God's Sovereignty and Providence

D.S. Fisher (July 1, 2007 at Gateway Christian Fellowship, Raleigh, NC)

Introduction
Scripture tells us that God is in complete control of all things and that would include things that are hidden and things that I don’t like. The way in which God integrates His will with a world in rebellion to maintain sovereign control and providentially care for me is complicated. You might reasonably ask why we should think about these things. What profit is there when we know that ultimately it is beyond our understanding? Well one reason that should be sufficient is that God tells us these things. So we should respond by paying attention to what scripture tells us about God. He has good reasons for telling us these things and I couldn’t sleep at night or have peace in my life without knowing all things are subject to God.

How has the world attacked this doctrine?
We really don’t have time to take an exhaustive look at the way in which the world has attacked the doctrine of God’s sovereign control of all things be we should mention some of the main responses.

First of all the world may be viewed as a machine. At one time this was a popular world view among scientists. The world was viewed simply as a machine and the way things are on an atomic scale was viewed as determining the way things would be on an atomic scale and then, as an inevitable result, on a macro scale. This results in the “God is Dead” argument because if the world were this way then the concept of God would be dead because we’d just be living in a clockwork universe ticking along without meaning and deterministically. Of course the thing I found shocking about this idea was not that God might be dead because He is big enough to take care of Himself. I found it shocking because it meant that I was dead or at least my concept of myself. If I was a machine then meaning in love and right and wrong were just illusions. However, I know I am because I think and this world view didn’t ever really make much sense to me. Those who embrace this philosophy embrace a deterministic view that results in no meaning and no hope of changing anything since they are just cogs in a machine.

Particularly with the advent of quantum theory the deterministic world view has become somewhat less popular as a fundamentally random universe has been embraced. When this is an atheistic approach it leaves a person without any real meaning in their life. This might be attractive to some folks who tend toward existentialism but meaning is lost and a firm foundation for morals is lacking except from a purely utilitarian point of view. This isn’t really satisfactory but it does give someone with this world view a way to think that they have a real “will” since those with a deterministic world view don’t really have room for a “will” and must consider it an illusion.

How have Religious people stumbled over this?
Religious people have also stumbled over the doctrine of God’s sovereign control and providence in our lives. Deism has been around for a long time and teaches that God created the world and then left it running. This error accepts God as our creator but teaches that God doesn’t have any continuing interaction with creation. Of course this is in direct conflict with God’s revelation in Scripture.

Another popular error is pantheism. In this false teaching, God is viewed as being, in part or in whole, within creation. Consequently, creation would not be able to pass away without diminishing God. This mistake actually makes creation at least partly God and vice versa. However, this is an error and while the heavens declare the glory of God they are not essential to God.

An error that has recently been proposed is that of the “Open God” heresy. Otherwise Bible believing people have stumbled on the idea that God is sovereign and begun to teach that God has a plan but that He doesn’t know for sure what is going to happen. These folks stress certain Scriptures and ignore many others in order to keep the future “open” rather than fixed. In a subtle error they became confused and decided that if God knows the future then it must mean that they don’t really have a will to exercise.

A Key to Remember
I have noticed a problem in presenting Scriptural truth about God’s sovereignty that seems to confuse a large number of individuals. It seems that one key that needs to be kept clearly in mind is that God is both transcendent and immanent. We need to think about these words and the meaning these words have in a theological sense.

Notice that I used the word immanent and not eminent. Eminent would be a person of great stature. Like an eminent philosopher who was a leader and great thinker. But that isn’t what I’m saying. I’m saying immanent. Think of immanent with the name for God as Emanuel. Emanuel means “God with us”. God is immanent. He is with us in the moment. When we suffer a loss God doesn’t just pretend to suffer with us. On the contrary, He is the friend that sticks closer than a brother. He is God cooking fish on the side of the Sea of Galilee and making breakfast for His disciples. He lives with us in time throughout our lives as the People of God. We are pretty comfortable with this aspect of God because we live in time and relate to God in a moment by moment way.

