October 12

My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure. - Isaiah 46:10.

THE word counsel now signifies advice, direction, deliberation, but when the Bible was translated it more commonly signified scheme, purpose, design. Hence it is said, “He worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.” Hence we read in the liturgy of the Church that from God “all holy desires, all good counsels, and all good works do proceed.” Good “counsels” there, means just aims and designs; they are distinguished from “holy desires” going before, and “good works” following after. Here the word intends the scheme, the purpose, and the design of God with regard to the salvation of his people; and it is so called not because God deliberates or consults, but to show us “wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence.”

To bring sin into the world was an easy thing; to take it away was a work to which God, and only God, was equal. We have imperfect views of the evil of sin, and also of the holiness and justice of God, and therefore we are not sufficiently struck with the difficulties that stood in the way of our salvation; but God knows them perfectly, and his scheme for removing them all and restoring us to himself is contained in the gospel. And that is what Paul means by “the counsel of God,” which he made the principal subject of his preaching. It was not human science, though he was a man of genius and education, nor the politics of the world, though he knew that the Christian did not abolish the man and the citizen, not the petty interests of mortality; he “looked not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen,” knowing that “the things which are seen are temporal, but that the things which are not seen are eternal.”

He considered himself as “the servant of the most High God, to show unto men the way of salvation,” even Jesus, who is “the way, the truth, and the life;” to show how a rebellious subject can be reconciled to his displeased and injured sovereign, how a wretched slave can be redeemed from the curse of the law, and the bondage of corruption, and enter into the glorious liberty of the sons of God; how the guilty can be justified freely from all things; how the unholy can be sanctified; how the weak can “hold on their way, and wax stronger and stronger;” how the opposed can be “more than conquerors through him that hath loved them;” how the most abject, miserable, and the mortal, and the dying can enter into life eternal; how the poor and the needy can obtain the unsearchable riches of Christ, and be blessed with all Spiritual blessings in heavenly places in him; how (in a word) man, the sinner, can be raised above the angels who never sinned, and not only have life, but have it more abundantly; how sin can be pardoned and yet condemned; how the law can suffer the sinner to escape and yet be fulfilled, and magnified, and made honourable; how mercy and truth have met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other; how, while he redeems Jacob, he “glorifies himself in Israel;” and how “Glory to God in the highest” can be blended with “Peace on earth and good will toward men.”

This is the counsel of God, the good pleasure of his will, which is to be published to the ends of the earth; and for its universal diffusion the dispensations of Providence are all at work, until “the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”