The Unsovereign Sovereign God

I have run into a few people lately who are in the movement of Christianity that is right now super focused on the Sovereignty of God.  As I understand it, this focus is designed to strengthen believers’ ability to trust in their God.  A God who has all things in his hands can bring great peace to an anxious heart.  The beauty of this picture of Sovereign God is that it is no longer my responsibility to figure everything out, or to fix things that are wrong.  I am only called to love Him, worship Him, and trust Him.  Unfortunately, its beauty is also its greatest weakness.  We are called to be powerful people in Christ, and those I have met who are intently focused on the sovereignty of God are unable to walk in their intended power or for that matter intimacy with God.

Sovereignty Biblical?

It is a very interesting exercise to search different Bible translations for the word, “sovereign.”  The New King James Version, which is my trusted source, never actually uses this word in the text in reference to God.  The English Standard Version only uses it three times to refer to God.  The New American Standard Bible uses it twice in reference to God.  Interestingly, the New International Version, which is another one of the top translations, uses it 297 times, almost all of which are in reference to God.  However, the reason for this is that every time the word Lord is used in the Old Testament they have decided to place sovereign before it, I presume from their understanding of what the connotation of that word was for the Jews.  Even in the NIV though only 5 of these nearly 300 come from the New Testament.  In other words, there are very few times in the original Hebrew and Greek texts when a word meaning “sovereign” is actually used to talk about God.  Sovereignty is a theological word, not a biblical one.

Sovereignty, Omnipotence, Omniscience, - superfluous words

Let me suggest that all of the words mentioned above are unnecessary in talking about God, and are in fact logical attributes of any god you could think of that created.  Any person who can come to mentally assent that a god created this universe would naturally assume these things about that god, even if they would not use these words.  The reason for this is that in order for me to make a sandwich I must have the power to do so: to cut the cheese, meat and tomatoes, and I must have the understanding or knowledge of how those things can be put together to make a sandwich.  Power and understanding are natural components of creation.  There is no reason this would be any less true of God.  In fact, in order to imagine a god that created absolutely everything one must assume these things about that being, presence, spirit, thing, or force.  The revelation of the one, true, supreme God is not that He is any of these things, though they are certainly true at least to some extent, but that He is intimate and loving in nature!  That God is sovereign is not a surprising or startling revelation of a creative being.  God is love – now that is bringing us somewhere.

I Believe God Is All Powerful

Now, I most certainly believe that God created the universe, and he in fact did it simply by speaking and breathing things into existence.  I believe God is capable at any moment of releasing any amount of power to do anything you could possibly imagine.  I believe that God wins!  I believe that things will end up as he foresaw them ending up.  I believe he could tell us the number of atoms in our galaxy, or galaxies in the universe, or hairs on your head.  However, I believe that his character is such and his security in his sovereignty, omnipotence, and omniscience are such that he doesn’t need to appear to be any of those things.

Sovereign’s Negative Effect On Our Understanding Of God

My biggest problem with the idea of God’s sovereignty is that in order to believe it in the same way that many do you must believe that all things happen per God’s design. This is where I must clarify that I believe God has and will for eternity reigned in sovereignty.  However, this does not mean that the things we have and do experience on this Earth are all God’s will.  At the end of time, God will still sit where he has sat since the seventh day of creation.  The mess of this world has in that most real sense not altered his sovereign omnipotence one iota.  God has not changed, nor has He been distressed in the sense of losing control by the troubles of humanity.   However, the eternal, sovereign God of love when He steps into relationship with the temporal world manifests liberty to his creation.   Thus, I cannot say with others that, “Whatever comes about, God intended to come about.” (John Piper)  I believe that such an understanding is completely unbiblical and contrary to the heart and nature of God.  This understanding of God’s power can do nothing but make us believe in a distant, bi-polar God.  I cannot relate with a God who in the same moment of time might be giving one family a new child and taking away the child of another.  Such a statement also forces me to say that God intended for evil to exist.  If a good God intended for evil to exist than God’s house is most certainly divided and as Jesus said, “a divided house cannot stand.” (See Matthew 12:25, Mark 3:25 or Luke 11:14)  My God intends for unity, not division.  His Vision for His creation is, “that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth – in Him.” (Ephesians 1:10)

