Chapter Seven
Sovereignty is Sanity

Throughout this book I have been working hard to let the Word be the Word. By that I mean that I have tried to reveal the Word of God to you in all its truth and in all its sufficiency. I have used the law of contradiction to show you that God’s Wordcannot be both the inspired, inerrant, infallible out-breathing of the living God, and at the same time be the words, ideas, experiences, or traditions of man. Similarly, I have used the law of identity to clearly identify what God’s Word is: absolute truth. The Bible is God’s perfect revelation to man of Himself and His eternal plan for human history. I have also used the law of the excluded middle to show you that the words you hear and read are either God’s Word--or man’s words. There is no commingling of the two that can still be called truth. You should see clearly by now that once you insert the teaching and traditions of man into God’s revelation, you have done the same thing as if you added a drop of strychnine to a cup of pure, clear water--you’ve poisoned the water! “Every word of God is pure,” but every word of man is skewed and distorted by sin. The law of excluded middle teaches us that there is only one pure source of truth--God’s Word.

We saw that the great cry of the Reformers, Scripture Alone, was an exhortation to all believers to let the Word be the Word, our one source of all truth. The Westminster Confession perfectly reflected this thinking, calling the Bible “the whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life,” and resolutely proclaimed that all truth “is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture.”

“Forever, O Lord,” Psalm 119 proclaims, “ your word is settled in heaven.” I have done my best to echo and elaborate on this first great truth of Scripture: that the Word is perfect, it is true, it is settled for eternity as truth, and it is, therefore, our epistemological foundation--our unshakeable pedestal for all knowledge and truth. “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.”

The Building Blocks for a Christian Philosophy

The goal of this book is to help you and your children develop a biblical world view--a Christian philosophy. There are four branches of philosophy: epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and politics. This book is devoted to a detailed discussion of the first two branches. Space will not permit me to devote sufficient attention to the latter two--ethics and politics. These subjects will be reserved for a subsequent volume.

We have covered the first branch, epistemology, in detail. Epistemology (pronounced “eh pis teh moll ah gee”) is a difficult-looking word which simply means “your basis and theory of knowledge.” Epistemology answers the question: How do you know that you know? Our entire philosophy--our worldview--is built upon our theory of knowledge. When we Christians espouse our worldview (In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth; God became a man and died on the cross to pay for the sins of His adopted children), we base that worldview on our epistemology--our theory of knowledge. That knowledge is derived from our axiom: the Bible alone is the Word of God. The Bible is our epistemological foundation; it is how we know that we know!

Metaphysics (pronounced “met ah fizz iks”) is the study of ultimate meaning and ultimate reality. We can not possibly discuss the concept of ultimate reality until we have established what our system of knowledge is. Once we have established the foundation for ultimate truth we may then look to the fountainhead of ultimate reality, which is the Lord God Almighty. So if we wish to discuss metaphysics we must discuss the God of the Bible, the great “I AM.” We wish to let the same law of identity apply in our discussions of the God of Scripture: we want to let the Word be the Word, and we want to let God be God!

Such a statement may strike you as banal, perhaps even silly. But I would like to contend here that the vast majority of Christian men and women throughout the world are vehemently opposed to letting God be God. They strongly resist the acceptance of an accurate, biblical definition of who the Sovereign Lord of the universe really is. And the root of the problem lies in the fact that our sinful nature recoils from the idea of the absolute sovereignty of God. “Sovereignty” is a word that is disappearing from sermon texts across America, and when it is used, it is generally tossed in with a long string of adjectives, such as “wonderful, majestic, glorious, sovereign Lord,” etc. The word rarely receives its proper emphasis and definition. Yet if we do not comprehend the truth of the sovereignty of God, we do not truly know the God of Scripture. Hence, God’s sovereignty is the divine template that enables us to correctly interpret all of Christian theology. If we continue with our analogy of Christianity being like the skeletal structure, we would say that the doctrine of God’s sovereignty is the spine: everything else in the body of Christian thought connects to it. This chapter was written to help you develop a scriptural understanding of what sovereignty means and what its implications are for you and me.

A Brief Word of Encouragement

There was a poster that used to dot the walls of dormitories and offices about twenty years ago.  The picture was of a wide-eyed kitten hanging from a tree limb, suspended only by the claws of its two front paws. The caption for the picture, as I recall, read “Hang in there, baby!” I would like to echo those same words to you. Dear Reader, hang in there!
I am going to introduce you to some ideas that you may have never before considered. For some of you, the concept of biblical sovereignty is going to cause you to alter and expand your understanding of just who the God of the Bible really is. Just like the kitten hanging from the tree limb, it may not be an entirely comfortable experience!

I must confess that as a pastor, I used to teach against this very doctrine I am about to assert here as truth. At that time, I had created a god I was quite comfortable with, a god whom I felt I understood, and I had absolutely no desire for anyone to come along and alter that creation. Whenever anyone started to discuss the great Reformers’ ideas on the sovereignty of God, I would become uneasy, even angry. I didn’t want to hear anything that would challenge my comfortable notions about my god. I actually avoided fellowship with those horrible “sovereigntists” who talked about such things.

There was only one problem with my carefully constructed theology, and if you have been paying attention to the capitalization of words used in the preceding paragraph, you have already guessed what my problem was: the nice, comfortable “god” I had constructed was not the God of Scripture! My teachers in Bible college had done nothing to change my misconceptions. Oh, I read the Bible, and I taught that faith in Jesus Christ was the only key that would open the door to heaven, but I did not have the proper understanding of the God who had sovereignly foreordained that gracious plan of salvation before the foundation of the world.

My made-up god was much like the character that Frank Morgan portrayed so delightfully in “The Wizard of Oz.” There was a great deal of fire and smoke and noise, and the whole creation was really quite impressive. Some friends, however, gently told me that I had fabricated something that had no real power to accomplish anything, and that I should investigate further and see if my notions were scripturally sound. But I didn’t want to peek behind the curtain and look. “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” I told myself fiercely. “The greatest Oz has spoken!” I resisted the idea of true, biblical sovereignty and preached even more vigorously against it. Finally, my friends took me by the hand and led me behind the curtain that I had kept carefully draped over the man-made and man-centered “god” that I had clung to so tenaciously for too many years. My friends encouraged me not to trust their word alone, nor even to accept the testimony of spiritual giants like Martin Luther and John Calvin. “Pray, Jack,” they urged, “and ask God to lead you to a proper understanding of Himself. Search the Scriptures, and ask Him to show you the truth.” Well, they had me over a barrel! I had been preaching for years that Christians must be modern-day Bereans, searching the Scriptures daily. I couldn’t very well say that I didn’t want to know what the Bible said about sovereignty. And so, with an honest, prayerful investigation of the truth, it didn’t take long for God to show me that I had been headed down the wrong path for a great many years. Worse yet, I had been leading hundreds of others behind me. I had to reverse course and carefully rebuild my understanding of the true nature of God, based this time on the axiom, rather than on my opinions and the opinions of the “doctors of thinkology.”

