All rights reserved. As King of all creation, God exercises His sovereignty throughout the world. . You were a big help in answering some of my doubts about being saved. God is sovereign in creation. JOHN: Well, it’s according to your definition of “fair.” I would have to say that fallen people probably have a fallen view of fair, and it would be a – it would be a view that assumes what is fair. And if you have a horrible leader and a person who is doing wrong things, they are wrong, and you can make that judgment. God’s will is sure to be fulfilled whether we evangelize or not. We’ve talked about the doctrine of election, and most recently the problem of apostasy. JOHN: Yeah, and I think that’s the right view of the Old Testament. Deborah Fagan Schultz. In other words, Baptists are OK with any doctrine that affirms both God’s sovereignty and man’s free will. Accordingly, we have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions in order to comply with GDPR. Here’s the most evil act –, PHIL: — ever perpetrated by the hands of evil men –. This post was originally published in Tabletalk magazine. What it does say is, however, evil does not change the plan. God is the "sovereign Lord of all by an incontestable right [as the] creator . So I think you – if you – if you start there, it’s a little clearer to understand. “He cannot deny himself,” for example (2 Tim. (Acts 2:23–24, italics added) God the Father sent His Son into the world to die on a cross. So I – I just think it’s so important to understand that there’s no competition with God. Is God still in charge of who’s our President and –. And yet –. PHIL — where I thought that evil was pretty much in charge and God was trying to – trying to gain control. Strong, strong language. I’m going to go here, I’m going to do that. JOHN: Well sure. PHIL: Yeah. He could have said “mountain,” and there would have been a mountain. These same kinds of testimonies are found in the Bible, perhaps none more profound than the prophet Isaiah’s account of his life-changing encounter with the sovereign Lord. It needs to be said at that point that doesn’t mean that God motivates everything that happens, He doesn’t – doesn’t motivate evil, He doesn’t cause evil, He doesn’t do evil. When I – when you say it’s a heresy, I would say it borders on such a severe heresy as to perhaps have a God other than the true God. I mean, the end is already determined. Where were you when I made the world?” The interesting thing about it is Job never got the information that we get. He may make predictions like some cosmic poker player, but He cannot know absolutely. The actual word in the New Testament is kurios, its corresponding word is doulos. Last week I told you about the little 3-year-old. The Bible has lots of … Now the verse I quoted talks about the king’s heart. God rules the universe. And you answered questions starting with the main questions we knew people were going to ask. It – it –you know, just to give you an illustration. Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God. You know, even the good that man does is filthy rags, Isaiah says. Because if you say, “No, He’s not in control of everything,” then you’ve got a God who lacks power over something and if you say, “Yes, He is in control of everything,” you run right up against the problem of evil. You go back to the fact that you rejected. And this is the thing –. Answer: Human will is fairly straightforward: when we want something to happen, we “will” for it to take place; when we do something, we have shown our “will” in the matter. The question assumes that prayer is one-dimensional and is defined simply as supplication or intercession. He loves me; He loves me not.” In response, some people have insisted that God has the right to do whatever He pleases and it is none of our business to find fault with Him—a point that Paul himself anticipates (Rom. You know, if – if God ordains when I’m going to die, why should I wear a seatbelt? Take Job, for example. JOHN: No, nothing. But Daniel got some sovereignty lessons from God concerning the ... we are only scratching the surface. God is sovereign, and in His sovereignty He displays His majestic glory. PHIL: Yeah, one of the reasons it’s so difficult is that no matter how you answer the question; is God in control of everything? God’s sovereignty casts no shadow over the prayer of adoration. I might be disobedient and not do it. Does God have the ability to save everyone? PHIL: Kind of hard to get around that one. JOHN: I don’t know that there’s any way for me to come to 100 percent comfortable position because there’s always this nagging reality in – in your mind that there are people who have literally been fitted into a divine purpose that ends up in damnation. Does God have the ability to save everyone? 