“For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to Whom be glory for ever. Amen” (Romans 11:36).
The line of sovereignty runs through that great section of the Epistle to the Romans—chapters 9-11. Like a golden thread it is woven in and out of the teaching of that section. It closes with the magnificent verse quoted at the head of this paper.
God’s sovereignty needs no proving. “Of Him … are all things.” There is but one God, supreme and alone. Nothing exists or could exist, but what came into existence “through Him.” If He were alone, the only will in the universe, then He could only act in sovereignty. For sovereignty means power to exercise will without reference to any.
That being so our intuitive knowledge of God forbids our believing that His sovereignty was ever exercised save in goodness and beneficence, and, since sin entered the universe, in grace and mercy. The hyper-Calvinist, who believes intensely in election drops into the serious error that God elects men and women to be damned, surely a grave insult to the character of God.
There have been autocrats on earth, who were able to do what they liked, as it is said of Nebuchadnezzar, “Whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept alive; and whom he would he set up; and whom he would he put down” (Dan. 5:19). It depended on the character of the despot whether he was just, humane and good, or a vile monster like Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned.
The writer had a very great friend, who was all kindness, and also very autocratic, and liked nothing better than to order those around him in all details. One day he said to him, “Mr X—., you are an autocrat, and you would be absolutely unbearable if you were not a benevolent autocrat.”
We can say with all reverence that God is a Benevolent Autocrat, intensely just, a God of infinite love.
That God never exercises His sovereignty save on the side of “grace and truth” is true. In Romans 9 22 we read that God endures “with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction.” Here is goodness enduring to long-suffering. But the vessels fit themselves to destruction. God does not do this. “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself” (Hos. 13:9).
But the next verse tells us God makes known “the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had afore prepared to glory.” Note God prepares “the vessels of mercy” to glory. “The vessels of wrath” prepare themselves to destruction. God in His divine nature of light and love cannot do otherwise than exercise His sovereign will in blessing man. To do otherwise might suit a Nero or a Nebuchadnezzar, but not the God of the Bible.
Many Christians find it difficult to believe in God’s sovereignty in the New Birth. Perhaps a little consideration how we are closely beset by sovereignty will help.
Take our first birth. We were passive in that matter. The process by which we come into the world is ordained of God. That is sovereignty. Yet we do not kick against the sovereignty of our first birth into this world. Why kick against God’s sovereignty in the second birth? The new birth is like the gardener preparing the soil, and then dropping the seed in, so God prepares the sod of our hearts and the good seed of the word germinates. “Of His own will”, not ours, “begat He us with the word of truth” (James 1:18).
“Being born again not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides for ever” (1 Peter 1:23). “Which [believers] were born”—antecedently—“Not of blood”—not because you are the child of Christian parents—“Nor of the will of the flesh”—not because man can encompass it by training or ritual—“Nor of the will of man”—man cannot bring it about—“But of God”—by God’s gracious sovereign act.
We may surely thank God this is so. If it were otherwise none would be blessed. If there were no sovereignty as to the first birth, there would be no human race. If there were no sovereignty as to the second birth, there would be no spiritual race.
“Hath not the potter power over the clay?” (Rom. 9:21). “Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid” (Rom. 9:14). “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen. 18:25) were the brave words of Abraham, which have found a grateful echo in tens of thousands of troubled, bewildered hearts. In that we can rest, though we may not understand.
Responsibility is ours in the sphere in which sovereignty has put us. We believe sovereignty is very far reaching and around us and touching us at every point, and that our responsibility lies within that sphere. For instance God has decreed that we maintain our lives by eating and drinking and taking due rest, and by work. That is sovereignty. My responsibility is to take proper food and rest and work, and thus work out God’s sovereignty.
For instance we read, “Elect [sovereignty] according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the spirit, to obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:2). “Elect” equates sovereignty—“Unto obedience,” to obey as Christ obeyed—the responsibility in that sphere. So we are told to make “your calling and election sure” (2 Peter 1:10), showing that responsibility lies within sovereignty.
The sum of it all lies in the triumphant and profound verse at the head of this article:“For of Him, and through Him, and to Him live all things; to whom be glory for ever. Amen.”