Almost every Christian denomination accepts that God is sovereign--which is interpreted to mean that He always does precisely what He pleases, and everything that happens on earth has either His explicit or implicit stamp of approval. So when we find ourselves in a crisis--we or someone we love gets a terminal diagnosis, or we don't have enough money to make the mortgage and may lose the house, or we're in the direct path of a natural disaster, etc--we pray for a miracle, because we all know that God can do anything He wants. And who knows? Maybe He'll say yes. But if He says no, the common theology goes, it's because He sees the bigger picture. He knows more than we do, and we have to just trust that He knows best.
That sounds so spiritual, doesn't it? Some believers manage to weather these trials of faith, pointing to Job as their example, when he said, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21) and "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him" (Job 13:15).
(One side note. When you hear of a great saint who loses everything and yet clings to their trust in God anyway, certain that He has a greater purpose for their loss, does that inspire you to praise God--or to praise that great saint? Who actually receives the glory for that?)
This theology has its roots in Calvinism, which espouses an extreme form of predestination (meaning that God chooses whether each of us will ultimately be saved, or damned, before we're ever born. He has to do this, they argue, because it is God who gives us the faith even to be saved, Eph 2:8-9, and if He withholds that faith, salvation for that individual is impossible.) So God, in this theological persuasion, decides a priori who will be saved and who will not, and then punishes those to whom He has not given the faith to be saved for their sins.
They do have scriptures to back up their argument--if you take them out of context. One of the big ones is Romans 9:18-21, which says: "Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens. You will say to me then, 'Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?' But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, 'Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?'"
In this passage, Paul was comparing Israel's hardness of heart in rejecting the Messiah to Pharaoh from the time of the Exodus (Romans 9:15-17). The reason it took ten plagues and the decimation of Egypt for Pharaoh to finally release the Israelites was because Pharaoh's heart was hardened, far beyond reason. Paul's point in this passage was that God did this so that He could display His power to the Israelites, delivering them with great signs and wonders (Romans 9:17). If Pharaoh hadn't resisted, it would not have taken great miracles to do it. (In the same way, Paul argues, the fact that Israel had rejected Jesus gave the Lord the opportunity to bring the Gentiles in to the New Covenant, too.)
But if God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, is Pharaoh still responsible for his own actions? If we go back to the original source text, we can see that this isn't quite the whole story. God did tell Moses in advance that He would harden Pharaoh's heart before the plagues ever began (Ex 4:21, 7:3). But for the first five plagues, Pharaoh hardened his own heart (Ex 7:22, 8:15, 8:19, 8:32, 9:7). It was only by the sixth plague that the scripture says God hardened Pharaoh's heart (Ex 9:12). Pharaoh still made his own choice first; God just enforced it and used it for His own purposes. I love the analogy Charles Capps uses to explain this. If one sets clay and wax out in the hot sun, the sun will harden the clay, but melt the wax. The sun adds the same heat to both, but the substance (wax or clay) determines its effect. A potter chooses whether to make “noble or ignoble” vessels from clay not arbitrarily, but on the basis of the quality of the clay. If the clay is supple and pliable, it can be made into something beautiful; if it is brittle, it might not be fit to shape into something worthy of display. God works with what we give him.
In the same way, in Jesus’ Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-23), the sower sows the Word indiscriminately, but it is the condition of the soil that determines the harvest. Luke later writes that God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34), and Peter writes that He is not willing that any should perish (2 Peter 3:9, more on this later). Likewise, any reasonable person would have been terrified into obedience by the plagues, long before they progressed to the death of the firstborn. And some of the Egyptians did believe and take refuge in Goshen, and the final exodus included “a mixed multitude” (Exodus 12:38), meaning some of the Egyptians were convinced, converted, and left with them. God gave the Egyptians the opportunity to escape the plagues that might otherwise have caused death, telling them to pull their livestock and their servants inside before the hail (Exodus 9:19), and to paint their doorposts with the blood of the Passover lamb (Exodus 12:22-23), which was symbolic of and foreshadowing the blood of Christ. Again, the Lord is “not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). He didn't want to harm the Egyptians, but neither did he want them to keep His people in bondage.
