6.2 - God’s sovereign will
Although we reflect God’s free will in us, the substance of His will transcends anything we can conceive from our own. Unlike our will that is designed to respond to all we are given, God’s will depends on no external conditions. Nothing exists outside His will that can influence or determine Him. It is God’s will that makes all conditions and things as they are in their given order. God creates with a freedom that is beyond creation’s realm of knowing. The whole universe is orchestrated by the conducting of His unfettered heart. God has made all things by His free and sovereign will just because this is how He wants all things to be. In the most true sense, it is a tautology to say, Thy will be done, because if His will is sovereign, then His will is always done. It must be done. Whatever word He speaks, whatever His heart wants, He wills it to be and it is. There is nothing outside of God that can constrain Him and nothing in Him that can contradict or frustrate Him. It is His will’s free and full authority that most reflects His sovereignty, God’s rule as King over all
How, then, does His divine will relate to ours? If it is impossible for God to be opposed, where is there room for our personal freedom? Does God’s absolute authority mean that He controls His creation in the same way we control a car when we steer it to the right or left, that the divine will grips His creation like a steering wheel He turns in whichever direction He chooses, determining all things in time and eternity to take His chosen course? If God’s voice alone can be heard and obeyed, then why speak? Why pretend to have any choice? Why hope for anything outside of the immovable will of God that must always trump all other wills? In the vise of such a fatalistic vision, all that our will personally defines us by -- our chosen beliefs, hopes, desires, intentions, efforts — would be gutted by a God who micromanages all. If God is the great determiner, then our relationship with Him is nothing more than that of a chess player with his pawns. To define God’s sovereign will in this way completely contradicts the revelation of a sacrificial God who gave Himself so that we could freely relate to Him in love
It is true that God’s desire will always be accomplished and must be fulfilled because He is God and King. But we must not confuse the nature of God’s authority with that of a dictator or any person who usurps authority that is not his or hers by nature. From the beginning of sacred history in Scripture, people who have known God have never been described as His predetermined puppets at the mercy of His twists and turns, resigned to bear His choices as their own. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve reflected God’s free will by choosing outside of His will, against Him. They were not His puppets and neither are we. From that beginning, God’s history with His people is the story of HIs will in response to ours. It is a story that speaks of His choices and His election in the face of our rejecting Him. God is able to create us with a freedom that does not compromise His sovereignty because this is His definition of sovereignty. That God can sovereignly choose to create people who have free will is not a contradiction in Him, even though it is to our logic. When we know Him as Creator and Source of all, we know that our free choices are ultimately from Him. The greatest of all choices He gives us is how we respond to Him. We can freely choose Him because He chooses us. We can respond to Him because He has responded to us. Divine authority is not made in the image of human dictators, but we are given God’s image, who willed that we reflect His freedom to choose
Even if we are willing to accept that God gives us free will, does He give it fairly? Does God fairly apportion freedom to all? How do we measure whether God is fair? Do we judge Him fair only if He gives equal amounts of opportunities and things to His children, comparable situations and families and health and dispositions? There is no fairness with God if we mean that He must give all physical and temporal things in equal measure. But God’s justice and impartiality does not originate from conditions and circumstances. He grants freedom in whichever circumstances He gives. Circumstances are incapable of binding God’s freedom. The same situation can be received entirely differently by different people, reflecting variables that are personal and outside our shared experiences. The will is the most prominent of these variables. Our wills’ response has the capacity to transform every experience, even the most heinous ones. Victor Frankl, a psychiatrist and holocaust survivor, wrote about survivors’responses to extreme sufferings and how some were devastated by them while others were inspired with an enlarged meaning of life that seemed inextricably bound to the Nazi horror.Such dramatic differences across survivors of the holocaust reflect how greatly God’s justice differs from our judgments of what is just and fair
What can seem most unfair of God and His choices in the Bible is that He chooses some people and not others. From our first generation on earth, God chose some and rejected others. He chose Abel and not Cain. Then He chose Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and rejected the others. Again and again God chose one person or family or people over others. This exercise of His will contradicts all human understanding of justice and good. Why would God choose one and reject the other even before they are born? But that is just what the Bible says God did with Isaac’s twin sons (Genesis 25:23). “I have loved Jacob; but I have hated Esau” (Malachi 1:2-3). It is destructive injustice when parents choose one child over another in this way, favoring one child at the expense of another. How can God be both good and have favorites? It is essential that we understand God’s heart in His choice of us because, as noted earlier, the will expresses what is most personal. With God, also, His will to choose us most clearly expresses who He personally is to each of us.