For many of you, I will be asking you to travel down an unfamiliar road that leads to a knowledge of the truth. You may well find it a bumpy and uncomfortable one, but let me urge you not to give up! Don’t reject what you are about to read just because it is challenging and unfamiliar. Pray, and ask God to give you the wisdom to rightly divide the Word of truth. Above all, please understand that I do not expect you to take my word for anything you read in this chapter or in this entire book! I am not trying to force my beliefs on you. You are reading the words of a brother in Christ, a man who has dedicated his life to serving the Lord and has devoted years of intense study to reaching the proper understanding of God’s matchless Word in order that I might share this knowledge with others. These truths are the great truths of historical, biblical Christianity. Great men of God like Charles Spurgeon and George Whitefield preached these themes urgently and often. I urge you--I implore you--to search the Scriptures daily to see if the things you read here are true. I am going to utilize a great many passages of Scripture that provide the basis for the doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of God. Please take the time to read them all, and ask God to reveal His truth to you through these verses.

I know it may be difficult for you to accept what you are about to read, because I had a hard time absorbing the doctrine of sovereignty myself! But I can promise you that once the Holy Spirit opens your eyes to the great, foundational truth of the absolute sovereignty of God, you will find that a road that once seemed rocky will suddenly lead you to a level of spiritual vitality and joy that you have never experienced before. You will also get a new Bible in the process--a God-centered Bible. As God has brought me to the proper understanding of His sovereignty, I find myself falling to my knees time and time again, often with tears of love and joy streaming down my face, raising my hands to heaven and saying, “I praise You, Lord. I praise You for who You are!” This, to me, is the purest form of worship, when we recognize the awesome majesty of who the God of Scripture really is, rather than the god that we wanted Him to be.

Martin Luther wrote one of the greatest books that has ever been produced by the Christian church: The Bondage of the Will. It was written in response to Desiderius Erasmus’ contentions that man can choose to do that which is in opposition to God’s will. Luther vigorously rebutted Erasmus’ arguments in a book that should be read by every man and woman who professes the name of Christ. However, Luther thanked Erasmus for raising this issue, because the issue of man’s free will directly speaks to the larger issue of the sovereignty of God. “I give you hearty praise and commendation,” Luther wrote to Erasmus. “You alone... have attacked the real thing, that is the essential issue... You, and you alone, have seen the hinge on which all turns, and aimed for the vital spot.” Luther correctly believed that once the authority and sufficiency of the truth of Scripture is accepted, there is no more important doctrinal question to be settled in the entire Christian faith. Everything else we will discuss in this book hinges upon a biblical understanding of God’s sovereignty.

So please, take your time with this chapter, and the one that follows, and don’t give up. I once watched someone hurl a book across the room in a fit of anger, a book that was quite accurately and powerfully proclaiming the doctrine of God’s sovereignty! I know I am asking you to traverse some difficult territory. However, the reward that awaits you at the end of the journey is glorious! Hang in there, baby!

What is Biblical Sovereignty?

What does the word sovereign mean when it is used to describe God? The dictionary definitions of the adjective “sovereign” and the noun “sovereignty” are a good starting point:

Here we see Job, a mature believer in the Lord, absorbing one devastating blow after another. He and his family had come under the direct attack of Satan. Many men have committed suicide because of the sudden loss of all their wealth. Job not only received this news, but also learned in the same moment that all his children, whom he loved and prayed for regularly, had been killed by what today’s insurance companies call “an act of God.” It must have felt as if his very soul was being ripped out of his being! Not only were all of his herds gone, and all but a handful of  his servants killed, but every one of his precious children had perished in one catastrophic event.

Look carefully at Job’s response to this horrible news. Notice that he finds no sanity in secondary causes.  Job didn’t begin to rant about those dastardly Sabeans, or the horrible Chaldeans. He didn’t wail that he should have moved to a part of the country where there was less lightning or fewer tornadoes. He didn’t utter the cry that is so common to sinful man: “Why is all this happening to me?!” (“Uh, excuse me, Job,” a witness to such a tantrum might be tempted to respond. “I don’t think anything has happened to you. It is your stock and your servants and your children who have had something dreadful happen to them.”) Job did not lay the blame at the feet of Satan, who was definitely orchestrating all these appalling events.

Instead, Job responded biblically because of his knowledge of the sovereignty of God. He responded to disaster with worship! He fell to the ground and worshiped. And he said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Take another look at the last, incredible sentence of Job 1: In all this--in spite of everything that had happened--Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong.

Those nearby--Job’s wife, for example--were certain that Job had not reasoned properly. “Why are you talking about God?” they might have wondered indignantly. “You can clearly see the causes for your misfortune.” They would have been wrong. Job was reasoning perfectly, because he was correctly deducing the truth from the axiom of God’s revelation. The only way that Job could know it was God who had given him happiness and prosperity, and God who had now taken it all away, was if God had revealed that to him. God spoke to Job, and Job responded to God’s revelation with worship and wisdom. By trusting God’s divine revelation about Himself, Job was letting God be God! Job let divine revelation speak for itself. He accepted the absolute truth of God’s Word, and he did not try to put a different “spin” on it. Job recognized God’s divine sovereignty in all events.

Job correctly deduced that it was God who had given him all he had--his wealth and his family. Job understood that it was not the Sabeans or the Chaldeans or the lightning or the wind that had taken all this away. He saw a divine decree behind these actions. He knew that it was God who had foreordained these things to happen, for it is He who declares the end from the beginning. “I form the light, and create darkness,” declares the Sovereign Lord of all the universe. “I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” Job did not ask the typical questions asked by many unbelievers and even some Christians: “How did this happen? Why did this happen? What if I hadn’t let my children go there? What have I done to bring all this on myself?” Job reasoned correctly from revelation: he saw that God is the ultimate cause of everything. Nothing happens apart from His will.

