Grace to You :: esp Unleashing God's Truth, One Verse at a Time

God’s Absolute Sovereignty

No doctrine is more despised by the natural mind than the truth that God is absolutely sovereign.
Human pride loathes the suggestion that God orders everything, controls everything, rules over
everything. The carnal mind, burning with enmity against God, abhors the biblical teaching that
nothing comes to pass except according to His eternal decrees. Most of all, the flesh hates the notion
that salvation is entirely God’s work. If God chose who would be saved, and if His choice was settled
before the foundation of the world, then believers deserve no credit for their salvation.

But that is, after all, precisely what Scripture teaches. Even faith is God’s gracious gift to His elect.
Jesus said, “No one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (John 6:65).
“Nor does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal
Him” (Matthew 11:27). Therefore no one who is saved has anything to boast about (cf Ephesians
2:8–9). “Salvation is from the Lord” (Jonah 2:9).

The doctrine of divine election is explicitly taught throughout Scripture. For example, in the New
Testament epistles alone, we learn that all believers are “chosen of God” (Titus 1:1). We were
“predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will” (Ephesians
1:11, emphasis added). “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. . . . He predestined
us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will”
(Ephesians 1:4–5). We “are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also
predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son. . . and whom He predestined, these He
also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also
glorified” (Romans 8:28–30).

When Peter wrote that we are “chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (1 Peter
1:1-2), he was not using the word “foreknowledge” to mean that God was aware beforehand who
would believe and therefore chose them because of their foreseen faith. Rather, Peter meant that
God determined before time began to know and love and save them; and He chose them without
regard to anything good or bad they might do. We’ll return to this point again, but for now, note that
those verses explicitly state that God’s sovereign choice is made “according to the kind intention of
His will” and “according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will”—that is, not
for any reason external to Himself. Certainly He did not choose certain sinners to be saved because
of something praiseworthy in them, or because He foresaw that they would choose Him. He chose
them solely because it pleased Him to do so. God declares “the end from the beginning. . . saying,
‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’” (Isaiah 46:10). He is not
subject to others’ decisions. His purposes for choosing some and rejecting others are hidden in the
secret counsels of His own will.

Moreover, everything that exists in the universe exists because God allowed it, decreed it, and called
it into existence. “Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases” (Psalm 115:3).
“Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps” (Psalm
135:6). He “works all things after the counsel of His will” (Ephesians 1:11). “From Him and through
Him and to Him are all things” (Romans 11:36). “For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom
are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist
through Him” (1 Corinthians 8:6).

What about sin? God is not the author of sin, but He certainly allowed it; it is integral to His eternal
decree. God has a purpose for allowing it. He cannot be blamed for evil or tainted by its existence (1
Samuel 2:2: “There is no one holy like the Lord”). But He certainly wasn’t caught off-guard or
standing helpless to stop it when sin entered the universe. We do not know His purposes for allowing
sin. If nothing else, He permitted it in order to destroy evil forever. And God sometimes uses evil to
accomplish good (Genesis 45:7, 8; 50:20; Romans 8:28). How can these things be? Scripture does
not answer all the questions for us. But we know from His Word that God is utterly sovereign, He is
perfectly holy, and He is absolutely just.

Admittedly, those truths are hard for the human mind to embrace, but Scripture is unequivocal. God
controls all things, right down to choosing who will be saved. Paul states the doctrine in inescapable
terms in the ninth chapter of Romans, by showing that God chose Jacob and rejected his twin
brother Esau “though the twins were not yet born, and had not done anything good or bad, in order
that God’s purpose according to His choice might stand, not because of works, but because of Him
who calls” (Romans 9:11). A few verses later, Paul adds this: “He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy
on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So then it does not
depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy” (Romans 9:15–16).

Paul anticipated the argument against divine sovereignty: “You will say to me then, ‘Why does He
still find fault? For who resists His will?’” (Romans 9:19). In other words, doesn’t God’s sovereignty
cancel out human responsibility? But rather than offering a philosophical answer or a deep
metaphysical argument, Paul simply reprimanded the skeptic: “On the contrary, who are you, O man,
who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like
this,’ will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one
vessel for honorable use, and another for common use?” (Romans 9:20, 21).

Scripture affirms both divine sovereignty and human responsibility. We must accept both sides of the
truth, though we may not understand how they correspond to one another. People are responsible
for what they do with the gospel—or with whatever light they have (Romans 2:19, 20), so that
punishment is just if they reject the light. And those who reject do so voluntarily. Jesus lamented,
“You are unwilling to come to Me, that you may have life” (John 5:40). He told unbelievers, “Unless
you believe that I am [God], you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24). In John chapter 6, our Lord
combined both divine sovereignty and human responsibility when He said, “All that the Father gives
Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37); “For
this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, may have
eternal life” (John 6:40); “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (John
6:44); “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life” (John 6:47); and, “No one can come
to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father” (John 6:65). How both of those two realities
can be true simultaneously cannot be understood by the human mind—only by God.

Above all, we must not conclude that God is unjust because He chooses to bestow grace on some
but not to everyone. God is never to be measured by what seems fair to human judgment. Are we so
foolish as to assume that we who are fallen, sinful creatures have a higher standard of what is right
than an unfallen and infinitely, eternally holy God? What kind of pride is that? In Psalm 50:21 God
says, “You thought that I was just like you.” But God is not like us, nor can He be held to human
standards. “‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord.
‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My
thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isaiah 55:8-9).

We step out of bounds when we conclude that anything God does isn’t fair. In Romans 11:33 the
apostle writes, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How
unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the
Lord, or who became His counselor?” (Romans 11:33–34).

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