Chapter 6: The Sovereignty of God

Walking with God through Pain & Suffering

by Tim Keller

 

Chapter 6: The Sovereignty of God

 

• Many philosophies and religions approach human suffering and evil too simplistically.
• The Bible’s picture of suffering is the most nuanced and multidimensional.
• Two foundational balanced truths:
  • Suffering is both just and unjust.
  • God is both a sovereign and a suffering God.
• These paired truths present a remarkably rich and many-sided understanding of the causes and forms of suffering.

 

Suffering as Justice and Judgment

• Genesis 1-3: Suffering in the world is the result of sin.
• All forms of suffering enter the world after Adam and Eve’s disobedience:
  • Spiritual alienation, inner psychological pain, social and interpersonal conflict and cruelty, natural disasters, disease, and death.
• All of this natural and moral evil stems from our ruptured relationship with God.
• Romans 8:18f.: The world is under the curse of frustration or futility.

 

• The world is now in a cursed condition and falls short of its design.
• A frustrated world is a broken world, in which things do not function as they should, and that is why there is evil and suffering.
• God placed the world in this condition for judgment, but God has not abandoned the world or us.
• God had in view a plan for the redemption and renewal of all things.

 

• Once human beings turned from God, there were only two alternatives, either immediate destruction or a path that led to redemption through great loss, grief, and pain, not only for human beings, but for God himself.
• The existence of suffering in the world is really a form of God’s justice.
• God often metes out retributive justice, in which people get what they deserve.
• Biblical wisdom literature is clear that suffering comes in many instances because of foolishness or wickedness.

 

 

Suffering as Injustice and Mystery

• While suffering in general is the result of sin in general and while God does sometimes bring retributive justice on individuals for their foolishness or wickedness, the Bible is also just as clear that individual instances of suffering may not be the result of a particular sin.
• The fact of suffering was held to be the result of sin, especially original sin, but this did not mean that each instance of suffering could be causally linked to a specific sin and its divine punishment.

 

• While the human race as a whole deserves the broken world it inhabits, nevertheless evil is not distributed in a proportionate, fair way.
• Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes are linked together in a complementary
• Proverbs emphasizes the foundational moral order of God’s world, the way things should work in a just world.
• Job and Ecclesiastes emphasize the fact that this world is broken, and suffering is not always linked to morality in a consistent way.

 

• Proverbs shows us the reality of God’s order, Job points to its “hiddenness,” and Ecclesiastes to its “confusion.”
• In the NT, John 9 shows us that suffering is not necessarily linked to past immoral actions. God’s ways are inscrutable.
• Much suffering is disproportionate and unfairly distributed. Much suffering is mysterious and unjust.

 

Suffering as the Enemy of God

• Suffering is an intrusion into God’s good creation, and often evil and suffering occur without regard to an individual’s moral decency or deserts.
• The Bible is insistent that suffering is not outside of God’s control, but we must understand evil as the enemy of God.
• Jesus’ emotional reaction at the tomb of Lazarus was not mere sadness; it was righteous anger and indignation toward the violent tyranny of death.
• Jesus came to destroy death and the one who “holds the power of death.”

 

• Jesus is furious at evil, death, and suffering. Evil is the enemy of God’s good creation, and of God himself.
• Jesus’ entire mission was to take on evil and end it.
• But Jesus could not just come as judge to end evil, or we would all be destroyed and without hope.
• Jesus came in weakness to the cross in order to pay for our sins, so that someday he will return to wipe out evil without having to judge us as well.

 

Suffering, Justice, and Wisdom

• Understanding that suffering is both just and unjust leads us to wisdom about how to face suffering.
• Wisdom is an awareness of complex reality.
• Suffering is something that God has justly imposed on the world; we deserve to live in a broken world because of our sin.
• At the same time, the created order is broken, and suffering and pain are disproportionately distributed.

 

• So, we cannot look at individuals who are suffering and assume a moral superiority over them.
• When suffering inexplicably comes to us, it means that we can cry out to God in confusion.
• If we ignore the fact that suffering is both just and unjust then we will be out of touch with the universe as it really is.
• This balance—that God is just and will bring final justice, but life in the meantime is often deeply unfair—keeps us from many deadly errors.

 

The Sovereignty of God

• Second pair of balancing truths:
  • God is a sovereign and yet a suffering
• God is not merely “all-powerful,” but sovereign over every event in history.
• God is not merely “good and loving,” but entered our world and became subject to greater evil, suffering, and pain, than any of us have ever experienced.

 

• The doctrine of the sovereignty of God in the Bible has been described as compatibilism.
• God is completely in control of what happens in history and yet he exercises that control in such a way that human beings are responsible for their freely chosen actions and the results of those actions.
• Human freedom and God’s direction of historical events are completely compatible.

 

• The Bible’s description of God’s sovereignty is not in any way like the Greek concept of “fate” or the Islamic concept of “kismet.”
• God’s plans work through our choices, not around or despite them. Our choices have consequences, and we are never forced by God to do anything—we always do what we most want to do.
• God works out his will perfectly through our willing

 

• God “works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will” (Eph 1:14).
• God’s plan includes even the “little things” (Prov 16:33).
• There are no accidents.
• God’s plan also includes the bad things (Psalm 60:3).
• Suffering is not outside of God’s plan but a part of it.
• Jesus’ suffering and death was a great act of injustice, but it was also part of the set plan of God.

 

God’s Plan and our Plans

• God plans our plans.
• Prov 16:9 – “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.”
• While we make our plans, they only fit into the larger plans of God.
• Joseph’s brothers’ evil actions and God’s overriding sovereign plan to rescue Abraham’s descendants.
• Romans 8:28 – God is working in all things—even the hard and painful—for our good.

 

• The enemies of Jesus acted in full accordance with their own desires and wills and yet fulfilled the ultimate plan of God for his crucifixion.
• Pharaoh hardened his own heart in accordance with his own will and stubbornness, and yet we read in Exodus that this was a part of God’s plan to harden Pharaoh’s heart.
• The Christian doctrine of God’s sovereignty is a marvelous, practical principle, and no one can claim to know exactly how it works.

 

• The sovereignty of God is mysterious but not contradictory.
• We have great incentive to use our wisdom and our will to the best effect, knowing that God holds us to it and knowing we will suffer consequences from foolishness and wickedness.
• On the other hand, there is no action that we can take that will thwart or alter the eternal, wise plan of God.
• We have the assurance that even wickedness and tragedy are being woven together by God into his wise plan.