I've recently come to thinking on God and His involvement in our lives. A large barrier I had was the question of God's control over sin and how that concurs with with our responsibility for sin. First of all, I know that God's control is universal Psalms 22:28-29; 103:17-19: Daniel 4:34-35; 1 Timothy 6:15. I also know that God controls the insignificant things Matthew 10:29-31; Matt 10:30; Luke 12:7; He controls the "accidental" (Proverbs 16:33); and He controls the good works (Phil. 2:13) as well as the bad (Acts 14:16). From these verses we see that God does control everything, even sin. Now, we can present the fact that God allows sin to happen and we do the actual sin ourselves, but that leaves some questions to still be answered. One of these being that how can God foreknow what will happen and (since nothing will or can happen outside of this foreknowledge) we still be responsible for doing them, since we can't doing anything else? The trick of this question is in our view of God. God is not bound by time. My best example is in saying that all of time for God is an "eternal present". He is viewing everything we have done, are doing and will do as if it is happening at that moment. From God's perspective, He is just seeing us sin, not seeing that will still have yet to do it. I hope this helps clear things up a bit.
Also, there is an aspect of "concurrence" which we cannot ignore. God is definitely at work always in our lives, for if we for a moment did not have God sustaining us, we would cease to exist. (Acts 17:28) this implies that without God, we could not sin. Now wait a minute, you may be thinking, doesn't this make God responsible for sin? Not at all, note I didn't say that God causes the sin, He only makes it possible. Maybe an example I read will help. It went something like, think of wood burning. Without God, that wood being burned by fire could not do just that, yet we don't give God the responsibility of the wood burning, we say that the wood burned because the fire burned it.
Now I may be wrong, so feel free to express your thoughts!!
Now it may be hard for some people, and it is for me also, and that is to grasp this idea of God's absolute control. How about you turn to Proverbs 16:33 which talks about God controlling the outcome of lots (or dice) which is something that to us appears the most random thing ever! Yet God in His power still controls that. If He controls that, what stops Him from holding all the dust particles in their place?
ReplyDeleteIf you would like, open the passage of Acts 4:27-28 and then turn to Acts 2:22-23. God controlled THE most sinful act in history: the crucifixion! Now here is a good starting point. If you are going to attempt to understand God's all-encompassing power, start with the fact of God's control over the scourging, the mocking, the crowd, the Romans, the nailing, etc... and you will have rest that God is in control over everything else.