It Pleased the Lord

To Reveal Himself and Declare His Will

The Westminster Doctrine of Holy Scripture — Article 3 of 48

Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal himself, and to declare that his will unto his church. — Westminster Confession of Faith 1.1¹

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1. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647) 1.1; 2.1; 7.1; Westminster Larger Catechism, questions 2 and 5. ↩

Natural revelation closes every mouth, but it does not open the mystery of redemption. Creation declares the power, wisdom, and goodness of its Maker. Providence confronts humanity with dependence upon his sustaining hand. Conscience bears witness to his moral claim. Yet neither heaven nor conscience announces the incarnation of the Son, the satisfaction of the cross, the triumph of the resurrection, or the promise of justification through faith. If sinners are to know God as Redeemer, God must speak again in a further and saving way.

Westminster marks that movement with one of the most grace-filled transitions in the Confession: “Therefore it pleased the Lord.” Humanity does not climb from nature to Christ. Philosophy does not uncover a gospel hidden in the structure of the cosmos. Religious experience does not cross the infinite distance between the guilty creature and the holy Creator. God freely makes himself known. He reveals himself and declares his will to his church.

Every phrase matters. Revelation arises from God’s good pleasure. Its great object is God himself. Its intelligible content is his declared will. Its historical recipient is his church. Its course unfolds at many times and through many modes. These are not separate observations accidentally placed together. They describe one sovereign act of covenantal condescension by which the living God gives his people the saving knowledge they could never obtain for themselves.

Revelation Begins in the Good Pleasure of God

The Confession does not say that human need compelled God to reveal himself, though the need was absolute. It says that it pleased him. The source of saving revelation lies in God’s free and gracious will. God does not reveal himself because creatures supply something he lacks. He is eternally complete and blessed in himself—the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost possessing perfect life, knowledge, love, and glory. The triune God neither creates from loneliness nor speaks from dependence. Revelation is not the completion of God but the condescension of God.

Nor does saving revelation answer a claim that fallen humanity holds against him. God owes his creatures truth in the covenantal relations he establishes, for he cannot lie or deny himself; but rebels possess no natural right to a revelation of pardon. The law may justly expose and condemn them without disclosing a Mediator. That God announces mercy after sin is mercy.

This freedom appears throughout Scripture. Jesus thanks the Father because saving truth is hidden from the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes according to the Father’s good pleasure. He then declares that no one knows the Father savingly except the Son and those to whom the Son wills to reveal him (Matt. 11:25–27). Paul speaks of the mystery of God’s will made known according to his good pleasure purposed in Christ (Eph. 1:7–10). Revelation belongs to the same gracious counsel as redemption itself.²

Divine freedom does not make revelation arbitrary or unreliable. The God who freely chooses to speak speaks according to his immutable truth, wisdom, holiness, and covenant faithfulness. His good pleasure determines both that he will reveal and what he will reveal. The church does not negotiate the content, revise the message, or establish conditions under which God may be believed. Theology begins by receiving what the Lord has freely given.

The phrase also destroys spiritual pride. Abraham did not reason his way into the covenant promise; God called him. Moses did not discover the divine name; God announced it. Israel did not devise the law; God spoke from Sinai. The prophets did not reach heaven by religious genius; the Word of the Lord came to them. The apostles did not infer the gospel from universal principles; Christ chose them as witnesses and sent the Spirit to teach them. At every stage, revelation descends.

The Incomprehensible God Makes Himself Truly Known

Westminster says that the Lord revealed himself. This presupposes both the majesty of God and the possibility of true creaturely knowledge. God is incomprehensible. This does not mean that he is unintelligible or wholly unknown. It means that no finite mind can contain, measure, or master him. The creature can know God truly because God makes himself known, but never exhaustively because the finite cannot comprehend the infinite. “Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?” (Job 11:7). Even glorified saints will remain creatures rejoicing in an inexhaustible God.

James Ussher expresses the point by comparing divine knowledge to sight of the sun. God dwells in unapproachable light and cannot be reached by the dulness and blindness of the human heart unless he shows himself. Yet the sun is seen by its own light, and God is known by the means through which he manifests himself. The impossibility of discovering God by autonomous searching does not imply agnosticism. It establishes the necessity of revelation.³

God accommodates his speech to creaturely capacity. He uses human words, created images, historical acts, offices, covenants, ceremonies, and comparisons drawn from ordinary life. He speaks of his arm, throne, anger, repentance, remembrance, and descent—not because he possesses creaturely limitations, but because he communicates eternal truth in forms suited to us. Accommodation is not distortion. A wise father can speak truly to a child without speaking exhaustively or falsely.

