Sovereignty
of God
The concept of a sovereign God is one that has been
challenged over the intervening years from the days of creation till now. All it takes is for one innocent child to die
early in a horrible fashion for us to begin to question the goodness and
all-powerful and all-knowing nature of God.
There are a number of permutations of the question of why God would
allow this bad thing to happen to this person at this time. The sovereignty of God though a separate concept
from the problem of evil is intrinsic to the discussion. If we accept that God is all the things that
we say that He is then we have to follow the line of reasoning that as the
creator of all things at some point in creation He created a creature that was
capable of rebellion and evil thus God created evil. This as you can imagine has never sat well
with any theologian. Of course we can
take the Zoroastrinistic approach and say that there were two creators one good
and one evil and they have been at war every day since the day they co-created
the earth. But then we would no longer
be talking about Christianity.[1]
Many people try at this point to limit in some way the
power of God. The problem in that
approach is that any limiting of the God that we have revealed to us in the
pages of scripture is to nullify the concept of God all together. The arguments for and against the limiting
the scope and ability of God are vast and in some ways far beyond the limited
understanding of this writer. The one
thing that most of the problem solvers try to do is define God, Evil, and Good
without using the Bible. There needs to
be a base line established for us to move on.
There needs to be somewhere a reference that we can turn to that
contains truth that is not relative to our understanding. If we do not have such a document then we
cannot ever resolve this issue. If we
are a creature and He is the creator and He has not revealed Himself to us then
we cannot begin to comprehend Him. This
is where we have to turn to the only document that has ever made the claim of
being the Revelation of God to men, the bible.
“The Lord of hosts has sworn saying, “Surely, just as I
have intended so it has happened, and just as I have planned so it will stand.”
(Isaiah 14:24 NASB)
“Also we have obtained an inheritance, having been
predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of
His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to
the praise of His glory.” (Ephesians 1:11-12 NASB)
“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 came into being through Him, and apart from Him
nothing came into being that has come into being.” (John 1”1-3 NASB)
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of
all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on
earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or
authorities— all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before
all things, and in Him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:15-17 NASB)
There are more verses then can be fit into this blog,
suffice it to say that the bible teaches that God not only created everything
but He also sustains everything. This
pretty much tears apart every argument that begins with the premise that God is
not all-powerful or all-knowing. If we
attempt still to argue the prospect that God has limited Himself or is somehow
constrained this ultimately undermines the concept of God. Either He is sovereign or He is not. If He is then He either He allowed Evil to
exist and at the very least tacitly allowed it to come into being or He did not. If God did
not allow evil to come into existence then there is a power out there
that is at the very least equal to God or greater as it would have been able to
“sneak one past” the big guy Himself.
What is left is that He is either an absent creator in
the lives of His creation, or he is just evil.
Either He loves us or He is playing a cruel joke on all of
humanity. Either He is trustworthy or He
is not. That last statement speaks to
heart of the sovereignty of God. If we
cannot trust His word even in a small part how can we trust Him or His word in
the big parts? The fact is the only
document on earth that purports to be the very word of the living God is the
bible and the bible says that He is all-knowing and all-powerful.
[1] Zoroastrianism
claims to be the world's oldest supposed monotheistic religion. It was founded
by the Prophet Zoroaster in ancient Iran about 3500 years ago and as its main
tenet there is a duality of good and evil deities. While there is a supreme god that is all good
there seems to be warring lesser deities that represent good and evil. There are some that claim that Zoroastrianism
influenced Judaism and all other Monotheistic religions but a closer look at
the actual tenets of that faith will reveal that it is in fact a polytheistic faith.
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