So, we have established that the Bible claims that God is sovereign. Let’s dive into that concept further. The purpose of this chapter is to have a clearer understanding of what sovereignty is and how it applies to God. I warn you that some concepts in this chapter may be challenging for you to accept. I understand that. All I ask you to do is prayerfully consider what is said and if you find it true, let it shape you with a better understanding of who God is and what His sovereignty means to you.
In my introduction, I laid out three truths learned about the sovereignty of God. In this chapter, we will explore these three truths further. Understanding these truths is crucial to grasp God’s sovereign nature. But if we try to chip away at these fundamental truths about God’s sovereignty because they make us feel uneasy, we will end up with a distorted and errant view of His sovereignty. These are the three things we will discuss in this chapter as the fundamental truths of God’s sovereignty:
God has inherent authority, power, and ability to do whatever He wants.
God answers to no man, no power, or to any other authority.
God has the right to make the rules and the power to enforce those rules on whomever He chooses.
A cursory reading of these truths may not throw up many red flags, but as we dive into them and understand what they truly mean, we will face bold decisions about how we choose to see our God. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what I choose to believe; the truth about God’s sovereignty is what it is, whether I believe it or not. Whether I write about it correctly or not, the truth about God’s sovereignty is what it is. My point is that His sovereignty isn’t dependent on what I think about it. It is what it is. Our responsibility is to prayerfully seek to understand what He has revealed about His sovereignty and to be content to let the secret things that He chooses not to reveal remain hidden by Him (Deuteronomy 29:29).
God has inherent authority, power, and ability to do whatever He wants.
Let’s look at what is wrapped up in this first truth about God’s sovereignty. There is so much in this statement alone that someone could write a book on it. But let’s examine this at a conversational level and not parse the phrases as an academic exercise. So, what are we saying?
The first concept that’s vital for us to understand is God’s authority. Authority is the right to rule, make decisions, or tell someone else what to do. We understand this in our everyday life. Teachers have authority over children. This means they can instruct the pupil, enforce rules, or decide how best to teach them. But the teacher’s authority is limited to what is granted or delegated to them. Teachers must act within the boundaries of the school board, the state, the federal government, and the parents. Their authority over students is carved out or delegated to them, and they must act within those bounds.
Teachers cannot one day decide that students must pass their tests or else be put into prison. Why? Because they do not have the authority granted to put children in prison. This harkens back to the continuum we discussed in chapter one. If there is an entity that can impose rules for you to follow, then your authority is limited. The imposing authority has delegated the scope of your authority and at any time can revoke your authority.
But the authority that makes God sovereign is that His authority is inherent. This means it rests entirely in Him and is not delegated to Him from anywhere. Further, God’s inherent authority is the source of all delegated authority everywhere. The Bible teaches in very plain terms that any authority exists because it flows from His inherent authority. There is no authority man can claim that doesn’t ultimately issue from God’s inherent authority.
We touched on this concept when we discussed God as creator and potter. Because God created, He has authority over all of creation, including authority over man. And in His sovereignty, God can delegate authority to the degree He wishes and take back that authority to the degree He wishes.
We see God exercising His inherent authority over man and nature throughout the Old Testament. He raised one nation to break another nation (Habakkuk 1:5-11). He created a fish and commanded it to swallow up Jonah (Jonah 1:17). He sent the hornets after the enemies of Israel (Joshua 24:12). He caused the sun to stop moving to give Joshua more time to complete the victory in battle (Joshua 10:12-14). All of these situations illustrate God’s authority over man and nature.
But God did not have to be granted the authority to do any of these things, nor could anyone prevent Him from exercising any of these acts. The choice to act was His and His alone. This is inherent authority, which is why godly men and women appeal to God and His providential care. We recognize that God has inherent authority over everything, and we pray to the One who inherently can choose to grant or withhold our requests. There is nothing we can pray for outside God’s inherent authority; every decision to act or not to act is from God alone.
After Jesus resurrected from the grave to conquer sin and death, He gave the disposition of all authority:
“And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.’” (Matthew 28:18 ESV).
Inherent authority rests in Jesus, our Lord, and Creator. He is not only the leader in the “religious” realm, He is the leader in everything. Yes, He can command our spiritual lives and instruct us on how we should live morally and ethically, but He also sets up nations and tears them down. He grants deliverance and allows His name to be glorified through martyrdom. He can cause the sea to destroy a ship, or He can deliver lives who were shipwrecked at sea. He can do this because He has all authority that inherently resides in Him.
