To anyone wanting to understand the position of so called Reformed believers like myself on various questions concerning the absolute sovereignty of God in all things:
The scripture says that God doesn’t take pleasure in the death of the wicked (or the just for that matter). In fact – it says quite the opposite. It breaks His heart.
What God takes pleasure in is the final resulting good that those deaths played a part in. In most things in life we cannot see what the final result is that God has decreed to be brought about by tragedy. We can surmise. But we cannot know for certain everything God is doing. Like Job’s friends – we may be way off the mark if we try to be dogmatic.
Examples from scripture have to suffice in most cases to assure us that He does indeed have a reason even when everything seems to be going wrong. Even when evil appears to win the battle – God shows us from scripture that He will win the war. All will, eventually, turn out to be good and He will be glorified eventually in the display of that good.
He even uses the evil done by the likes of Satan, or the Chaldeans, or the Egyptians, or the Assyrians, or Judas, or Titus, or Nero – the list goes on and on – to bring Him glory through the display of the good He has decreed to be eventually apparent to all.
The selling of a brother to slavers was shown in scripture to be a good thing. It was allowed, or even planned, for good purpose. Therefore, the scriptures tell us, it was God who did it as well as the evil brothers – for whom it was sin.
It was God’s good pleasure to “crush” the innocent man Jesus – and that for good reason. But it came to pass through the altogether sinful actions of evil men. The scriptures couldn’t be more clear that it was God who decreed that Jesus die at the hands of those evil men.
For that matter – God will eventually even use the rebellion of Satan and his minions and the fall of man as well to bring about and display good in the ages to come.
It would take page after page of cut and pasted passages from Bible Gateway to prove all this from scripture. But, to put it bluntly, if you are not aware of this aspect of how God operates – you just haven’t been paying attention when you’ve read your Bible. This is a fairly basic Bible principle.
All of God’s decrees are good. He is altogether good and it could be no other way. But His decrees that they fall out according to evil often appear from our perspective to be evil decrees.
He shows us again and again the good results in scripture that He decreed to be brought about by evil.
The principle from scripture might be stated thusly: God only decrees that which is good. He often uses temporary evil to bring to light the good that He has decreed. God does everything according to his good and perfect will. Therefore His decree that evil be allowed to take place to accomplish good is righteous.
OF COURSE SOME, EVEN MOST IT SEEMS, WILL ATTEMPT TO GET AROUND THIS BY SIMPLY IGNORING OR CHANGING WHAT THE SCRIPTURES SO OBVIOUSLY TEACH.
Some say that a God who makes such decrees (and carries them out by His indwelling Word) would be Himself doing evil. I have wrestled through that temptation myself many times.
Why would anyone think that I have not had such thoughts myself? I have – of course – as has any thinking student of the scriptures.
The difference between me and many others is that I now always take it by faith that God is doing good even as He uses evil for His purposes. Without faith, of course, it is impossible to please God.
Some – lacking the faith to believe every aspect of His Word – pick and choose which concepts they will believe and teach. This is the manner that people who lack faith use to handle apparent contradictions from God’s Word. It seems to me that it is a lot like what must have been the thoughts of the first couple before that fateful fall into sin.
Imagine what might have been the thoughts of Adam and Eve as they contemplated the apparent contradiction concerning God’s nature that He set before them in the Garden. Then bring it over to what is often said about the same kind of apparent contradictions that we are given concerning many doctrines from scripture – like the Trinity, predestination and related doctrines, eternal security vs. the tendency of believers to sin, and even the huge overall mystery of good and evil vs. the absolute sovereignty of God.
“God told us not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil lest we die. The God we know is good and doesn’t tempt people (He has told us so) – especially with things that might kill them. Since God is only good and He doesn’t tempt or kill His creations – we must have misunderstood Him. Surely the God we know must have said something else than what we thought we heard Him say.”
The serpent hisses his question to reinforce their dilemma. “Oh come now, let’s reason together, – hath God really said?”
