God’s Sovereignty and Man’s Free Will: The Apparent Contradiction First off, I would just like to say that I am so ridiculously overjoyed that some of you guys have been blessed by the last few posts I have made. Feel free to send me private messages (as some of you have) if you want to discuss some of these matters further. At the very least, I can point you to some excellent resources. The topic of this post is a response to a private message by a very good friend asking me if I could write about the relationship between God’s so-called perfect will and his permissive will... something I personally have grappled with for most - if not all - of my Christian walk, and something I am quite convinced that no one will come to resolve completely in this lifetime. Before I begin, I feel that it must be said that it is true that there are many complex concepts in the scriptures that we will simply never grasp fully in our finite state. But, I do believe that through diligent study of the scriptures and prayer, we are actually able to grasp many of these matters far more deeply and in a way that brings about far more reverence and awe for God and -consequently - transformation in our lives, than we are often lead to believe. If the Word of God is ‘clear, enlightening the mind’ and ‘perfect, reviving the soul’ (Psalm 19), then we need not fear being brought to further confusion as we apply ourselves to the pursuit of the full counsel of God (Acts 20:27). So the question is whether it is possible for a believer to miss God’s perfect plan for their life such that they would have to settle for God’s permissive plan. And I think that the way the question is phrased makes it difficult to answer because there are a number of assumptions made which I’m not too comfortable with, and it’s these that I would like to touch on initially. First, let me say that I’m of the firm conviction that no believer ever has to ‘settle’ for God’s permissible plan. Now I know that when my friend says ‘perfect plan’, he means what God supposedly intended for a person’s life, that is something generally good and noble. But let’s see this thinking out to it’s furthest extreme. Ultimately, the ‘perfect plan’ in this respect means spiritual perfection in our lives from start to finish. And if this is so, then unfortunately the entire human race has missed this boat (Ro 3:23). So the question really becomes pointless as we are all already in the hopeless position of having missed God’s so-called perfect plan. Now in light of this, what I want to bring attention to is the ineffably powerful and beautiful mystery that is God’s sovereign redemptive plan (which one could argue is also in some sense his permissible plan). Now this, my friends, is incomprehensibly better than what we often refer to as his ‘perfect’ plan, and it is this that as believers we can have a sure hope in. So what most people call God’s perfect plan in some respects was never really THE perfect plan. Second, there is the implication that somehow we are able to digress from God’s perfect plan. Was God’s ‘perfect’ plan, that is his original intention, really to have the human race never fall into sin? I’m of the conviction that the scriptures teach us otherwise. Rev 13:8 and all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain. Eph 1:3-4 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. These are just a few verses that tell me that even before the foundation of the world was in place God had a plan to redeem his chosen people by the blood of his Son. In addition, over and over again through the scriptures we are taught that there is nothing that can thwart God’s plans (Isaiah 46:8–11, Psalm 103:19 ), and that the plans that he has for his chosen children are to never cease doing good to them (Jer 32:40) and give them the same glory that he shared with his son, Jesus (John 17:24). So I believe that there is no one chosen by God who ever has to ‘settle’ for anything because in his presence is fullness of joy and the experience of glory that exists within the triune God (Psalm 16:11) and that God’s ultimate perfect plan, for all intents and purposes, IS his redemptive plan which involves the fall of man and the sacrifice of his son. Now one of the major questions that this brings about is the question of man’s responsibility in light of God’s sovereignty. And though this there is no simple and straight forward treatment of this subject, there is one portion of scripture that has really helped me to come to grips with this apparent tension. In 2 Chronicles 30, King Hezekiah issues a command to surrounding Israel to yield to the Lord. And only a few verses later, it becomes apparent that those who obeyed his instruction did so only by the very hand of God. So what this tells me is that God commands us, and this command implies that we are accountable, yet, he is the very one who enables us to obey his command. This idea was understood by many of the early church fathers, as expressed in Augustine’s prayer: ‘Lord, command what you will, and grant what you command.’ So all are fully responsible to choose obedience and yet it is God’s sovereign hand by his grace and mercy that enables his elect to obey. It is what Timothy Keller calls an apparent contradiction but not an intrinsic contradiction, much in the same way that light is both particle and wave - something that to us seems impossible, yet science simply dictates that it is so. Just because we cannot understand how something works, it does not mean that it does not indeed work. Our role therefore in all this is to act such that we are able to say as Paul said, ‘I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” (1 Cor 15:10), and obey his command to “work out your salvation in fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12), fully aware that “it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” So my take is this: in a cosmic, eternal sense, a believer cannot miss God’s perfect and redemptive plan for his life. But if you are indeed a believer with sincere faith, proof of it will be that you will, as Paul put it, work as hard as you are able to pursue God’s glory through your life. So there, a short, and surely insufficient collection of insights which I do hope will still be be helpful. And to those who would like to study the subject further, there are three resources that have been extremely helpful to me, and I highly recommend them to you. 1. The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God - D.A. Carson 2. John Piper’s lectures on T.U.L.I.P., particularly session 3 (pm me if you want a link) 3. When I Don’t Desire God - John Piper
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 05:34:44 +0000
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