He is the King!

Often, we make the mistake of confining our thoughts on God’s sovereignty only to the area of His sovereign election. While sovereign election is certainly an amazing and humbling truth, the fact remains that His sovereignty is not limited to the eternal destiny of His creation. Consider the following excerpts from chapter six of Dr. Lawson’s Made in Our Image.

He’s in Control of the Creation

The fact that God simply spoke the world into being very clearly demonstrates His sovereignty over all He created. Being under no coercion by anyone or anything, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit existed by Himself from eternity past. Free to create or to not create, in an extraordinary display of sheer sovereignty, God spoke this universe and all it contains into existence.

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To this day, God has not relinquished His sovereign prerogative to govern what He has made. Having spoken into being everything that exists, God continually sustains and rules over His universe. Contrary to what many believe, He has not made this world and then adopted a hands-off policy, choosing to withdraw His control and allow whatever happens to happen on its own. The universe is not a top that God spun into existence and is now watching unwind from a distance. Instead, God directly governs all His creation, orchestrating all nations, people, events, and circumstances, causing all things to work together for His glory and our good.

All Nature Bows before Him

The outworking of natural occurrences, whether peaceful or violent, belongs to the hand of God. Scripture reveals that God exhibits His power over all the forces of nature. The Lord has established the physical laws by which He governs the forces of nature, and these laws continually operate according to His sustaining power. For example, all types of weather—from a gentle rain to a devastating flood—are the result of the controlling, sovereign hand of God. He does not merely intervene on specific occasions; He rules over all of nature every day.

The Power behind Earthly Thrones

By divine authority, God makes all of the decisions of rulers and governments work together to conform to His plan for human history. He is the King of kings and Lord of lords, ruling over all earthly rulers, governing all governors, dictating to all dictators, leading all leaders.

God determines who assumes office, as well as when and where they preside over peoples. The Bible notes, “He removes kings and establishes kings” (Daniel 2:21). No ruler, good or evil, rules apart from God’s will.

The Invisible, Sovereign Hand

God works on a grander scale than what meets the human eye. Recognizing His invisible hand at work behind the scenes, Ezra wrote that the Lord “turned the heart of the king of Assyria toward them [the Jews] to encourage them in the work of the house of God” (Ezra 7:27). In this instance, God used a pagan potentate to assist in the restoration of His own house of worship.

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From this, we learn that God rules all earthly rulers—even unregenerate kings—to carry out His purposes on a global scale.

Nothing “Just Happens”

In governing the universe, God controls all occurrences, events, and actions. It may seem to some people that this world is out of control—but such is not the case. Tragedies come; trials buffet us; the unexpected occurs. Yet, despite outward appearances, God fully controls all events and brings all occurences to their appointed end. This is often called the doctrine of providence, or the truth that God orders all events according to His eternal plan.

His Right to Choose

[God’s] sovereignty extends to the eternity of His chosen ones, those who in the Bible are called His elect. With unmistakable language, Paul states, “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him” (Ephesians 1:4). Employing similar language, Jesus Himself said, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you” (John 15:16). Not based on any foreseen human faith or good works, God’s saving choice is the exercise of His own sovereign will. He selects those whom He would save.

Because there are none who seek after God (Romans 3:10-11), God Himself must take the initiative in salvation and choose us, His beloved. In our fallen state, we would never choose Him. The reason we have chosen Him in time is because He first chose us before time. God’s sovereignty is seen in the fact that our salvation originates with His choice of us, not our choice of Him (John 1:13).

Admittedly, this tremendous truth perplexes some and frightens others. In our human thinking, it may even seem unfair. But whatever Scripture affirms, we must embrace. Even with certain questions about God’s sovereignty left unanswered, it is not our place to question God’s right to choose and do as He pleases. This truth of divine election may run contrary to our human logic, disturb our emotions, and cut against the grain of our democratic mindset, but Scripture nevertheless clearly teaches it. There is nothing unjust about how God exercises His sovereignty (Romans 9:14-24).

At the same time, and paradoxical to our minds, is the truth that although God is fully sovereign, man is completely responsible to believe. One does not negate the other….Both are taught in Scripture, and we must live with the tension.

All quotations taken from Made in Our Image, by Steven Lawson.