GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY AND MAN’S FREEWILL

 


While Calvinists emphasize God’s Sovereignty, Arminians favor Man’s Freewill. However, it seems that the Bible embraces both, suggesting that we too must embrace both of these perspectives. Besides, it can be argued that there isn’t a single verse that nullifies either principle. (However, freewill is a relative thing. An adult has more freewill than a newborn, a drug addict, or a comatose patient.)

We see both in play in the account of Pharaoh hardening his own heart against the Israelites (Exodus 8:15, 32), but God also hardening Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 7:3; 9:12).

Many other accounts embrace these two realities. Often, God would bring nations in judgment against Israel. Assyria was one such nation:

•    Isaiah 10:5-7 “Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury! Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him, to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. But he does not so intend, and his heart does not so think; but it is in his heart to destroy, and to cut off nations not a few.

God had sovereignly used Assyria in judgment against other nations. However, as far as Assyria was aware, she had been merely motivated by her lust to conquer and destroy. She had no awareness that God had been pulling the strings through Assyria’s freewill choices. Nevertheless, she was guilty before God for her brutality and arrogance:

•    Isaiah 10:12-15 When the Lord has finished all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he will punish the speech of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the boastful look in his eyes. For he says: “By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I have understanding; I remove the boundaries of peoples, and plunder their treasures; like a bull I bring down those who sit on thrones. My hand has found like a nest the wealth of the peoples; and as one gathers eggs that have been forsaken, so I have gathered all the earth; and there was none that moved a wing or opened the mouth or chirped.” Shall the axe boast over him who hews with it, or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it? As if a rod should wield him who lifts it, or as if a staff should lift him who is not wood! [Are we the ax who boasts?]

In this passage, we can clearly see that both truths—God’s sovereignty and man’s freewill—are at play. In some mysterious way, they work together:

•    Proverbs 16:9 The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.

•    Proverbs 19:21 Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand.

•    Jeremiah 10:23 I know, O LORD, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps.

However, we are not mere puppets on the stage of a cosmic drama. We make our choices and pursue our desires. Saul and his servant had been combing the countryside for his donkeys that had wandered off. After a fruitless search, the servant suggested:

•    1 Samuel 9:6 …“Behold, there is a man of God in this city, and he is a man who is held in honor; all that he says comes true. So now let us go there. Perhaps he can tell us the way we should go.”

Saul freely agreed without any sense that he was being coerced by God. Meanwhile, God told the Prophet Samuel

•    1 Samuel 9:16 “Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines. For I have seen my people, because their cry has come to me.”

How can we grasp these two principles? I don’t think we can. There are some truths that transcend our childlike understanding as our Lord has warned us:

•    Isaiah 55:8–9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

It should be obvious to us that our Creator and Sustainer is far greater than we. Therefore, we are counseled:

•    Proverbs 3:5–6 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

Consequently, we shouldn’t discount what the Bible says simply because it doesn’t conform to our own understanding. Therefore, we should be ready to believe doctrines like the Sovereignty of God, the Trinity, and the Inerrancy of the Scriptures, even though they are written by men.

We too acknowledge that the Scriptures are also the words of men. Paul had written freely about his feelings, his friends, and his experiences. How can the Scriptures also entirely be the Words of God as the Scriptures consistently claim?

•    2 Timothy 3:16–17 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

Nevertheless, we believe that the Scriptures are both the product of man’s freewill choices and God’s all-embracing sovereignty. Likewise, we believe we are making freewill choices as we are being led by God, as Paul had confessed:

•    1 Corinthians 15:10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

Here, Paul affirmed that it was he who had worked hard, but it was primarily the work of God. Consequently, faithfulness to the Word of God requires us to take a step beyond our feeble understanding to embrace the evident truths of the Scriptures.