Two errors are thereby excluded. Rationalism imagines that human thought can comprehend God according to an independent standard and accept only what fits within it. Mystical agnosticism says that words and doctrines cannot communicate God and that genuine religion must pass beyond intelligible revelation into an undefined encounter. Scripture refuses both. God exceeds every creaturely concept, yet he has chosen words that truthfully communicate who he is and what he wills.

The knowledge given is analogical in the sound sense: creaturely knowledge corresponds truthfully to God’s self-knowledge without becoming identical in mode or measure. When Scripture says God is holy, the church truly knows his holiness, though not with the infinite comprehension God possesses of himself. Revelation gives genuine knowledge while preserving reverence, dependence, and wonder.

The Confession joins two actions: God reveals himself and declares his will. They must be distinguished without being separated. Revelation is personal because the living God is its object. Scripture does not merely supply religious facts while leaving God hidden behind them. God identifies himself: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”; “I AM THAT I AM”; “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt” (Exod. 3:6, 14; 20:2). His names, attributes, works, covenants, judgments, and promises disclose him as he truly is.

Revelation is also propositional because personal self-disclosure requires intelligible content. The opposition sometimes drawn between knowing a person and knowing truths about him is false. We know a person through meaningful communication, interpreted action, and faithful testimony. A supposedly personal revelation that declares nothing definite cannot identify the person revealed, distinguish truth from projection, or bind the hearer to any particular faith and obedience.

The phrase “declare his will” protects this intelligibility. God tells his church what he has purposed, promised, accomplished, commanded, and forbidden. His will here is not every secret decree known only to himself. Moses distinguishes the secret things that belong to the Lord from revealed things that belong to us and to our children, that we may do the words of his law (Deut. 29:29). God decides what belongs to creaturely faith and duty. Theological curiosity must not trespass beyond his disclosure, and theological indifference must not neglect what he has made known.

In the immediate context, “that his will” refers especially to the knowledge necessary for salvation that natural revelation cannot give. It includes the truth of human fall and guilt, the promise of grace, the identity and work of the Mediator, the covenant way of receiving his benefits, and the obedience God requires from the redeemed. It is both gospel and law rightly ordered: what sinners are to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of them.

Revealed words and revealed deeds therefore belong together. God’s mighty acts do not interpret themselves. The exodus could be treated as a fortunate political liberation unless God declares that he has redeemed his covenant people and judged Egypt. The cross could appear merely as the execution of a Galilean teacher unless Christ and his apostles declare it to be the atoning death of the Servant who bears his people’s sins. The empty tomb could be reduced to an unexplained anomaly unless God announces the resurrection of the Lord and its meaning for justification, kingship, and the world’s judgment.

Conversely, revelation is not bare speech detached from divine action. God speaks promises and fulfills them in history. He declares his covenant and administers it. He foretells redemption and accomplishes it. Biblical revelation is word interpreting deed and deed fulfilling word, both proceeding from the one Lord.

Revelation Is a Covenantal Address to the Church

God reveals himself and declares his will unto his church. This phrase does not make the church the source or judge of revelation. It identifies the covenantal people to whom God entrusts his saving Word. The church exists because God calls. The Word creates the community; the community does not create the Word. God addressed Adam after the fall, called Abraham, assembled Israel at Sinai, sent the prophets, and gave the first promise and the covenant oracles. Christ called disciples, appointed apostles, and by the gospel gathered one people from Israel and the nations.

Throughout this history, revelation is public and ecclesial rather than esoteric. Particular persons receive dreams, visions, or prophetic words, but the divine message is given through them for the people of God. Moses speaks to the congregation. The prophets cry in Israel and Judah. Apostolic letters are read in churches and exchanged among them. Even the most exalted mysteries are not private possessions of a spiritual elite. What God reveals belongs to his people and their children according to the administration of his covenant.

This ecclesial destination gives the church great responsibility. Israel was entrusted with the oracles of God (Rom. 3:2). Ministers must teach the whole counsel of God. Parents must speak of his words in the house and by the way. The congregation must hear, confess, sing, obey, preserve, and transmit the revelation it has received. The church is the household in which the Word dwells richly.

Yet reception never becomes lordship. A messenger does not authorize the royal decree he carries. A steward does not own the treasure entrusted to him. The church’s recognition, confession, and proclamation answer to an authority already present in God’s speech. This principle, introduced here, will govern the later discussions of canon, ecclesiastical testimony, interpretation, and councils.

The phrase also prevents an individualistic doctrine of revelation. God certainly addresses individuals and requires personal faith. But he does not ordinarily detach believers from the covenant community, its worship, its ministry, and its common confession. “His church” is not an infallible intermediary standing between God and the believer; it is the people formed and ruled by the Word that every believer has a right and duty to hear.