And so we see that Job did not find his sanity in secondary causes. Job maintained his sanity by his absolute faith in God: the primary cause. God is the decretive (de cree tiv) cause that is above all things. God’s decrees are the cause for everything that happens in all the universe.  Throughout the book of Job we see God guiding the conversation to bring Job to a greater understanding of God’s sovereign majesty, until Job responds with the great confession: “I know that You can do everything, and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You.”

“God Meant it for Good...”

Joseph was another of the Lord’s mature saints who maintained a firm grip on his understanding of God’s sovereign purpose. Hated by his brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife, thrown into prison despite his innocence, forgotten for two full years by Pharaoh’s cupbearer, Joseph’s trust in the absolute sovereignty of God never wavered. Like Job, he did not have Scripture to study and lean on day in and day out. But God had spoken to Joseph, and Joseph trusted completely in the Word of God. After all the terrible misfortunes that had befallen him, when Pharaoh questioned Joseph about his ability to interpret dreams, Joseph gave glory to God, not himself: “‘I cannot do it... but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires.’” Pharaoh realized that God was giving Joseph divine wisdom, and he made Joseph his prime minister, the second most powerful man in all Egypt.

When the great famine that Joseph had accurately predicted to Pharaoh threw the entire region into starvation, Joseph’s brothers came to buy food from Joseph. They had no idea who he was--the brother whom they had plotted to kill and whom they eventually sold to a group of Midianite merchants. Joseph finally made himself known to his former persecutors, and they feared for their lives. But Joseph, with tears streaming down his face, reassured them:

Any objective reading of the Scriptures reveals God’s overarching, redemptive plan for His people. His covenant is an everlasting covenant, an eternal covenant, and the blood sealing that divine pact was shed by “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” The book of Ephesians explains in detail God’s “eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Paul wrote to Timothy that God “saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began.” Peter proclaimed that Christ, the lamb of God, was “foreordained before the foundation of the world.” Jesus described His impending judgment on the “sheep” and “goat” nations: “Then the King will say to those on His right hand, 'Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”

These verses and dozens more declare that God formulated a plan before the creation of the world. He has an eternal plan, and therefore there is a purposive principle that governs everything God does. There is a purposeful end to His knowledge, His decrees, and His actions. Dear Reader, if God has an eternal plan, then He is not reacting to various events as they occur. God did not come up with Plan A, the “Wow Plan,” and then fall back on Contingency Plan B, the “Whoops Plan,” after Adam and Eve sinned in the garden. All of creation, all of history, every thought and action of every man, every animal, and every angel is moving inevitably, inexorably toward the fulfillment of God’s eternal purpose. Proverbs tells us, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” There is no such thing as “luck” or “fate” or “chance.” The words should not be in the dictionary, and should never fall from the lips of God’s saints! All thoughts and events are foreordained by the Sovereign Lord, according to the purpose of His infinite wisdom and His perfect, sovereign will.

God’s Master Plan

Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome that “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.” There, in a nutshell, is the plan for the ages! We see in five words--foreknew, predestined, called, justified, glorified--God’s purposeful plan of redemption. God’s knowledge is a purposeful knowledge. He foreknew (many commentators prefer the translation fore-loved) and predestined those whom He would call, by His irresistible grace, to be justified (declared righteous in His sight and legally credited with the perfect righteousness of Christ) and glorified (conformed to the image of His Son, and seated with Christ in the heavenly realms ). He did these things for us--not because there was anything about us that caused Him to--but freely, sovereignly, “according to the good pleasure of His will.”

Soli Deo Gloria!

We have seen that God is a purposeful God. He does everything according to His eternal plan, which is His redemptive purpose for His chosen people. Every purpose has an ultimate goal. God’s ultimate goal is to give glory to Himself. I see a great many Christians cringe a little when I say this. They’ll look at me questioningly, perhaps wondering if I have misspoken. So I’ll say it again, right away. God’s eternal end is Himself. He is seeking Himself. Jesus said, “I do not seek My own glory; there is One who seeks and judges.” God is His own goal, and He is working “to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.” I think the reason many Christians are uncomfortable with this idea is because it sounds, frankly, unbiblical! After all, haven’t we been commanded not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought? Should each of us not “esteem others better than himself”? If we are to hold ourselves in humble esteem, isn’t it wrong for God to seek His glory above all else? Absolutely not!

Romans 11:33 exalts “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!” Verse 36 then goes on to praise God and to teach us that “of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever.” All things come from God, all things come through God, and all things come to God. All praise and glory go to Him. All three members of the Trinity--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--share in the eternal economy of the redemption of God’s adopted children. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the source, the means, and the end of salvation, and indeed, of all creation. The end of creation is not the glory of man, but rather the glory of God! All things were created with that ultimate purpose in mind!

The verses we looked at two paragraphs previously clearly teach that a man who seeks to glorify himself is sinning; but if God were to seek anything but Himself, that would be sin! There is no thing or no creature that is higher than the Creator. God is holy and righteous and pure. “Your faithfulness You shall establish in the very heavens,” Ethan the Ezrahite wrote. “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; Mercy and truth go before your face.” God is truly perfect, and there is nothing else in all creation that can be described with that word. If God were to seek anything other than Himself and His glory, He would be seeking something less than perfection--something sinful! So when God seeks His glory, He is seeking the only, ultimate, eternal righteousness, goodness and truth. Every thing, animate and inanimate, in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the seas, was created from the Word of the sovereign God, and they have their existence through Him and were formed to give eternal glory to Him.

How Does Omniscience Relate to Sovereignty?

We have discussed the word omniscience (“ahm nish ence”) in previous chapters. Like perfection, omniscience is a quality that can only be claimed by God. Omniscience is the quality of possessing total and infinite knowledge and understanding. God has complete knowledge, all the way from the exhaustive knowledge of His own infinite Being down to the path of every electron that circles every nucleus of every atom in the entire universe. This knowledge encompasses all that is past, present, and future--all of eternity!

Dear Reader, please understand that God’s omniscience is not the mere passive foresight of non-determined future events; it is not a prescience, a pre-cognitive kind of thought. God’s omniscience is the eternal foreknowledge of all His eternally foreordained actions and events. On the day of Pentecost, Peter proclaimed to the assembled multitudes that Jesus Christ was “delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, [and] you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death.” God’s omnipotent sovereignty inevitably guarantees that every means--both evil and good--needed to accomplish His eternal purpose will be resolutely carried out by Him, to the praise of the glory of His grace.

