As we have seen, God claims sovereignty over all creation. We see He has the inherent authority and power to do all He pleases, and nothing can make Him submit to any standard or stop Him from exercising His authority. This gives Him the right and power to impose whatever standard on creation, including man, He wishes, and He has the power to enforce that standard upon His subjects. Isaiah reminds us about God’s sovereignty:
“remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, 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 46:9-10 ESV).
If there was ever a proof text on God’s sovereignty, this might be it. God is in a class by Himself because no one is like Him. We would expect this from a supremely sovereign being. He has tremendous power that no part of creation has. He alone can “declare the beginning from the end and from times things not yet done.” And His counsel is sure, unable to fail, meaning He will always accomplish everything He purposes.
But is this divine claim of supreme sovereignty valid, or is it an overreach by a powerful being engaging in divine propaganda? If God lays down the law for man, can we assume He wants us to follow that law? Is that His divine purpose for us? If God is “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9), and indeed, many will perish (Matthew 7:13), does that mean some of God’s purposes do not stand?
Now we have a conundrum the world has struggled with for centuries. Is God sovereign? Does man have free will? If man does have free will and can choose his way and reject God, does that lessen God’s sovereignty because there are indeed some things out of His control? Indeed, can sovereignty exist if someone can stand up to authority and say, “No, I will not do what You say! I will thwart Your purpose for me!”
Some have answered this question by saying God is sovereign and all His purposes will indeed come to pass for us because He has purposed some to obey and some to disobey. This is how they preserve God’s sovereignty. We all act the way a sovereign God has chosen for us to act since the foundation of creation. If God has predestined us to be lost, then we cannot change that purpose for our lives. And if we are the lucky ones whom God has predestined to be saved, then there is nothing we can do to alter that purpose. Some may pay lip service to man having free will, but in reality, man will fulfill the destiny God has assigned them. Free will, in this case, is a phantom window dressing.
In a moment, we will look at some of the verses they use to prove their point, and then we will look at what the Bible says about man’s free will and how it intersects with God’s sovereignty. But before we do, let’s take a slight detour that may seem out of place here, but it teaches a vital lesson as we go forward. Let’s look at the Sadducees and see how they reached conclusions about some of their beliefs. How Jesus sets them straight will teach us lessons as we examine how we arrive at our beliefs on the free will of man and God’s sovereignty.
Why Sadducees Do Not Believe In A Resurrection
In the days of Jesus, there were many sects, all believing something different. You had the Essenes who lived a communal existence which many thought may have been the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. You also had the Zealots who hated the Romans and believed God would conquer Rome through violence and might. Then you had the two more prominent sects who shared power in ruling the Jewish people through the Sanhedrin: the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Pharisees were the more conservative of the two and followed the law and the oral traditions. In contrast, the Sadducees followed the law alone, limiting their appeal for authority to the first five books of the Old Testament. A significant distinction between them was in their view of the afterlife. Pharisees believed in an afterlife and angels, while the Sadducees didn’t.
We see Jesus coming head-to-head with Sadducees on their view that there is no resurrection and no afterlife. The reasoning they used to arrive at this conclusion went something like this: The law taught what was referred to as the Levirate Marriage from Deuteronomy 25:5-10. If a man died without a son, his brother would take the widow as a wife and bear a son for his dead brother. The Sadducees reasoned that this inferred that there is no afterlife because if there was an afterlife and a resurrection, how would Levirate Marriages be handled when everyone met back up in the afterlife? This is how they would get Jesus to stumble and prove that there is no resurrection.
Remember, Jesus is God who created man in His image and instituted marriage in Genesis 1 at creation. The Sadducees had no idea the one they were about to test had firsthand knowledge of everything they were about to put to Him.
“The same day Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.’ Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother. So too the second and third, down to the seventh. After them all, the woman died. In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her.” (Matthew 22:23-28 ESV).