That is why the Psalmist can say,
“Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.” (Psalm 115:3 ESV).
So, inherent authority means that God has the right to do what He wishes without anyone’s approval because there is no authority greater than His, and His authority cannot be countermanded.
The second concept that’s vital for us to understand is that God has the power and ability to do whatever He wants. Again, His inherent authority and His power are so interwoven that they are hard to separate. However, I separate them because both are important for us to understand. Someone may say, “So what? God has inherent authority. It doesn’t mean I must listen to Him or submit to that authority.” This is what man has been saying from the beginning of time.
But God is not an impotent God with inherent authority but no way to enforce it. God has the power to back up His authority. Indeed, He has the power to do whatever He wishes. Listen to the Psalmist:
“Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.” (Psalm 115:3 ESV).
As the Lord prepared to make His humble entrance into the world He created, His chosen mother, Mary, was told by the angel Gabriel that she would be the mother of the Son of God. She didn’t quite understand how this could happen as a young teenage virgin. This is what Gabriel says to her:
“For nothing will be impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37 ESV).
Immediately, we hear this and say, “Whoa, slow down. Nothing?” We don’t like absolutes. We have learned that there is an exception for everything. But we feel that way because we are finite men. For us, absolutes prove to be elusive. The words “never” and “always” seem to be overgeneralizations. We often project our limitations upon God because we sometimes feel that God is subject to the same generalizations.
But what if Gabriel is correct? What if, indeed, nothing is impossible with God? What would that say about His sovereignty? So often, rather than accept truths about God, we fight hard to prove why He is not what He claims to be. Sometimes we do this with silly and fallacious arguments like, “Can God make a rock so heavy that He can’t lift it?” Now, I’m not going to get into a philosophical argument or defense of these questions in this book. There are a lot of good resources out there for you to consume if you have a burning desire to dive deeper into how to defend against these types of arguments. My point is to acknowledge our tendencies to explain away what we do not want to hear or what we read that may contradict a firmly held belief.
You say, “But the Bible plainly states that it is impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18). Ok, now we have two verses. One states that there is no limit on God, while the other says God is limited. Which is true? Hang in there with me because before this chapter is over, we will answer this question. But for where we are in the study of the sovereignty of God, I am going to ask you to go with the words of Gabriel that nothing is impossible for God. Free your mind from any circular argument to the contrary, knowing we will deal with it directly in just a few pages. Fair enough? {Note: We can add James 1:13 to the idea that it is impossible for God to be tempted with evil. We will address that impossibility later in this chapter as well}.
To help you with the idea that nothing is impossible for God or that He can do anything, consider these passages:
“But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26 ESV).
“Is anything too hard for the LORD? At the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.” (Genesis 18:14 ESV).
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28 ESV).
“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.” (Job 42:2 ESV).
“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us,” (Ephesians 3:20 ESV).
“Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.” (Jeremiah 32:17 ESV).
“Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?” (Jeremiah 32:27 ESV).
All of these passages state that nothing is impossible for God. If these passages are true about God, they speak to His sovereignty. God is sovereign because He has the inherent authority and the power to do anything He wants, and no one can stop Him. That’s supremacy. That’s sovereignty. That’s who our God is!
Let’s briefly see this in action. When Israel was between the proverbial rock and the hard place with the Red Sea on one side and Pharaoh’s army on the other side, God was able to deliver His people (Exodus 14). When a teenage shepherd faced a warrior giant, God gave the giant into the boy’s hand (1 Samuel 17). When three teen boys were thrown into a fiery furnace, God saved them (Daniel 3). When 5000 men, plus women and children, were hungry, Jesus fed them with five loaves and two fishes (Matthew 14). When the Son of God died, God raised Him, never to die again (Matthew 28).
So, when we put it all together, the Bible abundantly backs up the first truth about God’s sovereignty: God has inherent authority, power, and ability to do whatever He wants.
God answers to no man, no power, or to any other authority.