The Lord often spoke in the Scriptures of His “servants,” men like Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and David, whom God had called forth to do great works. But do you know that the Lord also referred to “Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant,” a pagan king whom God used to bring judgment against the people of Israel? In the same way, the Lord said of another pagan king, Cyrus the king of Babylon, “He is My shepherd, and he shall perform all My pleasure.” Indeed, Proverbs says that “The Lord works out everything for his own ends‑‑even the wicked for a day of disaster.” Rulers of nations are merely part of the Sovereign Lord’s perfect plan, for “The king’s heart [i.e., his mind and his thoughts] is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water; He turns it [his thoughts] wherever He wishes.” But the lowliest servant in the king’s castle is no less under the direction of God’s omnipotent and sovereign will: “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” This is equally true of Christian believers (“for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” ), and of unbelievers (“A man's steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand his own way?” ) God does not merely foresee the events of history; He foreordains them, and there is no thought or action that has not been predetermined by Him. “There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the Lord,” Proverbs affirms. Moreover, God’s will prevails in areas where many people have not considered. For example, God alone decrees where every human being will live and the boundaries of their dwellings. He also determines the span of all human beings’ lives: when they are born, when they die, and all of the events in between. Here are a sampling of the Scriptures which indicate that this is so.

God’s knowledge is not, and cannot logically be, a non-decretive knowledge. God’s knowledge is not a prediction without certainty, like some sort of cosmic seer forecasting future events. God is not merely looking down the corridors of time at events that will take place in the future. If God were merely predicting events, then these events would be beyond His control and God would not be sovereign! God’s knowledge is an eternal certainty, and His knowledge is certain because it is decretive knowledge--He has decreed every thought and event that will ever occur.

Some people will read Acts 15:18 (“Known to God from eternity are all His works” ) and assert that God only has knowledge of all things from before the creation of the world. To make such a claim is to take a lone verse of Scripture and ask it to stand up and do tricks. We must always compare Scripture with Scripture! It is abundantly clear from the overwhelming preponderance of Scriptural evidence that God knows all of His works because He has decreed all of His works! “Indeed I have spoken it,” says the Sovereign Lord; “I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it; I will also do it.”

When Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that “There is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days,” he was speaking of events that had been decreed. When Jesus told His disciples, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and to the scribes; and they will condemn Him to death, and deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock and to scourge and to crucify. And the third day He will rise again,” this is decretiveknowledge. There was no false knowledge in the mind of Christ, nor was He merely predicting that these events would occur, because they had been decreed “from the foundation of the world.”
In his first epistle Peter addressed “the pilgrims... [who are] elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.” In the same chapter of First Peter he wrote that Jesus was “foreordained before the foundation of the world.” The same Greek word is translated foreknowledge and foreordained in these two verses. This is because, quite simply, you cannot have the one without the other! While God’s foreordination(which is a part of His omnipotence) sovereignly decrees the certainty of all things, foreknowledge (which is one facet of God’s omniscience) exhaustively knows what those sovereign decrees are. God does not just “know” about all things--He has decreed all things! God is not passive. He is not the “Great Spectator in the sky,” watching over all things. “Our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases.” God is proactively working all things together toward the accomplishment of His eternal purpose. “Wisdom and might are His,” Daniel proclaimed. “And He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals deep and secret things; He knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with Him.”

God Works All Things for Glory... and Good

Most of usare familiar with Romans 8:28 --“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” This verse is another glorious proclamation of the love that our heavenly Father has for His chosen children. It is a verse that all believers in Jesus Christ can and should take to heart, particularly when day-to-day circumstances seem to be working against our good.

However, we must be careful not to read more into this verse than what is really there. We must bear in mind that God’s ultimate purpose is not the comfort of His creatures, but rather the glory of the Creator. We must never assume that God is working all the events in history so that the creature can be happy and comfortable. This is the unbiblical teaching of the “prosperity gospel” crowd, those who teach their adherents to “name it and claim it.” This is antithetical to scriptural truth and blasphemously implies that God is a man-centered God, like an all-powerful Santa Claus, and not the Sovereign Lord of the universe. The truth lies in what Paul told the Philippian Christians: “For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake.” God did not call us to a life of peace, prosperity and ease! He has assured us of an eternity of love and joy and peace, but nowhere in Scripture does God imply that He eagerly awaits to pop up, like a genie out of a bottle, to smooth the way for us. Jesus said quite clearly that we are to expect persecution in this present age, and several passages in Scripture prepare believers to expect many kinds of trials. Our sufferings, Romans 5:3-4 tells us, will produce perseverance in us, perseverance will produce character, and character will produce hope. This is the “good” that God works “all things” together for us, that we may be conformed to the likeness of Christ. This may not necessarily be a “comfortable” experience. But it will be a glorious one! And all the glory will be to the Lord God Almighty, who is able to take a wretch like you and like me and open our eyes to the truth of His glory and actually cause us to reflect that glory.

The point of this discussion, however, in light of God’s sovereignty, is to remind you that the “good” of every person is not the goal behind God’s decrees. For example, when God was preparing to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, He told Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh; for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his servants, that I may show these signs of Mine before him, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and your son's son the mighty things I have done in Egypt, and My signs which I have done among them, that you may know that I am the Lord.” God clearly did not have Pharaoh’s comfort in mind when He spoke these words to Moses! In fact, God was not even thinking of the immediate comfort of His chosen people, the Israelites, because they suffered persecution from the Egyptians as a result of the Lord’s command to Pharaoh that he “Let my people go.” God’s will was that when the people came out of Egypt, they would know that it was not due to any kindness on the part of Pharaoh, but only because of the awesome power of the Sovereign Lord. When the people escaped from Pharaoh’s charioteers, it was not because of the superior generalship of Moses and Aaron, but because of the mighty hand of Jehovah. God commanded Moses to “lift up your rod, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it. And the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea,” and He also explained His purpose in dividing the Red Sea: “I will gain honor [literally, “I will be glorified”] over Pharaoh and over all his army, his chariots, and his horsemen.” God’s purpose in destroying the Pharaoh’s army was that He, the Lord, would gain honor [“be glorified”]. These events, which would eventually work for the good of the people of Israel, were ultimately intended to bring glory to God, “that you may know that I am the Lord.” God spoke through the prophet Isaiah to the people of Israel, and told them, “I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; and I will not remember your sins.” Has God said that He will forgive the people so that they will be glorified, and thump their self-righteous chests and say, “God, I thank You that I am not like other men” who have not earned God’s pardon? Did God blot out their transgressions so that they could live comfortable, trouble-free lives? No, God forgave them so that His grace and His glory would be made manifest. In the unforgettable verses of the Twenty-third Psalm, David proclaimed, “He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.” Again, we see God working His sovereign grace, not for the welfare, comfort and the good of the creature, but for the glory of the Creator.