It would have been better if they had believed God, acted on that belief, and then asked Him for an explanation concerning the apparent contradiction when they saw Him face to face. But of course the rest is history.
“Without faith it is impossible to please God.” It was lack of faith in His Word pure and simple that manifested in the fall. It is, in my view, altogether appropriate that faith in His Word be the vehicle for the salvation of His fallen creation.
That goes for salvation in the basic sense. It goes for our sanctifying walk with Him. It also goes for our wrestling with the difficult doctrines of the Bible.
Another – even more basic paradox - is our very existence as real people vis-a-vis God’s constant indwelling of His creation and the fact that we work only because He works.
I’ll spare you an imaginary conversation that Lucifer might have had with God concerning this. Suffice it to say that the problem we have before us, so often heatedly debated here in the forum, is really no different than Lucifer’s “problem”.
He wanted to be independent of God. Essentially he wanted to be like God – totally self sufficient. You know the statements He made that are given us in scripture. I’m thinking that he might even have made a few comments about being a computer or a puppet or a robot since he only had his being in God and was not really independent. He simply couldn’t accept God’s assurance that he was a very real person, a person of worth, and someone whom God could love and have true fellowship with in spite of his being a creation of God and one where God was involved in everything about him down to the finest detail.
He could not accept the fact that nothing can exists apart from the constant “Lordship” of the indwelling Word. “In Him we live and move and have our being” is no different for Lucifer than for us - or a rock or a tree or the smallest particle of matter.
Concerning His Word, God says, “All things were created by Him, for Him, and in Him all things consist.”
Well – enough for now. There is a lot more to Reformed beliefs than these things of course. But these - basic and inescapable concepts from the scriptures - form a firm base from which many other things in Reformed theology flow. (That is not to say that all of the theology associated with so called Calvinism is correct.) But if you reject the sovereignty of God in all things you will fall into a theological ditch. Even what you think you have will be taken from you. Accept it and you will likely prosper in your theology. Even more will be given to you.
God is God. We are His creation. His Word is our constant companion and Lord and must be so if we are to continue to exist and function in any way at all. We are very real people with whom God has a relationship in spite of us not being independent from God. We can never be completely independent. We should worship Him because of it – not chafe at His Lordship. It seems to me that that’s what the scriptures are all about teaching us.
Jesus once told us that His “meat” was to do the will of God. He told us that He could only do what He saw God doing. He rejoiced in being dependent on God for every aspect of His being.
Call me “Reformed” or call me a person with a strange view of the nature of things. But count me in on that sentiment expressed by the Word of God.
I can hear the possible questions now. But! But! But!
My advice to everyone is to believe the Word of God first and act and teach accordingly and only then ask your questions of God. Ask for wisdom only after believing Him (would that Adam had done that). Only if you “have”, will more be given to you.
By the way – NEWS FLASH – I have no more insight into how these things could possibly be so than what the Bible shows. I see through the glass darkly just as the rest of men – even if acceptance of the sovereignty of God allows me to see a bit more clearly than those who will not receive it. I can’t explain these things any deeper than what the Bible provides for us.
But - my inability to explain how these things can possibly be has absolutely no bearing at all on whether the Bible teaches that they are indeed so.
I’m sure someone along the line will ask what possible good will come of the holocaust if God was sovereign in it’s coming to pass. I suppose that I could venture a few sanctified ideas. But they would undoubtedly fall short of the final truth of the matter which God will reveal someday.
I’m willing to wait.
I’ve been told directly here in the forum that unless we know the answers as to exactly the how or why of the sovereignty of God in everything including evil – we cannot build sound doctrine.
To the contrary, as I see it – unless you accept the sovereignty of God in everything – you cannot build truly sound doctrine – even concerning basic salvation.
According to some, there should be, can be and are no mysteries in the scriptures. I couldn’t disagree more.
COMMENTS?
