Perhaps someone has asked you the question, “What is your favorite Bible verse?” This is impossible to answer satisfactorily, but when we read older Christian writers, we can begin to see which Bible verses—which sentences and paragraphs of Scripture—they return to again and again. In the case of the great Reformer John Calvin, one of those verses is Deuteronomy 29:29. He quotes it again and again. This verse is worth committing to memory. It says, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”
This verse is precious because it reminds us of two basic truths. The first is a truth that we easily ignore: God has not revealed everything to us. There are things about God and His work that we could not understand and many things that, in His wisdom, He has decided to keep from us.
Job, the great Old Testament servant of the Lord, learned this lesson. He suffered in unimaginable ways, and even after God appeared to him, he did not learn why he had suffered. While the Lord does not charge Job with any sin, Job himself says, “Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (Job 42:3). Job’s encounter with God made him acutely aware that there were many things that he did not understand, many truths that were beyond his purview.
In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul makes the same declaration, writing, “For we know in part and we prophesy in part.” Then he adds: “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Cor. 13:9, 12).
There are many things that God has chosen not to reveal to us. The specific circumstances of our lives, while ordained by God, are not always explained by God—at least not yet. This should provide comfort to us. God knows all and is sovereign over all. But our knowledge is partial.
But of course, there is another great truth that Deuteronomy 29:29 teaches, and it relates to God’s revelation to us. There are secret things, but there are also revealed things. God has given us His Word that we might know Him, that we might know how to worship Him and serve Him, and that we might understand ourselves. Our goal in life should be to give ourselves to these revealed things and to teach them to our children and anyone else under our care. We can do so with confidence, knowing that God has given us all that we need.
There are secret things that belong to the Lord. But God, in His kindness, has given us a sufficient Word, sure and certain, and its testimonies are clear.
Dr. Jonathan L. Master is president of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Greenville, S.C., and a teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America. He is author of several books, including Growing in Grace and Reformed Theology.
Comments