God’s transcendence gives us more trouble. In fact, it is so hard to imagine that some folks just stop confessing that God is transcendent. To link this aspect of God to one of His names think of “I am”. When He took the name “I am” he was stressing His being. He is apart from anything thing else. We are dependent for existence on Him. I only exist because God continues my existence. In contrast God exists and is not dependent on anything or anyone for His existence. For example, in the error of pantheism God exists in the universe but God is above and beyond the universe and it could pass away and God would not be diminished. God in His transcendence is not even subject to time. Remember that He created time and is not bound to it. He sees the end from the beginning. He doesn’t “predict” the end from the beginning. He sees the end from the beginning. So when we think of prophecy as a prediction we are simply being anthropomorphic. It is a way for us to relate to God’s foreknowledge but we must remember that God’s Word is sure because He sees it done not because He is predicting the future or we may head off into the “open God” heresy.

Jesus is revealed in Scripture as being fully God and fully man. He has two complete natures without mixture or confusion. So what if I wanted to play chess with Jesus. If I played chess with Jesus in His human nature it would be a fair game. I’d probably make it to about the 10th move and lose interest as is my habit and start to day dream but He would make moves and I would make moves and we would have a game.

However, if Jesus didn’t promise to play in His human nature then I might have a problem. If He was in His transcendent nature he would see the end from the beginning and every move I would make. Although each of my moves would be made freely God would still see them all as if they were done and He would make me lose. At the 10th move, He could even draw me up into His transcendence and show me all my moves beginning to end all freely made and all ineffective against a God who knows all contingencies but knows nothing contingently. That is to say that God knows everything that could happen but He also knows for sure what will happen because He sees it.

Our primary concern should be to make sure that we affirm those things that Scripture affirms. If we find ourselves believing something that is not taught by Scripture or not believing something that is taught by Scripture then we have a problem. One of our most fundamental privileges is to be corrected by God through Scripture and grow in fidelity to His word.

I’ll cover three things that are affirmed by Scripture

1) Preservation – All things continue to exist with God given properties

Christ is causing all things to continue to exist in time (Hebrews 1:3; Nehemiah 9:6; Colossians 1:17) and Scripture uses a word that means to carry or bear along. The word is used for those who brought the paralyzed man to Jesus and of those who brought wine that Jesus had made at the wedding in Cana. In is important to remember that this word is not just a passive permitting to exist but requires an activity on the part of the “carrier”. So God is actively keeping us and all our stuff in existence. In addition he keeps water being water, and people being people, and beagles being beagles. God is so faithful in this that we don’t generally even thank Him for this aspect of his sovereignty. Science is based on this character of God since we assume that the pattern and consistency we see in the Universe is so fixed that we can study it and use the results to predict behavior of parts of creation in the future.

One of my favorite Bible guys is Elihu. He speaks in the book of Job just before God speaks. He gives a “right” answer and, as an aside, his comments to Job are worth studying. He was not one of Job’s comforters that God threatened to judge. Elihu pointed out that about God that, “If he should take back his spirit to himself, and gather to himself his breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust” (Job 34:14–15). We take existence a little too much for granted and don’t realize who dependent we are for each moment.


2) God cooperates with all created things in every action (Concurrence)

Not only does God sustain all things but He also must permit or concur with all things. This is a subtle difference but we need to affirm that all things are in God’s control. Scripture tells us that God “accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will (Ephesians 1:11).” We don’t see this in a natural way since we simply see natural processes clunking along all around us but Scripture tells us this. Consequently it is by faith in the revelation of Scripture that we understand this.

We can begin to understand the extent of God’s providence by thinking about it in various arenas.

1. Inanimate Creation.

God tells us that He causes things we think of as “natural” to occur. For example, fire, hail, snow, frost, lightning, and storm winds are said to fulfill His command (Psalm 148:8; Job 37:6–13). God directs the stars in the heavens (Job 38:32) and even says that He directs the coming of the morning (Job 38:12; Matt. 5:45). God tells us these things for our comfort. Things happen that are hard to understand and things happen that we don’t want to happen but God assures us that nothing is outside His controls. We can walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death because His rod (weapon) and staff (correction) comfort us.