At Sundry Times and in Divers Manners

Westminster takes its language from Hebrews 1:1: God spoke in former times to the fathers by the prophets at many times and in many ways. Special revelation has a history. It was not deposited all at once in undifferentiated form, nor did it arise as the gradual religious insight of humanity. God sovereignly spoke at chosen moments through appointed means.

The biblical modes are strikingly diverse: direct speech, theophanies, dreams, visions, signs and wonders, Urim and Thummim, angelic messages, covenant law, inspired songs, proverbs, histories, parables, letters, and apocalyptic symbols. Prophets sometimes spoke, sometimes wrote, and sometimes enacted signs with their lives. Ussher gathers the extraordinary modes under the broad heads of oracles and visions. Oracles communicate the divine Word as spoken through appointed servants and instruments; visions present God’s will through images and representations, whether to waking or sleeping recipients. His classification is useful because it recognizes diversity without allowing the modes to become independent religious phenomena. In every case, the governing reality is that God spoke.

The diversity displays divine wisdom. God accommodated revelation to different ages, circumstances, recipients, and redemptive moments. A promise suited the exile from Eden. A covenant sign marked Noah and Abraham. Ceremonial shadows instructed Israel before the sacrifice of Christ. Prophetic indictment addressed covenant apostasy. Apocalyptic imagery strengthened persecuted saints. Apostolic letters ordered churches living after Pentecost.

No mode possessed authority because it was psychologically intense or culturally impressive. A dream was revelation only when God gave it. A prophetic symbol was authoritative only because God commissioned the prophet. Human religious experience does not become revelation by resembling a biblical experience. The authority lies in the divine Speaker, not in the phenomenology of the recipient.

Progressive Revelation Is One Divine Story

“At sundry times” also describes the progressive unfolding of redemption. God revealed truly from the beginning, but he did not reveal every truth with equal fullness at every moment.

The promise of Genesis 3:15 contains the seed of the gospel: conflict between the serpent and the woman, suffering, and a victorious offspring. The covenant with Noah preserves the world in which redemption will unfold. The promises to Abraham identify a covenant family, a land, a seed, and blessing for the nations. The Mosaic economy gives law, priesthood, sacrifice, tabernacle, feasts, and national types. The Davidic covenant focuses expectation upon a royal Son. The prophets clarify the Servant’s suffering, the new covenant, the gift of the Spirit, resurrection, judgment, and the glory of the coming kingdom.

This progress is organic, not corrective in the sense of replacing earlier falsehood with later truth. God does not repent of inaccurate revelation. Later revelation explains, expands, and fulfills what was genuinely given before. The acorn is not a mistaken oak; it is the oak in an earlier stage of divinely ordered development. Promise advances toward fulfillment, shadow toward substance, type toward antitype, prophecy toward the appearing of Christ.

The saints under the old covenant were therefore not saved by a different way. They received Christ in promises, sacrifices, and types, trusting the mercy of the God who would accomplish what he pledged. The revelation available to them was sufficient for faith in its appointed administration even though they longed to see more clearly the things now announced in the gospel (Luke 10:23–24; 1 Pet. 1:10–12).

Progressive revelation must be distinguished from religious evolution. Scripture narrates no human ascent from primitive superstition to refined monotheism, but God’s repeated intervention amid apostasy. Its unity comes from one divine Author, one covenant purpose, and one Mediator promised and revealed across the ages. Hebrews does not stop with the former times and diverse manners. “God … hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Heb. 1:1–2). The history of revelation reaches its climax in Jesus Christ.

The Son is not merely the greatest in a series of prophets. He is the eternal radiance of the Father’s glory and the express image of his person, the One through whom the worlds were made and by whom all things are upheld. The prophets spoke as servants in God’s house; the Son speaks as the heir and Lord of the house (Heb. 1:2–3; 3:1–6). He does not merely report a reality external to himself. He reveals the Father because he eternally knows the Father and is one with him.

John states the same truth: no man has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has declared him (John 1:18). To see the Son is to see the Father, not because the persons are confused, but because the incarnate Son perfectly makes the Father known (John 14:9–11). The content of saving revelation is therefore irreducibly Christological. God’s will is purposed in Christ, accomplished by Christ, and known through Christ.

Yet the supremacy of the incarnate Word must never be used against the written Word. Christ did not leave an uninterpreted memory of his presence for later communities to reshape. He taught with words, explained his mission, appealed to the Old Testament, interpreted his death and resurrection, appointed eyewitnesses, promised them the Spirit, and commissioned their testimony. We know the incarnate Christ through the prophetic and apostolic witness God has given.