Understand, they had settled their authority that there is no resurrection, in part, by how they reasoned this situation through. Jesus tells the Sadducees that there is a resurrection and explains why. Remember, Jesus created man as an eternal being in His image. He was teaching the truth because He was the author of this truth. If you want to know how something works, there is no more qualified source than the creator of that something.
But look at the two charges Jesus lays at their feet which explains the error they made in how they arrived at their incorrect conclusion:
“But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.” (Matthew 22:29 ESV).
The first error was in not knowing the Scriptures:
“And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” (Matthew 22:31-32 ESV).
The second error was not knowing the power of God:
“For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” (Matthew 22:30 ESV).
As we go through the rest of this study on the sovereignty of God, I will harken back to this lesson on the Sadducees’ belief that there is no resurrection. Our challenge is not taking a passage, inferring from that passage, and then building a belief system that may not be true. If we make an inference about the sovereignty of God or about how our free will intersects and affects the sovereignty of God, and that inference is incorrect, then we may have a whole house of cards that come crashing down upon us.
And sometimes, we may have to admit that we can’t figure out how everything works together because God has not told us. Sometimes we have to take what we read at face value and chalk it up to the power of God. Even though God has given us the ability to reason, there is no shame in saying, “I believe that God’s purposes will always stand. I believe that God gave man free will. And I believe that God will not always get what He wants. And I still believe He is supremely sovereign.” All of these statements are taught in Scripture, and nothing says we have to be able to fully understand things that may be too wonderful for us to understand.
To some, this may sound like a cop-out for an author. I get it. An author who has trouble backing up his point and says, “Well, you just have to have faith that my point is true,” argues from a weak foundation. But sometimes, that foundation is the only correct foundation to stand on. There is no shame in saying that we don’t understand how things work, but we believe it by faith.
Okay, back to our predestination framework for defining how God’s sovereignty is supreme in light of our rejection of His will. There are many variations to the doctrine of predestination, and whole books can be written on this subject. I will address this at a very high level, understanding that there is much more to dig into. In essence, predestination teaches that God must direct the fate of everyone for His purpose to stand. To be fair, most who hold this position believe that man is a fallen creature with inherited sin, and all, by nature, are worthy of eternal punishment. But rather than condemn the whole race, Jesus selectively exercises His grace to choose whom He will save. Apart from His exercise of grace, these people would be in the same situation as everyone else, deserving eternal punishment.
Here are three passages to illustrate this. And I know that this is a slight scratch of the surface from the deep dive we could easily make if this were the book’s purpose.
“even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,” (Ephesians 1:4-5 ESV).
“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” (Romans 8:29-30 ESV).
“who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began,” (2 Timothy 1:9 ESV).
All of these verses speak to God’s predestined foreknowledge. The danger in reading passages like these is building a house of cards that comes crashing down when we err because we do not know the Scriptures and start to infer who the predestined are or what God has chosen for them, and then let our err cancel out other passages that teach God has given man free will to make his own choices.
Created In God’s Image and Free Will
At one end of the spectrum, you have a God who has planned out every decision and action His creation will take. This includes every decision and action that man will take. People who espouse this view do so because it is logical that this is the only way God can maintain His supreme sovereignty over creation. The thought is that if you give man free will to choose something that God does not want you to choose, then you are proving that God is not supremely sovereign, which goes against what the Bible teaches about Him. But just as with the Sadducees, a few incorrect inferences here will force us to build a logical house of cards that ends in God having to take control of every decision and outcome to maintain His sovereignty.
But that ignores many Scriptures and, as we will see, assumes that a supremely sovereign God cannot choose to create man with free will and allow man to exercise that free will within His sovereignty. In essence, you make God much less powerful when you say that the only way He can accomplish His purposes is if He controls every decision and outcome. I would argue that you do not know the power of God because a sovereign God is capable of giving man free will and still being able to accomplish His purposes in light of man exercising his free will. That is a powerful God beyond our comprehension!
