God's Sovereignty and Human Freedom

What does it mean to talk about God's sovereignty? How does human choice fit into the picture? Christians have debated this issue for centuries and will undoubtedly continue until the Second Coming. The reason why we disagree on this subject is because the Bible seems ambiguous, and it's a lot easier to take apart somebody else's worldview than to formulate a biblically and logically consistent one of our own. So accept this as it's offered: a point in the journey of a finite mind to make some sense of the profound mysteries of God. As always, I welcome your honest thoughts.

God is sovereign, but his sovereignty in this world is not the same as it will be on the New Earth, where God will work in and through every person for his perfect glory. As long as evil exists, God's highest will is thwarted. (But as I will discuss later, even now he has defeated evil on the cross, and he has the power to overcome it.) The kingdom of God is in our midst (Luke 17:21), but it has not yet been established like it will be when Jesus comes in glory with his angels (Matthew 16:27).

In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus tells us to pray: "Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." That means that God's will should direct and motivate all our prayers, but it also implies that his will doesn't necessarily happen by default. And that would make sense, because he has given us prayer as a means of laying hold of his will. Why else would we pray? To change God's mind? Personally, I trust his judgment more than my own. But I'm still told to pray fervently, because changing the status quo is not necessarily changing God's mind. Jesus was always fighting against the status quo during the three years of his ministry.

Although God's overall purposes for his creation will stand, we can't look at every past event and unequivocally say that God willed it. For example, does he will that millions starve to death or die of AIDS in Africa or that children be brutally raped and murdered? To me, it seems blasphemous to suggest it, especially since we know that Jesus "went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil" (Acts 10:38). As ambassadors for Christ (2 Cor. 5:20), let's make sure we don't unwittingly defame him.

I thought that my views about this would be controversial in our modern religious climate, where a lot of people believe that God controls everything and therefore every atrocity is ultimately his will. But it turns out I actually have a Calvinist in my corner: John MacArthur. In his sermon, The Plan of Prayer, he says:

Now this may sound heretical but in this context, people, [tragedy] is not God’s will. That is the kind of stuff that Jesus came into the world to stop. Because "God is not willing that any should perish." And believe me--there are people perishing all over the place. God will have all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, and not all men do. God’s will is done in heaven, but it isn’t always done on earth.

Certainly God can work in those atrocities for good, and he will bring suffering into the lives of his people so he can perform spiritual surgery. I can testify to that. But there's much evil in the world that serves no good purpose at all. It is not according to God's will. It simply happens because of human will to do evil. (Note that I did not say "free" will. Our will is not free until God frees it.)

And that human will is pivotal in this discussion. God, in his sovereignty, made creatures that actually have the power to rebel against him. When I work on my novel, the characters do and say exactly what I want them to. Some novelists say that their characters almost come alive and shape the book. That takes more creativity than I have. But it's still nothing compared to God's creative genius. These four children that Rick and I have brought into the world actually have wills of their own. Although I don't often appreciate that as much as maybe I should, right now as I'm sitting at my desk writing (and they're in school), I consider it the greatest miracle of creation.

Do I believe that human choice is absolute? No. We are all born in bondage to sin (Romans 7:14), but we are called to freedom (Galatians 5:13). "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." (2 Cor. 3:17) By his grace, God enables us to receive him, but he respects even the most wretched, rebellious will in order to nurture it the point where it's fully surrendered to him. That's why Jesus stands at the door and knocks (Revelation 3:20), instead of just kicking it down. He wants to meet us where we are and enable us to surrender, and the more we do so, the more we experience his sovereign grace in our lives, in the sense that everything we do and say is by his power. But he has also called us to perfect freedom, so even though he wants us to let him be everything in our lives, he doesn't force his way in.

I've seen in my own life how much God respects my will. He will spend years trying to get me to surrender in a particular area, using experiences, other people, Bible teachings, directs insights--and by the time I do, I submit willingly. Why doesn't he save himself the trouble and just overpower my will? Because I am called to freedom. Christ wants to be "all, and in all" (Colossians 3:11), but he wants friends, not slaves (John 15:15). The crowning glory of his creation is creatures who will someday reach the pinnacle of perfect freedom and complete surrender to his will. Only God can make such a thing possible, but it's not easy even for him, because he has chosen not to pull all the strings. So not everyone will share in that glory.