Amen To God’s Declaration Of His Sovereignty

I know that I already questioned the biblical nature of God’s sovereignty and though I intended to do that, I do believe there is grounds for a right thinking of sovereignty.  I simply wanted to highlight that the word itself God does not use to describe Himself.  This does not mean there is not a place where we should just say, “God is God!”  I simply want to clarify the difference between when we have grown accustomed to saying that and when God says that.  For surely when speaking to Job out of the whirlwind he is more than anything saying, “Job, you are not God!  I am God!” (Job 38-42)  There is a place for this!  Let me now look at the verses from Isaiah which many, (including John Piper) use to understand God’s sovereignty.  In Isaiah 46:8-13 God says,

Remember this, and show yourselves men; recall to mind, O you transgressors, 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 that are not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand and I will do all my pleasure,’ calling a bird of prey from the east, the man who executes My counsel, from a far country.  Indeed I have spoken it; I will also bring it to pass, I have purposed it; I will also do it.  Listen to Me, you stubborn-hearted, who are far from righteousness: I bring My righteousness near, it shall not be far off; My salvation shall not linger.  And I will place salvation in Zion, for Israel My glory.

I first want to note that God is not and cannot be speaking to any Christian through this passage.  He reveals in verse 12 that he is talking to those who are “far from righteousness.”  We are not far from righteousness.  Jesus Christ has come close to us to be our righteousness.  That being said, we can learn some things about God here!  Let me suggest now that beginnings and endings are important.  God begins and ends this statement by talking about things in the end, things he will in the future do.  He makes it clear that He does indeed have foreknowledge of future things, specifically the end from the beginning.  This is what I mean when I say God has never been bothered or caught off guard by the fall.   He saw the good end he would bring.  The end verses of this statement also refer to something which at this point was coming, but which has now been accomplished in Christ, salvation!  That being said, I would suggest that the context and perspective for all of this is eternal.  It is with this understanding that we read, “My counsel shall stand and I will do all my pleasure,” and “I have spoken it; I will also bring it to pass, I have purposed it; I will also do it.”  From this we can conclude that God will eternally be pleased with what happens with his creation, and that everything he has spoken and purposed he will do.  To these things I would say “Amen!”  My God wins, he will see his purposes and his word does not return void!  However, I must also clarify that it does not say “all things that come to pass, I have spoken” or, “all things that are done, I have purposed.”  Such an understanding is an inerrant reading of scripture and a detrimental position for our life in this world and with God.

The Nature Of Will And Pleasure

The nature of those things that I, or anyone, will or am pleased to do is that they are capable of and even likely to conflict.  For example, it may please a good father to go to an amusement park.  However, if his wife and children would rather go to a zoo than that good father suddenly has a conflicting will.  He wills not only to go to the amusement park, but also to please his wife and children.  In this instance there must be a dominant will or pleasure upon which action is taken.  For the good father his will to please his family must surely outweigh his pleasure in the amusement park.  What is more, after he has forsaken his desire to go to the amusement park and finished enjoying a day at the zoo with his family he is most certainly a man who would say that he has accomplished his will and pleasure.  We must be very careful not to divorce this reality from an understanding of God’s will and pleasure.  God is not a robot anymore than you and I and thus he has desires that conflict.  It is thus that we must understand his sovereignty in light of his character.  God is sovereign, but He is also good, and He is love, and He is our Father! 