In the creation, we see God creating everything from plants, animals, and celestial bodies. In other places, we also see He created the heavenly beings (Colossians 1:16), though they are not the subject of the Genesis account. But listen to what God says about the creation of man:
“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:26-27 ESV).
On earth, something separates man from all other parts of His creation. To nothing else did He (They: The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) say They would make in Their image. It was only man who was given this gift. And we see this gift being bestowed upon man as God allows us to observe man being created in His image:
“then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” (Genesis 2:7 ESV).
Throughout Scripture, those whom He made in His image have been called His children, and He serves as a Father to them. Still, being created in the image of God separates us from all other parts of creation. So, what does it mean that we are created in His image?
God endowed certain attributes of Himself onto man and on no other part of creations {Note: We are speaking of creation in the physical universe, not in the heavenly realm. We share traits with angels that we will discuss later, but even so, God separates man from angels and endows things upon us that He does not endow upon angels.} As we discuss the attributes of Himself that He endows upon man, it is essential that we understand that divinity is not one of those attributes. We may say that God created us with “sparks” of divinity that no other part of creation shares, but this is in no way saying that we are divine. Only God is divine. Jesus told Satan that only God is the One worthy of worship (Matthew 4:10). And as the subject of this book discusses, only God has supreme authority, sovereignty, and power.
But here are sparks of divinity that God endows upon the creation in His image that separates man from all other parts of creation:
Man is given a portion of dominion/limited sovereignty
Man is given intellect, knowledge, and reason
Man is created as an eternal being
Man is created with an ingrained desire to seek out God
Man is given limited free will
Each of these attributes makes us different from everything else God created, and, in some way, it can be said that God put a little piece of Himself in us with these attributes. We will look at these things specifically, but we will focus our time on the last since it is the one that affects all the others most directly and it is the one that interacts with God’s supreme sovereignty the most.
Man is given a portion of dominion/limited sovereignty
We see this in Genesis 1 in the creation account. God creates a world as a perfect paradise for His image bearer to live. After looking at everything and saying it was good, God creates man in His image and says it is very good. He sets man in a paradise garden and then turns over a portion of His dominion to man.
“And 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 heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28 ESV).
Dominion was God’s and God’s alone. Yet He gifted a portion of His dominion to man. We will see that with every unique gift God bestows upon man, He bestows the gifts in a limited fashion. God never relinquishes any gift to man in an unlimited measure. He always maintains sovereignty over the gifts and attributes He gives to man. Dominion was given to man as long as man exercised the dominion under God’s dominion. God reserved the right to tell man what to do and what not to do with the gifted dominion. For example, God told Adam and Eve what they could and could not eat. Later, He would tell Cain and Abel what to sacrifice and what not to sacrifice. Dominion, as with any gift from God, must be used according to God’s will, and we will be held accountable for how we exercise our dominion.
Man is given intellect, knowledge, and reason
Another gift the Creator gave to His image bearer that separated us from the rest of creation is the ability to reason and think. God has this ability to the fullest, being all-knowing and all-wise. But He has given man a limited ability to know and think according to His will. Moses addresses this limited gift in Deuteronomy:
“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” (Deuteronomy 29:29 ESV).
God gives man knowledge that no other part of His creation has or can even understand. He provides us with the ability to reason for good or evil. After the flood, man exercised this reason to do a remarkable, albeit sinful thing:
“And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.” (Genesis 11:5-6 ESV).
We know the rest of the story, don’t we? God exercised His sovereignty and purpose over man and confused their language so they would have to separate. The Bible contains examples of men creating works of art and literature, weapons and inventions of war, and inventions of good and evil things. Yet, God never granted man unlimited intellect, knowledge, or reason. He still reserved His sovereignty over how they would use these gifts.
