I want us to consider the subject of God's sovereignty and human responsibility. In his important book on The Sovereignty of God A W Pink wrote, when he came to his chapter on this, that “This is, admittedly, the most difficult branch of our subject. Those who have ever devoted much study to this theme have uniformly recognised that the harmonising of God’s Sovereignty with Man’s Responsibility is the Gordian knot of theology.”
Inadequate proposed solutions
In the face of the apparent problem professing Christians have reacted in different ways.
(1) Some have tried to tackle it by denying God's absolute sovereignty. This has become popular in certain circles in more recent times. They deny that God is all knowing and all powerful and they argue for a certain amount of openness in God. They draw attention to verses that speak of God changing his mind, repenting. But these verses rather speak of God in human terms in order to help us to understand that there is no coldness in God. He is not like some sort of machine. There is so much else in the Bible that opposes the idea of God being anything less than absolutely sovereign that we can't suppose it right to to lessen it. It will rather serve only to denigrate the glory of God.
(2) Then there are other, perhaps less thought through, professing Christians who so stress human responsibility that they are in danger of leaving no room for the sovereignty of God. For them it is all about what we do. Yes, the very fact that they usually have a place somewhere in their scheme for prayer means that they cannot entirely do away with the idea that God is in control to some extent but for all practical purposes, they feel, it is all down to us.
(3) Then at the other extreme to these we have those who so stress the sovereignty of God that there is really very little room in their system for human responsibility. A fatalistic streak binds them so that they have no real place for human effort at all. They end up performing all sorts of mental gymnastics in order to explain themselves.
(4) Still others acknowledge that the Bible certainly does teach both the sovereignty of God and human responsibility but, they say, as to how it they fit together it is simply a mystery, one that we cannot penetrate and so there is little point in our even considering the subject. They would advise us to give up our question now.
In the face of the apparent problem professing Christians have reacted in different ways.
(1) Some have tried to tackle it by denying God's absolute sovereignty. This has become popular in certain circles in more recent times. They deny that God is all knowing and all powerful and they argue for a certain amount of openness in God. They draw attention to verses that speak of God changing his mind, repenting. But these verses rather speak of God in human terms in order to help us to understand that there is no coldness in God. He is not like some sort of machine. There is so much else in the Bible that opposes the idea of God being anything less than absolutely sovereign that we can't suppose it right to to lessen it. It will rather serve only to denigrate the glory of God.
(2) Then there are other, perhaps less thought through, professing Christians who so stress human responsibility that they are in danger of leaving no room for the sovereignty of God. For them it is all about what we do. Yes, the very fact that they usually have a place somewhere in their scheme for prayer means that they cannot entirely do away with the idea that God is in control to some extent but for all practical purposes, they feel, it is all down to us.
(3) Then at the other extreme to these we have those who so stress the sovereignty of God that there is really very little room in their system for human responsibility. A fatalistic streak binds them so that they have no real place for human effort at all. They end up performing all sorts of mental gymnastics in order to explain themselves.
(4) Still others acknowledge that the Bible certainly does teach both the sovereignty of God and human responsibility but, they say, as to how it they fit together it is simply a mystery, one that we cannot penetrate and so there is little point in our even considering the subject. They would advise us to give up our question now.
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