2. Animals and Plants

God also says that He controls and causes plants to grow (Psalm 104:14) and that in spite of the natural processes in play God is still in control. God also says that He feeds and is aware of the details of wildlife (Psalm 104:27–29; Job 38:39–41; Matt. 6:26; Matt. 10:29). What we see in Scripture is that, even though there are natural processes at work that we can measure and use to explain cause and effect, God still reveals that He is providentially in control.

3. Seemingly “Random” or “Chance” Events.

Mankind has developed statistical procedures to measure and understand “random” and “chance” events and yet God claims control of these events as well (Proverbs 16:33). I still remember taking a statistics class that was taught by a believer who paused one day and said, “You don’t have to believe that the world is random for these things to be useful constructs for understanding the world.” I was shocked because usually we didn’t discuss philosophy as we worked toward a doctorate of philosophy (PhD). Again we see that although we find useful ways of understanding the way things work we still much acknowledge that God is in control. Just because we can think of a natural cause or demonstrate a statistical distribution does not mean that God did not cause it.

6. All Aspects of Our Lives and the Affairs of Nations

It would be hard to overstate the level of dependence that Scripture teaches for us. We are told to ask each day for God to feed us (Matthew 6:11). This is really difficult for us since we work for our food and think of ourselves as feeding ourselves using what we have learned about the world. Only as a result of the Holy Spirit working within us would it make sense to say “my God will supply every need” (Philippians 4:19). God says He was aware of every detail of our lives before our birth (Ps. 139:16).

It naturally isn’t just the individual that is under God’s sovereign control but Scripture also teaches that God controls all the details of human societies Job 12:23; Psalm 22:28; Acts 17:26).


What About Evil?

If God is omniscient, omnipotent, and transcendent and He affirms it by stating that He does cause everything then what is His relationship to evil? Scripture affirms that God can use or cause evil to work for His purposes. God will use an evil man according to his evil nature to accomplish His purposes. However, exactly how God does this is never easy for us to understand and eventually we can only affirm what Scripture affirms. The evil that God uses indirectly is acted out by those who freely oppose God’s commands and God Himself. Many Christians avoid thinking about how God uses evil. Joseph confessed to his brothers that what they meant for evil was used by God for good (Genesis 45:5 and 50:20). His brothers sinned and were subject to God’s judgment and yet they were used by God.

Pharoah is another example of a man who set himself against our transcendent God and was simply used to glorify God. God says that He will harden Pharoah’s heart even before Moses makes it back to Egypt (Exodus 4:21; 7:3; 9:12; 10:20; 10:27; 11:10; 14:4; 14:8). It is true that Pharaoh participated in the process (Ex. 8:15, 32; 9:34) but God really hammers away at our proud expectation that we have a will that is able to oppose God in some effective manner.

God will use men to accomplish His purposes. Jonah (who needed lessons from me in procrastination and made a mistake I would never make by running and giving God a moving target) is an illustration of a man who was chucked off a boat by men (Jonah 1:15) but he acknowledged it was God (Jonah 2:3). Both things are true. The men needed to pray that God would not judge them for throwing Jonah overboard. However, Jonah knew what was happening through the willing choices of men.

Even, or especially, the horror of crucifixion of Christ was not outside the sovereign control of God. All the details were ordained by God. We each are responsible for the Christ’s presence on the Cross. Love kept him there. On the Cross Christ prayed for those crucifying Him (Luke 23:34) and the impact of His prayers are seen in the demeanor of His crucifiers as they left Golgotha (Luke 23:48). The church at Jerusalem recognized that all that happened was ordained by God (Acts 4:27).