Let me state this again, just as strongly as Scripture proclaims this irrefutable truth: The final, glorious outcome of God’s sovereign plan will demonstrate that all of God’s decrees have not been made for the good of the creature, but for the glory of the Sovereign Creator. And the redeemed of God will say “Alleluia! Salvation and glory and honor and power belong to the Lord our God!... Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns!”

Indeed, the Lord God Omnipotent reigns over all things. From the smallest of His creatures--“Not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father's will” --to the greatest--“He sets up kings and deposes them” --God is sovereign over the affairs of all. “The very hairs of your head are all numbered.” God “rules over the nations,” He“makes nations great, and destroys them; He enlarges nations, and guides them.” Other than God’s marvelous plan of salvation, this is probably the most glorious doctrine in all of Scripture! However, it can also be one of the most perplexing. In the next chapter we will examine some of the “hard questions” that are almost inevitably sparked by serious study of the doctrine of God’s sovereignty.

Legacy, Chapter Eight
Let God be God!

Dear Reader, this may well be one of the most difficult chapters for you to read in this entire book. I don’t mean difficult in the sense that I am going to introduce some especially difficult words which will send you scurrying for a dictionary, or that the concepts involved are overly complex and confusing. However, we are going to meet some theological issues head-on that can be extremely hard to digest emotionally. I am going to ask--and answer--some of the toughest questions that any Christian man or woman will ever consider.

As I said in the previous chapter, the doctrine of God’s sovereignty is often passed over quite lightly--if not completely ignored--in many churches throughout the world. There are some pastors and theologians who deny the idea of God’s perfect sovereignty altogether; others only accept a severely limited version. This enables them to glibly sidestep the issues that we are going to address, such as: Does man have free will? Is God the culpable cause of evil? Is Satan a part of God’s sovereign plan? If God does create evil and declare disaster, then how can God be a good God? Has God ever compromised His holiness? How can man be responsible for his sins, if God is sovereign? Why should men pray if God is sovereign? Does God change His mind?

As you can see, there aren’t any “warm and fuzzy” discussions ahead of us in the pages to come. As I did in the opening pages of chapter seven, I want to encourage you again not to give up! I promise you that a careful reading of this chapter will give you a new understanding of your heavenly Father that should cause you to fall to your knees and praise Him with a deepened and renewed sense of reverence and awe! There is real spiritual gold to be mined in the following pages; don’t get discouraged because the digging is difficult! We must come to the point of understanding where we can truly let God be God and worship Him in all His sovereign majesty and holiness. May God give us the courage and the wisdom to honestly investigate these questions according to the light of God’s Word. Let us measure the of doctrine of God’s sovereignty in the light of the unwavering truth of Scripture, and not by the fickle and unreliable indicators of our emotions.

Does Man Have Free Will?

This question and the implications that arise from it are probably the most controversial in all of Christian theology. In general company there are certain issues that people tend to avoid discussing, because a “conversation” is likely to lead to a violent argument. The subject of abortion, for example, is almost certain to provoke passionate opinions on both sides of the issue. A friend of mine once described sitting at an absolutely delightful dinner party-soft music, candlelight, gentle laughter, etc.--when the issue of abortion suddenly arose. My friend, believing that he was comfortably seated with a group of like-minded people, bluntly expressed his opinion that abortion is the murder of the innocent unborn. Boom! Another guest exploded in furious disagreement, becoming so agitated that saliva actually flew from her mouth while she spoke.

While a debate about the freedom of man’s will may not get quite so ugly, it is almost certainly just as divisive. Luther and Erasmus, for example, were friends before their debate over free will. Their relationship didn’t survive the controversy. Churches have split over this issue. Entire denominations have formed around this central question. I have personally observed a cold glint of anger in the eyes of otherwise gentle and loving Christians who are confronted with the notion that man’s will is not free. In fact, as I confessed to you earlier, I used to react in just that way myself! Again, I feel compelled to urge you not to blindly reject a notion which is challenging or disconcerting.

Most Christian churches today assert that man’s will is free. But when we come to a proper understanding of the sovereignty of God, we come to the unavoidable question: If God is truly sovereign, then that must mean that man cannot resist His will. We have already seen a great many verses of Scripture indicating that this is true. There are dozens more that I could cite for you here. King Jehoshaphat stood before the people of Judah and proclaimed,“O Lord, God of our fathers, are you not the God who is in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations. Power and might are in your hand, and no one can withstand you.” Jeremiah confessed,“I know, O Lord, that a man's life is not his own; It is not for man to direct his steps.” The Christians in Jerusalem raised their voices to God “with one accord and said ... ‘Truly against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose determined before to be done.’” Paul preached to the citizens of Athens that “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.” Solomon asserted that “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.”

The testimony of Scripture is clear and unequivocal: Man thinks he is in charge of his actions, but it is the Lord who has sovereignly foreordained every thought and action of every creature and every event of history to work in accordance with His eternal plan. Many Christians, when confronted with this truth, become extremely uncomfortable. “If man is not free,” they reason, “then isn’t he just a robot, a puppet dangling on God’s cosmic string?” This is a perfectly reasonable and vitally important question, and I am going to devote some time to answering it.

What Do We Mean by “Free Will”?

It is extremely important to define what we mean when we use the phrase “free will” throughout this discussion. In a marvelous essay written to answer the question of whether God foreordains evil or merely allows it to exist, Gordon Clark defined free will this way: It is “the theory that a man faced with incompatible courses of action is as able to choose any one as well as any other.” In other words, if a man stands at a crossroads, he is equally likely to choose to go east as to go west. There are no outside forces that would compel him to choose one direction over another. For the purposes of this discussion, I would stress that those who believe that man’s will is free assert that God does not cause the man to choose one of the two directions. They claim that man makes up his own mind, without any outside influence or superintendence.

If you have read through the previous chapter and honestly considered the Scripture verses provided there, I think you will have to agree with me that man’s will is not free in this way. In fact, we just read Proverbs 16:9, which asserts that “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” So much for the equal likelihood of heading east or west!