In this country, most of us don't question the importance of freedom, hence the song that goes, "I'm glad to be an American, where at least I know I'm free. And I'm thankful for the men who died and gave that right to me." Something in us recognizes that freedom is worth dying for. Since we are created in the image of God, is it such a stretch to say that he values freedom just as highly and that he's willing to make great sacrifices for it? If God had been content with puppets, evil would never had entered the world, and he would not have had to send his Son to die on the cross.

But having said all that, I also believe that God in his sovereignty can override a person's will. For example, when I pray for God to protect my children, I trust him to be a shield about them to protect them from evil people as well. God's hands are not tied because he respects the evil person's choice. In John 7:30, the authorities tried to seize Jesus but they couldn't because "his hour had not yet come." Nobody had the power to harm Jesus apart from the will of the Father.

Also, prayer for somebody else can be so powerful that it may bring a person to the point where he or she is unlikely to resist God's grace. Times of great revival were usually precipitated by fervent prayer. Prayer will light a spark of life and stir up a hunger where there was none, but it doesn't overpower someone's will. It is perhaps the most profound way in which we can be fellow workers with God, because we tap into the power that raised Jesus from the dead.

Through the cross, God's sovereignty in this world is equal to his sovereignty on the New Earth. Jesus fully disarmed all the spiritual forces of evil (Colossians 2:15), and "by his stripes we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5). This is an objective, historical and spiritual reality. Through Christ, we have complete victory (1 Cor. 15:57) and access to the throne of grace, where we find mercy and grace in time of need (Hebrews 4:16).

Why is this world such a mess if evil was defeated on the cross? Because it is through faith we lay hold of this victory. "This is the victory that has overcome the world--our faith." (1 John 5:4) Faith is as powerful as Christ's victory on the cross, because it is his victory.

Hebrews 11:1 says: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." (KJV) The word "substance" is key here, because the Greek word hypostasis means "reality, essence, substantial nature, assurance." So faith is far more than positive thinking--it is the reality or essence of the victory of Christ on the cross. In other words, it is the thing itself. I explain this further in The Substance of Things Hoped For.

This is very important to understand, because it shows why faith is so important. It is the means by which we receive the free gift, or as Charles Spurgeon said, "Faith is the hand that grasps." So faith, then, is our measure of an objective reality: Christ and everything he accomplished on the cross. In other words, if we want to lay hold of God's will, we have to look to the cross.

How do we get faith? Three ways: By hearing the word of God, by surrender to God, and by abiding in Christ like a branch on a vine. Romans 10:7 says: "So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of God." In order to have faith, we have to hear the gospel message. That is the seed of faith. Of course there's no way to believe if we've never heard the word of life. But even if we have been born again by the Spirit, we have to keep hearing the word in order to grow in our faith.

Surrender means that we yield our will, and that goes back to what I said about Jesus not kicking down the door. He has called us to freedom, right? So he will only fill us with his Spirit if we surrender to him. But you might have noticed that complete surrender is not that easy because it involves admitting defeat, and we would rather stake our little flag of self-sufficiency in the ground and die. And we actually do have to admit defeat. We have to realize that we're spiritually bankrupt, needy, weak--without God we're unable to do anything about the evil in our own hearts, let alone the evil in the world.

So what do we do if we intellectually recognize the need to surrender, but we can't do it? We take a step back and ask God to give us the desire to surrender. Let's say you don't buy a thing I've said, but if it's true, you would like it to be real in your life. Then you can take a step back even further and ask God to work in your mind, to bring intellectual faith. Maybe you hate religion altogether, but you're not completely settled in your atheism or agnosticism. You're not sure if it's Jesus you hate, or just the behavior of some of his so-called followers. Then tell God that. Wherever the barrier, he will meet us there. In the end, all the sons and daughters who are brought to glory will only be there by the power of God, and the smaller and more helpless we are in our own minds, the greater he is in our lives, because we will have exorcised the greatest enemy of all: Self.

