genesis 6:5, 6

[sola_gratia]

This might seem a bit elementary. I searched the forum...I hope this hasn't been asked before. But someone asked me if God ordains all things that come to pass...why did he grieve?

 

[just_grace]

Because, He is free to do so. We are not.

We are the clay and not the potter.

He is before all things and in Him all things consist.

Submit to God and the devil will flee from you.

 

[rgrove]

Might be worthwhile going over God's preceptive will and his decretive will as well. Just because He is able to use our desire to sin to His glory and our betterment doesn't mean he's ambivilent in His attitude when we sin. The classical compatibilist examples of Gen 50, Isa 10 or the cross would be good examples of God ordaining something, but not being happy with those sinning all the while under his sovereign decree, and all the while knowing that it's for our good that what happens happens (especially true in the case of the cross of course).

Could be worded better, but hopefully what I said makes sense.

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

Matthew Henry:

Here is, I. God's resentment of man's wickedness. He did not see it as an unconcerned spectator, but as one injured and affronted by it; he saw it as a tender father sees the folly and stubbornness of a rebellious and disobedient child, which not only angers him, but grieves him, and makes him wish he had been written childless. The expressions here used are very strange: It repented the Lord that he had made man upon the earth, that he had made a creature of such noble powers and faculties, and had put him on this earth, which he built and furnished on purpose to be a convenient, comfortable, habitation for him; and it grieved him at his heart. These are expressions after the manner of men, and must be understood so as not to reflect upon the honour of God's immutability or felicity. 1. This language does not imply any passion or uneasiness in God (nothing can create disturbance to the Eternal Mind), but it expresses his just and holy displeasure against sin and sinners, against sin as odious to his holiness and against sinners as obnoxious to his justice. He is pressed by the sins of his creatures (Amos ii. 13), wearied (Isa. xliii. 24), broken (Ezek. vi. 9), grieved (Ps. cxv. 10), and here grieved to the heart, as men are when they are wronged and abused by those they have been very kind to, and therefore repent of their kindness, and wish they had never fostered that snake in their bosom which now hisses in their face and stings them to the heart. Does God thus hate sin? And shall we not hate it? Has our sin grieved him to the heart? And shall we not be grieved and pricked to the heart for it? O that this consideration may humble us and shame us, and that we may look on him whom we have thus grieved, and mourn! Zech. xii. 10. 2. It does not imply any change of God's mind; for he is in one mind, and who can turn him? With him there is not variableness. But it expressed a change of his way. When God had made man upright, he rested and was refreshed (Exod. xxxi. 17), and his way towards him was such as showed he was pleased with the work of his own hands; but, now that man had apostatized, he could not do otherwise than show himself displeased; so that the change was in man, not in God. God repented that he had made man; but we never find him repenting that he redeemed man (though that was a work of much greater expense), because special and effectual grace is given to secure the great ends of redemption; so that those gifts and callings are without repentance, Rom. xi. 29.

 

[Contra_Mundum]

This thread had some on this passage:

http://www.puritanboard.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=6558

 

[C. Matthew McMahon]

God grieves....?

God is the ever blessed, ever miserable God? (Immutably so?)

 

[WrittenFromUtopia]

The Septuagint's rendering of this passage is most interesting ...

 

[just_grace]

Originally posted by C. Matthew McMahon
God grieves....?

God is the ever blessed, ever miserable God? (Immutably so?)

What then. O Teacher!

We await.

 

[SolaScriptura]

Originally posted by sola_gratia
This might seem a bit elementary. I searched the forum...I hope this hasn't been asked before. But someone asked me if God ordains all things that come to pass...why did he grieve?

Probably the best book if you are studying these things is Bruce Ware's God's Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism.

Not only is the book a fine rebuttal of open theism, but it also serves as a nice "mini commentary" on all those "God grieves/repents" passages that are so often appealed to by open theists.