But what about the heart of man? Does a man determine his own moral direction? The prevailing notion in most churches today is that man is free to choose to do evil or to do good. We hear from respected preachers and theologians that God permits or allows evil to occur. An honest examination of the Scriptures forces us to admit that such teaching is not based on the truth. We have seen that “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord;” that “it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails,” not man’s purpose, and that “A man's life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps.” We read in Judges 14 that Samson saw a Philistine woman and insisted that his parents arrange for him to marry her. His parents protested: “Can’t you find a wife from among our own people?” But Samson was adamant. It must be this woman and no other! In verse 4, the Holy Spirit explains, “This was from the Lord, who was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines; for at that time they were ruling over Israel.” I’m quite sure Samson thought he had “freely” chosen this woman for his wife, but in reality his seemingly impetuous desire for her had been sovereignly decreed by God. If Samson could have chosen any woman he wanted for his wife, and God had merely “permitted” it to happen, then God would not be sovereign--Samson would!

If Scripture is so very clear about God’s complete sovereignty over all of man’s affairs, why do we deny the truth of God’s Word and insist that a man “chooses” his path and that the Lord “permits” his steps? As Gordon Clark brilliantly argued in his essay, there can be only one reason: those who teach that God “allows” evil are trying to protect God’s reputation! After all, if God is truly sovereign over every event, that means God decreed that scores of men, women, and children would be incinerated at Waco, Texas! God foreordained that Adolph Hitler would order the Holocaust! God determined that over 100 million people would die as the result of Communism! To even suggest a thing seems blasphemous to most of us! We know that God is pure and holy, that He is “of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness.” How could anyone possibly dare to suggest that God is the cause of such ghastly evils?

Dear Reader, it is precisely because of difficult questions like these that I began this book by laying down the foundation--the axiom--of Christianity: The Bible alone is the Word of God. There are far too many people in seminaries and churches across this land who teach that the Bible contains “paradoxes” that we cannot possibly understand. Some attack the Bible by claiming it contains contradictions. The existence of evil in a world governed by a pure and holy God is one such “contradiction” that these enemies of the Scriptures often cite. There are even conservative theologians, men who love God and revere the truth of Scripture, who teach that the Bible contains antinomies (“an tin ah mees”), apparent contradictions which only the infinite mind of the living God can see as true consistencies.

None of these ideas is reflective of historical, biblical Christianity. The reality is that God has given us a complete system of knowledge and truth. There are no mistakes, no falsehoods, no contradictions, no paradoxes, and no antinomies. Every word of God is pure, and that means that the Bible does not, can not, contradict itself! Are there difficult passages? Certainly. Are there wondrous mysteries? Most assuredly. The doctrines of the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the eternal existence of God, and a host of others are, indeed, glorious mysteries that are fully answered only in the mind of God. Are there doctrines, such as the one we are discussing here, which we must struggle to understand? Absolutely! The question of the existence of God and evil in the same universe has troubled theologians for centuries. However, this does not mean that it is an unanswerable question! If we have a complete system of truth, then every verse, every precept, every doctrine is a vital member of that truth, and is perfectly interwoven in such a way as to present every facet of that truth. When we encounter an idea that doesn’t seem to “fit,” we do not discard it as a paradox, a contradiction, or an antinomy. Instead, we rely on the fact that God has given us an organized body of knowledge, a system of truth, and we dig deeper to see where each piece fits into “the whole counsel of God.” Armed with this confidence in the cohesion and the consistency of the Word of God, we may confidently begin to unravel the more difficult questions that confront our Christian faith.

We have been discussing one such question in these recent pages. Does man choose to do evil, and does God merely stand back and permit him to do so? The vast majority of Christians like to believe that this is the case. Again, the laws of logic teach us that it is vitally important to define our terms at the beginning of our discussion. We have defined “free will” to mean an “independent, autonomous will.” A will that is independent and autonomous would be a sovereign will! If man were capable of making independent decisions beyond God’s control, then man would be sovereign and God would be subject to man’s sovereign decisions! If God “allowed” Pastor Lannom to choose to do evil--or to do good, for that matter--whenever Jack felt like it, independent of God’s will, then God would be a reactor, a responder, to my actions. He would not be the One who sovereignly decrees all my thoughts and actions. God would, in effect, be sitting in heaven, adjusting His plan to fit mine. To even suggest such a thing is to realize the absurdity and outright blasphemy of the idea. We have seen that God is sovereign over all the affairs of the earth. He has an eternal plan for the history of the cosmos, and he directs the affairs of all men--king or commoner, president or pastor, monk or murderer--He “works all things according to the counsel of His will.”

Since this is so, does that mean that man is a mere robot, a puppet that God directs at all times, just as you or I direct every twist and turn of a radio-controlled model car? This is not the case, either. Man does make choices, but his choices are God-ordained choices.The great Reformers were emphatic that we do have the power to choose. The Bible is filled with verses that confirm man’s ability to make choices. Nor is man held in the grip of any kind of mechanistic or psychological determinism. Man is not compelled to act in a certain way because he was raised in a certain environment. A man is influenced by his environment, of course. However, his environment does not rob him of his will. You could probably cite several instances of men and women who overcame horrible childhoods to become successful, and several more stories about those who were raised in privileged environments only to fall into the pits of depravity and degradation later in life. Man does not behave in predetermined ways because the planets are aligned in a particular position. Man is completely free of this kind of deterministic compulsion.

The Reformers did not believe in what is called behavioristic determinism, but they did believe in theistic determinism. In other words, they believed that God determines everything that will ever happen in time and eternity. That is why the Reformers referred to man as a free agent, in contrast to man possessing a free will. Free agency means that man’s will is free from any physical forces determining the outcomes of his attitudes or actions.