The second fundamental truth about the sovereignty of God is wrapped up in the idea that full sovereignty means that God is not subjected to any other authority. I am confident that I will start to challenge you to think, because if this is true, it will rock the foundations of beliefs that you may be tightly holding on to. This is saying much more than God is the top man on the totem pole. This is an ethical and moral argument as well. What do we mean?
Can we start with the simple assumption that we all agree God is, indeed, the highest ranking being in existence? That’s not a stretch, is it? The writer of Proverbs says:
“No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can avail against the LORD.” (Proverbs 21:30 ESV).
This is a powerful verse that speak to God’s sovereignty and to illustrate our point. The proverb tells us God is above all wisdom. The wisest of the wise will never be able to prevail over the Lord. No wisdom will bring God into subjection. Neither will any understanding nor knowledge defeat the Lord. In a courtroom trial, knowledge, testimony, and evidence are all submitted to either convict or acquit someone. But in the case of God, no knowledge can overcome Him. Not that He is good enough at hiding the understanding, but that God is all truth, and truth will always be part of His nature and character. No counsel can prevail against God. Counsel, in this sense, is akin to a lawyer or someone skilled in finding weakness and exploiting it against another to expose their guilt. In a nutshell, this passage is telling us that God can never lose against man, or from the positive, God will always succeed against man. Always.
“remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me,” (Isaiah 46:9 ESV).
In this passage, God makes the point most eloquently. It says that God is not only at the top of the food chain, but He is on an entirely different plane from us. He is in a class by Himself. The true sovereignty of God recognizes that God is not only above us in every way, but we cannot be compared to Him in any way. And further, not only is He above us but there is no one or nothing else that can compare to Him. So, if this passage is correct, it means that God inherently is Sovereign over all things because He is so far above and beyond everything else that nothing can compare to Him. This is precisely why God says,
“For 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 ESV).
If it can be said that God struggles in anything, it is in His ability to get us to understand how far beyond us in every way He is to us. And this struggle is directly related to our finite nature versus his infinite nature. Better stated, it is not God’s struggle to get us to understand; we struggle to understand the magnificent truths about Him that He reveals to us. Here, we must make a few concessions that many of us may find hard to make.
God is infinite; we are finite. God is perfect; we are imperfect. God knows everything; we do good to understand what God reveals to us. Indeed, as Paul puts it:
“For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (1 Corinthians 1:25 ESV).
This means that our capacity to understand God’s sovereignty, or anything about the fullness of His nature, is limited. Sometimes we will have to take things at face value instead of logically understanding how it all interconnects. It becomes a futile practice to try to understand everything there is to understand about God.
So, we get this first point, don’t we? God is at the top of the food chain. There is none higher. Because this is true, it means that God answers to no man, no power, or no other authority. Simply, no authority exists that can place God under it. It means He cannot be held accountable to anything. I guess that this is where we start to get that strange feeling in the pit of our stomachs. What does it mean that God is not held accountable to anything? We will spend an entire chapter going through the book of Job because this is the main point God makes to Job in the book that bears his name.
Since God is at the top of the Authority-Sovereignty continuum, He gets to make the rules and enforce them on others as He sees fit. We will dive into this last truth about God’s sovereignty at the end of this chapter in detail. But this point is simply that no one can hold God accountable for anything.
No one has the moral or ethical authority to charge God with anything and put Him on trial, yet our society attempts to do this every day. As His children, we must recognize that His sovereignty makes this a futile endeavor. We must not jump on the bandwagon of accusing God because we know He will win against any charge brought against Him. Trying to charge God with anything and forcing Him to answer us is antithetical to His sovereignty. We do not get to make accusations against God. We cannot demand that God give an account of His deeds or give answers to why He did or did not act in a particular way. We simply cannot do it, nor will God allow Himself to yield His sovereignty to us in that way.
God gets to make the rules because He is sovereign, yet He is not held to any authority. God’s sovereignty is limited if he is forced to act a certain way. That would mean there is something greater than Him.
Earlier, I promised to look at a couple of verses about God’s sovereignty and the tension in Scripture that nothing is impossible for God, yet some things are impossible for Him. This is where we will look at those passages because we must understand what they are saying and, more importantly, what they are not saying. If we misunderstand them, it may cause us to walk away with an incomplete understanding of God’s sovereignty. I fully expect that this is where I may start to lose some people, and I ask that you consider these things prayerfully, and I will continue to do so as well. So, let’s remind ourselves of the tension in these verses:
“For nothing will be impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37 ESV).