So, did God harden Pharaoh’s heart? Yes, but perhaps only in the sense that God performed the miracles, and Pharaoh’s heart was such that those miracles caused him to dig in his heels. We’ve all met stubborn people like this, with whom any direct attempt at persuasion will cause them to double down on their original position. God does not override our free will, so in this case, He worked with it, using it to His advantage. Our choices do matter. But He's so amazing that He takes those choices and still manages to work “all things together for good to those who love God, who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). As a result of Pharaoh’s stubbornness, God’s people had a legacy of spectacular stories to remind their children and their children’s children of His might on their behalf.
My point in saying all that is just that the argument that God sovereignly controls everything that happens is inconsistent with the overall teachings of scripture; even the individual verses that seem to suggest that don't stand up to scrutiny. But a larger problem is that, taken to its logical conclusion, the theological position that God's will is absolute, and will come to pass no matter what we do, leads to a sense of futility. Why pray--why even evangelize--if God is going to do what He's going to do, regardless? To their credit (though against logic), most Calvinist denominations recognize that the scriptures are very clear that we should still both evangelize and pray, and they therefore preach that we should do both, just because God said we should. (Sort of the equivalent of a parent saying, "Because I said so, that's why!") But historically, many Protestant denominations stemmed from or were heavily influenced by Calvinist doctrine. As a result, until about the late 18th and early 19th century, almost all missionary activity around the world came from the Catholic church, which I suspect was precisely because it held no doctrine of predestination, so they thought their efforts could make an eternal difference. Motivation matters. (Protestant missions largely date back to William Carey's work in India in 1793. The London Missionary Society was founded two years later, in 1795, and in 1810, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was founded.)
Even if we're not ultimately each predestined for heaven or hell, God is still sovereign, though, right? He knows way more than we do. So doesn't that mean sometimes He'll say no to our prayer requests, and when we all get to heaven, we'll understand why?
Yes, God is sovereign in the sense that He is all-powerful, all-loving, and all-knowing, but He is not all-controlling (and I covered this extensively in this podcast https://www.drlaurendeville.com/podcasts/why-bad-things-happen-from-a-biblical-perspective on why bad things happen, from a biblical perspective). God told Adam and Eve not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; they did anyway. Was that God's will? Certainly not! He did everything He could to keep them from doing it, short of making them automatons, when He told them, don't do it. Likewise, any sovereign can set laws that his citizens may not necessarily obey. The US is a sovereign nation and in 1974 the administration set the "National Maximum Speed Law" of 55mph. But many drivers exceeded that speed limit daily.
The New English Translation has the word “sovereign” appear more than any other biblical translation (368 times). Not one of the original Hebrew or Greek words connotes the idea that He controls everything that happens. Most of the time, "sovereign" is just the way they render God’s names. The word sovereign is often translated from Shaddai (meaning Almighty) when it’s part of God’s name (48 times in the OT). Other times it’s translated from ‘elohiym: supreme God, as a superlative, or ‘elyown, meaning High or Most High. Sometimes it's thrown in as part of the transition of ‘Adonay: an emphatic form of the Lord. Sometimes it's translated from tsaba’, also translated the Lord of Hosts, meaning one who commands an army.
In some cases the word sovereign is used to describe God's characteristics, but in context, it doesn't mean what we typically mean by the word (that His will always happens). The NET version of 1 Chronicles 29:11 says, "O LORD, you are great, mighty, majestic, magnificent, glorious, and sovereign over all the sky and earth! You have dominion and exalt yourself as the ruler of all." Only this translation uses the word sovereign; the others , translate it Head. This word connotes the idea of a supreme ruler, but not of one who always gets His way.
