“One Pill May Stop The Flu in Just One Day.”

That’s the headline in FORBES about a Japanese drug company that’s releasing a one-day flu treatment this coming May.

Let’s hope it works. This year’s flu season has been deadly.

The reason this hopeful remedy was found is simple. A problem (the influenza virus) is killing some and harming many. Scientific research, building on decades of previous study and experimentation, led to a discovery. And that discovery could change millions of lives.

This is one of the most recent in a long line of discoveries. From the wheel to the laser, human ingenuity and the resources of God’s amazing creation have led to findings that have improved life for all of us.

But there are some things we just can’t really figure out. Or ever will.

Free Will and God’s Sovereignty

I teach introductory classes in theology and philosophy at a Christian university. One of the questions I’m asked most often is one as old as the Bible: How can man be free if God has determined everything? And how can God be sovereign, in charge of everything, if man has a free will?

Here’s what I tell my students:

• God causes no one to sin but allows us to choose to sin. So it was with Adam. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve decided to disobey their Creator and do the one thing He had forbidden. That bite of fruit has had fatal consequences for all but one Man ever since.
• God is omniscient, and therefore knew Adam would choose to sin. This choice did not take Him by surprise. “Even before a word is on my tongue,” writes David, “behold, O Lord, you know it altogether” (Ps. 139:4).
• God oversees all things always. Nothing can violate or thwart His eternal purpose. And nothing is out of His grip at any time, anywhere in the universe. “He has predestined all things after the counsel of His will,” Paul tells the Ephesians (1:11).

So, how does this all add up? Simple:

• God is sovereign over all things, large and small, from every atom in the universe to the ultimate consummation of history.
• Man is accountable for the choice he makes. The Bible makes clear that we make decisions and are responsible for them. No debate there.
• God knows everything simultaneously. He does not think; He knows. He does not decide; in “eternity past,” He determined everything from the DNA of all living things to the shape of the tiniest fragment of matter at the very rim of the universe.

Reasonable Minds

But, you say, this doesn’t add up! How can we be responsible if God decided everything? Where’s the justice in that?

And if man’s choices have consequences, how is it that God can be sovereign? Does He surrender His control of things so that we can have free will?

Great questions. They express the frustration of all reasonable minds, minds that want resolution and clarity and the harmony of fact and logic.

So did the early Christians. They asked the same things. And here’s how Paul the apostle answered them:

Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! … he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?’ But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?” (Romans 9:14 and following).

Satisfying Our Curiosity

In other words, Paul says that the Lord will not neatly resolve the tension between free will and sovereignty. Instead, he demands of us the answer to another question: Who are we to insist that God satisfy our curiosity?

That’s a large pill to swallow. God explains some things to us, but many others He does not. He is God. He is under no obligation to explain anything. Any clarity He provides is a gift. He owes us absolutely nothing, certainly not of things too high for us to understand.

This is where the extremes of opinion get dangerous. Some strongly Reformed Calvinists weigh-in so heavily on the side of predestination that they start claiming tiny infants wind up in hell (they have sinful natures, right?) and other deductions that most Christians would find disturbing. Free will, they claim, is an affront to the complete kingship of the Lord of all.

Some strongly Arminian/Wesleyan believers argue that belief in God’s sovereignty makes Him into a cruel, primitive deity Who makes people in His image for the sheet delight of destroying them. Predestination and election mean that the Creator is brutal.

The first view reduces man to a rather robotic state. It diminishes his value as an image-bearer of God.

The second view reduces God to a being Who does not order all things but, instead, makes mere suggestions about them. He then scrambles to put things together, so man doesn’t disrupt His plans.

In both cases, insisting that everything be teased-out to its conclusion reduces God and man. Requiring everything to “fit” does damage to certain teachings of the Bible about Who God is, who man is, and what God has designed for time and eternity.

The ‘Grandeur of God’

So, here’s my solution: We need a major shift in our understanding of the grandeur of God.

The God of the Bible will not allow us to understand everything about Him and His will, the way He works or why. He is not a machine whose disassembly enables us to examine all its part. Here’s what He says of Himself through Isaiah (46:9-10):

I am God, and there is no other;

I am God, and there is none like me.

I make known the end from the beginning,

from ancient times, what is still to come.

I say, ‘My purpose will stand,

and I will do all that I please.’

God has predestined all things. He is wholly and eternally sovereign.

Man is a moral actor who is responsible to decide for or against Jesus Christ. He rightly bears, and will bear, the results of that decision.

And God is God: He gives His glory to no one else, is in debt to no one, is like no other being.

Now: Let’s go share the Gospel and acknowledge that the secret things belong to the Lord. And quit stomping our little feet and shaking our puny fists at God. To Him be all glory.