“so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.” (Hebrews 6:18 ESV).
“Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.” (James 1:13 ESV).
On the surface, these three verses say this: Nothing is impossible for God; it is impossible for God to lie; it is impossible for God to be tempted with evil. How we harmonize these three verses will significantly impact how we view God’s Sovereignty. When faced with tension like this, we have three basic ways we can choose to handle it. First, we can use the tension as an apparent contradiction and conclude that the Bible is in error, proving it is a work of man and not the work of a perfect divine being. I reject that option outright and am confident that many of my readers will as well. For those contemplating this option, understand that it is not within the scope of this work to launch into a full-scale apologetic treatment. I would, however, encourage you to search for one of the many great apologetics works that specifically deal with how to reconcile apparent contradictions in the Bible.
That leaves the believers to consider the other options. One option is to view these verses in their absolute sense, which will cause us to choose one primary truth and do some pretty interesting logic acrobatics to harmonize the three. For example, we can hold to the truth that it is impossible for God to lie; therefore, Luke 1:37 doesn’t literally mean nothing is impossible for God. We can say the same thing about it being impossible for God to be tempted with evil. That must be true, so Luke 1:37 must mean something different from what it says. Perhaps it means that nothing is impossible for God to accomplish in the sense of virgins giving birth. We, therefore, elevate one passage and subjugate the other passage.
Or, we can use the same option and flip the reasoning. We can say that Luke 1:37 is true, meaning that Hebrews 6:18 (impossible for God to lie) and James 1:13 (impossible for God to be tempted with evil) must mean something else. Perhaps we reason that lying is a sin, and we know that God cannot sin, or we reason that since evil is not in the presence of God, that is what makes it impossible for Him to be tempted with evil. But this reasoning subjugates God to living under authority. God cannot lie or be tempted because He would be sinning if He did. And once you subject God to any authority, you have limited His sovereignty. You can’t have it both ways. You cannot say God has absolute sovereignty and yet force Him to be subject to a moral code.
So, what do I believe? I must find a way to preserve the Scriptures’ integrity while maintaining God’s supreme authority and sovereignty. So, I hold to these revealed truths. First, God’s sovereignty means that He cannot answer to any authority. This is where I know that many may disagree. God has the free will to lie or tell the truth and the free will to be tempted by evil or not to be tempted by evil. No one can tell God He can’t or shouldn’t do anything. Being sovereign in the way God is sovereign means He can do what He wants and never have to answer for His actions. Being forced to give account to anyone is a surrender of sovereignty.
At the same time, I do believe the scriptures when it says that it is impossible for God to lie and it is impossible for God to be tempted with evil. It is not possible for either of those two things to happen. I believe that with all my heart. And I believe all three verses are equally true, and neither one rises in supremacy over the others. I do not have to use logic acrobatics to explain how one is absolute, and the others are not really saying what they are saying. So, the question becomes, if I believe that nothing is impossible with God and that God can choose to lie or choose to be tempted with evil (because nothing is impossible with God), then what makes lying or being tempted with evil impossible for God?
I believe it’s impossible for God to lie or to be tempted with evil because it is not in God’s character to do those things. That’s a far cry from saying that God couldn’t do those things even if He wanted to or that He couldn’t do those things because a moral code prevented Him from doing those things. Again, we will spend an entire chapter looking at the book of Job, which I believe teaches this very truth.
There are things that the Bible teaches about God’s character that bears this out. First and foremost is that it’s a mistake for us to compare God’s character to man’s. Man often makes plans but fails to follow through on them for whatever reason. Man often tries to live a sinless life with a willing spirit but with a weak flesh that we constantly battle. But God is not like man in His character. Consider these verses of distinction:
“God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?” (Numbers 23:19 ESV).
“By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written, “That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged.” (Romans 3:4 ESV).
“Once for all I have sworn by my holiness; I will not lie to David.” (Psalm 89:35 ESV).
“declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’” (Isaiah 46:10 ESV).
These verses contrast God’s character with ours. God completes what He sets out to accomplish. As I read the Bible, there is only one thing that can cause God to change His purpose, and we will deal with that later in the book in detail. But simply, God will sometimes change His purpose when men ask with a penitent or faithful heart. That change, however, is a free will change from a sovereign God.