However, man is only free to choose according to his nature. In fact, he will always choose according to the dictates of his nature. There is one problem, though, which affects man’s decisions in a truly dreadful way: the sinful nature of mankind. The unsaved man or woman is only free to choose to sin! “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” Jeremiah wrote. The unsaved person will naturally and voluntarily choose to sin on every occasion. “The carnal mind is enmity against God,” Paul wrote; “For it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” The mind of the man or woman that has not been reborn, or regenerated, by the Holy Spirit is hostile to the things of God! Unsaved men and women “cannot cease from sin,” Peter asserted, and are incapable of pleasing God. Nor do they have any desire to do so! So unsaved man’s choices are free, but they are free only in a downward, sinfulsense. Man will freely, voluntarily, choose to turn away from God and turn toward evil every time! “The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men,” the Psalmist wrote, “to see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is none who does good, no, not one.” No unsaved man or woman seeks after God or chooses to do good. Not one. This is the word of Scripture concerning the nature of man. It is much like a suicidal person who has jumped off the top of a skyscraper: man is perfectly free to choose to continue to plummet downward. He will always choose to continue to move downward, because that is the direction that is entirely compatible with his nature. It is only when he raises his eyes toward heaven and considers a return to the top of the building from whence he leaped that he finds he is incapable of doing so. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots?” the Lord asked rhetorically. “Then may you also do good who are accustomed to do evil.” Man is no more capable of changing his sinful nature, which is accustomed--quite comfortable in fact--with evil, than a leopard is capable of changing the shape or color of the spots on its skin! It is only when one has been born again and indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God that one can choose to seek after God and do that which is pleasing to Him. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,” Paul wrote. It is only in Christ that we receive the freedom to choose to do good.

It is important to note that the believer can and will still sin. The believer is no more worthy of the grace of God than is the unbeliever.Jesus once addressed His disciples by saying, “If you then, being evil...” Jesus was stating that even the disciples, the men whom He called friends, were also sinners. If these men are “evil,” then surely you and I and all believers are sinners also! Indeed, Paul called himself the “chief” of sinners. “There is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” But the believer now has the ability to truly choose, by the grace of God, to do good. The Holy Spirit of God living within us gives us the divine power to do good. Prior to the moment of salvation, you and I were in abject slavery to the sinful nature.

At the same time, no man or woman, saved or unsaved, operates independently of God’s sovereign, eternal decrees. We have seen that God has an eternal plan, a plan that is moving to its inevitable conclusion, a plan which will ultimately cause every man, woman, and child--living and dead, saved and unsaved--to recognize and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. There is nothing and no one--none of God’s creatures--which can resist God and operate in opposition to that plan. There are a great many men and women who appear to resist God’s will, but in actuality all of creation, all of history, and all of God’s eternal plan for redemption and damnation are a glorious display of His divine sovereignty! Paul exulted, “For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.”

What About Satan? Is He a Part of God’s Plan?
Does God merely “permit” the activities of Satan and his demons? Did evil climb over the impregnable wall of God’s omnipotence, slip past the watchful eye of His omniscience, and subdue His insuperable sovereignty? To answer such questions in the affirmative is to elevate evil to omnipotence and to superimpose sin over sovereignty! Is there anything that can exist outside God’s sovereign will? Was Satan able to fight God to a draw, to the point where God conceded, “All right, Satan, you may go this far and no farther”? If this were true, then God would have to share His throne with Satan, would He not? God would be a limited God, a finite God, acquiescing to at least some of the rapacious demands of the evil one. In this case our theory of metaphysics would be reduced to a pagan dualism, where the powers of good and evil are locked in an eternal struggle for supremacy, thereby keeping each other in check and balance. This, however, is not the teaching of the Bible. “Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?” the prophet asked. “Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?” There is nothing that can come to pass unless the Lord has commanded it. God is not only in command of His people and the blessings of goodness and truth and beauty, He is sovereign over sin and evil, as well. “I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me,” proclaims the Sovereign God of the universe, “ ...that they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.”   The prophet Amos also declared that God sovereignly decrees evil: “Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?” I have researched a total of sixty-one verses of Scripture which teach that God is the sovereign, primary cause of evil. I found these verses by tracing the original Hebrew root word for evil, ra. The English translation that best reflects the accuracy of the Hebrew text for these verses is the King James Version of the Bible.
Verses Which Asserts that God is the Sovereign, Primary Cause of Evil

Joshua Judges            1 Samuel         2 Samuel         1 Kings            2 Kings         
23:15                9:23      16:14-16            12:11                9:9                     6:33
18:10                17:14                14:10                 21:12
                                    19:9                                          17:20                 22:16, 20
                                                                                                21:21, 29
                                                                                                22:23

2 Chronicles   Nehemiah        Job                  Psalms             Isaiah              Jeremiah        
7:22                  13:18                2:10-11 54:5                  45:7                   1:14
18: 22                                       42:11                78:49                                         4:6
34:24, 28                                                                                                           6:19
                                                                                                                        11:11, 17, 23
Lamentations  Ezekiel            Amos              Micah                                      16:10
3:38                  14:22                3:6                   1:12                                           18:11
                        38:10                9:4                   2:3                                            19:3, 15
                                                                                                                        21:10
                                                                                                                        23:12
                                                                                                                        35:17
                                                                                                                        36:3, 31
                                                                                                                        39:16
                                                                                                                        40:2
                                                                                                                        42:17
                                                                                                                        44:2, 27, 29
                                                                                                                        45:5
                                                                                                                        49:37
                                                                                                                        51:64

There is nothing in the universe that acts outside of the sovereign will of God. Read the magnificent words of the Lord God Almighty at the conclusion of the book of Job.
Have you entered the storehouses of the snow
or seen the storehouses of the hail,
which I reserve for times of trouble,
for days of war and battle?
What is the way to the place where the
lightning is dispersed,
or the place where the east winds are
scattered over the earth?
Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm...?

Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades?
Can you loose the cords of Orion?
Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons
or lead out the Bear with its cubs?
Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you set up [God's] dominion over the earth?

Can you raise your voice to the clouds
and cover yourself with a flood of water?
Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?
Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?
Who endowed the heart with wisdom
or gave understanding to the mind?

“Therefore know this day,” Moses called to the people of Israel, “and consider it in your heart, that the Lord Himself is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other.” He is “the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords,” as Paul proclaimed to Timothy. Nebuchadnezzar worshiped God and acknowledged that “He does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’” The Lord is the Sovereign King of all the universe. He is the King who directs the hearts (the thoughts and minds) of all the kings of the earth. The Lord sits enthroned over all the earth. God has a literal throne in heaven, and He rules over His kingdom--which is all that is in the heavens, all that is in the earth, and all that is in the seas--precisely according to His will. “You, whose name alone is the Lord, are the Most High over all the earth,” Asaph affirmed. He is not “a” king, He is The King! Satan does not make a move apart from the sovereign decree of God. The evil one whined to God that he could not attack Job because God had “made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all that he has on every side.” The Lord told Satan exactly what he could and could not do to Job. Satan never slips free of God’s sovereign leash. Satan had to ask God if he might sift Peter as wheat, and the Lord foreordained that Peter would fall away only for a short time.

