Have you ever considered I am asking you to consider that what is
coming to us in the 21st century may be so catastrophic, so unprecedented
in this country, that everything we ever knew of earthly securities will
fail
by John Piper
One of the great advantages of being a pastor and laboring to understand
Gods word and exult over it in preaching is that I must stand before
people week after week whose children have died, or worse, are
spiritually dead; whose spouses are critically ill, or worse,
spiritually hard; whose health is failing; whose jobs are in jeopardy;
whose finances are strapped; who battle depression, or love someone who
does; and who know from experience that the world the real world where
they live is shot through with sin and suffering and futility. I say
it is a great advantage to me as a pastor who is called to understand,
and teach, and exult over the word of God, to do it in this context of
life.
Its an advantage because I cant afford to play any academic games
here. I cant endlessly suspend judgment on crucial teachings. I cant
be neutral about great realities that matter in peoples lives. Theres
too much at stake every week for us to entertain ourselves with
trivialities or platitudes. Life is hard and you don't come here to hear
me speculate, or give my opinion, and offer pep talks to divert your
attention from your problems.
And its an advantage because in this context of real, live people of
all kinds in real pain every week, the big truths of the Bible either
help or they don. And a pastor hears about it. It is a great blessing
to me to do theology in the public context of a covenant community of
suffering people. The problem of pain, and the problem of evil, and the
truth of Gods sovereignty are never far away.
TESTIMONIES OF GOD'S SOVEREIGN GOODNESS
I now have about 125 entries in my filing system under the title,
'sovereignty of God.' Many of them are letters. Letters from you and
letters from people around the country about the practical, powerful,
precious effect of the truth that God the Father of our Lord, Jesus
Christ, is absolutely sovereign over all suffering and sin.
One of the reasons I don shrink from the vision of God in Romans 9 is
because after almost 30 years now of teaching and preaching from the
conviction of Gods supremacy and sovereignty in all things, I believe
that it is not only biblically faithful, but also profoundly practical
and faith-sustaining and life-giving. I have seen the sheer absolute
holiness and majesty and sovereignty of God over all evil and over all
human willing and acting become an anchor for storm-tossed souls, and
a
refuge for the frightened, and a rock of stability when all else seemed
to give way, and a hope when the most precious earthly things had been
lost, and a confidence that the worst of miseries really will be turned
for good.
One mother of a 22-year-old college son who has not awakened yet from
a
coma for over two years after a skiing accident (that my son Barnabas
was on), wrote to me, "Your statement, In reality our pain and losses
are always a test of how much we treasure the all-wise, all-governing
God in comparison to what we have lost, brought me to my knees again.
It has been very hard to give my treasure back to the Lord. As you
say, This is a very precious discovery, because it enables us to repent
and seek to cherish Christ as we ought." Isn't that amazing!
One of the reasons I mention some of these letters is to help you
realize that peoples responses to the truth of Gods sovereignty over
all things are often not what you think they will be. The fact is: the
views of God that you or I, in our limited experience, think are needed
in a painful situation, may not be what is needed at all. Have you ever
been surprised, like I have, at how amazingly and powerfully relevant
the sheer absolute God-ness of God is! It turns out to be exactly what
some people need when we think: surely what they need is some soft,
non-theological, emotionally-gentle cushion. To our amazement, we find
them saying, though they may not even be able to articulate it, I am so
deeply shaken to the utter foundations of my being that nothing but a
massive dose of divine majesty and sovereignty will do me good.
I have had a father say to me in March, after three horrible months
of
revelation concerning the abuse of his daughters by an uncle, that it
was the truth of Gods absolute holiness and sovereignty, preached in
January, that was the rock that got him through the last three months.
I met a young woman from India a few years ago who thanked me for the
truth she had heard in something I had said and asked if she could write
to me. When she was born a treatable disease was misdiagnosed, and she
was paralyzed. By age 14 she had had 21 surgeries and was cruelly
treated by other children calling her crippled. She became a Christian
in high school. She married, had four miscarriages, and her second child
died in her husbands arms at two months. She closed the letter,
I have read many books on suffering, but they are often so man-centered
and . . . nullify, or at least diminish the glory, majesty and
sovereignty of God. It is radical thinking to say that God wills and
ordains our suffering and not just passively allows it, hoping to make
the best of it for us. As I have grown in my walk, I can see that
nothing in this world happens apart from the sovereign will of God.
FACING THE 21ST CENTURY
Have you ever considered I am asking you to consider that what is
coming to us in the 21st century may be so catastrophic, so
unprecedented in this country, that everything we ever knew of earthly
securities will fail, and that this God, the God of Romans 9 the God
that, in our three centuries of American security and comfort and luxury
could be so easily marginalized that this God may be precisely the God
perfectly suited to take on the challenge of Islam, and shield us from
false teachings within the church, and be big enough to give you hope
when the whole world seems to collapse and then rise in rebellion
against Christ? Are you sure that your inherited God is the Biblical
God? Is your God big enough and majestic enough and sovereign enough to
be the God of the 21st century and of the world that we see developing
around us?
AN OBJECTION AGAINST THIS VISION OF GOD
In Romans 9:19, Paul hears someone raise an objection to his vision
of
God. They say, Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his
will? Paul had just said in verses 17-18, For the Scripture says to
Pharaoh, For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show
my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.
18 So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever
he
wills. It was this last phrase that raised the objection. If he hardens
whomever he wills if God has the right to decree who will become
rebellious then Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his
will?
