How Does God’s Sovereignty Not Violate Our Decision-Making?
00:00:00.000 | Well, how does God's sovereignty over every life not make each of us robots?
00:00:08.800 | Where is the place for human willpower and for decision-making?
00:00:13.640 | And how does God govern over all of those decisions that we make?
00:00:18.560 | It is a great question from a listener named Max in Lincoln, Nebraska, my home
00:00:25.080 | state, shout out to Scott Frost and the Huskers.
00:00:27.180 | All right.
00:00:28.100 | Here's the question from Max in Lincoln.
00:00:29.520 | Pastor John, thank you for all your episodes over the years.
00:00:32.940 | This podcast nourishes my soul, but I am also thick headed and a lot of important
00:00:38.540 | theological points come to me very, very slowly.
00:00:41.780 | Can you explain again how God's sovereignty over human decisions and
00:00:47.480 | actions comes through his control over our affections such that we are not
00:00:53.180 | robots responding moment by moment to individual commands and prompts in
00:00:57.940 | situations, but that he is in control of our decisions as we freely choose what
00:01:02.400 | we want?
00:01:02.980 | I think I'm on the verge of understanding you and Edwards and the reform tradition
00:01:08.380 | on this, but can you make this all clear in 10 minutes so Tony doesn't scold you
00:01:14.480 | for going long again?
00:01:16.040 | What would you say to Max?
00:01:17.960 | Well, the likelihood that I could put in 10 minutes what 2,000 years of church
00:01:25.200 | history has not succeeded in completely clarifying for the best of minds is not
00:01:31.440 | very likely, but there aren't many things more important than the sovereignty of
00:01:37.700 | God in our personal lives and how we make choices.
00:01:42.280 | And the way we think about this does have implications for how we worship and serve
00:01:48.360 | and persevere as Christians.
00:01:50.600 | So let's make a stab at it.
00:01:53.020 | I'm going to lay out seven points in what I think is a biblical view of the
00:01:59.260 | relationship between the human will and God's sovereignty.
00:02:03.580 | Each one could have a book written about it.
00:02:07.380 | So these are simply pointers with biblical passages to think about.
00:02:13.900 | Point number one, until they are born again by the power of God's spirit, all
00:02:22.300 | human beings ever since Adam are spiritually blind, 2 Corinthians 4, 4,
00:02:29.620 | darkened in their understanding, hardened in their heart, Ephesians 4, 18, unable to
00:02:37.500 | grasp spiritual truth, 1 Corinthians 2, 14, rebellious against God, Romans 8, 7,
00:02:45.660 | spiritually dead in trespasses, Ephesians 2, 5, enslaved to sin, Romans 6, 6, unable
00:02:54.740 | to please God, Romans 8, 8.
00:02:57.060 | That's point one.
00:02:58.460 | Pretty devastating bondage.
00:03:01.820 | Point number two, all people are still responsible in that condition, accountable
00:03:09.460 | to God, liable to judgment, because this darkness that they are in, this slavery
00:03:18.540 | that holds them, has its power over them, not against their will or against their
00:03:26.780 | desires, but precisely because of their will and because of their desires, they
00:03:34.900 | love sin so much.
00:03:38.820 | Jesus said in John 3, 19, "The light has come into the world and people loved the
00:03:44.300 | darkness rather than the light, because their works were evil."
00:03:49.940 | The problem is not that we lack light, but that we love darkness.
00:03:55.420 | This is not a bondage against people's will.
00:03:59.820 | This is a bondage because of their will.
00:04:03.380 | Point number three, this deep evil in all human hearts does not limit the complete
00:04:11.740 | sovereignty of God over all things, including the fallen human will.
00:04:17.060 | Proverbs 21, 1, "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord.
00:04:23.220 | He turns it wherever he will."
00:04:26.100 | Ezra 6, 22, "The Lord made them joyful and had turned the heart of the king of
00:04:33.340 | Assyria to them so that he aided them in the work of the house of God."
00:04:40.060 | Genesis 26, "Then God said to Abimelech," this is the pagan king who had not
00:04:46.940 | committed adultery with Sarah, Abraham's wife, "He said to Abimelech, 'It was I
00:04:52.140 | who kept you from sinning against me.'"
00:04:54.860 | In other words, God was ruling in the will of a pagan king.
00:04:59.340 | Genesis 20, verse 6, Proverbs 16, 1, "The plans of the heart belong to man, but
00:05:05.300 | the answer of the tongue is from the Lord."
00:05:07.940 | Acts 4, 27, "In this city, Jerusalem, Herod, and Pontius Pilate, along with the
00:05:14.380 | Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together to do whatever your
00:05:18.500 | hand and your plan had predestined to take place."
00:05:23.580 | God is profoundly, thoroughly in control of the fallen will of man.
00:05:32.140 | Point number four, by the sovereign, regenerating, life-giving, blindness-
00:05:39.460 | removing, hardness-replacing, light-shining work of the Holy Spirit, God replaces
00:05:48.860 | blindness with the light of reality and breaks the deceptive bondage of sin
00:05:55.700 | and sets people free.
00:05:58.500 | That's what it means to be saved, what it means to be converted, born again.
00:06:02.660 | Second Corinthians 4, 6, God said, "Let light shine out of darkness," and He's
00:06:09.580 | shown in our hearts with that light to give the light of the knowledge of the
00:06:14.100 | glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
00:06:17.140 | That's the meaning of conversion.
00:06:19.180 | Romans 6, 20, "For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to
00:06:25.660 | righteousness.