So to maintain a high fidelity to Scripture we need to affirm that;
1) God uses all things to fulfill His purposes and even uses evil for His glory and for our good (Romans 8:28),
2) God never does evil and is not to be blamed for evil (Luke 22:22; Matthew 26:24; Mark 14:21; Matthew 18:7; James 1:13-14). Calvin (in his less than concise manner) heads a chapter, “God So Uses the Works of the Ungodly, and So Bends Their Minds to Carry Out His Judgments, That He Remains Pure From Every Stain.”
3) God is right to blame us and judge us as moral creatures for the evil that we do (Isaiah 66:3-4; Ecclesiastes 7:29; Romans 9:19-20)
4) Evil is real and not an illusion so we must never do evil since it will harm us and others (Matthew 6:13; James 5:19-20; 1 Peter 2:11; Romans 3:8),
5) We can’t use evil for as Augustine says, “There is a great difference between what is fitting for man to will and what is fitting for God....For through the bad wills of evil men God fulfills what he righteously wills.”
6) It is OK that we can’t fully understand how God can ordain that men carry out evil deeds and yet hold men accountable for them and not be blamed Himself (in part this is because of God’s transcendent nature).

Do We Have “Free Will”?

We are not making decisions under compulsion while God in His transcendence, omniscience, and omnipotence maintains providential control over all events. The answer to the question revolves around how you define “free” will. We always choose according to our strongest inclination at the time but perhaps we should avoid the use of free will as Calvin did in most cases. The problem is that our will apart from the Holy Spirit will not enable us to good works. Good must be in accord with the will and timing of God with no other thought than for His glory. That is a high standard and we don’t clear that hurdle apart from Grace. Calvin says, “Man will then be spoken of as having this sort of free decision, not because he has free choice equally of good and evil, but because he acts wickedly by will, not by compulsion. Well put, indeed, but what purpose is served by labeling with a proud name such a slight thing?”


3) Causes all things to fulfill His purposes (Government)

In addition to God preserving or causing to continue to exist and His concurrence in agreeing that each cause may exist, Scripture also teaches that God’s providence has a purpose in all He does. He rules over all (Psalm 103:19; Daniel 4:35; Romans 11:36; 1 Corinthians 15:27; Ephesians 1:11). We can affirm that God causes all things to work together for good (Romans 8:28) because we see God’s providence extends to a purpose and plan. God’s will is not divided but we do see God’s revealed moral will in Scripture (such as the 10 Commandments) but disobedience to His moral will does not defeat His providential will in the world. Only a small part of His will is revealed to us.

The Importance of Our Human Actions
While affirming the providential government of God and His use of human actions we must not depart from Scriptural teaching on the importance of our actions. We are still responsible for our actions and our actions have real results and we can change the way things otherwise would be. For example, prayer has results and changes the course of events (James 4:2; John 16:24). We must act in obedience to Christ. To become a determinist is to depart from sound doctrine and to disobey scripture. We know God’s power to save and to neglect our participation in that process through prayer and preaching is to fail in God’s command to us (2 Timothy 2:10).


At some point as we meditate on these things we’ll find them hard to understand how God’s providence fits will other Scripture. Listen to what Calvin said about this:
Let those for whom this seems harsh consider for a little while how bearable their squeamishness is in refusing a thing attested by clear Scriptural proofs because it exceeds their mental capacity, and find fault that things are put forth publicly, which if God had not judged useful for men to know, he would never have bidden his prophets and apostles to teach. For our wisdom ought to be nothing else than to embrace with humble teachableness, and at least without finding fault, whatever is taught in sacred Scripture.

Calvin makes some vital points here. First, our flesh is fast to refuse things we find hard in Scripture. Second, God wants us to know these things so they must be good for us if understood rightly. Third, we must bow our knees to Scripture.


Summary

We must do away with fear and trust God. We should be thankful for all good things whether large or small. We must confess that there is no such thing ultimately as luck or chance but we don’t let this move us to superstition but instead trust God and obey Him fully.

In the end we still will find our minds staring in awe and without real understanding at our transcendent God. He created a universe with creatures living in time that make real decisions and interact with Him by His Grace without giving up His sovereignty.