The third way to have faith is to abide in Christ. That is, we have to spend time with him, and allow him to work through us like sap flows through a vine to the branches. John 15:7 goes so far as to say, "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you." But there's a catch here--if we abide in Christ we won't want a larger home or a more prestigious job. God will change our hearts so that we want his will. So we come full circle back to the Lord's Prayer: If we abide in Christ, we will have the power to lay hold of God's will, to make this world more like heaven. We will have the victory that overcomes the world: faith. (1 John 5:4)

So a person who lives by faith in Christ will surrender more and more fully to God's perfect sovereignty, while growing in freedom. The two are far from mutually exclusive; they are inexorably linked.

"Venite Ad Me Omnes"

In the center of the University of Notre Dame campus, not far from the law school, stands a statue of Jesus with his arms stretched out and the inscription, "Venite ad me omnes" ("Come to me all") on a plaque. The simplicity of those words always filled me with a deep peace back in the days when my only worry was finals. It wasn't until May 12, 1993, the day after I completed the requirements for law school graduation, that their meaning began to take on a whole new significance.

May 12, 1993 was the day that redefined "normal." When Ingrid, not yet five months old, had her first seizure.

Fast-forward three months: Rick and I drove back to Illinois from Minnesota with a sedated eight-month-old Ingrid sleeping in her car seat. In three months, she had gone from a beautiful, communicative baby to one who could no longer cry or smile, and whose right hand was fisted and unusable from constant seizures. I knew that the seizures would start up again as soon as the Valium wore off. But the children's hospital had sent us home. She was not a candidate for surgery and none of the experimental medications had worked.

But more devastating than any of that, God had not come through and healed her, in spite of our frantic, all-consuming prayers. The laws of nature had prevailed as I feared they would, and I found myself standing over the precipice of a terrifying new reality.

The strange thing about evil is that we all know it's there, but most of the time it doesn't seem real because it stays at a safe enough distance. Theologians write countless books on The Problem of Evil, trying to make sense of it. But when it encroaches on your personal space for the first time, when the knowledge of evil becomes part of the fiber of your soul, explanations mean nothing. The safety rails are off and you realize the magnitude of the stakes. A place called Hell could really exist, because you've been there.

My first reaction when Ingrid wasn't healed was, "So God isn't real after all. We're in this nightmare all alone." I had no explanation--no defense of God. Watching Ingrid having a seizure was like standing by as wild dogs tore my baby apart. How could God allow that? My worldview was shattered.

But I was even more shattered. I started having panic attacks, and darkness hung like a curtain around me. The only way I could get through the day was by leaning more heavily than ever on the God whose existence no longer seemed intellectually credible.

And he was there, more real than ever before. He told me to lay down the burden, to stop praying for Ingrid so obsessively and come. Come without asking for anything except his presence. Surrender everything at his altar. "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28)

I clung to him like never before, releasing everything into his hands--Ingrid, my precarious mental state, and my faltering faith. His light spilled into my life, more powerful than ever, filling me with a joy and peace that could only be supernatural. The darkness that had lurked in every corner fled at his presence, and the panic attacks disappeared and never came back.

A few days later, an untried combination of medications stopped Ingrid's seizures enough to bring us out of crisis mode. And God began to rebuild our family's life.

The problem of evil has many moving parts, and all the books in the world combined can't do justice to it. But it has only one solution: Christ. Having experienced that first-hand silences many questions.

The Substance of Things Hoped For

Is there anything more gut-wrenching than having prayed for a healing miracle that never comes? God's promises are right there in the Bible, and yet he failed to come through. It's easy enough for people who have never seen their young child severely damaged by seizures or who have never known a young parent taken too soon, to dismiss prayer for healing. But before my brother-in-law Richard died of cancer at thirty-eight, hundreds of people prayed for him. We were non-denominational evangelicals, mainline Protestants, New Agers, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Pentecostals, and even unbelievers. We all agreed that he was too young to die, and we all wanted--needed--to believe in miracles.