Man is created as an eternal being
No other part of the natural world is eternal. When a tree dies, there is nothing of the tree that lives on. And I am sorry to say this, but when your pet dies, there is nothing that lives on. Only man is made an eternal being. This is an aspect of God that is easiest for us to understand. Yet, as with the other gifts God gave to His image bearers, this is also limited. Whereas God is eternal, with no beginning or end, we have a beginning. Whereas God self-exists, we were created. God is eternal because He always was and always will be. He is the great uncreated Creator. His eternal nature is part of who He is. Our eternal nature is, by virtue, a gift from God.
“Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” (Psalm 90:2 ESV).
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16 ESV).
And our God intends that man spend eternity with Him, but we must submit ourselves to His authority as we recognize His sovereignty. Whether we go to heaven or hell, reward or punishment, it will be for eternity because we were created never to cease existing—more on this as when we bring a close to the book.
Man is created with an ingrained desire to seek out God
God didn’t create man as a side project or as a novelty. He created man to glorify Himself and commune with Man. God desires a relationship with His image bearer. We are more than just His creation. He makes us His children. He becomes our Father. That means He loves us. He truly loves us in a way that we could never understand love. And God seeks us to love Him and to pursue a relationship with Him. He made us for that purpose. That’s why man turns to something greater than himself in times of tremendous need. Solomon says:
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 ESV).
God has set eternity in our hearts. God has built into us this longing and desire for something greater. As we will see in a moment, we can choose to ignore this longing, but it is still always there, no matter how hard we try to bury it. This is such a wonderful gift from God that we often overlook. He gives us every advantage to seek after Him if we only use it. This is why king David says:
“I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Selah” (Psalm 143:6 ESV).
Over and over, the Bible talks about our natural desire to seek the Lord to the point that we hunger and thirst after Him. Yet we often deaden this desire and learn to ignore it altogether. And we can grow to a point where we no longer have a desire to seek after Him and His sovereignty, but it’s not because He doesn’t care. He created us with this desire built-in; if we listen to it, we can find Him and have that relationship we were created to have with Him.
“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13 ESV).
Man is given limited free will
Perhaps this is one attribute of being created in the image of God that we often overlook. And as we have seen, some will not accept this. Because with free will, comes responsibility, and many of us would rather make God responsible for our actions. This, however, is not how God created us. This is a hallmark attribute of being an image bearer of our divine Father. God, in His absolute free will, has granted man a limited measure of His free will.
God has absolute free will. This touches on the first fundamental truth of His sovereignty, which says He has the “ability to do whatever He wants.” “Whatever” is the word that encapsulates God’s free will. Remember, we said that being sovereign means He can do anything He wants, and no one can prevent Him. He says that He will accomplish all His purposes. With man, however, God has granted us free will in a limited fashion. It might be my will to be a billionaire tomorrow, but some limitations will likely prevent that from happening. Not so with God.
Let’s establish that the Bible shows that God has endowed His image bearers with limited free will, and then we will discuss how this intersects with God’s sovereignty.
“So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.” (John 7:16-17 ESV).
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live,” (Deuteronomy 30:19 ESV).
“And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” (Joshua 24:15 ESV).
We see God placing choices before man throughout the Scriptures. In Genesis 2, God tells Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but He gave them the free will choice of obeying or not obeying. In Matthew 7, Jesus presents two paths, one broad and one narrow. He lets us decide which path to follow. In Revelation 3, Jesus says He stands at the door and knocks, waiting for us to hear and open. It’s our choice. He could force His way through the door, but He leaves the decision of opening the door or not to us. And if we had no free will, why would He waste His time knocking at a door that would be impossible for us to open?
So, here they are. Wonderful gifts from a powerful, sovereign God who created us in His image and made us different from every other part of His creation. Sparks of divinity that makes us like Him:
Man is given a portion of dominion/limited sovereignty
Man is given intellect, knowledge, and reason
Man is created as an eternal being
Man is created with an ingrained desire to seek out God
Man is given limited free will
But with great gifts comes great responsibility. If we are to glorify God and seek the relationship with Him we are created to have, we must use the gift of free will to exercise the other gifts in a way that draws us closer to Him.
