I would like to continue considering the why question regarding God’s purpose in the creation of Satan/the devil, and subsequently allowing the evil and destruction the devil has brought into God’s good creation. Our good friend Jonathan Edwards, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 2, writing on the Fall of the Angels, sees God’s purpose in allowing Lucifer and the angels, and ultimately man to rebel against His good purposes in creating them, as being for His glory, as I argued in my previous post.
However, Edwards sees a specific glory, a specific attribute of God that is to be magnified in the fall of men and angels, and that is to be the glory of His sovereign grace, as it is revealed most gloriously in the person and work of Jesus Christ in His redemption of both man and creation. In this the infinite glory of God the Son would shine most gloriously in this age and in the ages to come (2 Corinthians 4:6) (Ephesians 2:5-7).
The term or concept of grace is typically defined as the kind intentions of one person toward another, a gift freely given that benefits another, or the goodness we receive from someone who owes us absolutely nothing. Mercy, which is a form of grace, is the goodness expressed toward someone in misery, who deserves that misery.
One writer describes God’s grace as being God’s free and glad display of His infinite goodness, wisdom and power on behalf of his creation, particularly mankind, for our eternal joy, pleasure and satisfaction in Him.
Thus, all of creation exists and is sustained by God’s grace and is dependent upon His grace in all things that pertain to life with God. God graciously created angels with great wisdom, beauty and power to exist in His immediate presence, beholding His glory and serving Him in His beneficence toward mankind, whom He would create in His image and likeness to also have life in His presence where we would know only fulness of joy and pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11). All of the awesome wonders of nature in the heavens and the earth that God heralded as “very good” were graciously provided by God for man to rule over, protect, and fully and freely enjoy under God’s gracious authority (Genesis 1:27-31) (1 Timothy 6:17).
As created beings, made for His glory, it should be evident to both men and angels that apart from His grace we are nothing and have nothing to bring about the abundant joy and eternal happiness God designed us to know in Him.
Edwards thus sets forth the premise that the fall of men and angels from the gracious and glorious relationship with God for which they were created, a fall caused by their despising of His grace, was by God’s design to demonstrate for all eternity, and to all creation, the emptiness, the helplessness, the exceeding insufficiency of both men and angels to exist and thrive, as God intended, apart from His grace.
Edward’s writes “God’s design was to first show the creature’s emptiness in itself and then fill it with himself in eternal, unalterable fullness and glory”. To this end, God allowed the creature, both men and angels, to sink into total and utter depravity and humiliation, and the earth that was to be ruled and enjoyed by man to undergo complete ruin.
God would bring both men and angels to know their own emptiness, inadequacy and absolute insufficiency apart from submission to God, as the vanity, the futility and destructiveness of their self-dependence and self-willfulness would be exposed as they were, in judgement, cut off from the life with God for which they were created, subjected to His wrath. As such, they were brought to an entire dependence on sovereign grace and the all sufficiency of God to be communicated to them by God to escape the finality of His judgement.
Edwards writes as to the wisdom of this, “And thus the whole old creation, both heaven and earth, as to all its natural glory and creature-fulness, was to be pulled down; and thus, way was to be made for the creation of the new heavens and new earth, or the setting forth of the whole elect universe in its consummate, everlasting, immutable glory in the fulness of God, in a great, most conspicuous, immediate, and universal dependence on his power and sovereign grace, and also on the glorious and infinitely excellent nature and essence of God, as the infinite fountain of glory and love; the beholding and enjoying of which, and union with which, being the elect creature’s all in all, all its strength, all its beauty, all its life, its fruit, its honour, its blessedness”.
This new creation would come forth through the One, who unlike the devil and fallen mankind whom both sought equality with and even exaltation over God, “did not see equality with God a thing to be grasp, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:5-11).
This One is of course God the Son, Jesus Christ, who after living a life of perfect obedience to and total dependence upon God the Father, suffers the greatest of humiliations on the cross so that creation could be renewed and redeemed men and women could one day be conformed, by grace, to His eternal glory in every aspect of our being (1 John 3:1-4) (Philippians 3:20-21).
Edwards writes that it was always the divine purpose that the human nature was to be assumed by, and united to, the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, and that He was to be the head of all principality and power, the infinite fountain of God’s glory and love, such that angels and men should come to know the riches and the glory of God’s grace through Him and in Him (Ephesians 1:3-10).
Edwards notes that this grace was first extended to what he referred to as the “elect angels” (1 Timothy 5:21), those angels whom God graciously chose to restrain from joining the devil and his angels in their rebellion, who would be cut off from God’s grace forever (Matthew 25:41). The “elect” angels would be confirmed in holiness as ministering spirits to Christ and His elect (Hebrews 1:14). His “elect” are men and women graciously chosen by God out of condemned humanity (Romans 11:5-6) (1 Peter 2:9-10), in whom God would grant spiritual life (Ephesians 2:4-7), create in them a new heart, freeing them from the pride and envy that brought about that condemnation, and put His Spirit in them (Ezekiel 36:24-27). He would do so that they could fully enjoy the benefits of the new creation and receive by faith the redemption that is in Jesus Christ (Romans 3:24). It is a new creation that would exceed in glory all that was found in the first creation, even before it was corrupted by sin. (2 Peter 3:13) (Revelation 21).
This is the glorious destiny of all whom God freely chose, from the foundation of the world Ephesians 1:3-5), whom He has humbled in their hearts to know it is not by their righteous works that they have been saved from God’s judgement (Titus 3:4-7), but that their salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone (Ephesians 2:8-10), to the praise of the glory of God’s grace alone (Ephesians 1:6). And thus all elect men and angels must and will proclaim from the depths of their hearts, now and throughout eternity, Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! Thank you Jesus! Amen!
Grace and Peace ×