What Does It Mean That God Is Sovereign?

by R.C. Sproul

Sometimes Christians get confused about predestination and free will, as if they are opposites. We must understand that free will is not simply a pagan concept, though the pagan conception enjoys widespread approval. Christians also believe in free will, but the free will that we believe in is not the humanistic or pagan version of it. One secular idea that has been pervasive in the church today is the humanistic doctrine of human freedom that says that our will, even in our fallen condition, remains indifferent and equally able to incline ourselves to the good or to the evil. It ignores the biblical revelation that though we have the power of choosing, our choices are in bondage to sin. Only the power of God the Holy Spirit can rescue us from that bondage, that spiritual death, and that paralysis. We have to get our view of the human will not from the secular culture but from the Word of God. Not only are we deficient at that point, but also the pagan world has intruded into our thinking the idea that this world functions according to internal independent laws of nature and of physics.

Some say God is sovereign, but God’s sovereignty is limited by human freedom. If that were the case, then who is sovereign? We have been given a measure of freedom by our Creator, but our freedom is always and everywhere limited by God’s freedom. God is sovereign, not we ourselves, and His sovereignty extends to all things, not only the creation of the world but the sustaining and governing of the world, and what we describe as the laws of nature only describe the ordinary ways that God in His sovereignty governs nature.

are required to believe, to affirm, to teach, and to preach everything the Bible teaches, not what you want the Bible to teach”—I

The truth of God never depends on my submission to it for its truthfulness.

Ultimately, is salvation of the Lord or is it of man? Is it of His grace, sovereignly distributed, or is it by the exercise of our human will? Pelagianism and humanism have always insisted that the decisive critical point is in the will of man. That is simply not Christian. That is an affront against the sovereignty of God’s grace. And today, the church is being held in a death grip by the ancient Pelagian heresy that casts an eclipsing shadow over the brightness of the glory of God’s sovereign grace.

But what about free will? Don’t people have the moral ability to choose? Do people have the power to choose what they want while they are dead in sin and trespasses? Of course they do. If all we mean by free will is man’s ability to make choices according to what he wants, then yes, we still have free will even though we’re spiritually dead. In fact, the problem with our spiritual death is not that we don’t have free will; it’s that our will is most free indeed to do whatever we want to do. And what we want is to flee as fast as we can from anything that has to do with the living Christ, because we are free to choose what we want and we are not free to choose what we don’t want. And what we don’t want naturally is God. But what if I say that I have the moral power, unaided by regeneration and before I am born again, to incline myself to the things of God through an act of my flesh? Do I have that kind of free will? Absolutely not. That’s an ability we don’t have.

I ask my Arminian friends: “Why do you believe in Christ but your friends at home don’t? Are you a believer because you’re more righteous intrinsically than somebody who doesn’t believe? Why do you have faith? Where does your faith come from? Does it come from your flesh? If it comes from the flesh, you can boast. You can stand before the judgment seat of God and say, ‘The reason I’m standing before You is because of a decision I made.’” Or we can say, “When I heard the gospel, I didn’t even know that the secret, transcendent, sovereign, efficacious, supernatural, immediate power of Your Holy Spirit had invaded my soul and awakened me and made me alive to Jesus Christ. When the gospel was preached, I heard it through ears that were regenerate, I saw it through regenerate eyes, and I embraced it with a regenerate heart. I fairly ran to that altar to embrace my Savior. Yes, I chose Him, and I chose Him freely, but not until I had been resurrected from spiritual death by the sovereign supernatural power of the Holy Spirit.”

Man’s freedom is limited by God’s sovereignty (not the other way around). God is free and you are free, but He is freer than you are, and when there’s a conflict between His freedom and your freedom, guess which one wins? When we say to the world in all piety that God’s sovereignty is limited by our freedom, we say that we are sovereign, and we are speaking blasphemy.

You would think this would be simple, but people make statements such as “God’s sovereignty is limited by human freedom.” That is not good theology; that is blasphemy. If God’s sovereignty is limited by our freedom, then who is sovereign? We are. We then have freedom that exceeds the freedom of God Himself.

On the road to Damascus, Saul of Tarsus did not ask Christ to save him. When God intruded into my life through His sovereign good pleasure and changed the disposition of my heart, I wasn’t seeking Him. I didn’t ask Him to come in. He came. That’s how He came to you. He didn’t destroy my freedom. He elevated it, because until He did that, I was a slave to my own wicked inclinations.

Free will does not mean autonomy; nor does it mean that as a creature you have the ability to incline yourself either to the good or to the bad with equal power. God says that by nature in your sin you’re a slave. You still have a will, you still have the ability to make choices, but your choices are wicked. You are morally incapable in and of yourself, until you are enabled by God the Holy Spirit, ever to choose the holy things of God.

Then Paul says, “As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!’” (v. 15). He is citing the prophet Isaiah who wrote, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace” (Isa. 52:7). What is Isaiah talking about? In the ancient world, when men of war went out to battle and the outcome of the battle was in doubt, news was delivered to the home front by messengers. Those messengers would be dispatched from the battle to return to town with the message. The message could be bad news or the message could be good news. Defeat was bad news; victory was gospel, good news. Many towns had a watchtower, where a person was stationed to scan the horizon to see the approach of a messenger who would bring the news of the battle. The watchmen became so proficient that, even from a distance, they could tell by the gait of the messenger whether it was good news or bad news. If the messenger was bringing bad news, the lookout would see the survival shuffle of discouragement. But if he saw the feet kicking up dust on the side of the mountain, he knew that the messenger couldn’t wait to get to the village because he was the bearer of good news. And so, Isaiah says, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news.” Keep in mind that the messenger was not responsible for the news. The messenger simply delivered the news, and yet, because the news he was delivering was so wonderful, his own ...

In February, two days before he died, Martin Luther preached his last sermon. In the sermon, Luther expressed his great fear for what was happening in Germany. He said that the light of the gospel had been recovered and was preached every Sunday morning in the churches and night after night in special services, yet the people continued to flock to churches that had relics. He questioned why they were doing this and proposed that they were looking for power in their Christian life. But, Luther said, that is not where God has put power. The power is in the gospel.

Most evangelicals today don’t run to relics; they don’t try to find pieces of the cross or straw from the manger. We know that the power isn’t there. But we try to find power in our programs. We try to find power in our methods. When will we ever learn that the power is in the gospel? God awakens people to Himself as the Holy Spirit generates faith in the hearts of people through the Word. The Spirit of God works in and through the Word. The power is in the gospel. And so, if you believe in the sovereign power of God and care about evangelism, you will use the power where God has put it.