Paul has portrayed God as absolutely sovereign. He decides who will
believe and undeservingly be saved and who will rebel and deservingly
perish. Before they were born or had done anything good or evil, he
loves Jacob and gives Esau over to wickedness and destruction (9:11-13).
He is free and unconstrained from influences outside himself when he
decrees who will receive mercy and who will not (9:15-18).
Why is this right for him to do? He has given answers in verses 14-18
and now he gives two more. I will summarize them very briefly and do
very little defending on my own. I will let them stand and read one very
powerful summary quotation from Jonathan Edwards that has helped me see
the enormous implications of this passage.
FIRST ARGUMENT:THE QUALITATIVE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN POTTER AND CLAY MAKES
FOOLISH THE CRITICISM OF THE CLAY
First Paul argues that a potter has the authority and right over the
clay to make a wide range of vessels from the same lump. Verse 21: Has
the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one
vessel for honored use and another for dishonorable use? The argument
here is basically: Potters know more than clay about what is wise to
make. I say this because Paul asks in verse 20, Who are you, O man,
[that is, a mere man, a mere piece of clay] to answer back to God? Will
what is molded say to its molder, Why have you made me like this? In
other words, the argument is simply this: we humans don know enough to
elevate our values and our standards and our insights to the point of
judging God and saying: You used your sovereignty in an unwise,
unrighteous way. That s argument number one. There is an infinite,
qualitative difference between potter and clay that makes it foolish and
wrong for clay to criticize the choices of the potter.
SECOND ARGUMENT: THE PURPOSE IS TO DISPLAY GOD'S MERCY FOR THE VESSELS
OF MERCY
The second argument goes deeper. I think it is the deepest argument
in
all the Bible for why God is right to unconditionally choose whom to
love and whom to hate, whom to show mercy and whom to harden, whom to
make a vessel for honor and whom to make a vessel for dishonor. The
deepest reason this is right, Paul says, is that it displays most fully
the glory of God, including his wrath against sin and his power in
judgment, so that the vessels of mercy can know him most completely and
worship him with the greatest intensity for all eternity.
I will read it to you from verses 22-23 and you decide if you think
that
is a fair restatement of Paul s argument. What if God, desiring to show
his wrath [it is wrong to insert although before desiring the way
the NASB does, saying Although he desired to show his wrath . . .
That s a paraphrase that gets the meaning exactly backward. Its wrong
because we know from verse 17 it is not although God desired to show his
wrath and power that he raised Pharaoh up and endured his rebellion
through 10 plagues; rather it is because he desired to display his power
and wrath that he dealt with Pharaoh the way he did (Exodus 7:3; 8:10;
10:1; 14:4)] What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known
his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for
destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for
vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.
THE THREE PURPOSES IN VERSES 22 AND 23
There are three purposes mentioned and the first two serve the third.
First (v. 22) God acts to show his wrath against sin that he is a holy
God who hates sin. Second (v. 22) God acts to show his power in
judgment. Third, (v. 23) all of this self-revelation is to make known
the riches of his glory (including his holy wrath and mighty power) for
the vessels of mercy. In other words, the final and deepest argument
Paul gives for why God acts in sovereign freedom is that this way of
acting displays most fully the glory of God, including his wrath against
sin and his power in judgment, so that the vessels of mercy can know him
most completely and worship him with the greatest intensity for all
eternity.
EDWARDS ON WHY GOD ORDAINED THAT EVIL BE
Now listen to one whose insight and understanding of these things is
far
beyond mine, Jonathan Edwards, answering the question why a good and
holy God would decree that there be hardening and evil. Listen
carefully. Think hard. This is not the Bible. This is a man who I
believe understood the Bible correctly on this point:
It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth;
and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth of Gods
glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of his glory should
shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionably effulgent
[=radiant], that the beholder may have a proper notion of God. It is not
proper that one glory should be exceedingly manifested, and another not
at all. . .
Thus it is necessary, that Gods awful majesty, his authority and
dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But
this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that
the shining forth of Gods glory would be very imperfect, both because
these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and
also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint
without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all.
If it were not right that God should decree and permit and punish sin,
there could be no manifestation of Gods holiness in hatred of sin, or
in showing any preference, in his providence, of godliness before it.
There would be no manifestation of Gods grace or true goodness, if
there was no sin to be pardoned, no misery to be saved from. How much
happiness soever he bestowed, his goodness would not be so much prized
and admired, and the sense of it not so great . . .
So evil is necessary, in order to the highest happiness of the creature,
and the completeness of that communication of God, for which he made the
world; because the creatures happiness consists in the knowledge of
God, and the sense of his love. And if the knowledge of him be
imperfect, the happiness of the creature must be proportionably
imperfect. (Jonathan Edwards, Concerning the Divine Decrees, in The
Works of Jonathan Edwards (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1974), p. 528)
SUMMARY
So I ask, Is God less glorious because he ordained that there be real
evil and real guilt and just punishment? Paul s answer is, no, just the
opposite. Gods glory will shine the more truly and brightly for having
decreed and governed this universe as we know it. The effort to rescue
God from his sovereignty by denying his foreknowledge of sin or by
denying his ultimate control over sin is destructive for faith and hope
and worship. It is a great dishonor to his word and his wisdom.
Christians, if you love the glory of God, look well to the teaching of
your church and your schools. Test them. But most of all look well to
your souls.
May the majesty of God and the weight of his glory and the grace of
his
dying and rising Son rest upon you. Amen.
http://www.desiringGOD.org
