Sovereign, Wise, Loving and Good

Thanks to all who commented on the previous blog. I find this very cathartic and have come to the place where I truly value, as I think Paul did, being joined in “suffering for the gospel.”

2Ti 1:8 So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God,

I think our joy in him, especially in suffering, glorifies him and displays his worth.

Of course, like others, when feeling the pain, I begin to ask the big eternal and universal questions about suffering and why God has planned such an economy of suffering in his story.

The question is asked, “Why would God allow human free-will, knowing that great suffering would result?” The answer is given, “God desires to be freely loved, just as anyone would and so the choice to love him, or to refuse to love him, had to be granted.”

The second question that should be asked is, “But were not we, who love him, chosen to do so, before the foundation of the world?”

Eph 1:4 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.

Does not our chosen-ness negate our free-will and therefore nullify the previous argument for its necessity?

No. God’s sovereign choice never diminishes the value of our choice to love him or our responsibility when we refuse to trust him, regardless of our inability to comprehend this fact.

I will always have chosen to trust and love God and it will always matter that I did. It matters even now, perhaps most of all when he has allowed circumstances necessary for his plan, his glory, necessary for my eternal good, that can only be seen as negative in and of themselves.

I still have free will. He will not accomplish his will in me apart from mine.

Php 1:6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

He will do this through – in conjunction with - my willingness to see it completed.

Php 2:13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

Choosing to trust and love him because I want to, because he proves himself sovereign, wise, loving and good has always mattered and it always will.