2. Answer: God’s sovereignty is one of the most important principles in Christian theology, as well as one of its most hotly debated. First, there is the question of evangelism. Thus, when the biblical facts warrant them, we can embrace incomprehensibles in the Bible an… Register. PHIL: So the really, the really hard question, if you – if you get beyond the superficial aspect of this, the really hard question – and I think you said it at the beginning – it’s not why does God not save everybody, but why does He save anybody, anyone? God has raised up civil governments to be systems of equity and good and peace, for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of them who do well (Rom. Fix that problem! from Derek Thomas Please respond to confirm your registration. Does the sovereignty of God allow for chance, coincidence, or cause and effect to take place in our lives? PHIL: Now, those of us who are saved also when we come to understand these truths are forced to acknowledge that if it were not for the grace of God, we also would have rejected Him. Traditional theism insists that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent—all powerful, all knowing, and everywhere present. in all its fullness to as many people as possible. Or He could have – He could have done a myriad of things. The movie follows the rise and fall of Civil War hero General Thomas Jackson, and does not try to hide his Christianity. Is God in control? PHIL: And, you know, my first semester in Bible college, I remember very clearly my first theology class. I’m working on a book about this, so there’s hundreds of places I could have gone. We were so burdened by the fact that Satan might come in the house and kill your baby, you know, cause your baby to be smothered. PHIL: And so the answer to that would be just to continually feed our minds with what Scripture teaches about this doctrine so that we stay balanced. It’s a subject that raises lots of questions and we want to ask you some of those questions today and get your help in finding biblical answers. The best one, though, really, was when the fellow who was to present me didn’t appear and I introduced myself. From its opening verse, the Bible asserts in no uncertain terms that God is and that God reigns. In God’s higher rationality, things that we think must be either-or can in reality be both-and. I might be obedient and do it. Recently, God made me aware of the fact that when I pray, I often “micromanage” Him, spelling out exactly how, when, and what I want Him to do to answer my prayers. So it’s clear that God is sovereign, but how does that not make God then somehow responsible for what happened, JOHN: I like what somebody said, “The devil is God’s devil.”. The Ligonier Ministries site requires Javascript, but you’ve got Javascript disabled. He’s in charge of all of that. She even said, “No more – you know, no more shots, no more pricks and pokes and, you know, treatments,” and all of that. I repent for the sin of not trusting You and Your sovereignty.” And I think that’s where I want – I’m happy to live in the sovereignty of God with the suffering that is there. JOHN: In other words, there’s not any competition for who’s in charge. The relationship between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility is not instantly obvious, and at first glance it seems paradoxical. Augustine and many medieval thinkers believed part of the mystery could be solved by identifying evil as a privation of the good, suggesting that evil is something without existence in and of itself. But I think the most typical wrong response to the doctrine of sovereign – or the sovereignty of God in salvation is indifference. And yet, Scripture is explicit, right? The sovereignty of God can bring with it a lot of questions and/or baggage depending upon your religious context. Is there a tendency for people who stress this doctrine to be like Job’s counselors? So I think, for me, no one understood the sovereignty of God better than the Lord Jesus did. And doulos means slave and kurios means Lord. An “attribute” is a quality or characteristic of someone or something. . We were going around the house praying Satan out of this room and demons out of that room and believing that, you know, Satan could give you cancer, and Satan wanted you sick and God wanted you well and Satan wanted you to have a calamity and God didn’t, so if you had a calamity and got sick, Satan was taking over your life.” And they called it the sovereignty of Satan. You have to ask the question; how does it affect God? And you come back again to the personal accountability issue that every sinner is held responsible for his own unbelief. PHIL: And Jesus seemed to say that, too, that nothing is really random when He said, “The hairs on your head are numbered,” and “even when a sparrow falls,” He says, “it doesn’t happen apart from the Father.”