PCEA

God in Providence

By “providence” we mean God’s care of His universe. Christianity teaches that God provides for all His creation. There are those who think that God is not personally interested or personally involved in the world He has made. He set it agoing as an intricate mechanism, and left it to work itself to a halt. He stands aside and watches, a mere spectator of the course of nature that He has set in motion!

Christianity cannot accept this clockwork view of the universe. It teaches that though God is infinitely exalted above the world, yet He is in it, sustaining and controlling everything from within. This is what we mean by Providence. It teaches that God is preserving His creatures. If left to itself the universe would not continue to exist. All its life, animal and vegetable, hangs upon God to uphold it in being. The nature of life largely eludes us. God appears to have kept the secret of life within His own keeping. He gives life, He sustains it, and, in His own good time, He withdraws it. The throb of life is from God, the heartbeat is under His control.

Cooperation

It means, too, that Providence is a sphere in which God co-operates with His creatures, He causes life to act precisely as it does because He is in control, yet He uses His creatures and their efforts to work for the preserving and betterment of life. For example, the instinct of self-preservation is deeply imbedded in every living thing. It is really the creature co-operating with the Creator: it is He who causes us to act in that way. His ways we may not understand, but His plan we freely operate.

Providence also introduces us to God’s government of His creatures. God is above the world and He rules all things towards the fulfilment of His own purposes. He brings all that happens under His control so that everything moves towards the goal He has set for His creatures. The pattern is with Him, it is only the threads that we see in the weaving.

This raises a question as to the extent of Providence. If the meaning we have given is correct, does it not mean that everything must come under His control, evil as well as good? We know that God is not the author of sin, but we know that He restrains, and controls it, and over-rules it for His own good purpose. The activities of men, even of wicked men, are under His control, yet He is not responsible for what they do. He shall judge it and punish it at the last.

The supernatural

Another question arises from this: is there anything of what we call the supernatural in God’s providence? Generally speaking, God works along the laws of nature, for the laws of nature are really what we observe of the faithfulness of God. But God is not a prisoner within these laws. He is at liberty to supersede them when and as He pleases. This He often does by introducing higher laws hitherto unknown to us, as in the case of an aeroplane in flight, The modern aeroplane, of enormous tonnage, would seem to be contradicting the law of gravitation when it is airborne. But in flight it is being sustained by another and higher law, a law of aerodynamics. The law of gravitation is not set aside, it is superseded by a higher law.

God can also modify natural law. When we speak of the uniformity of nature, we are really speaking of our experience of God’s usual way of working. He can change this at will. Moreover, natural law must, at God’s bidding, yield to spiritual law. If the visible order of things rests on another, the spiritual — if, in other words, the material is only the vesture of the spiritual, then the spiritual reality can break through the material at any moment. This we rightly think of as the supernatural, though we must not think of it as unnatural. It does not contradict nature, it supersedes it.

If this be the order of the divine government, is there room for prayer? There certainly is. Prayer is not to influence God to do certain things He would not otherwise do. Prayer so puts us in line with the will of God that it may be the channel through which God works His will in us and through us. So God has left a place for prayer in the vast and intricate organisation of life.