by Jacob Ninan
Some Christians hold the view that since God is in full control of everything, whatever happens is from God. They say that God is the One who sends them every circumstance that they face. It sounds attractive because it seems to attribute full sovereignty to God. But if we think more about it, we can see that it would imply that God is responsible for all the evil also that happens to us. That is the reason why people get upset with God when bad things happen to them. Another implication of this assumption is that God must be acting like a puppet master who manipulates all people to do what He wants them to do.
This is such a wrong and blasphemous picture of God! No, God is entirely good and He cannot do any evil (1Jn.1:5). We are the ones who do evil, and then suffer the consequences. If we did not have the free will to choose good or evil, how can God punish or reward us according to what we do? Adam and Eve had the ability to choose to obey or disobey God, and because they disobeyed, all the world is now facing the consequences.
Then the question comes about how God can be fully sovereign and we can also have our free will. In one sense, it makes things easier for us to say that God is in full control, and indirectly place all the responsibility for whatever happens on Him! But we do have a free will, and somehow we have to reconcile it with the sovereignty of God.
The answer is in the way God created man. When God created us, He created us 'in His image'. Obviously, this does not mean similarity in appearance. God, who is Spirit, has no form, and among us we do not look alike. God's image is seen in the way He and we function, in thinking, feeling and making decisions. The ability to make decisions by ourselves is called sovereignty or free will. It is obvious that God is sovereign and He is able to do whatever He wants (Psa.115:3). We too have been created with this sovereignty, to the extent that is limited by our abilities. Within the domain of power that God has granted to us, we are free to choose what we want, especially to do what He tells us to do or to disobey Him and do what we want. That is why we qualify for reward or punishment depending on what we choose.
God, being in total control over everything, is also sovereign over the domain He has granted to us. He carries out His plans even over our domain, without taking away our freedom of will and causing us to act like puppets, but by coordinating everything together in His wisdom and power to accomplish His plans (Isa.25:1). This is how He fulfils His prophecies and promises in such a way that we wonder how He will keep them, but when we look back we can see how He did it. To take just one example, think of how He got Caesar to declare a census so that Mary had to go to Bethlehem right at the time of her delivery, so that the Messiah could be born in Bethlehem! God makes use of people who are acting out of their free will to accomplish His greater plans, just as He used Pharaoh of Egypt to manifest His glory (Rom.9:17).
God also intervenes when man's plans hinder His plans. When Haman had manipulated King Ahasuerus to pass an order to destroy all the Jews, God prevented the king from getting sleep and he thought of reading some reports. This brought him to remember Mordecai who had saved his life, and it finally led to the execution of Haman and the deliverance of the Jews. Now we can look back and see how Esther had become the queen at the right moment in history. God decides what is good for us and how much we can handle, and protects us at times or allows evil to touch us at other time.
"God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that creeps on the earth'" (Gen.1:28). In a way, this defines our domain, and we can see that this domain concerns the things we have to deal with on this earth. God also tells us that if we follow His laws for our life, blessings will follow, and warns us about serious consequences if did not (Exo.20:6;Deut.28:1,2). Let us note that we have the ability to obey God or go according to our own ways.
Actually, we have all messed up, having done whatever pleased us, and now we are all facing the consequences. We must now recognise that it is not God who is to be blamed for the mess but we, individually or as mankind. What we need to do is to humble ourselves, acknowledge our failure, receive forgiveness from God and decide to be careful now about the choices we make.
God respects the free will He has given us and He will not forcibly prevent us from making wrong choices, even though He warns us through different means. The consequences we face after we do wrong things are themselves meant to help us to be careful. But if we go on ignoring His warnings and continue to choose wrong, finally He may just give up on us and leave us entirely to ourselves without any more help from Him (Rom.1:24). When God was dealing with Pharaoh in Egypt, and found that Pharaoh continued to resist His warnings, at one point God gave up doing anything more to help Pharaoh.
When we exercise our free choice, we know that there are not only earthly consequences but also eternal ones. We have the freedom to choose our actions now, but no ability to change the consequences after we have done wrong. Even if we receive forgiveness for our sins, the consequences of those sins may continue to trouble us afterwards. We see in Leviticus 26 that God keeps hoping that people will turn back to Him, and He increases the consequences of wrongdoing in steps so that each step will cause people to sit up and repent. When they call on Him finally, they will find that He had been waiting for them, because He wanted them to choose to ask for His help. The people of Israel had been in Egypt for 430 years, but perhaps they had forgotten God or gone after Egyptian gods. But finally, when they cried out to Him, He took action to help them (Exo.2:23,24).
As long as we do not go seeking God, He waits, not thrusting Himself upon us but leaving things to our choice. But when we cry out to Him, we find that He is there to help us. This is how God's love for us and our free will interact. When we are born again, He gives us a new heart that does not want to sin, and our conscience becomes more sensitive towards sin. But now we must take up responsibility for our choices and our actions. We must not think that we can pray and leave everything to God instead of learning to exercise our will according to the ways of God.