Whereas man is often forgetful, God is not. Whereas man is often lazy, God is not. Whereas man often overestimates his ability to complete a task, God does not. Whereas man often encounters opposition that stops his plans, God does not. God will always accomplish His purposes. Man does not.
I threw in the passage in Psalm 89 because it helps us accurately understand the true nature of the impossibility of God to lie. God swears He will not lie to David. And the lie becomes an impossibility for God because of this. God cannot lie because God will not lie. This is what makes God sovereign over man. God cannot because God will not. On the other hand, man often does things, even when he doesn’t want to do them.
“For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” (Romans 7:18-19 ESV).
Let’s revisit the second truth we are examining. God answers to no man, no power, or to any other authority. If God is supremely sovereign, then this statement must be true. Anything less than this is an erosion of God’s sovereignty. Ask yourself, if God must act a certain way or not act a certain way, then what power exists to enforce this? The truth is that no power exists that can enforce anything upon God. And yet we try to do this all the time.
We say, “God, you aren’t being fair,” which is a statement of accountability. Or we say, “God, if you are just, then you wouldn’t let a man kill a child,” which is holding God to a standard. Or we say, “God, I do not deserve to suffer from boils, loss of my fortune, and the loss of all ten of my children,” which is an indictment against God to which He must answer.
When we treat God the way we treat each other, we lose the sense of awesome sovereignty that is God’s. We can hold each other accountable. We can hold each other to standards, indict each other for our actions, and force each other to answer for those actions. But we can do none of that to God. We are left with the reaction of Job when he tried to do this to God:
“Then Job answered the LORD and said: “Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer; twice, but I will proceed no further.” (Job 40:3-5 ESV).
God has the right to make the rules and the power to enforce those rules on whomever He chooses.
The third truth about God’s sovereignty is predicated on the first two being true. If God (1) Has the authority, power, and ability to do what He wants and (2) No one can stop Him from doing what He wants or force Him to act a certain way, then it stands to reason that God has the right to make all the rules by which everything under His authority must act. In this case, everything is all of creation, including man. Simply put, God can make the rules for all of us and enforce those rules however He sees fit.
In nature, God chose to order everything according to rules or laws that we are still discovering. God ordained in nature that gravity holds people to the earth. We call this a natural law. We discovered it, but God ordained it at the creation. Whether talking about the laws of thermodynamics, astrophysics, or even quantum physics, we are all simply discovering the laws God ordained to maintain His creation.
Sometimes we make a correct hypothesis when studying these laws, and sometimes we make a wrong one. But our ability or inability to correctly understand the laws God has ordained does not alter the reality that God ordered everything to make the universe work. I suspect that no matter how smart we grow, we will never be able to understand everything God sets in order for His creation to work the way it does. And the “smarter” we grow, the more we uncover how God designed the world. In essence, we are just learning more about the Creator.
But seeing God in creation is stuff for another book. Let me end this part of God’s sovereignty by reminding us how nature itself testifies to its Creator:
“To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” (Psalm 19:1 ESV).
Let us turn our attention to something that more directly concerns us. God not only showcases His existence through His creation, but He has taken the special step to communicate directly to man regarding His will for us.
“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.” (Hebrews 1:1-2 ESV).
God spoke to man at various times and in different ways. But He did speak to us. And His speaking to us was for the special purpose of instructing us on how we should live. We divide the history of man into three broad eras defined by how God chose to speak to us. We call these periods dispensations. Roughly, there are three distinct dispensations in which God has interacted with man.
In the first, the Patriarchal dispensation, God spoke directly to the heads of the family and told them how to live their lives. Some listened, but many ignored the voice of the Lord. Adam was told about his work in the Garden of Eden and the prohibition against eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:15-17). In the rest of the book of Genesis, we see God speaking to Cain, Noah, Abraham, and Abraham’s descendants through Joseph. God spoke to them by telling them what to do and what not to do. Sometimes they listened, but often they did not. As their sovereign Creator, His right was to give them rules and enforce them however He wished. Sometimes He banished people who sinned, sent a flood to kill them, confound their languages, or rained down fire and brimstone. But the point is that God had the sovereign right to instruct them on how to live and enforce that in any way He saw fit.