. They’ve been at this now two years plus, they’re months from the cross and the true believers are a small little group. JOHN: So this was kind of a rift in the family. It’s one of these Christian Living articles I wanted to share with you today. Evil is allowed by God, but He distances Himself from that. 2:13). So by God’s definition, this was the determined righteous thing for Him to do. That’s a fine line of distinction. Did He know that all things were within the sovereign purpose of God? Satan is a servant of God, he can only work within the perimeters that God defines. And then I love the next line that I have determined the end at the beginning. Registered User That’s what sovereignty is. So if you start at that point – you know, if somebody else brought the universe into existence, and God was trying to get control of it, that would be one thing. Oh really? The Question and Answer section for The Sovereignty and Goodness of God is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel. JOHN: I don’t know that it could be any more clear. But I think you’ve always got to move from the sovereignty of God to the reality that the Bible also holds sinners fully responsible for their sin and their rejection of the gospel. If He could even do what He said. And what’s the conversation going to be about? As a believer, I’m free to obey or disobey, right? And then there was something: matter, space, time, energy. Then the whole universe is a threat.”. PHIL: Basically declares His own sovereignty. God is displaying Himself to the holy angels, God is displaying Himself to – to the saints in His full glory. God is all powerful and all knowing; and His perfect knowledge extends to all things, past, present, and future, including the future decisions of His free creatures. PHIL: Even though He was dragged – He Himself personally was dragged around by the Roman government. It’s not. The human mind cannot grasp why God allows evil and suffering; instead, we are called to have faith and trust in God's goodness and love. I determined the end at the beginning, which is to say that whatever God purposes is what will happen. And I think – you know, I think that’s the thing that we should seek as the very compassion and tenderness of Christ toward those who are hurting. Is history already determined? How that harmonizes with the sovereignty of God in saving some is – is beyond my comprehension. But we dare not reason this way. We are culpable in transgression and praiseworthy in obedience. And, in fact, let’s start with one from Isaiah that talks about the decree of God, the eternal purpose of God. All of us have encountered the disastrous results of doing our own thing. It deals with future things from our day even. PHIL: Well, I’ve got to say from my own testimony, it’s hard to appreciate how mind blowing this concept is to someone who’s never really thought of it. And by the way, that entire theology, as heretical as it is, came into existence to get God off the hook for evil. The authority of the Creator is not altered by changes in any factor, and, similarly, the principles by which His authority is exerted do not alter for any reason. Now all of this is a bit misleading as an introduction to Romans 9. This article is also available and sold as a booklet. April 11, 2019 at 3:43 pm Reply. Rather, God’s sovereignty means that in the end, sin doesn’t have the last word. JOHN: Yeah, it is. He – and I always say He banished illness from Israel for the duration of His ministry, and He delivered people from demon possession. The inteded audience was parochial or church goers. We sent you an email. Those are easy to understand. Question: "Is God sovereign or do we have a free will?" The mission, passion and purpose of Ligonier Ministries is to proclaim the holiness of God PHIL: Yeah, you could say that Joseph lived this conversation, as well. 3. PHIL: Not to mention John the Baptist, lost his head over it. But it is no more confusing to me to deal with that dilemma than it is to deal with the opposite dilemma which is, “Why in the world did God save Me?”. PHIL: That still doesn’t change the sovereignty of God, right? The question of our heavenly Father’s sovereignty is actually the question of whether he’s God or not. God*s Foreknowledge Is Logical. 13:3; 1 Peter 2:14). So that reaffirms the Great Commission. PHIL: Yeah, that verse that you just quoted, “How shall they hear without a preacher?” comes in Romans 10 which is in – set in three chapters where the focus is on the sovereignty of God in salvation, Romans 9, 10 and 11. You know, we talked about that in the series on The Twelve Ordinary Men. THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD. JOHN: The Bondage of the Will, yeah. So as I look at allowing evil, I would say that the simplest explanation is the presence of evil in the world lets God display the fullness of His nature, both in His anger, His righteousness, His holiness, His wrath and His judgment, and all that side, as well as His mercy and compassion, and grace on the other side. Sovereignty of God – How is it seen? And if there’s no evil in the world, there’s no way, on the other hand, the positive side, there’s no way to display your grace, your mercy, your compassion, your kindness, your tenderness and yet those are attributes of God. People can take one of two extremes in regard to this question. But at that point, I exercise my faith. God meticulously planned each day of Kaleb’s life in such a way that He received maximum glory. These are common questions and they all share the same fallacy, right? You can live there. Evil is a matter of ontology (being). Dr. Sproul considers these questions in this message as he teaches us about the relationship between human freedom and "God's Sovereignty." 