God’s Sovereign Will vs. Permissive Will
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There is no question that God has a will for all of creation. Questions have arisen from the piece on Free-Will versus Free Choice. It has been suggested that mankind can override the will of God. I disagree with this point of view.
The Word of God speaks of His will in several different ways with different applications. I would like to touch upon His different wills and how they apply to mankind.
There is the Decreed Will or His Sovereign Will of God than cannot be overcome by man. If God has decreed something, it will come to pass. God’s will was that Jesus would be born and He declared that long before He appeared on earth. “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” (Isa 7:14) This was a decree by God and God’s decrees will always, without exception, come to pass.
There is what is known as God’s “permissive will.” This was the source of confusion in the Free-Will versus Free Choice piece. Some individuals expressed confusion based on my statement that we cannot override God’s will. God’s will does not change. God’s will or desire is that all mankind obey His commandments. His will or desire for mankind is that no one murder, steal, commit adultery, and a whole host of other commandments. Yet, it appears that we are overriding His will by disobeying those commandments. This is known as God’s ‘permissive will.” He has created mankind with the ability to make choices. Because we are His creation with the ability to make choices, He permits mankind to make choices even if they are in disobedience to His desire. His permissive will is only applicable if it does not override His decretive will. What God desires and decrees will come to pass and cannot be abrogated by our free-choice whether it is a sin or not. An example is Joseph’s brothers sought to kill him (Genesis 37:18). By their own ability to make choices, good or bad, they sought to kill him. They were unable because God superseded their plan and thwarted it for God had another plan for Joseph. It is a classic example in how man can exercise his free choice without thwarting God’s will.
It was God’s decree that Joseph be used to keep His people alive. “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” (Gen 50:20)
There is also what is known as God’s ‘secret will or unknown will.’ Using the example of Joseph, at that point in time, no one knew of God’s plan for Joseph. Eventually, it was revealed but it remained an unknown until after it came to pass. God’s decree regarding Joseph had not yet been spoken though it was a plan that God designed that would come to pass. Mankind (Joseph’s brothers) while not knowing God’s plan were unable to thwart it. What God chooses to do will come about despite man’s ability to make choices.
Another aspect of His will is plain. This is His revealed or what is known as His perceptive will.
Man’s choices or will can only operate within the confines of what God allows. He allows mankind to sin but their choices will never override God’s decretive will. What God has chosen to reveal in His Word is His declared will for mankind. He has revealed to all of mankind that man is not to break His commandments, to repent, be holy as He is Holy, etc. Yet, while it is His revealed will, man has free choice to disobey and the first disobedience was in the Garden of Eden. Man will be held accountable when disobeyed.
God’s perfect will is revealed in the bible. Mankind is able to make choices that are not in His perfect will but this falls under His permissive will as He designed mankind to have free choice. A Christian need not ask God in prayer if he/she should marry someone that is not a Christian. The answer to that question is already revealed in His Word. Yet, the Christian has free choice and can choose to go outside His perfect will. But even that choice outside of His perfect revealed will cannot repress or quell God’s ultimate sovereign will. God’s sovereign plan will always come to fruition exactly as He desires.
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I love it. You’ve harnessed the paradox, like few people ever do.
Hi, thanks for your kind words.
This is interesting. I suppose my caveat would be that our capacity for free choice is, by my understanding of the word, subsumed by God’s sovereign will. It’s not like we can “fall out” of God’s will by doing something wrong or seeking to do something that just falls within some kind of permissive arrangement. God is sovereign over every tiny thing. Ultimately, if you made a good decision, He willed it; if you made a bad decision, He willed it. I want to highlight that word ‘ultimately’ because a.) it’s mostly beyond our knowledge that God is working sovereignly behind all we do and all that is done to us, and b.) I am not denying our freedom to choose, but merely saying that ultimately God is at work behind our choices (whether directly or, in some way, indirectly). Check out Philippians 2:13…I don’t want to angle for a single-verse proof text, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind right now.
Now, with all this talk of God being absolutely sovereign and our choices being subsumed by his and so forth, it kind of sounds like God is condescending us — and, well, he probably is in a sense
. What else could he do? He is the all-wise, all-powerful God and we’re just mere mortals! The fact that he would listen to us, love us, make plans for us…it’s all condescension, but of the kind that expressly reveals his unmatchable glory. In other words, God’s complete sovereignty expresses his glory.
Thank you for your insightful piece. We overlap on lots of things here, but I particularly want to encourage you to continue writing and espectially to seek the living God. Keep going strong!
Hi,
I think that we can fall out of His perfect will but He allows it and that became clear with the first two humans, Adam and Eve. Joseph’s brothers had one thing in mind but God had another. They could not accomplish what they wanted even though they acted according to their free choice. What cannot happen is that we can damage or prevent His decretive will.
Here’s what I think — I don’t believe we can fully comprehend it all. I don’t think mankind is smart enough to comprehend it. I know that I have free choice but He can prevent something that I choose to do and I don’t even know He’s doing that. The course I may have in mind may not be what He wants so circumstances will prevent me from take that course of action. He has His hand in all of His creation but we don’t necessarily see it.
You gave me food for thought. Thanks
Very true that we can’t fully comprehend this! In fact, the Bible really seems to suggest that God is absolutely soveriegn and that we are ‘elected’ and, on the other hand (seemingly), that salvation is contingent on our choice. If we simply say that we have ‘free will’/'free choice’ and that’s it, we run into lots of roadblocks — it means God is no longer sovereign. And conversely if we say everything is utterly fatalistic, then this contravenes some clear Biblical concepts regarding choice. I think Romans 9 actually brings the two together in a beautiful way, however. Check it out!