In The Beginning God Spoke

The Isaiah passage we looked at earlier asks us to, “remember the former things,” it speaks of God’s, “declaring the end from the beginning,” and reads, “I have spoken it; I will also bring it to pass.”  Every single one of these statements brings me back to Genesis, “In the beginning,” when, “God created the universe.” (See Genesis 1:1)  In the beginning God spoke and things began to happen.  He spoke and declared in the end that it was, “very good!” (See Genesis 1:31)  He spoke and gave humanity dominion over the earth. (See Genesis 1:28)  Here is a playground for us to understand God’s sovereignty.  First of all, the Bible, as many have said, begins, “In the Beginning God.”  God was and is and always has been.  He is wholly set apart, and this is part of His sovereignty.  God created all these things just by speaking and they were “very good.”  God is in the business of “very good.”  “Very Good” is God’s will, and thus things now that are not “very good” we can assume are not God’s will.  But as God has told us, “He has spoken it; He will bring it to pass.”  Even in a world where not all things are “very good,” we may know that a day is coming when all things will indeed be, “very good.”  The most radical revelation of God’s sovereignty however comes with the creation of humans.  God reveals his desire to make a being in His own image, and when He has done that He gives “dominion” to those beings.  A “sovereign” God makes humans in his “sovereign” image and with his sovereign authority gives them their own authority over the earth.  Our sovereign God made us to be sovereign on the earth.  With this action you begin to see the pleasure of the Father God.  His pleasure is not in being sovereign.  He simply is sovereign.  His pleasure is in His creation! 

Our “Sovereignty” On Earth

I do put this word in quotes on purpose.  This is not a word to elevate mankind to the level of God.  Remember, “In the beginning God.”  However, as part of that beginning process God, out of His good pleasure, gave us dominion over the earth.  This was a dominion that was to be founded in intimate relationship with the King of kings and Lord of lords, but we were not a puppet government.  We were completely and totally in control.  We know this because when we stepped out of line with the true government we didn’t get the “reign”s ripped out of our hands!  The dominion of earth did not just return to God, it was actually given to the enemy, the devil.  Who gave it to him?  We did!  Ever since this moment God, in his sovereignty, has been reestablishing our reign in intimate relationship with Him.  This is the other problem with the false understanding of God’s sovereignty.  It not only gives God credit for things he does not want credit for, but it negates our role as reigning ones on the earth.  It assumes that God created the earth and us for Him to reign over, when in reality he created the earth for us to reign over.  Now don’t hear here what I am not saying.  I am not saying that God doesn’t reign over all things, or that He is not my King.  I am saying that even as God will always be in control over all things, we were meant to be in control of the earth. 

Things That Are Not God’s Will

I would say that there are many things that happen on this earth that are not God’s will, which means that he cannot be sovereign as so many understand him to be.  Anything that an insurance company would call an, “act of God,” I would actually argue was not God’s will.  There is a culture in much of the church that joins the world in distancing themselves from the will of God, chalking mishaps etc. as His will.  1 Cor. 2:9-10 tells us though, “But as it is written: ‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.’ But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit.  For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.”  We are not a people who live clueless to what God is doing around us, trying to believe in an unknowable God. He shows us His will.  Hebrews 1 tells us that Jesus was a perfect representation of God.  Thus, when we see Jesus take authority over sickness, over demons, and over storms we can know that those things are not God’s will.  One of my biggest pet peeves is when Christians say things like, “that’s just life.”  Most of the time when someone says that they are accepting a less than desirable reality as a normal part of the life which God called, “very good.”  We must quit letting Satan have his way by attributing things of his will to God’s.  1 Cor. 15:26 also tells us that death is the final enemy that will be destroyed.  Death is God’s enemy, not his will.  Now this does not mean that we need to be hunting for the elixir of life or the fountain of youth so that we will never die!  However, it does mean that we don’t need to make peace with death.  Death has nothing on us!  We can pass in peace, but we should be contending for life whenever death rears its ugly head.

Enforcing God’s Will

The biggest thing I want to emphasize here is our responsibility as the God-designated authority on Earth to enforce His will here.   Sovereignty means that there will be a day when everything God desired will be.  However, that day is not here, and we have been commissioned not only to walk in the Kingdom, but to speed its coming (See 2 Peter 3:12).  There is sickness all around us which God does not want to exist.  There are demons that have had all their power taken from them, demons that Jesus publically humiliated, that we are allowing to terrorize the lives of those around and among us.  There are storms and natural disasters that are killing and destroying (always the work of satan) that we are not only not praying against, but are actually in some circles attributing to God’s judgment.  Any idea of sovereignty that makes me a lethargic, helpless church-goer is not biblical.  We have been promised greater things than what Jesus saw in his lifetime.  We have been promised that the kingdom of darkness will not overcome us.  We have been given a great commission that we are actually expected to be able to accomplish.  Here is God’s sovereign will:  His beloved children reigning on the Earth He created for them, while walking with Him in intimacy!