Yet there's something potentially destructive about that kind of prayer as well. We come before God with the rawest of emotions. Can we talk about the fear and doubt, or would that be admitting defeat? And then there's the possible carnage at the end, when everybody leaves the battle scene in silence, coping with it in their own way.

I remember when Ingrid was an infant and spent three months in the hospital while doctors tried to stop her seizures. I prayed and read the Bible all the time. My mind was completely made up that she would be healed, and no doubt could possibly seep through my defenses. But when she wasn't healed, the first thought that entered my mind was, "I knew it." The doubt was there, held back by sheer will-power.

Whatever faith is, I didn't have it. But why should it matter? Does God require it like a currency? Is he like the Egyptian task masters who forced the Israelites to produce just as many bricks after their masters took away the straw? If I don't have enough faith despite my very best efforts, what hope is there?

God has never let me abandon that question. Because it really, really matters. Faith matters. And it matters more than the healing. Healing may be a matter of life and death, but faith has eternal significance. "By faith our ancestors won approval." (Hebrews 11:2)

So what is faith? First, let's talk about what it's not. It is not looking at a promise in the Bible and saying, for example, "God's word says, 'By his stripes we are healed,' so therefore my loved one will be healed.'" We may be convinced of God's power and willingness to heal, and still not have faith. It is not intellectual acquiescence, logical deduction, or mental gymnastics.

What is it then? Hebrews 11:1 gives us the definition: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." (KJV) The word "substance" is very important here, so I chose the King James Version rather than the New American Standard, which uses the word "assurance." The Greek word hypostasis means "reality, essence, or substantial nature." Later in the definition we get the word "assurance," but by itself that translation might be misleading. (I can almost feel your eyes glazing over, so I'll stop talking about Greek words!)

Faith is not just a state of mind. It's not synonymous with positive thinking. It is our measure of an objective spiritual reality, and it doesn't change depending on our moods. Jesus wept before raising Lazarus from the dead, but that didn't undermine his power to resurrect him.

What is that objective reality? It is Jesus Christ and everything he accomplished on the cross. When he died, he won a complete victory over sin and death. He defeated Satan decisively, and paid for all our sins. The curtain keeping us out of the Holy of Holies was split in two, so every person may enter into God's holy presence without guilt. Sin no longer has any power over us. And "by his stripes we are healed." (Isaiah 53:5) All of that is an objective historical and spiritual fact. Jesus is the rock of our salvation.

So what does that mean for each individual? Faith is what links us to that objective reality. Some people have great faith, others have little faith, and many have none. Faith is our ability to receive everything Jesus purchased with his blood on that cross. So a Christian who is indistinguishable from an unbeliever and stays that way is an oxymoron. He or she by definition does not have what Jesus offers. Faith is so important because it's about having what Jesus came to give. And he came to give us himself--his Spirit. The presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives will have a profound impact on everything. We can't just decide to take the healing but pass on the sanctification.

Although God cares deeply about our suffering (again, Jesus wept when Lazarus died), he knows that our bodies are temporary, but our souls are eternal. So he may have to allow illness and loss in order to heal our souls. He wants to give us an eternal treasure but can't if we're not paying attention, and we tend to pay attention to him when something goes wrong. Paradoxically, our faith often grows through suffering. After many disappointments (but also many amazing answers to prayer), my faith is much stronger now than before Ingrid had her first seizure. That is because hardship has forced me to rely on God, which is the only way I can share in his victory. In "The Needle's Eye," I talk about how God blessed me spiritually right after my disappointment of Ingrid not being healed. (Just in case this post isn't long enough for you. ;)

And the prayers for Richard were not in vain. With all the people lifting him up in prayer, he was empowered to live in ways that were possible only through the cross. In spite of his pain, he talked often about God's love. It was very real to him, and he wanted others to experience it, too. His only concern about dying was how it would impact other people, especially his wife Karen and daughter Amelia. A couple of weeks before he died, when his strength and ability to focus were almost gone, he wrote the following: "Do not fail to seize the love of God, which is available to you in the all-embracing sacrifice of Jesus Christ."