“The doctrine of creation and providence is rich in encouragement and comfort. There is so much in life that is oppressive and that robs us of the strength to live and to act. There are the adversities and disappointments which we meet on life’s way.
There are those terrible calamities and disasters which sometimes cause hundreds and thousands of lives to be lost in nameless anguish. But life in its ordinary course also can sometimes raise doubts in the mind about the providence of God.
Is not mystery the portion of all mankind? The worm of restlessness and fear gnaws at all existence. Is it not true that God has a quarrel with His creatures and that we perish in His wrath and are terrified by His anger?
No, it is not the unbelievers and the frivolous only, but the children of God also, and these the most deeply of all, who are seized upon by the awful seriousness of reality. And sometimes the question forces its way from the heart up to the lips: Can it be that God created man on the earth for nothing?
But then the despondent Christian by a faith in God’s creation and providence again raises his head up high. No devil, but God, the Almighty, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, created the world. It is in its entirety and in its parts the work of His hands, and of His hands alone.
Once He had created it, He did not let it go. By His almighty and omnipresent power He sustains it. He governs and rules all things in such a way that they all cooperate and all converge upon the purpose He has established.
The providence of God includes, together with the maintenance and the cooperation, also the third aspect of governance. He is the King of kings and Lord of lords (1 Tim. 6:15 and Rev. 19:6) and His kingdom lasts unto all eternity (1 Tim. 1:17).
No accident and no necessity, no arbitrariness and no force, no mere caprice nor iron destiny controls the world and its history and the life and lot of mankind. Behind all secondary causes there lurks and works the almighty will of an almighty God and a faithful Father.
It speaks for itself that no one can really believe this with his heart and confess it with his mouth except the person who knows himself to be a child of God. The faith in providence stands in the most intimate of relationships with the faith in redemption.
True, the providence of God belongs to those truths which to some extent are ascertainable from the general revelation in nature and history. Some of the pagans have often expressed and described it in a beautiful way.
One of them said that the gods see and hear everything, that they are omnipresent and that they care for all things. And another one of them said that the order and the arrangement of the universe were maintained by God and for His sake.
But none of them knew the confession of the Christian that this God who maintains and governs all things is his God and his Father for Christ His Son’s sake. The faith in the providence of God was consequently shaken by doubt in the pagan world and often proved inadequate in the face of the vicissitudes of life.
The eighteenth century was very optimistic and held that God had created the best of all possible worlds. But when in the year 1755 the city of Lisbon was for the most part destroyed by a terrible earthquake, many began to blaspheme the providence of God and to deny its existence.
But the Christian who has experienced the love of God in the forgiveness of sins and the redemption of his soul is sure to boast with the Apostle Paul that neither tribulation, nor distress, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword shall separate him from that love (Rom. 8:35). If God be for us, who can be against us? (Rom. 8:31).
Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls; yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation (Habak. 3:17–18).
In such joy of heart the Christian calls on even the earth to praise the Lord: The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of isles be glad thereof! (Ps. 97:1).”
–Herman Bavinck, The Wonderful Works of God (trans. Henry Zylstra; Glenside, PA: Westminster Seminary Press, 1909/2019), 163-165.
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