Psalm 84:11 says, “For the Lord God is a sun and shield (magen: shield, buckler, protector).” The same verse is translated in NET: "For the LORD God is our sovereign protector." Clearly the word magen does not indicate that He always gets His way, either.
Sovereign power is also translated as holiness from qadash: "to consecrate, sanctify, prepare, dedicate, be hallowed, be holy, be sanctified, be separate." This word is used in Ezekiel 28:25: "'This is what the sovereign LORD says: When I regather the house of Israel from the peoples where they are dispersed, I will reveal my sovereign power (or holiness) over them in the sight of the nations, and they will live in their land that I gave to my servant Jacob." It doesn't mean supreme dictator there either.
Micah 5:4 says, "He will assume his post and shepherd the people by the LORD's strength, by the sovereign authority of the LORD his God. They will live securely, for at that time he will be honored even in the distant regions of the earth.” Sovereign authority here is the words ga'own (exaltation, majesty, pride) shem (name, reputation, fame, glory): thus, it's better translated “in the majesty of the name” of the Lord. Not a supreme dictator there either.
Habakkuk 2:14 says, "For recognition of the LORD's sovereign majesty will fill the earth just as the waters fill up the sea." Sovereign majesty here is yada (to know, to perceive, to make known) kabowd (glory, honour, glorious, abundance), also translated “for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.” Still not indicating ultimate control over everything that happens.
Of course God's will does not always come to pass. As I mentioned earlier, the classic example of this is 2 Peter 3:9: “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance,” and 1 Timothy 2:4: “[He] desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Matthew 18:14 also says, “Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” Jesus paid for the sins of the whole world, not just those who are saved. 1 John 2:2 says, “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world”, and 1 Tim 4:10 says, "That is why we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe.” This doesn't sound like a God who created anyone for the expressed purpose of eternal damnation to me. On the contrary, He did everything He could possibly do to save us all, short of making us automatons.
But not everybody will be saved, because He doesn't force us to choose Him--nor does He make any of our other decisions for us, either. Jesus said in Matthew 7:13: "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it." God wills it; He paid an enormous price for it; but He won't get all of us, because we get a choice.
There are other verses that imply the concept of sovereignty as we typically define it (in the sense that when God decides to do something, He does it, and no one can stop Him). Here are a few of those verses:
- Job 42:2: “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”
- Isaiah 46:10: “I declare the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.”
- Romans 8:28: “All things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose.” (i.e. He can use bad and work it for good.)
But these verses refers to God’s right and His power -- they say nothing about voluntary restrictions that God has placed upon His own power. Those limitations are defined by the covenants God had in place with mankind at various points in history. Once He gives His word that He will do this and not that, He cannot violate it--He exalts His word even above His name (Psalm 138:2). It's the integrity of His word that literally holds the universe together (Hebrews 1:3). Again, more on this in this podcast: https://www.drlaurendeville.com/podcasts/why-bad-things-happen-from-a-biblical-perspective and extensively more in "Blood Covenant Origins" and "Blood Covenant Fulfilled" from this book series: https://www.drlaurendeville.com/books/biblical-retellings). A quick overview, though: since God gave the earth to man in the garden, and man decided to obey Satan, God had to find a legal entry to get back in. That was the purpose of the covenants—first the Adamic, then the Noahic, then the Abrahamic, then the Mosaic, and now finally, the New Covenant. In the middle three there were stipulations of what we had to do, and therefore what God would do for us, if we kept up our end. But there were provisions for blessings even in those.
For instance, a common Old Testament example I've heard preached to back up the idea that we never know what God's going to do, but we should have faith in Him anyway, is Daniel 3:18. Here's how that verse is preached: "If you throw us into the fiery furnace, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king. But even if He does not save us, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up."
