A Controversial Assurance? Part 2

Romans 8:28-39

Paul is saying at the end of Romans 8 that there is an assurance that we can have that can absolutely change a life through Christ. But when Paul expresses this assurance we (in a modern-western culture) raise a question. It is very hard in our culture to even receive this assurance that Paul is talking about... to enjoy it and to use it unimpeded.

In our modern-western culture this assurance raises an issue. All of this talk, I will start explaining in the next paragraph, brings up controversial topics like predestination, calling, and election. This bothers us, but as it bothers us I hope we do not forget that other centuries and other cultures have not been bothered by it.
This is a problem for modern-western, enlightenment individualistic people. It is wise to identify the lenses by which we see the world. We must never absolutize any of our objections that our specific to our culture because they always arrive from within our culture. The objections should always be taken seriously because we live within that culture, but we must relativize them because we are not the only culture in the world and therefore should never declare that any cultural objection is an insurmountable obstacle to faith in Christ.

What is the controversy?

When modern-western people (a group which I am of course a part of) hear, ‘Christ will keep you in his love, so that no matter what we do we will never stop loving him and he will never stop loving us, and he is in total control of everything so that everything is working out according to his plan.’ The response could be something like, ‘What about freewill because it sounds like then that God would be doing all of this stuff despite our choices, and if that is the case, then what about human responsibility? What does it matter how we live then if this is true? If it is true and I am a Christian, then can I do anything because God is going to keep me loving him? And if he is going to work out everything into his plan, then what does it matter what I do? What happens to the responsibility of the choices I make?’

These are very good questions.

Today, in this theological debate, we are only given two alternatives to choose from: either we believe that we have freewill and are responsible for our choices and our choices matter, which means that the future is open and undetermined, OR something has set and fixed the future and our choices don’t matter.

But is this an either/or debate?

I think, in the Bible, we are not given a choice between one or the other. It seems to always be, in the Bible, that you are free and responsible for your choices and your choices matter and no one is forcing you to make those choices AND YET every single thing that happens as a result of those choices is working out according to the plan of God. It is not just that God foresees what you are going to do, but rather what you do fits perfectly into the plan he wants and the course he wants history to take.

Here are a few examples of this is in the Bible (there are many more).

The principle of it can be seen in Proverbs 16:1, “To man belongs the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes the reply of the tongue,” and verse 9, “the heart of man plans his way, but it is the Lord who establishes his steps.” To you belongs the plans of the heart, but the result of the plan comes from God. To you belongs your plans, but when you actually speak or act that ALWAYS fits in with God’s plan. This is amazing. On one hand, your choices belong to you, they are yours and are not coerced and not accomplished or chosen by God and you cannot say you could not help it. You are free and responsible. And yet, the result is always exactly what God wants.

How can this be?

This does not have to be an either/or debate. Isn’t possible that God could fix things and work things out and at the same time not violate your freewill. We might not be able to imagine how we could do it but the question is can GOD do it?

J.I. Packer wrote once, “The relationship of our freewill and responsibility and God’s sovereignty and control of all things is... not a contradiction but an apparent contradiction.” He uses an example of light to explain this. We know that light sometimes behaves as waves and sometimes as particles. Sometimes it acts as if it does not consist of matter and sometimes it acts as if it does. How can this be? We reason that it should not be like this but it is. We do not know how it works, he says, but we know it does work this way and so we work with it, otherwise you are not going to know how to handle light. Just like our knowledge of light, J.I. Packer says, this debate is not a contradiction but an apparent contradiction since we do not have the knowledge to figure and reason everything out.

On the one hand, God is setting and fixing absolutely everything the way he wants it to be. He does not do it despite our choices, but through them. Our choices are part of his plan.

Another example of this put into practice is seen in Acts 27. For the sake of brevity see how this works out in the passage for yourself, but simply put, Paul has a biblical understanding of this debate here. Our choices matter absolutely, but they do not determine the future. Because they matter Paul is not passive in life, he says let’s do things the way they should be done (by trusting God, I think in the case in Acts 27), but because they (his choices) do not determine the future, he is not paralyzed in doubts. He is neither passive nor paralyzed. If you believe everything is fixed despite our choices you will be passive. If you believe that our choices determine our future you will become paralyzed. Paul in this case is neither.

You may say here, ‘Why would you be paralyzed if you believe that our choices determine the future?’ Everything that happens in history is interlocked in an infinite number of ways and any little change to one thing changes everything and if these changes are completely determined by us then we should be floored because we do not have even a speck of the wisdom necessary to make those choices. Take for instance the relatively modern search for a “soulmate” or “the one.” If just one person had children with someone else in the past then whole civilizations might have never have even come to pass.

We cannot possibly anticipate all of the effects and changes that our decisions make. The Bible, thankfully, tells us that we do not have to anticipate and predicate the consequences of our choices. It says on one hand that you are absolutely responsible for your choices, you are free and nobody is forcing you to do them and if you make bad choices there will be bad consequences, BUT God is the one in charge of the future and he is overruling everything so you can do your best and then relax because God will see it all through...

If we truly had freewill then it very well could be paralyzing to get out of bed in the morning since we do not even have the slightest insight as to how one of our choices may devastatingly change the future. Instead though we can be sure that all things work together for good for those that love God, even though it is all very intricate and we very rarely see how it all works out.

Here is my best attempt for us to get more of a glimpse: What would have happened if my great, great grandparents decided only to have eleven children instead of twelve? What would have happened if my grandma’s first husband would have come home alive from the war? What if John Wilkes Booth was stopped before he shot Abraham Lincoln? What if one man decided to launch a nuclear bomb during the Cold War? What would have happened if I had decided not to have become a lifeguard my Sophomore year of High School in which I met my future wife for the first time, which then led to, years later, meeting up with her again and eventually marrying her?

An infinite amount of ‘big’ moments in the past are made up of a difference of inches or seconds or small decisions, which are interwoven in infinitely complex ways that make up our future today... I think a question we have to seriously ask ourselves is: do we think the inches and seconds, that make all of the difference, happen by accident?

The Bible says that ALL things work together for good for those that love God and are called according to his purpose.

Very seldom do we even get a glimpse of how God is working all things together for the good of those that love him, but he is and therefore you can be assured that no matter what bad stuff is happening inside of you and outside of you he has not abandoned you and he loves you.