THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.
Who would not fear You, O Lord God of hosts, most high and most terrible? For You are Lord alone. You have made heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth and all the things therein, and in your hand is the soul of every living thing. You sit king upon the flood; yes, You sit King forever. You are a great king over all the earth. You are clothed with strength; honor and majesty are before You. Amen.
God’s sovereignty is the attribute by which He rules His entire creation, and to be sovereign God must be all-knowing, all –powerful, and absolutely free. The reasons are these:
Were there ever one datum of knowledge, however small, unknown to God, His rule would break down at that point. To be Lord over all creation, He must possess all knowledge. And were God lacking one infinitesimal modicum of power, that lack would end His reign and undo His kingdom; that one stray atom of power would belong to someone else and God would be a limited ruler and hence not sovereign.
Furthermore, His sovereignty requires that He be absolutely free, which means simply that He must be free to do whatever He wills to do anywhere at any time to carry out His eternal purpose in every single detail without interference. Were He less than free He must be less than sovereign.
To grasp the idea of unqualified freedom requires a vigorous effort of the mind. We are not psychologically conditioned to understand freedom except in its imperfect forms. Our concepts of it have been shaped in a world where no absolute freedom exists. Here each natural object is dependent on many other objects, and that dependence limits its freedom.
Wordsworth at the beginning of his “Prelude” rejoiced that he had escaped the city where he had long been pent up and was “now free, free as a bird to settle where I will.” But to be free as a bird is not to be free at all. The naturalist knows that the supposedly free bird actual lives its entire life in a cage made of fears, hungers, and instincts; it is limited by weather conditions varying air pleasures, local food supply predatory beasts, and that strangest of all bonds, the irresistible compulsion to stay within the small plot of land and air assigned to it by bird-land comity. The freest bird is, along with every other created thing, held in constant check by a net of necessity. Only God is free.
God is said to be absolutely frère because no one and no thing can hinder Him or compel Him or stop Him. He is able to do as He pleases always, everywhere, forever. To be thus free means also that He must possess universal authority. That He has unlimited power we know from the Scriptures and may deduce from certain other of His attributes. But what about His authority?
Even to discuss the authority of almighty God seems a bit meaningless, and to question it would be absurd. Can we imagine the Lord God having to request permission from anyone or to apply for anything to a higher body? To whom would God go for permission? Who is higher than the highest? Who is mightier that the Almighty? Whose position antedates that of the eternal? At whose throne would God kneel? Where is the greater one to whom He must appeal? “Thus saith the Lord the king of Israel, and His redeemer the Lord of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.”
The sovereignty of God is a fact well established in the Scriptures and declared aloud by the logic of truth. But admittedly it raises certain problems which have not to this time been satisfactorily solved. These are mainly two.
The first is the presence of the creation of those things which God cannot approve, such as evil, pain, and death. If God is sovereign He could have prevented their coming into existence. Why did He not do so?
The Zend-Avesta,, Sacred book of Zoroas-trianism, loftiest of the great non-Biblical religions, got around this difficulty neatly enough by postulating a theological dualism. There were two Gods, Ormazd and Ahriman, and these between them created the world. The good Ormazd made all good things and the evil Ahriman made the rest. It was quite simple. Ormazd had no sovereignty to worry about, and apparently did not mind sharing his prerogatives with another.
For Christians, this explanation will not do, for it flatly contradicts the truth taught so emphatically throughout the whole Bible, that there is one God and that He alone created the heaven and the earth and all the things that are therein. God’s attributes are such as to make impossible the existence of another God. The Christian admits that he does not have the final answer to the riddle of permitted evil. But he knows what that answer is not. And he knows that the Zend-Avesta does not have it either.
While a complete of the origin of sin eludes us, there are a few things we do know. In His sovereign wisdom God has permitted evil to exist in carefully restricted areas of His creation, a kind of fugitive outlaw whose activities are temporary and limited in scope. In doing this God has acted according to His infinite wisdom and goodness. More than that, no one knows at present; and more than that, no one needs to know. The name of God is sufficient guarantee of the perfection of His works.
Another real problem created by the doctrine of the divine sovereignty has to do with the will of man. If God rules His universe by His sovereign decrees, how is it possible for man to exercise free choice? And if he cannot exercise free choice, how can he be held responsible for his conduct? Is he not a mere puppet whose actions are determined by a behind-the-scenes God who pulls the strings as it pleases Him?
