W W W W  World Wide Web Witness Inc.  Home Page  Contents Page What is New

Now the Highway,

Then the Heights

Chapter Seven

The  Glorious Liberty within the Astonishing Sovereignty

Sovereignty and Mutuality

It is not at all a matter of bending the will to meaningless surrender to the mighty power of an unknown God. Take the apostolicl parallel for example (Ephesians 5). Marriage for a woman, on biblical lines, is not like that either. What is often forgotten is this, that it is a two-edged sword, this obligation, and a doubly faceted jewel, if you prefer the symbol in the glowing of light.

NOT ONLY does the man have the final power of domestic decision within scriptural bounds, under Christ who is the operative Head, something which never elevates a bounder to a dictator, but the WOMAN is to be treated as one to whom the love parallel to that of Christ for the Church, is to be shown. To isolate the one may be a traditional mode for some, whether in thought or in deed; but in neither does it relate to the Bible. Like a dance, it is not only mutual, but holds the power to be beautiful. Without the Spirit of God, through the appointed Way, which is the Lord Jesus Christ, such a grace is likely to run foul in pretence, pretension, dictation, whining, wheedling, blatant bargaining, rash tempers, tantrums, abuse, indifference, coldness or mere formalistic social mutuality.

The reality of which these are the misguided outcomes, like a jewel, is ONE with many facets. They cohere to make the unity.

Actually, when you KNOW God, there is this same mutuality, but it has no limit. That is to say, the grace on His part is ALWAYS assured, and the love, just as on one's own part, the obedience is towards the infinite wisdom of God. It needs trial and testing, lest anyone be misled, by the filter of the Bible, which is the word of the living God, the standing instructions. Once, however, it is established that what is to be done is both biblical pure and dynamically applied in one's life, then it is not at all MERE sovereignty which applies. It may SEEM so, as for Jonah, when it appeared quite impossible that he should go as a last gasp missionary to Nineveh, a great city which was near to being the world capital of power and arrogance, if not indeed, cruelty and intemperance.

Unwilling ? That is when faith begins to collapse, or go on a holiday. You might as well try to go on a holiday in this land, in driving, just for a little bit, on the right hand side of the road. It does not work, and fouling things up in this manner is just as foolish, and the results of such folly can be even greater. This however is the domain of grating, not love, of reaction, not response.

When one knows the Lord, and His character and worships not items such as the vast statues of the Kims, but the sovereign who MADE the universe and deployed its powers by legal means, as is so well shown for example in astrophysicist, Dr Jason Lisle's Taking Back Astronomy: it is then that the case has unique features. After all, when this is in place, then you are dealing directly with the One who, having made man, gave him scope for fellowship, and then this being blasted by unbelief in the absorption by man and woman of  the lie from Satan, gave him redemption. This was available to all (Genesis 4:6-7), but applicable on an individual basis.

Even in the Garden of Initial Deposition of Man (GIDOM), the salvation to be accomplished was outlined (Genesis 3:15), and sacrifice became obligatory in principle. When it became known in essence, WHO would be sacrificed and under WHAT conditions and with WHICH payment and WHY as in Romans 1, 3, 5, 8, then the love in its SELF-SACRIFICIAL INTENSITY (SSI), became not an obligation but an exhibition on the part of God Himself. Of this, we have seen elements in Ch. 6 above.

Now it is privilege and joy, a matter of keen anticipation as when a hunting dog perceives relevant action on the part of his master, and bounding about, races towards the fray. WHAT now is to come, where is the action, what is its nature, what does the Master have in mind, and in what way will His magnificence of nature be experienced, shown and worked out in practice THIS day ? There is an expectation based on His authority (it is no use trying to act as a counsellor to God, whether on one's own part, or as a delusive representative of men, customary with false prophets, and deplored by Paul the apostle (Galatians 1:6-10, esp.  v. 10).