Except that's not what that verse actually says. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendego, the Hebrew kids in Babylonian exile in that story, were under the Mosaic covenant, and they were on the right side of it--so they had a right to the blessings (Deut 28:7), and they knew it. They knew God’s promises. That’s why they were able to stand up to the king—just like David could call Goliath that “uncircumcised Philistine,” absolutely convinced of the outcome, because he had a covenant, and Goliath didn’t. In the story in Daniel, what the verse actually says is, “If you do not worship, you shall be cast immediately into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.” The Jewish captives respond saying, “If that is the case” (implying, if you will throw us in to the furnace, the subject of the previous verse). Then they say, “But if not”—and the Hebrew never qualifies if not what. People tend to assume they are saying “but if God doesn’t deliver us” (the end of the previous thought). But it could just as easily have meant, “If it is not the case that you will throw us into the fiery furnace,” just like it did in previous verse. This would change the entire meaning of the verse, and would be far more consistent with the rest of scripture. I can think of no instances anywhere in scripture where someone put faith in God’s covenant promises, and God did not come through. He can’t not come through—because again, He exalts His word above His very name (Ps 138:2)!
In the New Covenant, Jesus paid to make sure we are always on the blessing side, having fulfilled the law perfectly on our behalf, and become the curse for us (Gal 3:13). Because of that, every single promise is now Yes and Amen in Him (2 Cor 1:20). When Christ saved us, the word in Greek is sozo—that word appears 110 times in the New Testament. It includes spiritual salvation, but it also means physical healing, to rescue from physical danger, and to deliver from the penalties of judgment. All of these things are accessed by faith. Scripture doesn’t say that sometimes God says no to physical healing; on the contrary, every time someone came to Jesus for healing, they got it—and He was the exact image of the Father (Col 1:15), doing nothing but what He saw the Father doing (John 5:19). He turned no one away, saying, “Nope, this one is God’s will for you, to bring glory to Himself.” What brings God glory is healing, not sickness (John 9:1-4), and the “fruit” of answered prayers (John 15:7-8). It’s the blessings of God on our lives that are supposed to get the attention of the world around us.
So back to the issue of praying for miracles. The theological position of most Christian denominations is that God can do anything, but there’s no guarantees that He will. Because of course, we can look around and see so many good Christians (some of the best!) who pray, and don’t seem to receive. What are we to do with that? Shouldn’t we adjust our theology to account for all of these practical examples… no matter what the Bible actually says?
My dad died of cancer when he was 48 years old. We had lots of people praying. I had several well-meaning believers after the fact try to console me with the idea that God “allowed” this to happen for some inscrutable reason of His own… maybe someone might come to the Lord as a result of our loss, someone suggested. (What actually happened was that I became a religious Pharisee for about 10 years, going through the motions, but I didn’t trust God at all. I figured, based on that theology, that God was like an army general who made sacrifices for the greater good, and sometimes—sorry!—it’s you. The effect on the rest of my family's faith and outlook on the world was similar to mine, or worse.)
All of that is predictable in hindsight, because cancer and death are the fingerprints of the Enemy, not of God. The Enemy comes to “steal, kill, and destroy”—Jesus came that we might “have life, and have it more abundantly.” It’s very clear who does what. But the vast majority of the body of Christ today preaches this confused theology, attributing horrific things to God under the strange explanation that because God’s ways are higher than our ways, somehow from His perspective, bad is good, and wrong is right, and once we all get to heaven, we’ll understand. (No wonder I didn’t trust God anymore when I believed this. How could I trust a God like that?)
I get why the Church at large preaches this—they’re trying to make the Bible fit our experience. God's supreme sovereignty is a nice, spiritual-sounding explanation which borrows from the long Calvinistic tradition, even if we don't take it quite to that extreme (though some denominations still do even that). But what finally set me free was when I realized that God’s definition of good and mine are actually the same. That my dad’s death at such a young age was never His will. That how God dealt with mankind at various times in history was dependent upon the covenants in place at the time--and today, we're under the best covenant of all, the one where all the curses for disobedience are paid for in full, and all that's left is the blessing, which we can receive by faith.
