 12:1; Mal. 3:16; Luke 10:20; Phil. 3:20; 4:3; Heb. 12:23 Rev. 3:5; 13:8; 17:8; 20:11, 12, 13, 14, 15; 21:27). If God is sovereign over my depression then His purpose for it will be accomplished. If He brought me to these dark days of grace then He will see me through them. His sovereignty brings me comfort, encouragement, and hope. May He work in me what good this may bring, a humble and empathetic heart, and may He bring Himself praise in the pain, worship through the tears, and glory for His grace.
__________
† Paul David Tripp, Everyday Gospel: Christmas Devotional (Wheaton: Crossway, 2024), December 4.
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