00:06:26.460 | But now that you have become free from sin and have become slaves of God, the end
00:06:36.860 | you get is eternal life."
00:06:38.420 | So this slavery to God now in the regenerate, in the born again, this slavery
00:06:45.620 | to God is the same kind of slavery that we had to sin in this sense.
00:06:51.700 | It's not a slavery contrary to our will.
00:06:56.380 | We were enslaved to sin because sin looks so good and desirable to us.
00:07:03.420 | Our will was all in with sin, and we are enslaved to God because God looks so good
00:07:10.460 | and so desirable to us, and our will is all in with God.
00:07:15.180 | That's what happened in the new birth.
00:07:18.500 | Point number five, this new slavery to God is true freedom for three reasons.
00:07:27.180 | One, like slavery to sin, it is completely willing.
00:07:33.140 | We are not controlled or coerced against our desire, against our will, but by means
00:07:40.060 | of new and powerful desires.
00:07:43.500 | Second, these new desires, unlike the desires for sin, accord with, agree with,
00:07:51.500 | are in harmony with what is true and beautiful and lasting, God's righteousness,
00:07:57.980 | God's way, John 8:32.
00:08:00.820 | We're not being deceived.
00:08:02.820 | We have been set free from deception.
00:08:05.940 | And third, this new slavery to God is true freedom.
00:08:11.020 | Thirdly, because our former so-called freedom ended in everlasting death,
00:08:18.620 | and our new freedom, our slavery to God, ends in eternal joy.
00:08:24.300 | You're not really free if you're doing what you want to do and you are miserable
00:08:30.020 | for it for eternity.
00:08:31.500 | You're free if you do what you want to do and don't regret it a million years.
00:08:37.860 | Point number six, this new freedom does not limit the complete sovereignty of God
00:08:45.620 | over all things, including the redeemed human will.
00:08:50.140 | Hebrews 13, 21, "God is working in us that which is pleasing in his sight."
00:08:58.100 | God is doing this through Jesus Christ, "to whom be glory."
00:09:02.220 | Yes, not to us, but to him forever and ever.
00:09:06.060 | This doesn't mean we can't grieve the Spirit of God, Ephesians 4, 30, but it does
00:09:10.980 | mean that God lets himself be grieved as part of his larger purpose, which always
00:09:18.220 | comes to pass.
00:09:19.780 | For it says in Ephesians 1, 11, "He works all things according to the counsel of his
00:09:26.500 | will."
00:09:27.020 | So in this new freedom, God is still sovereign over our wills.
00:09:32.380 | Lastly, point number seven, "Nevertheless, God's way of ruling the redeemed will not
00:09:41.660 | compromise our responsibility or nullify the freedom which is true freedom."
00:09:48.740 | How can this be?
00:09:50.620 | I think that's probably the nub of the question that's being asked.
00:09:55.300 | How can this be?
00:09:56.740 | And I doubt that we will fully understand that until we get to heaven.
00:10:01.900 | But there is a glimpse, I think, of how it might be in 2 Corinthians 3, 17 and 18.
00:10:10.380 | Think carefully.
00:10:11.660 | Now, the Lord is the Spirit.
00:10:14.060 | Jesus is the Spirit.
00:10:16.220 | And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
00:10:21.460 | And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed.
00:10:28.460 | This is what freedom looks like.
00:10:30.420 | Being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.
00:10:36.620 | And then he adds again, "This comes from the Lord who is the Spirit."
00:10:40.180 | So he begins with, "The Lord is the Spirit."
00:10:42.580 | And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
00:10:44.780 | That's where he begins in verse 17.
00:10:46.700 | And then he ends, "This comes from the Lord who is the Spirit."
00:10:50.580 | In other words, it seems like he's saying this.
00:10:53.100 | When the Spirit of God transforms us to God's will, to love God's will, to conform to God's will,
00:11:03.620 | and thus reflect the glory of God, this is true freedom.
00:11:09.780 | And the reason it is true freedom is that this transformation is happening through beholding the glory of the Lord.
00:11:18.980 | Not by any kind of coercion, but by beholding the glory of the Lord.
00:11:23.300 | The compelling savor of Christ, we're compelled by savoring Christ.
00:11:29.300 | That compelling savor is awakened by seeing Christ.
00:11:36.900 | That seems to be at the heart of what freedom is in Paul's understanding.
00:11:42.700 | When you see Christ for who he is, it awakens such an authentic, freeing, savoring of Christ that he says,
00:11:52.980 | "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."
00:11:57.140 | Of course, there are many more questions.
00:12:00.980 | And for some of them, I doubt that we will have answers until we see Jesus face to face.
00:12:07.180 | But I think these seven points are biblical and crucial for enjoying our freedom in Christ
00:12:17.220 | and living under and living worshipfully under the glorious sovereignty of God.
00:12:24.780 | Beautiful.
00:12:25.980 | Amen.
00:12:26.500 | Thank you, Pastor John, for that 11-minute answer.
00:12:29.380 | Thank you for listening to the podcast.
00:12:32.020 | Max, thanks for the question.
00:12:33.020 | Great question from Lincoln Raska.
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00:12:43.980 | You can search our past episodes or browse our most popular episodes or send us a question.
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00:12:54.940 | I'm your host, Tony Rinke.
00:12:56.100 | We'll be back on Friday.
00:12:56.980 | We'll see you then.
00:12:57.460 | [BLANK_AUDIO]
00:13:06.320 | [ Silence ]