Does Our Free Will Diminish God’s Sovereignty?
Our understanding of how man’s free will affects God’s sovereignty is at the core of the issue. The follow-through on the logic we build may cause us to say God must be making all the decisions because if man’s free will stops God from getting what He wants, that means He is not supremely sovereign. And that concept is so paramount in our belief in God that we will sacrifice any other belief we think may challenge it. The prospect of worshiping a God Who is not supremely sovereign is beyond our willingness to accept.
But we need to remember the admonition God gave the Sadducees when He condemned their lack of belief in a resurrection based on the logic they used to build their case. (1) You do not know the Scriptures. (2) You do not know the power of God. Perhaps all of us need to remember this admonition as we use our God-given gift of reason to create a belief system that may end up being a house of cards because we are mistaken on a few critical facts about God. My advice is to stand firm on what we know and be careful how we use that knowledge to infer what we do not know, no matter how logical it may seem.
So, what do we know from Scripture? We have already seen that God is supremely sovereign and gave man free will to make choices. What we will see is that God does not always get His way. The Bible makes that clear, and even God Himself says as much. Yet, we know that God will always accomplish His purpose. I can confidently say both statements are true because the Bible says so. What I have to be careful not to do is to use my logic to infer something that may be in error and then build the rest of a belief system that stems from that error. This happens with men who believe in predestination and ascribe every action to God and none to man, eliminating any hint of man’s free will to make this erroneous system work.
Let’s establish from Scripture that God does not always get what He wants. We will deal with the ramifications of this truth on God’s sovereignty later. Here are some basic verses that show God does not always get what He wants:
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Matthew 23:37 ESV).
“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9 ESV).
“Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11 ESV).
Caution: Here is the first opportunity to build a faulty belief system based on an error of logic.
We can be so beholden to our belief that God’s purposes will always be accomplished; therefore, God has purposed that these people will perish though it causes Him grief
Or
We can be so beholden to the concept of the supremacy of man’s free will that we say that this is the exception to God being able to accomplish His purposes. Therefore, the purposes He will accomplish must be things that lie outside the free will that God has bestowed upon man.
These false conclusions lead to an erroneous understanding of God’s sovereignty. They both build a belief system pegged on a mistaken belief of what the Scriptures teach. The logic flaw is based on the maxim “If this is true, that that must be true” or “If this is false, then that must be false.” But as Jesus would say, “You err, not knowing the Scriptures.”
What specific maxims do we need to be careful not to peg our belief systems on?
If man has free will, it is impossible for God always to accomplish His purposes.
If God always accomplishes His purposes, man can’t have free will.
If God gave free will to man, then God can never intervene in that free will.
That last one may shock many, and I fear many have pegged their belief on this maxim which doesn’t seem to be supported in Scripture. We will walk through this one at length. But to get us down this path, I want you to reread the three verses I listed above that show God does not always get what He wants. I then want you to think about any other verses you can find that also show that God does not always get what He wants. I suspect any verse you find will somehow be about man choosing not to do what God wants man to do. In no other area will you see that God has a desire that does not happen.
“Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.” (Psalm 115:3 ESV).
In light of everything we have discussed, how do we understand this verse? Does it please God to save all men? Some will say yes, and some will say no based on their desire to support their belief system. But from a fair reading of Scripture, an honest man will be hard-pressed to come away with any other conclusion but that God loves all men and does not want to see any of them lost. He says as much as we have already read.
