I came across an article that talked about how Christians nowadays always try to use God for each reasoning. It ultimately talked about how the typical Christian believes God is behind everything and everything happens for a reason. The author said we as the church needed to stop this thinking, because everything doesn't happen for a reason. After giving it thought, I agree. Let me give an example.
A situation generally has two outcomes. How can God be behind every single outcome when those outcomes contradict each other? Opposite outcomes contradict each other, and if we say God's Will is behind everything and everything happens for a reason, then we're essentially saying God is a contradiction. Because one outcome can be positive and the other would be negative. So why would God have both a positive and negative (sinful) outcome for His will, when He is against sin? Everything doesn't happen for a reason, and not everything is according to His Will. He can use any situation for His glory, but that doesn't mean that situation was His Will. We do, after all, have free will.
God's will is a complex topic. There are three different aspects to Gods will. This article covers them well.
One thing is for sure, though...God is sovereign, omniscient and omnipotent, and has exhaustive foreknowledge (unlike the futile god of the open theists). There is nothing that He does not know, either past, present, and future and if he does not cause something to happen, he definitely allows it. I would say that all things occur according to his passive or active decree. Whether he specifically causes them to happen is irrelevant in matters of small importance. Do I think he decided what pair of briefs I wore this morning? No..
He is also not the author of sin, but He allowed it for a purpose..I think part of the purpose is to show us that rejecting Him ultimately leads to nothing but physical, mental and spiritual suffering. In addition, the fact that sin exists exposes us to his attributes of justness, and hopefully mercy if one repents and accepts Jesus Christ and his perfect sacrifice.
By the way, I don't think anyone except hyper-Calvinists deny free will. Calvinists will deny autonomous free will. Our free will is always subject to God's free will. God's will trumps ours every time. We are like fish that swim in a pond. We can swim in the pond all we want, but we can't jump out of the pond and decide we are going to live there.
You may also want to study the concept of compatibilism in relation to this topic. Man's free will and God's sovereignty are like two rails on a railroad. They may appear to be separate and parallel but they converge at some point, though.
Good examples of this relate to Joseph and his brothers and the selling of him into captivity. The brothers sold him into slavery due to their wickedness, but God planned it all along to preserve the nation of Israel through a famine. Another example is the use of God by the Assyrians to punish Israel (see Isaiah 10), yet they did it out of their own wickedness and he punished them for it. Yet another one is the use of wicked men to crucify Christ, yet it was foreordained from the foundation of the earth.
I've seen Pelagian/Finneyists or hyper-Arminians try to claim that the Crucifixion was a random act in order get past this reality but their position is obviously unbiblical. For some reason, some of those who believe in libertarian free will can simply not get past acknowledging that God's will trumps theirs every time, in the sense of his sovereign or decretive will.
Question: "What is the difference between God's sovereign will and God's perfect will?"
Answer: When speaking of God’s will, many people see three different aspects of it in the Bible. The first aspect is known as God’s decretive, sovereign, or hidden will. This is God’s "ultimate" will. This facet of God’s will comes out of the recognition of God’s sovereignty and the other aspects of God’s nature. This expression of God’s will focuses on the fact that God sovereignly ordains everything that comes to pass. In other words, there is nothing that happens that is outside of God’s sovereign will. This aspect of God’s will is seen in verses like
Ephesians 1:11, where we learn that God is the one “who works all things according to the counsel of His will,” and
Job 42:2, "I know that You can do everything, And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You.” This view of God’s will is based on the fact that, because God is sovereign, His will can never be frustrated. Nothing happens that is beyond His control.
This understanding of His sovereign will does not imply that God causes everything to happen. Rather, it acknowledges that, because He is sovereign, He must at least permit or allow whatever happens to happen. This aspect of God’s will acknowledges that, even when God passively permits things to happen, He must choose to permit them, because He always has the power and right to intervene. God can always decide to either permit or stop the actions and events of this world. Therefore, as He allows things to happen, He has “willed” them in this sense of the word.
While God’s sovereign will is often hidden from us until after it comes to pass, there is another aspect of His will that is plain to us: His preceptive or revealed will. As the name implies, this facet of God’s will means that God has chosen to reveal some of His will in the Bible. The preceptive will of God is God’s declared will concerning what we should or should not do. For example, because of the revealed will of God, we can know that it is God’s will that we do not steal, that we love our enemies, that we repent of our sins, and that we be holy as He is holy. This expression of God’s will is revealed both in His Word and in our conscience, through which God has written His moral law upon the hearts of all men. The laws of God, whether found in Scripture or in our hearts, are binding upon us. We are accountable when we disobey them.
Understanding this aspect of God’s will acknowledges that while we have the power and ability to disobey God’s commands, we do not have the right to do so. Therefore, there is no excuse for our sin, and we cannot claim that by choosing to sin we are simply fulfilling God’s sovereign decree or will. Judas was fulfilling God’s sovereign will in betraying Christ, just as the Romans who crucified Him were. That does not justify their sins. They were no less evil or treacherous, and they were held accountable for their rejection of Christ (
Acts 4:27-28). Even though in His sovereign will God allows or permits sin to happen, we are still accountable to Him for that sin.
The third aspect of God’s will that we see in the Bible is God’s permissive or perfect will. This facet of God’s will describes God’s attitude and defines what is pleasing to Him. For example, while it is clear that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, it is also clear that He wills or decrees their death. This expression of God’s will is revealed in the many verses of Scripture which indicate what God does and does not take pleasure in. For example, in
1 Timothy 2:4 we see that God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth,” yet we know that God’s sovereign will is that “no one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day” (
John 6:44).
If we are not careful, we can easily become preoccupied or even obsessed with finding the “will” of God for our lives. However, if the will we are seeking is His secret, hidden, or decretive will, we are on a foolish quest. God has not chosen to reveal that aspect of His will to us. What we should seek to know is the perceptive or revealed will of God. The true mark of spirituality is when we desire to know and live according to the will of God as revealed in Scripture, and that can be summarized as “be holy for I am Holy” (
1 Peter 1:15-16). Our responsibility is to obey the revealed will of God and not to speculate on what His hidden will for us might be. While we should seek to be “led by the Holy Spirit,” we must never forget that the Holy Spirit is primarily leading us to righteousness and to being conformed into the image of Christ so that our lives will glorify God. God calls us to live our lives by every word that proceeds from His mouth.
Living according to His revealed will should be the chief aim or purpose of our lives.
Romans 12:1-2 summarizes this truth, as we are called to present our “bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” To know the will of God, we should immerse ourselves in the written Word of God, saturating our minds with it, and praying that the Holy Spirit will transform us through the renewing of our minds, so that the result is what is good, acceptable and perfect—the will of God.
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What is the difference between God's sovereign will and God's perfect will?