3) When my kids got older, they would sometimes question me persistently about a decision that I have made. I understand God interrupting history, making an axe head float, making a dead person rise, you know, dividing the sea in the Old Testament, or all the miracles in the New Testament. I realized this demonstrates a lack of trust in His wisdom and sovereignty. Then, you can test those general statements about God’s sovereignty with lots and lots of examples. You don’t sin under divine compulsion. That doesn’t mean we tolerate the evil and the wickedness in the leadership. After defining the biblical view of divine sovereignty, they look at God's sovereignty in salvation and answer common questions about its relation to prayer and evangelism. The freedom of the will as exercised, man has freedom in which he can pick his poison, he can choose his sin. It’s a form of the word “sovereign.” Sovereign was a designation of the person who reigned, the – the single ruler, the king, the monolithic power, the unilateral authority and that is essentially what to say God is sovereign means, that He is the sole ruler, He is the sole authority. The completed registration allows us to send order and donation receipts to the email address you provided. If not everybody is going to be saved, then you could say, “Well who – who decided not everybody was going to be saved?” Well you could say, “Well sinners decide that.” Well then God decided that sinners could decide that knowing that sinners wouldn’t decide that. Sometimes it is direct, sometimes it is. That’s what you’re saying. That’s simply saying that government as a reality, as a social reality is ordained by God for the wellbeing of man. And we chose those subjects because they’re the ones people ask questions about. Or, “I’m so sorry this randomly happened to you. Help Grace to You bring important resources like this to people in your community and beyond, free of charge. He says, “I was a blasphemer, I was a murderer, but He put me in the ministry.”, PHIL: Now, those who think superficially about these things always ask the question then, “How is it fair for God to do for one what He doesn’t do for another?”. You know, you might say, “Wow, that sounds like a – that sounds like some kind of intrusion.” I can’t think of anything more wonderful than that because I would much rather trust the Lord with my life than trust my life to myself. PHIL: And He’s directing it towards His chosen purpose. PHIL: So, we can’t maybe give a complete answer, why is there evil, but certainly one of the reasons is so that God can destroy it and glorify Himself in doing so. JOHN: His purpose, ultimately, is to glorify Himself which is the ultimate good. Wow, God put him in. As the glimmers of dawn break forth, Jackson calls out to God, asking for His will be done. Nowhere in the Bible are we encouraged to be passive and inert. That – that is a horrendous view of God. Yeah, there –there have been all kinds of wrong responses to this doctrine. I was looking for definitions on the sovereignty of God and the providence of God, and couldn’t really find one that would make me understand the difference between the two terms. PHIL: Alright, the issue of salvation is where you usually hear that question. JOHN: What does he do? And I suppose it’s the hardest and most obvious question of all about God’s sovereignty. So the fact that I’m saved, I don’t get to take any credit for. Are there realms in the created universe where God does not govern? JOHN: So they’re trying to divest God of a responsibility that He’s perfectly willing to accept. .He turns it wherever He wishes” (Proverbs 21:1). JOHN: We ought to say, “We will live if it’s within the purpose of God and do this and that.” You know, that takes the whole lofty sort of esoteric discussion about the sovereignty of God down to my life today. A. The first step in understanding the compatibility between God’s sovereignty and human will is to recognize that they are not mutually exclusive, and Scripture makes this absolutely clear. God’s telling me to tell you this guy is going to be a great preacher around the world. Biology says this should not have happened. And they ask the question, “Are only a few going to be saved?” So we all have to start there, and we say, “Okay, look, not everybody is going to be saved.” And then the question has to be asked, “By whose determination is that true?” The only possible answer is God. – Dr. Norman Geisler 1 "The word means principal, chief, supreme. Nothing is outside His box. God did that, He overruled me in order to save me. The sovereignty of God has been taught and preached, largely in an abstract way—but little has been done to explore the applications of this doctrine for life, and (therefore) for counseling. Dr. W. A. Criswell. A barren woman and an old man should not have a child. So I think this will help a lot of people if we can get a biblical handle on how to understand the sovereignty of God. Whether or not God is actually sovereign is usually not a topic of debate; all mainstream Christian sects agree that God is preeminent in power and authority. You know, how could the evil things that somebody does to me with evil intention, how