Even given this, I don’t claim to understand all this stuff. Was actually praying about it this morning as God put this verse in my reading: Job 11:7-8.
What I would say in my current understanding is this…I do believe God is in control of all things, whether directly or indirectly. That’s where we have some overlap I think. Like, you would say he ‘indirectly’ allowed sin to come into the world by virtue of Adam and Eve’s free choice. I might say he ‘directly’ caused sin to come into the world, not because he is some kind of evil God or because I believe in dualism (I don’t), but because it was his plan before all time (Ephesians 1) to redeem his people from sin and unite all things under Christ. He caused sin to enter the world so that we would know his mercy, his love and his utterly high regard for relationship with us. We would not know these things without sin first being existant and then being overcome. A couple of interesting verses that seem to cause problems for the opposite point of view are Isaiah 45:7 and Amos 3:6.
But hey, my understanding is growing and there are lots of questions I have yet to answer. I won’t be able to answer all of them (nor will anyone else
) and that’s quite okay. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing!! — our mandate to reach all peoples with the love of Christ and his message of salvation.
Hi Dan,
I think I know what you are saying but this is where I am not so sure I would agree. I don’t see scripture supporting God directly causing sin to come into the world. In fact, I see Him being so disgusted with sin that He wiped out the entire world (except for Noah and family). I see Him allowing things. I’m just not comfortable with Him directly causing sin for the purpose of showing His mercy.
Blessings to you,
Frankly – and perhaps brutally – I don’t want to use “comfort” as the litmus test for what is true. I want to use God’s word.
Now, God is no doubt disgusted with sin and has set a redemptive plan in place to overcome it. The fulfilment of this plan is Christ, who himself has become all that we need for salvation, satisfaction, truth, life, meaning…everything!
But I find it incredibly unnerving to think that God simply ‘allowed’ sin to sneak into the world. He couldn’tve missed it by accident, since He is all-wise. So that’s that possibility gone. What if He simply permitted it, as you suggest? Once again I’m not so sure. Sin isn’t here just because we chose to disobey, or satan chose to rebel, or whatever. I believe it’s here because God ordained it. And He ordained us to be destroyed by it unless we are buried and raised again with His Son. He himself hates this sin, and ordained us (as new creations) to hate it also. God creating sin is not a matter of Him giving implicit assent to sin, if that’s where your uneasiness lies. It’s actually very much the opposite. God is in complete control — so He put sin in the world for reasons which we can speculate on but never truly understand (that is His wisdom), and He set in motion a plan for us to be redeemed from it. I’m not sure if what I’m saying comes across as completely clear here. But our God who sends disaster and condemns rebels to hell is the same God who heals nations and rescues us from the pit. Do I make sense there?
So it leads to one conclusion, really: satan didn’t create evil, man’s choice didn’t create evil — God did. And He also created the way out of it. That’s His wisdom.
Now, once again, I want to make it abundantly clear that this is my interpretation of things. Let me say it upfront: whether in a partial or total sense, I am wrong. This is God’s marvellously unsearchable work which we’ll be contemplating (and praising him!) for all eternity.
I’m very glad, however, that we can engage in discourse about it in the here-and-now
.
Hi Dan,
God did not kind of just allow sin to sneak into the world. He, who gains no knowledge nor is taken by surprise, knew it would happen. And yes, He permitted it. He permitted it because He made man with the ability to make choices.
I completely disagree that God ordained sin. In our modern day usage of ordain, it means to establish. Using it in that sense, you are saying that God created man without sin, then created sin and established it so that Christ could come in and redeem man which God created sin so that man would fail. In other words, God creates man without sin. He tells them don’t eat of the fruit of the tree of good & evil. In the meantime, He’s establishing the necessary ingredients (sin) so that man is sure to fail. In that case, God created a situation that man could not obey — it’s like setting up a situation for a baby that they will absolutely fail at and then blaming and punishing the baby because he could not heat his own bottle. That’s setting up the baby for certain failure and then punishing the baby with death for failing to do what you commanded even if it’s beyond the baby’s ability.
If you look at the word “ordain” in the biblical sense as can be found in scripture, it is used in a positive sense. Priests in the OT were ordained. It means to institute (in its most basic form). God does not institute sin just so He can redeem man from what He created (sin). Man brought sin into the world all on their own when they disobeyed Him. What kind of a God do we follow if our Father is one who sets us up to die because He created that which will kill us.
Sin is so repulsive to God that He even said He regretted that He created man — and ended up wiping all of them out in the flood except for a select few. If God created sin, He also doomed them and man has no responsibility in what they did because God doomed them. God is not the author nor creator of sin. That is outside of His nature.
Here’s where I think is the problem. Knowing an outcome doesn’t mean you created an outcome. God created man without sin even though He knew they would sin.
God did not ordain the first humans to hate sin. They had no knowledge of sin — that is until AFTER they disobeyed God. There is no scripture that supports that Adam & Eve hated sin. They had no knowledge of it. The only knowledge that they had was they were not supposed to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good & evil.
You said that you’re not so sure sin is here because we disobeyed. Scripture supports the very teaching that sin is here because man disobeyed. That can be found in Genesis.
My uneasiness does not lie in God “giving implicit assent to sin,” as you suggested. I am very uncomfortable with a teaching that God is the creator and author of sin and setting up man so that He will fail for the sole purpose of redeeming some men while the rest are damned. This teaching puts the responsibility of sin on God and not on man. In other words, man is punished for a creation of God.
Sin is defined as a transgression — missing the mark. We did that, not God. God only creates that which is good, He does not create adultery, mass murder, and all the other things that people do.
Thanks for the discussion and your thoughts — I just re-read the first few chapters of Genesis before I answered you so that’s a good thing