When we get to Exodus, we see a transition to the second dispensation, the Mosaic dispensation. God shifts from speaking directly to men, to speaking through the written law and prophets. The Law told people how to live, and the prophets were sent to warn people that punishment was coming when they stopped listening to the written law. This period started when God gave the Law to the first prophet, Moses, and lasted until the coming of His Son, which would usher in the third and final dispensation, the Christian dispensation.
Interestingly enough, God chose a period of silence of approximately 400 years as He transitioned between dispensations. The Israelites spent about 400 years in Egypt as slaves between the first and the second. Between the second and the third, we have what is commonly referred to as the silent years from the writing of the last prophet, Malachi, to the coming of Jesus, the Messiah. This period also lasted about 400 years. Another interesting note is that God spoke to people in each dispensation for at least 2000 years, and in our case, 2000 years and counting.
This takes us back to our passage in Hebrews 1:1-2- God spoke in many ways at various times to people. But the speaking was for a sovereign God to instruct His people on how they should live and to execute whatever judgment upon them He chose if they did not heed His words. A sovereign God has the inherent right to tell people how He wants them to live. And as subjects of the sovereign God, we do not get to pick and choose what laws we will follow and what laws we will not follow. We are bound by the laws our sovereign God lays upon us, whether we choose to follow them or not.
Today, and through the rest of time, we live under the Christian dispensation. God has spoken to us through His Son, Jesus. As we have already discussed, Jesus is not a mere prophet. He is God Himself, who left heaven to live in the world and among the people He created. To nail this point home, consider these verses. They will be at the heart of God’s sovereignty over us today:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” (John 1:1-3 ESV).
“He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.” (John 1:10 ESV).
“yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” (1 Corinthians 8:6 ESV).
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:15-17 ESV).
These verses demonstrate that the Son of God, the Messiah prophesied about in the Old Testament, was not merely another man whom God would raise up, but that Jesus Himself was the God of creation in Genesis 1. If this bedrock of faith is true, then supreme sovereignty rests upon Him, and His words are binding upon man today as the only words by which we must live and the only words by which we will be judged. If Jesus is the God we have been studying about in this book, then how can we walk away with any other conclusion but that Jesus
Has the authority, power, and ability to do whatever He wants.
Answers to no man, no power, or to any other authority.
Has the right to make the rules and the power to enforce those rules on whomever He chooses.
Consider these claims of Jesus:
“Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6 ESV).
“The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.” (John 12:48 ESV).
“And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” (Matthew 28:18 ESV).
Jesus also depicts Himself as the great Judge of mankind on the Day of Judgment:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” (Matthew 7:21-23 ESV).
This is seen in more detail in Matthew 25:31-46. In the Judgment Day scenes, Jesus shows us how His words will judge us on the last day while He sits on the judgment seat. But after the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus into heaven, where God seated Him at His right hand on the throne, the Spirit inspired men to write about Jesus and His sovereign role as King and Judge. This is important because we see the triune nature of the three persons of the one true God, all attesting to the legitimacy of Jesus as the sovereign God whose words will judge all men and grant the only access to God the Father. Here is what the Spirit attests to:
“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” (2 Corinthians 5:10 ESV).
“because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:31 ESV).
“on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 2:16 ESV).
“Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.” (Romans 14:10-12 ESV).
So, you have all three persons of the one true God attesting to the sovereignty of Jesus as Judge over man. Jesus speaks of the day when He will judge man. The Father seats Him on a throne at His right hand and gives His Son all authority. The Spirit continues to testify of Jesus’ sovereign role as judge over mankind.
We see in our dispensation that God has chosen to speak to us by His Son. This dispensation will continue until the Father sends His Son back to earth to claim His children and judge all mankind who have ever lived. Someone estimated that between 75 billion and 100 billion souls might have lived since Adam who will stand before Jesus on that Day. Regardless of how many there will be, the Bible makes it clear that ALL will stand before Jesus to give account.
But the fact that there will be a judgment tells us something about sovereignty that we will tackle in the next chapter. If we are given a standard or a law to live by, and there will be a judgment regarding whether we have lived by the law, then there must be a choice we have to obey or not to obey. In the next chapter, we will dive deeply into how a supremely sovereign God who always accomplishes His purposes interacts with a creation possessing the free will to obey or not to obey his Creator. Does man’s rejection of God diminish the Creator’s sovereignty?