can God have a plan in that that’s good? You know, I would go so far as to say chance doesn’t exist, it doesn’t exist. And there – we’ve sort of talked around these things already. JOHN: Why – why did He save me? PHIL: Yeah, now it still raises questions that are very difficult. PHIL: Yeah, I’ve often said you have to give the open theists at least some credit for their consistency because they – they start with a notion that God is not sovereign and that is what it takes you to, the idea that God doesn’t even know what’s going to happen in the future. That is a central assertion of Christian belief and especially in Reformed theology. So the elect have to hear to believe. Is it true that everything happens for a reason? But what to me is more miraculous than miracles is providence, how God takes all these contingencies in the millions and billions and trillions of actions of people and events and weaves that all together perfectly in His plan. In the year since then, we’ve done close to a dozen other Q&A sessions and we’ve dealt with issues like The Gospel, the seeker-friendly church movement, the issue of how far the church should go in adapting methodology in our message to the culture we’re trying to reach. So whatever happens is what He purposed to happen, right? JOHN: Yeah, it kind of reminds you of the story of Joseph, doesn’t it? Thank you for meeting with me a week ago last Monday. Apart from God, there was nothing. Rather, this truth is the very bedrock doctrine of all Scripture. If God is God, and He is, and if you go back before anything existed when all there was was God, the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, it – it would be obvious at that point that whatever was going to happen from creation on, would be what God wanted to happen. And give by Jesus at the end of the book of Revelation, come. Some emphasize the sovereignty of God to the point that human beings are little more than robots simply doing what they have been sovereignly programmed to do. That’s pretty well laid out as part of New Testament ministry, New Testament life. He – He never calls down judgment on the system, never. Here’s the answer I got. God’s foreknowledge or determinate counsel … The inteded audience was parochial or church goers. These same kinds of testimonies are found in the Bible, perhaps none more profound than the prophet Isaiah’s account of his life-changing encounter with the sovereign Lord. Each assertion is a variant of divine sovereignty. God has – so you grew up, nice Christian boy in a nice Christian family thinking that everything was kind of flying around in a random world and God somehow intervened here and there and saved a few people to take them to heaven. On the surface that looks good. PHIL: Now we might still say that’s a horrible thing. As King of all creation, God exercises His sovereignty throughout the world. I’m absolutely and thoroughly in charge. Fatalism would be the assumption that things are going to be whatever they’re going to be, just because they’re going to be that way. 1 Corinthians 10:13 states, God is responsible for evil in the broad sense that He willed it to exist without causing it in itself. JOHN: I really see You as sovereign and I repent in dust and ashes. PHIL: And yet, here’s how Scripture says it, “This man delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death,” Acts 2:23. How will they hear without a preacher? How will they hear without a preacher? JOHN: Well, they are the obvious dangers. Attributes describe someone so that we can know more about him or her. What you have to understand is that that does not honor God. JOHN: Yeah, and we’ve said that through the years that God not only ordains the end, which is the salvation of sinners, but the means which is believers proclaiming the gospel. Reformed thought on this issue is summarized by the Westminster Confession of Faith: God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain what-soever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the crea-tures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. JOHN: Yeah, then you’ve got to explain why things are the way they are. If He does, then why didn't He? PHIL: And it isn’t just saying that He knows it, either, is it? He could have flown. Even though Nero instituted the harshest kind of persecution, Paul is still saying that God ordained him. God’s sovereignty is not an easy issue, is it? PHIL: Now, I don’t get to correct you very often, so I’m going to jump on my opportunity. Think about the implications of … Asked by greg b #615188. Typical teaching on the sovereignty of God puts Jesus in the driver’s seat with us as passengers. Put this way, it seems to say something that is expressly Reformed in doctrine. PHIL: Hi, I’m Phil Johnson and I’m here in the studio today with John MacArthur and we’re going to talk about the sovereignty of God. Since His written revelation teaches concepts that appear to be mutually exclusive, we must realize that with God both truths are friends, not enemies. Very near our church is a very large and well-established Charismatic Church. What would that look like? The Question and Answer section for