It is not that God does not listen (as He did to Daniel as in Daniel 10, or Moses in 32:32 - 33:23. There are times when one may feel inclined to take a severe course without adequate depth and self-control, discernment and patience, and in such a case the Lord may try the heart, so that as with Moses, it cries out, and He hears, so that this spiritual probe proving satisfactory, then the messenger is ready to act! God is very deep, and has His own ways. It is this which is so delightful. One may indeed feel like a foolish beast at times (Psalm 73:22), before Him, so great is His wisdom and understanding, and so readily may one become superficial or unaware of deep or broad elements of what one must face. Yet He does not disdain, and the more one needs, the more He feeds as in John 10, and the more one is ignorant, the more He teaches as in Jonah 4.

This is where mystery is marvellous, and lends depth to delight

Sovereignty and Task Selection

Looking past the personal aspect in the disciple however, let us consider the divine input. Here is the sovereign with tenderness, the ruler with love, the King with compassion. He does not lack the majesty, but He DOES lack the petty authority and self-will of some of this earth's mighty. As He looks at men, He may choose a David, this choice being a deep feature of His self-revelation to Samuel the prophet, as God aided him to choose the one to be king (I Samuel 16:7-13). He may choose a Noah and his family, as in the prlude to the flood (Genesis 6:6ff.), or engage a Daniel for the humiliating fixture of the exile for 70 years , giving him a deeply subordinate place at the outset, one apparently meshed in the shocking culture of the foreign land which had spoiled his own, only after a time, to place him, like Joseph, like Esther, in a position of great authority where INTEGRITY of heart and spirit led to OPPORTUNITY to glorify God and deliver his people from submergence. In fact, in the case of Daniel, it also led to great acknowledgement by King Nebuchadnezzar of the glory of the unique and actual God above all gods, the Lord (Daniel 4).

Indeed, it is from this Daniel, sent off initially from a humiliated land to the apparent servility of being a wise man cadet in a foreign culture, and intent when there on obeying ALL that God had demanded, whatever the result, that there came such a focus on the God of creation and redemption, IN that land, that it doubtless aided the resolve of Persian King Cyrus in his day. To what then would it encourage him ? it would be to make his grand gesture of authorising the return of Israel to its land, thus duly leading on to the return to Israel of temple objects, in a great restoration!

The testimony throughout several reigns in day of Babylon, and Persia. In these, Daniel participated, and was greatly maintained, this resulting from the divine aid to him, and the attendant fortitude and faithfulness he showed (the opposite or current compromise made by many churches, both with toleration of false scientism and false political pollution of truth in educational spheres).

WHOM God chooses and for what is always a fascinating element; for His wisdom and love are far deeper than any plan of the devil, ambition of the heart or nostrum of the human mind. It is therefore an exhilarating thing to serve Him, knowing His authority is merely one aspect of the love of His heart, the wisdom of His mind and the expectations of His knowledge. Children who love their parents may find something of this as the excellent parental plans unfold.

Thus, there is a parallel. Just as God freely CHOOSES in divine infinity, that man will be made with the power to resist the Holy Spirit as Stephen indicated in no uncertain terms (Acts 7:51-52), and to act to the uttermost, if so desired, in capricious cruelty, as now practised by so many governments on this poor and afflicted world, at times seeming almost to have for its main fuel, simple self-will: so there is another aspect. What is this one ? God equally freely selects another aspect of His sovereign desire. Just as that was for liberty for man, giving love meaning and life definition, so His unfathomable wisdom gives appointments of believer or unbeliever, of Daniel or Cyrus (the latter not actually personally knowing God as in Isaiah 45:4). For all that, God appointed Cyrus to act over a century after Isaiah's prophecy, and declared what would be done. Precisely as declared, so it came to be. Similarly Ezra and Nehemiah were appointed to lead the restoration of Israel.

In the days of the Judges,the Lord also appointed this or that one. The appointments did not always mean sanctity thereafter, for God is not limited to man's ideas of what works, having far deeper missions and tests, gifts of far better opportunities and far more rigorous deployments, searching all, allowing mere superficiality to rule in its pretension, or not a all.