So, how do we reconcile this without creating a complex, faulty belief system to support a conclusion we want to justify? Could it be that a sovereign God Who can do all things is pleased to create man in His image, endow Him with free will, giving man the choice to obey or not to obey? This is in perfect harmony with what we read in Scripture and in no way diminishes God’s sovereignty. I would argue that it would take a being of supreme sovereignty to create another being with free will and still maintain His supreme sovereignty. How does God do that? Perhaps how He does it is beyond our ability to understand because it is beyond us to know. Maybe we just have to read the Scriptures that say it is so and accept it by faith. But if we try to impose our logic so we can understand it, we may walk away condemned with Jesus’ second criticism of erring because we do not know the power of God.
Is it God’s purpose to create a free will being who can choose to obey or not obey? I would say that Scripture teaches this to be so. Is it God’s purpose to create a being who can reject Him, something He doesn’t wish to happen? I would say that the Scriptures also teach this to be so.
Earlier, we said that being created in the image of God meant that man has been given the gift of limited free will. Whereas God’s free will is unlimited, we said God did not give man unlimited free will. This is true on a couple of levels. First, there are limits to what man can choose because man does not have the power of God to do all he wants. Remember, just because it is my will to be a billionaire tomorrow doesn’t mean it will happen. Second, our free will choices have consequences imposed by a greater Being. I can choose to disobey God, but I cannot choose to be free from the consequences of that free will choice, unlike God, who has no one who imposes consequences upon Him. Any consequences of His unlimited free will choices are consequences He imposes upon Himself. It grieves the Spirit when we sin. That consequence is brought about by what God imposed upon Himself. Unlike us, God never suffers consequences forced upon Him by someone else.
Do you remember when I asked you to think of other passages where God did not get what He wanted? From my reading of Scripture, I am hard pressed to find any example of this other than when it deals with man’s free will choice to obey Him or not. I am careful in what I am about to say, but it seems that the only protected aspect of man’s free will is when it comes to choosing whether to accept Him or not. God will never force man to accept Him or to reject Him. Why? It seems that this is what God purposes in His heart.
Could it be that the notion that God never interferes with any aspect of man’s free will is also a logical error not found in Scripture? I can read many passages where it seems God’s sovereignty overrides man’s free will, forcing man to do what God wants him to do. Yet, in none of these examples, I see God overriding man’s free will to accept or reject Him, a conclusion that those who hold to predestination believe. If I am correct, it magnifies God’s sovereignty over man while showing that God can accomplish His purposes. Simply, I believe it is possible that God can override man’s free will in areas other than salvation. And the only reason He doesn’t override man’s free will in salvation is that God purposed in His heart that it is man’s choice to obey or reject Him.
Where can I see examples of God overriding man’s free will? A well-known example is with Pharaoh in Egypt. How many times do we see that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart?
“But the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them, as the LORD had spoken to Moses.” (Exodus 9:12 ESV).
Now, there are many things we don’t know about this hardening of Pharaoh’s heart that would make it easy for us to build a belief system based on possible erroneous logic, which may cause us to infer things that are not correct. But here is what we do know. God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Later, Moses writes that Pharaoh also hardens His own heart. But the Bible never tells us how God hardened his heart, and that is where we have to be careful in filling in the blanks with what could be faulty inferences. Perhaps God hardened Pharaoh’s heart the same way we would say we make someone angry. Just like our actions may make someone angry, so could God’s actions with the plagues be the thing that hardened Pharaoh’s heart.
Or, maybe God forced Pharaoh’s heart to be hardened so that he would reject Moses’ demand for Him to let God’s people go. Perhaps this way of overriding man’s free will is within God’s purposes while still allowing Pharaoh to have accepted or rejected God. Suppose Pharaoh had already rejected God (which he had thus the judgments that were about to come upon Him). In that case, God hardening his heart directly would not change his acceptance or rejection of God because Pharaoh had already made that free will decision. Paul may give some support to this when he writes:
“For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.” (Romans 9:17-18 ESV).
