Having said this, not all Scripture is as straightforward
as John 3:16 or 1 Corinthians 15:1-4.
Peter makes this very assertion in 2 Peter 3:14-16; “Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be
diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, and
regard the patience of our Lord to be salvation; just as also our
beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also
in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand,
which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their
own destruction.”
Passages such as Romans
9-11, Ephesians 1, and 2 Thessalonians 2 are but a few texts that require greater effort
(2 Tim. 2:15) in order to interpret them properly.
The Bible teaches twin truths
with regards to God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. Both are equally true. The absolute
sovereignty of God does not lessen or eliminate human responsibility and/or human culpability
one iota. Concerning God’s absolute freedom to be God passages of Scripture such as Psalm 115:3 remind us, Our God is in the heavens and he does whatever he pleases. “As our sovereign Lord, He does always as He pleases, only as He pleases, and all that He pleases.”
In reference to this holy
attribute one author writes, “Our God remains
incomprehensible and retains His simplicity. He tells us in His Word that He is
not a God of confusion but of order. He is not at war with Himself. He is
altogether good, altogether holy, and altogether sovereign. This we must affirm
to maintain a biblical concept of divine sovereignty. Yet we must always
balance this understanding with a clear understanding that God always exercises
His power and authority according to His holy character.
He chooses what He
chooses according to His own good pleasure. It is His pleasure that
He does. He chooses what is
pleasing to Himself. But that pleasure is always His good pleasure,
for God is never pleased to will or to do anything that is evil or contrary to
His own goodness.
In this we can rest,
knowing that He wishes for, and has the power to bring about, all good things
for us His children.” Note also
Psalm 103:19; Psalm 66:7; 1 Chronicles 29:12.