Everything that happens has been decreed by God. “Remember the former things of old,” says the Lord, “for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure.’” The fact that you are seated right where you are, at this very instant reading this book, was foreordained by the Lord before the beginning of time. Nothing escapes His decree. All reality comes from the sovereign decree of God Almighty. The flight path of the bird outside your window was foreordained by God. We have read that the path of every lightning bolt is directed by Him. God’s sovereignty is the clear and unequivocal teaching of Scripture. To assert anything else, to suggest that God is only “semi-sovereign” over the thoughts and decisions of any man or any creature, even over the activities of Satan, is to attack the truth of Scripture and impugn the sovereignty of God!

Is God the Culpable Cause of Evil?

Once we have established God’s absolute sovereignty over all events, including actions which you or I would call “evil,” we are confronted with a most disquieting--yet unavoidable--question: Is God the culpable cause of evil? This is a frightening thought, one which many of us do not even wish to consider. Everything in our being rebels against the very thought, because we assume that if God causes evil then God is also responsible (culpable) for evil.

We seem to have reached one of those apparent contradictions in Scripture. Specifically, how do we reconcile these two verses: Isaiah 45:5‑7, which reads, “I am the Lord, and there is none else... I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things;” and Habakkuk 1:13, which reads  “You [O Lord] are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness.” Is one of these verses incorrect? That is impossible, since we know that “All Scripture is God-breathed,” that “Every word of God is pure,” and that “The entirety of [His] word is truth.” Again, Dear Reader, this is where we must hold firmly to the truth that God has given us a complete, comprehensive system of knowledge and truth. All the verses we read are different components of the same whole. How then do we integrate these verses from Isaiah and Habakkuk into one consistent system of truth, when they seem so irreconcilably opposed to each other?

Let us begin to answer this question by considering some specific examples. In Genesis 22, God commanded Abraham to “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” Abraham was to take his son, his only son, and kill him and burn the body as an offering to God. Now, Dear Reader, let me ask you two questions: Was it “evil” for God to command this action? Would it have been sin for Abraham to disobey God and spare the life of his son? Abraham set out the very next morning and took Isaac to the top of the mountain. There Abraham built an altar, bound Isaac to it, and took up a knife to kill his own son. Suddenly the Angel of the Lord called to Abraham and commanded him not to kill Isaac! Was this an “evil” command on the part of the Lord? Would it have been sin for Abraham to disobey God and kill Isaac, thereby carrying out his initial orders? While you’re considering these questions, let’s look at still another example from Scripture.

In Joshua 6 we see the people of Israel, recently liberated by God from their slavery in Egypt, approaching the city of Jericho. God told Joshua that He would deliver the city into the hands of the Israelites. However, the Lord said, “Now the city shall be doomed by the Lord to destruction, it and all who are in it. Only Rahab the harlot shall live... they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword.” The people of Israel slaughtered everything in Jericho that drew breath: every man, woman, child, and every animal were to be killed. Only Rahab the prostitute and her family were spared, as a reward for Rahab’s faith. Again I ask you: Was it “evil” for God to command this action? Would it have been sin for the people of Israel to disobey God and spare the lives of the people and animals of Jericho? Give these questions some thought before you read on!

God Is Not--and Can Not--Be the Author of Evil

Dear Reader, I want to congratulate you for sticking with me here! I know this is a very difficult subject, and the answers to these questions are not simple ones. Let me pull the different parts of this discussion together for you, so that you may truly see God in all His matchless, sovereign glory. Some of you are probably uncomfortable with the destruction of Jericho in Joshua 6. God’s command to Abraham is easier for us to accept because the Scriptures tell us in the first verse of Genesis 22 that God was testing Abraham. So we comfort ourselves with the idea that God never intended for Abraham to actually plunge the knife into Isaac’s heart. But the city of Jericho was an entirely different matter. This was no test! God commanded the people of Israel to kill every living thing, and He fully expected His command to be obeyed. Some of you reading this account might admit, “You know, I don’t ever want to call God ‘evil,’ but I’ll have to admit this doesn’t seem fair! I understand that God didn’t want His people to be contaminated by the pagan culture of the people of Jericho, but surely there had to be a better way of doing that than killing all the people and animals!”

Did your thinking follow this pattern? It is a perfectly natural, human response. But, Dear Reader, allow me to say this to you in love: it is a sinful response. When we think that “there had to be a better way” for God to accomplish anything, whether it is the testing of Abraham, the destruction of Jericho, or the plan of salvation, we are presuming to be wiser and more pure of thought than God! We are saying in our hearts, “I would have been more merciful than God. I could have been more just.” We are seeking to conform God to a moral or ethical standard that we believe to be superior to God’s! We are assuming that there is a “higher” law to which God must adhere.

But who are you, O man, to talk back to God?

When we allow our thinking to drift in such a direction, we forget the basic doctrine of God’s sovereignty! Remember our definition of sovereignty: God is the Creator, Owner, and King of all creation, who is a law unto Himself--acting according to the good pleasure of His will--without obligation to the creature and motivated by nothing outside of Himself, who freely decreed all things, both good and evil, solely for His eternal glory. To say that God is sovereign is to affirm that God is not subject to any outside cause. There is nothing higher than God or superior to God! God is not subject to any “higher” law or ethical standard because He is the law. “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” said the God-man, Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Holy Trinity. God is truth, and goodness, and righteousness. “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes... the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” God is ex lex (“outside the law”) because He is the Law. Just as God is sovereign over all the affairs of the universe, He is also the sovereign Lawgiver. God’s commands are perfect, they are pure, and they are true and righteous altogether. If God commands Abraham to kill Isaac, or He commands the people of Israel to kill every living thing in the city of Jericho, those commands are not “evil,” they are perfect and holy and altogether righteous because they are the commands of Holy God! For Abraham or Israel to disobey God’s commands based on a man-made moral code that they considered to be “more” righteous than the Word of God  would most definitely be sin! John Calvin expressed it this way: “[God’s] will is, and rightly ought to be, the cause of all things that are... God’s will is so much the highest rule of righteousness that whatever he wills, by the very fact that he wills it, must be considered righteous. When, therefore, one asks why God has so done, we must reply: because he has willed it. But if you proceed further to ask why he so willed, you are seeking something greater and higher than God’s will, which cannot be found.”

In answering the question of whether God is the cause of sin, Gordon Clark was blunt: