Predestination and Sovereignty

The Lord has been leading me to spend a lot of time in thought about His sovereignty is accordance with His will and predestination. If you pause to think about it, the fact that God is sovereign over all things, including sin, and predestined all things as well, would at first sight appear to indicate that God Himself causes us to sin.

But after lots of careful study, I realized that this is not so. Now, with our limited human minds we cannot comprehend all of the details of how this can be so, but we can at least understand the concept of why it is.

Rom. 11:33 Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!

However Scripture, which we have hopefully all believe to be true (otherwise we have a problem), is very clear that even though God is sovereign over everything and predestined all, we are still held accountable for our own deeds because we are acting in accordance with our own sinful natures.

Eph. 1:11 In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will,

James 1:13, 14, 17 Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed...Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.

But we are also told that He can harden the hearts of those He wills.

Rom. 9:15,18 For He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion."...Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.

It is interesting to note, that God is not making us sin against our wills, it is not in His nature to do so...rather He is simply allowing us to act in accordance with our own wills.

1 Kings 22:22-23 The LORD said to him, 'In what way?' So he said, 'I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' And the LORD said, 'You shall persuade him, and also prevail. Go out and do so.' 23 "Therefore look! The LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these prophets of yours, and the LORD has declared disaster against you."

In this passage, God allows the lying spirit to go out and deceive the nations. The lying spirit is performing the evil deed, not God, but God is allowing it of His own perfect will. Where this concept is very profound is in the following two passages.

2 Sam. 24:1 Again the anger of the LORD was aroused against Israel , and He moved David against them to say, "Go, number Israel and Judah ."

1 Chron. 21:1 Now Satan stood up against Israel , and moved David to number Israel .

Now it is important to remember the context of these passages before we examine all that is implied by them. David was tempted to number Israel, but God forbid it lest David put his faith in the number of his armies rather than the God of heaven who determines that outcome of all battles. But in the first passage, it says that the Lord moved David to commit the deed. But in the very next passage it says that Satan did. So what does that mean? Is the Bible contradictory? Not at all! Rather, God is allowing David to sin by allowing Satan to tempt him. There is no sin on God's part.

I hope this has not been too confusing to you, and it is an issue that has thrown off a lot of people over the history of the church, but I hope it does not do so now. I will seek to answer any questions you may have to the best of my ability, and seek the answers for those that I do not know answers to myself. I would also welcome you to share your own thoughts on the matter for open discussion.

There are literally dozens of other passages in Scripture that support this concept, and I do not have time to list them all, but if you are interested in further reading on the matter, please provide your email address and I will forward to you an email that my father sent me when I was inquiring of him about it and it will definitely help clear things up.