Those, therefore, who like to stress God's uttermost sovereignty, are not at all, in this facet and phase, wrong. It is only when they make what is virtually a new god by removing the choices that He has made as to what to make in terms of man, and with what gifts to endue him, and with what results, with what Gospel, in what conditions, with which opportunities, that the very word becomes like a bird of prey. God does not CHOOSE authoritatively to be a mysterious operator, unknown to man, unreachable, merely showing love as He prefers for what He prefers^*1. He is in constant in emphatic denial of such parameters. The confusion is so often made between His oversight of what is to become of each soul, a due and true sovereignty, and the principle on which the results of such oversight are based, that it becomes almost like hearing a monotonous chant from some monastery of old.

God BY His oversight ensures that the liberty for man, however spoiled and soiled by adventures and adventitious absorptions, is maintained as to its results, having foreknown with His stated and unchanging bases, for God does not change,  before sin took its toll, and rendered so much in man's spirit, so dysfunctional. The PRINCIPLE is as stated in John 3:19, the desire as in Colossians 1:19ff., and the result as in John 3:36. God would have all, selected before sin did, which has afflicted all, and superintends the outcome when the time comes.

Sovereignty and Liberty

Liberty and initiative in man are greatly to be desired, these parallel virtues being wonders that rebuke pride in man continually. God preserves this reality, and while man loses full power to operate toward God in himself at this level (John 1:12), God does not lose ANY power to effect what with HIS OWN principles (as in John 3:19), He foreknew. It is never wise to leave God out, in dealing with the relationship between God and man! or for that matter, ANY PART of His word, let alone its whole texture of expression.

Man can, through his own dowered inventiveness,  by marvellous works make superficial simulations of freedom, using various input modes of HIS OWN wisdom, and desire, and planning, in constructing for example, a robot. Yet however much man chooses to make this and that consultable criterion available for his robots, as they work in the field; yet he cannot at all make that liberty which has will at the personal level.

All his provisions, however indirect, and based on whichever considerations, are HIS OWN. He merely constructs a savvy slave, or a multiply or indirectly manipulable resultant. This is simple: it is because though man has a spirit, which wills, supervises, chooses, contends, rejects, is courageous, outrageous or asinine, in this domain he has no power to create. GOD is Himself a Spirit, and father of spirits. Making persons is wholly beyond man. Indeed, restoring persons to the privilege of divine peace is also wholly beyond man, since Godk, the offended party, does not parley with representatives, but gives the Gospel direct (Galatians 1:6-10). 

God constructs a body for a spirit with liberty to experience will and shame for its misuse, to know the point of that will so clearly in his own consciousness, as disposing standards or values or desires in this way and that, he acts. He is perfectly well aware of having done so, and then, very often, of the principles and results of such choices of the heart. The liberty of the will to will, and not merely  to do, to will as it will, is possible only because God has made it so, as one of the penultimates in creation. Only as HE gives to man what is beyond all subjectivity, all minor, subsidiary limits, what can express itself beyond mere specifications within, in a one to one manner, does God make the liberty that can love, or the individuality which has personal meaning.

No one else can do this, since to get beyond oneself, in order to see outside the constructions of one's own soul, is not possible unless there is a place beyond oneself, where this can be done, a perspective above one's natural one, to which one may refer, a purity and competence not limited by merely prejudicial desire, or confusion, or ignorance, or distortion, even unintentional, but composed of truth.

This requires for sin swamped, culture cloistered, mentality crowded man, nothing short of regeneration. Then the natural heritage, once lost, is restored. Found by His own knowledge, are those so to come, founded by His own action, are those freely coming by His call. What then of those who so come to know God, what of such a person ? It is SUCH a person, regenerate with such a spirit, who once redeemed, once purified, once made aware of the entirety of the scope of God's creative gift, can delight in this liberty, being free to assess the case, respond to the mission, present grounds for adjustment in hardship, for receiving help in the impossible seeming aspects, and proceed as a going concern. Being chosen in terms of truth, with the principle of NOT preferring darkness, before time was, man is freely what he would be, summarily made into what he could be, and tested in the life of reality, as he might be, as all things are exposed by the light of truth.