Whitaker fittingly begins his disputation on Scripture with Christ’s command, “Search the scriptures” (John 5:39). Christ names his works, his Father, and the Scriptures as witnesses, and the whole Scripture bears testimony to him. The proper Christ-centeredness of revelation therefore sends the church into the text rather than away from it. A Christ detached from Scripture soon becomes a projection of the interpreter.⁴

The many times and modes converge upon the Son. He is the promised seed, true Israel, greater Moses, final Priest, Davidic King, suffering Servant, incarnate Wisdom, temple, sacrifice, and Lord. Revelation is one because its center is one.

The Father Reveals Through the Son by the Spirit

Special revelation is the work of the triune God. The Father is the fountain of the saving counsel; the Son is its Mediator, content, and climactic manifestation; the Holy Spirit searches the deep things of God, communicates them to chosen messengers, and enables the church to receive them.

Paul says that the things eye has not seen and human wisdom has not discovered are revealed by God through his Spirit. The Spirit knows the things of God and teaches them in words, so that apostolic speech communicates what God has freely given in Christ (1 Cor. 2:9–13). Peter likewise says that prophecy did not originate in the will of man: holy men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Ghost (2 Pet. 1:20–21).

This trinitarian pattern guards the objectivity of revelation. God’s Word is revelation whether hearers welcome or reject it. Pharaoh’s unbelief did not turn Moses’ message into a human opinion. Jerusalem’s resistance did not cancel the prophetic Word. The cross remained the divinely interpreted saving act even when rulers mocked it. Revelation does not become divine only when religious consciousness recognizes it.

At the same time, sinners require the Spirit’s inward work to receive revelation savingly. Objective revelation and subjective illumination must be distinguished. Revelation supplies the truth; illumination opens the mind and heart to understand, embrace, and obey it. The Spirit does not remedy an inadequate Word by adding secret content. He causes sinners to see the glory already revealed in Christ through the Word.

The order must therefore be clear: the Father does not leave saving truth to human discovery; he gives it through the Son and makes it known by the Spirit.

Revelation Calls for Faith, Worship, and Obedience

God’s purpose in revelation is not the satisfaction of speculative curiosity. He reveals himself that his people may know him, trust him, worship him, and live before him. He declares his will so that they may believe his promises and keep his commandments. This purpose gives theology its proper posture. The theologian is a hearer before he is a teacher. The church confesses what it has received. Reason serves by tracing connections, drawing necessary consequences, answering objections, and applying truth, but it may not sit as judge over the possibility or propriety of what God says. Revelation supplies the first principles of Christian thought.

The covenantal response is comprehensive. Divine promises call for faith. Commands call for obedience. Threatenings call for trembling. Histories call for remembrance and wisdom. Songs call for praise. Prophecies call for hope and watchfulness. The revelation of God’s holiness produces fear; his mercy, gratitude; his sovereignty, submission; his faithfulness, confidence; his glory in Christ, worship.

The church must also resist the desire to know what God has not revealed. Ussher warns that curious searching beyond God’s self-disclosure is vain and harmful. Deuteronomy 29:29 is not a prohibition against careful theology; it is the charter of careful theology. Revealed things belong to the church for faith and obedience. Secret things remain the Lord’s possession. Humility consists neither in knowing less than God has said nor in claiming more.

Pastorally, the doctrine supplies firm comfort. Christianity does not rest upon humanity’s uncertain search for the divine. God has entered history, identified himself, interpreted his acts, declared his promise, and centered his saving will in the Son. Faith rests outside itself in public divine testimony. The believer’s assurance may fluctuate; the revelation believed does not.

Conclusion: The God Who Chose to Speak

The necessity of special revelation magnifies grace. Humanity knows God as Creator and Judge and suppresses that knowledge. God could justly have left sinners under the witness of creation, conscience, and condemnation. Instead, it pleased him to speak a saving Word.

He revealed himself—not an unnamed religious object, but the covenant Lord whose name, character, and works he made known. He declared his will—not an unintelligible encounter, but promises, doctrines, commandments, and divinely interpreted acts. He addressed his church—not as the authority that creates revelation, but as the people his Word creates and governs. He spoke at sundry times and in divers manners—not through humanity’s religious evolution, but through sovereign interventions forming one progressive history. And he brought that history to its center and climax in the Son.

The church therefore begins every doctrine with grateful reception: it pleased the Lord. God was not found by those who searched above his Word. He made himself known by grace. The same good pleasure that purposed redemption also disclosed redemption, so that the people purchased by Christ would not walk by conjecture but by divine testimony.

Notes and Further Reading