The Fall Overruled By God’s Grace

I will praise thee, O LORD, with my whole heart; I will shew forth all thy marvelous works. I will be glad and rejoice in thee: I will sing praise to thy name, O thou most High. (Psalms 9:1-2)

“Ye shall not go empty” (Exodus 3:21b)

It is God primarily who has been wronged in all his
rights by sin. Yet, man too has been wronged. But the Lord God has, in infinite
wisdom, fixed it, so that both he and his people shall be made the gainers by
the injury done. As the children of Israel were enriched by their bondage in
Egypt, as the fall of Israel has been overruled by our heavenly Father for the
riches of the world and the glory of God, so the fall of Satan and the entrance
of sin into the world by the fall of our father Adam has been, is being, and
shall yet be made to redound to the everlasting riches of God’s elect and the
glory of his great name.

Yes, the God of glory works all things together for
the good of his people and the everlasting glory of his own great name. Satan
will gain nothing by the havoc he has wrought in the world. He will achieve
absolutely nothing! And God’s elect will lose nothing, absolutely nothing! I
have chosen my words deliberately. This is the great glory of the cross. —
“Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound!” Both God and
his people have gained more by the forgiveness of sin through the blood of
Christ than was lost by the sin and fall of our father Adam and the long years
of our Egyptian bondage.

The Lord God has arranged all things, even the sin and fall of our father Adam, for the everlasting good and happiness of his people.

I repeat myself deliberately — We shall lose nothing, but only gain by what happened in the garden, gainers not by sin but by redemption! Indeed, the sin and fall of Adam was itself, by divine purpose, a picture of redemption by Christ (Romans 5:12-20). Martin Luther understood what I am trying to preach to you. He said, with regard to Adam’s sin in the Garden,

 “O
blessed fall!” Had there been no fall, no sin, no condemnation, we could
never have known the wonders of redemption. Had there been no fall, no sin, no
condemnation, we could never have known the glories of grace. Grace not only
cuts up sin by the roots and ultimately destroys it, — grace makes chosen sinners
to be eternal beneficiaries of Satan’s work!

– Don Fortner, Pastor of Sovereign Grace Baptist Church, Danville, KY USA