With many things in our lives, achieving the proper balance brings the greatest pleasure out of life. The right amount of work and play. The perfect number of icons on your computer desktop. Knowing when to say something and when to shut up when communicating with your wife (or husband for that matter). Is balance therefore helpful in understanding the interaction between God and man? Not so much. There isn’t a cosmic scale on this issue, but if there was, God would be way down and we would be way up on the scales. That’s right, I am talking about old school scales with a balance and counter balance. When God is desiring to accomplish something that fits into His overall redemptive plan for mankind, my best Biblical advice would be “Get out of the way!”.
There are several examples from Scripture that demonstrate this, but Paul’s favorite seems to be Pharaoh and the Exodus. In Romans 9:18, he uses this as a sample case to show that “God shows mercy upon who He desires, and hardens the hearts of who He desires.” In Exodus chapters 4 – 12, God has a showdown with Pharaoh and the “so called” gods of Egypt. It is part of His Redemptive Plan to bring the Jews out of Egypt and turn them into a nation called Israel. It is out of this nation that He will bring the Messiah, Jesus. God warns Moses ahead of time in Exodus 4:21 that the end result of the plagues will be that “He will harden the heart of Pharaoh” and will bring glory for Himself out of that situation. Sure enough, although Pharaoh hardens his own heart a few times, eventually God steps in and directly hardens Pharaoh’s heart. This results in Pharaoh’s army being crushed in the sea (which made for a way better movie! Thanks God.)
Where was Pharaoh’s free will in this story? I truly believe that Pharaoh was given a chance to let the people go, even though God knew that he wouldn’t. The plagues start out not as destructive, and it is actually God’s mercy that they only gradually worsened in their effect. Moses is quite clear when he tells this story though in Exodus 9:12, that God stepped in, exerted His sovereign control, and MADE Pharaoh do what He wanted him to do. The bottom line is that when people try to get in God’s way and obstruct His plan, God overrides free will to accomplish what He wants. Pawn on a chess board anyone?
Let us also rethink the conversion of Saul to Paul. Saul is a violent persecutor of the church, and is on his way to Damascus to arrest some Christians there. Jesus meets him in power on the road, and strikes Paul with blindness. Then, God tells a Christian named Ananias to go and pray for Paul (I bet he was thrilled with this job!). Paul allows him to pray for him, and his blindness is healed. For Paul, I believe being struck with blindness was to show him his spiritual blindness and convince him to obey the call of Jesus to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles. Did Paul really have a choice of whether to follow God? You could say he does, but you wonder if he felt that way. Would God have healed his blindness if Paul had continued to persecute the church? Do all of us get this type of dramatic call and guidance? That doesn’t seem fair.
Now, we have finally come to a disturbing conclusion, albeit necessary one. God is not fair. Not how we as humans define fairness. God does somethings with some people and people groups, that He doesn’t do with others. Only the Jews received the amazing gifts of God that Paul lists out in Romans 3 and 9. All of us don’t get dried up fleeces or the parting of waters in our lives and ministries. Was it fair that God choose Jacob rather than Esau? Neither one of them deserved God’s election any more than the other. My Mom always used to tell me that “life isn’t fair”. I didn’t like hearing it then if it meant my sister got something or got to do something that I didn’t, and I don’t like to hear it from God either. But, it is still true, so thank you mother. Another one of your perfect moments to add a comment to this post and say, “I told you so”. Unless you aren’t reading this, and then what kind of Mom doesn’t read her own son’s blog?
As a final conclusion in this discussion, let me summarize some main points. The Bible clearly teaches that God is sovereign and is in control. It also teaches that man was created with a free will and is held accountable for his decisions in this life. We don’t have the exact words or paradigm to explain how this all works, but we trust that God presents us with truth in His Word. There is not a balance, as God’s plan will always be accomplished, sometimes in spite of our choices. In the next post, I will attempt to pull all of this together into an illustration that may be helpful to you. If not, try not be to upset that I just wasted another 10 minutes of your life. At least it wasn’t just that annoying IQ test with the lady spinning around (don’t even try to tell me that you saw her spin both ways!)
The Bible Nerd 