The attempt to answer these questions has divided the Christian church neatly into two camps which have borne the names of distinguished theologians, Jacobus Arminius and John Calvin. Most Christians are content to get into one camp or the other and deny either sovereignty of God or free will to man. It appears, however to, to reconcile these two positions without doing violence to either, although the effort that follows may prove deficient to partisans of one camp or the other.
Here is my view: God soverignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfils it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, “what doest thou?. Mans will is free because God is sovereign. A god less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.
Perhaps a homely illustration might help us to understand. An ocean liner leaves New York bound for Liverpool. Its destination has been determined by proper authorities. Nothing can change it. This is at least a faint picture of sovereignty.
On board the liner are several scores of passengers. These are not in chains, neither are their activities determined for them by decree. They are completely free to move about as they will. They eat, sleep, play, lounge about on the deck, read, talk, altogether as they please; but all the while the great liner is carrying them steadily onward toward a predetermined port.
Both freedom and sovereignty are present here and they do not contradict each other. So it is, I believe, with man’s freedom and the sovereignty of God. The might liner of Gods sovereign design keeps its steady course over the sea of history. God moves undisturbed and unhindered toward the fulfillment of those eternal purposes which He purpose in Christ Jesus before the world began. We do not know all that is included in those purposes, but enough has been disclosed to furnish us with a broad outline of things to come and to good hope and firm assurance of future well-being.
We know that God will fulfill every promise made to the prophets; we know that sinners will someday be cleansed out of the earth; we know that the Ransomed company will enter into the joy of God and that the righteous will shine forth in the kingdom of their Father; we know that God’s perfection will yet receive universal acclamation, that all created intelligences will own Jesus Christ Lord to the glory of God the Father, that the present imperfect order will be done away, and a new haven and a new earth be established forever.
Toward all of this, God is moving with infinite wisdom and perfect precision of action. No one can dissuade Him of His purposes; nothing will turn Him aside from His plans. Since He is omniscient, there can be no unforeseen circumstances, or accidents. As He is sovereign, there can be no countermanded orders, no breakdown in authority; and as He is omnipotent there can be no want of power achieve His chosen ends. God is sufficient unto Himself for all these things.
In the meantime things are not as smooth as this quick outline might suggest. The mystery of iniquity is already at work. Within the broad field of God’s sovereign, permissive will the deadly conflict of good and evil continues with increasing fury. God will yet have His way in the whirlwind and the storm, but the storm and the whirlwind are here, and as responsible beings we must make our choice in the present moral situation.
Certain things have been decreed by the determination of God, and one of these is the law of choice and consequences. God has decreed that all who willingly commit themselves to His Son Jesus Christ in obedience of faith shall receive eternal life and become sons of God. He also decreed that all who love darkness and continue in rebellion against the high authority of heaven shall remain in a state of spiritual alienation and suffer eternal death at last.
Reducing the whole matter to individual terms, we arrive at some vital and highly personal conclusions. In the moral conflict now raging around us whoever is on God’s side is on the winning side and cannot lose; whoever is on the other side is on the losing side and cannot win. Here there is no chance, no gamble. There is freedom to choose which side we will be on but no freedom to negotiate the results of the choice once it is made. By the mercy of God we may repent a wrong choice and alter the consequence by making a new and right choice. Beyond that we cannot go.
The whole matter of moral choice centers around Jesus Chris. Christ stated it plainly:”He that is not with me is against me.” No man cometh to the Father but by me.” The gospel message embodies three distinct elements: an announcement, a command, and a call. It announces the good news of redemption accomplished in mercy; it commands all men everywhere to repent, and it calls all men to surrender to the terms of grace by believing in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
We must all choose whether we will obey the gospel or turn away in unbelief and reject its authority. Our choice is our own, but the consequence has already been determined by the sovereign will of God, and from this there is no appeal.
The Lord descended from above,
And bowed the heavens most high,
And underneath His feet He cast
The darkness of the sky
On cherubim and seraphim
Full royally He rode,
And on the wings of mighty winds
Came flying all abroad
He sat serene upon the floods,
Their fury to restrain;
And He, as sovereign Lord and King,
For evermore shall reign.
Psalm paraphrase,
By Thomas Sternhold