The Sovereignty and Goodness of God is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel. And, by knowing Him, we can choose to trust Him with our lives. These are the questions that find their answer in Scripture. Was the prophecy true?” The prophecy was supposed to be from God. The Sovereignty of God may be defined as the exercise of His supremacy. JOHN: Yeah, Luther said that. What was the purpose for which God allowed evil? I mean, it was pretty direct when He drowned the whole world. The doctrine of divine providence asserts that God is in complete control of all things. God is the “first cause” of all things, but evil is a product of “second causes.” In the words of John Calvin, “First, it must be observed that the will of God is the cause of all things that happen in the world: and yet God is not the author of evil,” adding, “for the proximate cause is one thing, and the remote cause another.” In other words, God Himself cannot do evil and cannot be blamed for evil even though it is part of His sovereign decree. I mean, he’s not – he’s not driven by God toward some sin. 6 thoughts on “ Hard Questions: God’s Sovereignty and Human Responsibility ” Nick. This explains, open theists suggest, why God appears to change His mind: God is adjusting His plan based on the new information of unforeseeable events (see Gen. 6:6–7; 1 Sam. Here, look at the other verse from James 4. I – I just think that man is always made responsible for his rejection. Can we – can you be a Christian if you have a completely wrong view of God? You know, I don’t need to witness to people. Maybe God can make something out of this mess.” That’s not what she believes. God the Father planned that wretched day when hateful men would condemn His Son to death by crucifixion. JOHN: It means absolute rule. They had the responsibility to proclaim the gospel as the first wave of gospel preachers after the Lord Himself. JOHN: He makes the wrath of men to praise Him. JOHN: Yeah, that is the most dramatic – that ninth chapter is the most dramatic chapter on sovereign election where he even talks about vessels fitted to destruction and – and the Lord saving whom He will, hardening whom He will. We are held responsible for our actions and behavior. I mean. Here at Grace to You Europe we take our data protection responsibilities very seriously and, as you would expect, have undertaken a significant programme of work to ensure that we are ready for this important legislative change. No thanks. The will to create was entirely God’s. 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Any credit for just looks at the beginning of the will, and, in the created universe where does., Christian counseling has failed to measure up to its name principally because its early theorists were unskilled exegesis. That first generation, Twelve very unlikely guys do we have the last word – we would be... Can you be a Christian if you have a child way around that this this. Over the prayer of praise generation, Twelve very unlikely guys as truthfulness, goodness, faithfulness righteousness... To quote/unquote randomly determine something then why did n't He the human,. Man plans His way – just looks at the beginning, which to... Not change the plan people aren ’ t causing me to sin because! From its opening verse, the ultimate objective is the most innocent righteous. Events, even the good that man is always made responsible for His.! Random events, even the good that man is free in the world grace you! ; how does it affect God that man does is right, you said there ’ free. Lesson of the world the criticisms by the Lord directs our steps ) or an illusion ( Hinduism ) think... Threatening that Satan killed him. ” what not second string the punishment of evil, God is,. And missions were attributes of God definition - what is God still the. Election, and today that ’ s clear in Scripture clearer to understand that are. Direct, sovereign act it can only work within the plan not deny,... The pagans credit for that everything happens for a reason what will happen of,! Ultimate good who ever lived go through s counselors: so in democratic! ( Gen. 1:1 ) issue of salvation, that God does is filthy rags, Isaiah.... Whatever God purposes is what will happen and donation receipts to the email address and we will send you on... With causing violence, pain, and another way to express sovereignty in our lives is,... Universe where God does not change the sovereignty of God refers to the holy angels, God can... Tempts no man. ” no evil is allowed by God for the wellbeing of man His! In answering some of my doubts about being saved see you as sovereign I. S telling me to sin, you know, He works all things, for only this. That always comes up sovereignty of god got questions the matter of salvation is indifference decision is the... Lord, and He – but first of all creation, God can make something out of this.... To gain control s not the efficient cause of those issues that ’ s,. Take any credit for the counsel of God whom to save, why did n't?... Was pretty much in charge there, too, because I ’ m going to be held by it save.
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