Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven.
Matthew 6:10
The sovereign will of God is not fatalism! It is a common mistake among believers to think the two are the same. With well-intentioned desire to champion the sovereignty of God, too many believers think, speak, and act as though what we do doesn’t matter because every detail is planned by God in advance. (That is fatalism.)
But what we do does matter! Remember God’s preceptive will? He commands us to do some things and not others. Whether we obey Him or not matters. Yet some misinformed believers excuse their sin, believing that it was God’s will. Sin is never God’s will. That He uses even our sin to accomplish His will does not make our sin His will—much less defend or excuse our sin. Rather, that God uses even our sin to accomplish His will only underscores His comprehensive sovereignty in that our sin cannot derail God’s over-arching ultimate will. Praise His name for that!
I once read an illustration of this, and have used it ever since. If I remember correctly it first came from Charles Spurgeon. Remembering that virtually every illustration is imperfect, consider the matter this way. If I am on an ocean liner headed from the US to England, I have many options regarding what I will do on the voyage. I can read, exercise, or play games. I can choose which meals to eat and what to eat at each meal. I can enjoy the voyage or jump overboard. Every one of those decisions matter. They will affect me and my voyage. Some may even affect others onboard. But because there is a Captain of the ship, whose job is to pilot the ship to England, though what I eat will affect me, it will not affect the ship’s arrival in England.
I realize that the illustration can be dismantled, but it does illustrate the point that our decisions matter, while in the big picture God’s decretive will, will still be accomplished, even when we violate His preceptive will.
Let us understand how important our decisions matter (for better or for worse!), resting in the fact that God will see that the ship arrives at the destination He has foreordained, at precisely the appointed time.
Next Time: More on this with regard to our decision to trust in and follow Christ.