So the Christian, freed and freely loving the Lord, lives in the life of Christ through the presence of the Spirit which brings Him into lively connection (Ephesians 3:16, Romans 5).It is not like John Le Carré's intelligence chief, who being somewhat inscrutable, nevertheless has his own weaknesses and perspective from which issue the orders which ARE TO BE DONE. With God, on the contrary, you KNOW who He is and His nature is plain in the word of God and in His actions as we have reviewed somewhat in the last Chapter of this volume. In this context, you may choose to discuss the work assigned by God to you, plead for its results, ask for apparatus, and seek continual willingness to sacrifice if necessary, never being outwitted by the devil, but if failing, then quickly moving to seek, from the living God, both pardon and peace, to enable progress.

It is a remarkable office, to be under assignment by the living God. It may lead to crucifixion, slander, dismissal by wolves in Church clothing, treachery, and nowadays frequently does. Yet this is all for a deep purpose, and as one abides in the Sender, so one finds the results. One will need patience, as might the vine bound to endure in cold and heat, in tempest and in wind. One must bear when none seems to care. Yet this develops character (Romans 5), and if it shows the love of God to a fresh generation, then so be it (Colossians 1:24): God as always is of discerning depth, and one needs to pray as in John 15:7, to seek the full realisation of His purpose. Liberty really is a delightful thing, and even more so, is that love of the Lord who gave it, and paid to restore man WITH IT; for where the Spirit of Christ is, there is liberty (II Corinthians 3:17).

The sense, then, of grand and infinite depth in the God whom one worships, of His incalculable wisdom, of His wonderful plans and ways of developing what He wants in history, is based on truth. No less, however,  is the certainty and the clarity on which His own DECISIONS have been made, concerning the election of man, those chosen to be His (John 15:16), the scope of His love and the magnitude of the frank and cordial reference of His gift of salvation.

One part is not alone. Sovereignty relates to the Sovereign, and His chosen principles realate to what happens, on what bases selection is made; and as He made man in His image, so man is enabled by God to fulfil the desire of his heart, through divine knowledge which is, God being God, foreknowledge.

ALL of God's character and word and each of His principles is valid. One is not above another. NOT to know God, and to imagine that He is NOT as Christ showed, these errors tend to be joint, and to go together. Even Calvin made a tragic trip in the forbidden land in this regard, despite the excellence of most of his theology. For him, at one point, the Father was deemed to have been at odds with the clear statement of Christ. He invented a way to put this, but put it he did^*1 . This type of error has been characterised in Ch. 6 above, where like a plague, it the more readily comes when the clarity and authority of the word of God, by this or that means, is minimised and the desires of philosophy are so maximised, that outrageous compression or constrictions of what God says, are made.

It is well that we are all humbled, for again and again, this or that theologian makes profound gifts of insight, only to make a mistake along with, in some area. Tolerance is good in some such cases, where the essence of the free Gospel of utter grace is not denied; but acceptance is ALWAYS wrong, for then one merely heightens error and extends division; for this is nothing so binding as the truth, and nothing else solves all the problems of philosophy, and brings the light of God entirely to the mind of man, as does the perspective, the principles and the pronouncements of the word of God: but ALL OF THEM.

The word of God, like the sophisticated construction of a hue airliner to the non-technical, and far more so, since He is infinite, is not for ADJUSTMENT by the canny talk and contrary walk of man, however ostensibly orthodox it may seem. When a contradiction is made, the case is simple. Do not follow it.  At ANY point, be persuaded in your own mind (Roman 14:5); but as to contradicting what is written, hug this to yourself as a baby might hug a boa constrictor. It would be about as wise.

NOTE

*1

See on this and related issues:

Celestial Harmony for the Terrestrial Host Ch. 2,

The Christian Pilgrimage Ch. 3,

Three Anzas, One Answer Ch. 6, ), 

The Glow of Predestinative Power Ch. 4,

Christ's Ineffable Peace Ch. 2,

SMR Appendix B.