God intended to display His power through Pharoah, and it is within God’s sovereignty to choose whom to harden and whom to grant mercy to. But nowhere in Paul’s writing does it say that Pharaoh was forced to reject God. That free will decision had been made, and God was now glorifying His name through Pharaoh. Paul said that God blessed Pharaoh with greatness to accentuate His glory through Pharaoh.
But even at the burning bush, when God appeared to Moses, He told Moses about everything that would happen, and God mentioned all the things He would make the people do.
“But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand. So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it; after that he will let you go. And I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians; and when you go, you shall not go empty, but each woman shall ask of her neighbor, and any woman who lives in her house, for silver and gold jewelry, and for clothing. You shall put them on your sons and on your daughters. So you shall plunder the Egyptians.” (Exodus 3:19-22 ESV).
Notice that God said Pharaoh would not listen unless He compelled Him with a mighty hand. Perhaps it was the mighty hand that hardened Pharaoh’s heart until the power was so great that it broke Pharaoh’s will (with the killing of the firstborn). But He also says He will give Israel favor in the eyes of the Egyptians, and the Egyptians would give them great treasure as they left Egypt. God would do that. The Egyptians would have no choice because it was from God. God’s sovereignty overrode the people’s free will because God purposed it in their hearts. Again, the overriding of their free will did not have anything to do with whether they accepted or rejected Him but to ensure His purpose was accomplished (See more on God working through Pharaoh’s heart in Chapter 7: “Ways God Accomplishes His Purposes”).
My point in going over this is that we need to be careful in forcing our inferences upon our belief systems. The Bible does not tell us how God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, just that He did. Can we simply accept that without trying to explain something that the Bible doesn’t explain? Can we be satisfied by knowing the Scriptures and God’s power as Jesus told the Sadducees? If we go too far down a path of inferences to make a belief system work, we may end up with something that ends up denying the very Scriptures we want to support.
Here are some other places where God makes it clear that He will cause people to act a certain way. He doesn’t explain how it will happen, just that He will do it. And in no way do any of these examples show that God forces or prevents anyone from accepting or rejecting Him:
“Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing:” (2 Chronicles 36:22 ESV).
“for God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and handing over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled.” (Revelation 17:17 ESV).
“For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth, to seize dwellings not their own.” (Habakkuk 1:6 ESV).
God puts things into motion in these passages to carry out His purposes. He doesn’t explain how He will do it, and we often see Him use a variety of means to accomplish His purpose, but the result is that God directs the actions of all of these people. God does not have to sit around and hope that these people will act the way He wants them to act in their free will. Cyrus acted because God ordained Him to act. God directed evil people to act in a way that accomplished His purposes. God caused the Babylonians to execute His will upon the Israelites. In each of these cases, we see the preeminence of God’s sovereignty over the limited free will He endowed man with at creation. But never do we see God forcing man to accept or reject Him. This is the one free will choice we see through the Old and New Testaments where God never interfered with man’s ability to choose.
Please understand the point I am making in this chapter. It’s not to explain how God’s sovereignty and man’s free will work together as much as it is for us to recognize that God can be supremely sovereign and man can have free will given by God. The truth is, I am not sure how it works together, but I suspect it’s not because I am too dense to understand as much as it’s because God hasn’t told us. We use reasoning and logic to try to harmonize the Scriptures, but as we do, we need to be very careful with the assumptions and inferences used to connect the dots. What we do know is that God, in His sovereignty, accomplishes His purposes. Let us not jump to conclusions on what His purposes may or may not be outside of what He has revealed to us, nor let us ignore some purposes and elevate others.
We also know that God gave man limited free will. He gives us the ability to make choices about rejecting or accepting Him, and God has never once interfered with that decision, nor will God ever force man to sin. We expect this is a free will choice He will always leave to us. And we know God directs people and nations to act in specific ways to accomplish His purposes without violating their choice to accept or reject Him. Everything else we do to connect the dots are inferences that may or may not be true. Let us guard against elevating our inferences to the level of “thus saith the Lord.”