The stars seem to have aligned for me to do a great deal of thinking and reading about the sovereignty of God this week. I’m preparing for a Lead with Character trip and God’s sovereignty is a major teaching point for the level 1 trips. I’m also preparing the evening sermon for next Lord’s Day on the topic as we work our way through Arthur Pink’s book The Attributes of God.

I’ve certainly spent a fair share of time studying this subject in the past. My initial exposure to this doctrine was one of the major events that lead to my taking hold of a more mature faith in college. Hearing Dr. Terry Eves’ explanation and biblical defense of that doctrine, against the objections of a room of undergraduate skeptics, began the process through which I came to recognize the intellectual respectability of the Christian faith. The ability of Christianity to withstand legitimate intellectual inquiry was something I hadn’t known before.

This morning I observed something heretofore unnoticed by me in Pink’s defense of the doctrine. It deals with that challenging question of the relationship between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. This is a lengthy quote but very important. Pink has just finished describing the freedom to rebel that God gave to some angels but not others.

So too, God sovereignly placed Adam in the garden of Eden upon a conditional footing. Had he so pleased, he could have placed him upon an unconditional footing; he could have placed him on a footing as firm as that occupied by the unfallen angels, he could have placed him upon a footing as sure and as immutable as that which his saints have in Christ. But, instead, he chose to set him in Eden on the basis of creature responsibility, so that he stood or fell according as he measured or failed to measure up to his responsibility – obedience to his maker. Adam stood accountable to God by the law which his creator had given him. Here was responsibility, unimpaired responsibility, tested out under the most favorable conditions.
Now God did not place Adam upon a footing of conditional, creature, responsibility because it was right he should so place him. No, it was right because God did it. God did not even give creatures being because it was right for him to do so…but it was right because he did so. God is sovereign. His will is supreme. So far from God being under any law of “right,” he is a law unto himself, so that whatever he does is right.

When considering the will of God, and particularly the intersection of divine sovereignty and human responsibility, we are often guilty of judging God’s actions by the standard of “right.” It would be wrong, we imagine, for God to violate those things which our minds perceive to be self-evidently fair. How wayward our thinking! Things are right or just only when they reflect God’s own nature. He cannot act contrary to his own nature and so everything he does is right. It’s intellectually nonsensical to try and begin with a conception of right and proceed to evaluate God’s self-revealed actions by that standard.

Putting God’s actions on trial, in light of his supremacy and sovereignty, is a foolish endeavor. It is equally foolish to consider the topic of human freedom from any starting point which limits God’s sovereignty.

It was God in the exercise of his high sovereignty that placed Satan and his angels, Adam, and Israel in their respective responsible positions. But so far from his sovereignty taking away responsibility from the creature, it was by the exercise thereof that he placed them on this conditional footing, under such responsibilities as he thought proper; by virtue of which sovereignty he is seen to be God over all. Thus, there is perfect harmony between the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of the creature. Many have most foolishly said that it is quite impossible to show where divine sovereignty ends and creature accountability begins. Here is where creature responsibility begins: in the sovereign ordination of the creature. And to his sovereignty, there is not and will never be any end to it.