Here's what that doesn't mean: it doesn't mean that faith is a new form of works, that God now watches to see if we reach the critical threshold of faith before He doles out our miracle... and if we don't quite get there, ah, too bad, try harder next time. No! He's not responding in real time to our faith at all, deciding which requests to grant and which to refuse. God already provided every blessing in spiritual form in Christ’s atonement, 2000 years ago (Gal 1:3, Isaiah 53:4-5, 1 Peter 2:24). We receive all of those blessings now the same way we receive salvation: by faith. It's "in your account" already, as it were, just waiting for you to make a withdrawal--just like salvation is freely available, waiting for you to accept it. But God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34). He doesn’t sovereignly say yes to one person and no to another for things that we know are in His will—if we know that we’re asking for something already in His explicit will, He hears us, and if we know that He hears us, we know we already have the requests made of Him (1 John 5:14-15). (That is the key, though--we can only have faith that we'll receive things that were already paid for in the atonement of Jesus. We can ask God for other things outside of that, but in those cases, God might say yes, or He might say no, for our own good--James 4:3. So it's quite useful to know scripture, so you can know for sure what you can stand on!)
Back to my dad, and so many others besides. At that time, my family didn’t know any of this. We thought, we should pray, we should ask, and maybe God will say yes and maybe He will say no. But that’s not faith—that’s hope. And God didn’t say no—He said yes, 2000 years ago! Jesus paid an incredibly high price for God to say yes. Jesus also gave us the formula of how to receive in Mark 11:23-24: believe, and don’t doubt. If you do that, it’s as good as done. Unopposed faith (without doubt, James 1:6-8) is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen (Heb 11:1).
It’s cruel to tell people that they didn’t receive their miracle because they didn’t believe hard enough, or pray long enough, though. But the solution to that isn’t to blame God’s “sovereignty” instead! (That’s how people lose their faith—who wants to serve a God whom they believe “allowed” the Holocaust, or 9-11, or child trafficking, or etc to happen?) Rather, the solution is to understand that we’re in a war, and that Satan is seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8). While he’s a defeated foe ever since the cross (Col 2:15), and we now have authority over him through Jesus (Matt 28:18, Eph 1:17-19), most of us don’t know it. We don’t know that, with the authority we now have, Satan’s only weapon against believers now is deception and fear (2 Cor 10:3-5)—and of course anything he can indirectly control against us that is part of the fallen world. But Jesus has already overcome the world on our behalf (John 16:33). And understanding God’s perfect love for us casts out fear (James 4:18). Because if He loves us enough to send Jesus, how will He not also freely give us all things (Romans 8:32)?
But most of us are so focused on what we see, on the things this world says, that a cancer diagnosis, for example (or any other terminal doctor’s report, or insurmountable financial problem, etc), strikes fear into our hearts. Whatever we focus on, we magnify—and if we’re in a church that tells us maybe God will come through and maybe He won’t (for things that He’s explicitly promised in His word), then we’re standing on shifting sand. It’s hard enough to deal with our own doubt and unbelief, without being surrounded by the doubt and unbelief of others. But absolute trust God’s word—even if it means isolating ourselves from well-meaning believers who might cause us to doubt—is the only way. Jesus on numerous occasions got away from the crowds or put everyone out of the house except for his few top disciples before he performed a miracle. Abraham received because he did not consider anything except God’s promises (Romans 4:19). He didn’t have a contingency plan (or at least he didn’t anymore after the whole Ishmael thing was out of the way). Because he didn’t consider any of the natural circumstances, he didn’t waver in his faith. In the same way, today, our lack of fear of Satan’s schemes is proof to him that we’re going to win (Phil 1:28)—and if we stand firm (Eph 6:13-14) and resist the devil, sooner or later, he has to flee (James 4:7). We’ll win, if we don’t quit.
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