God's Unsearchable Sovereignty

Sovereignty. The dictionary defines it as the “freedom from outside interference and the right to self-government”. Now of course that refers to earthly nations and rulers and is completely limited in its scope, limited by the mind of man and the measurable operations in this world. But the sovereignty about which I will be dealing is the sovereignty of Almighty God, an eternal and complete sovereignty that is separate from any and all examples of what we consider sovereignty upon this three dimensional planet called earth. It is basically defined as God does whatever He pleases without any consultation from any outside sources. He sees all, knows all, does all, directs all, and the greater revelation about sovereignty is beyond human definition and understanding, it will always remain within the Godhead. God is all in all forever.

So against the backdrop of that disclaimer I write as a dog scratching at a door but without the means to turn the knob and enter. Whatever we can glean about God’s sovereignty will be as a gracious revelation of the Spirit and surely not by getting our heads together and by compilation figure God out. The glory of God’s sovereign essence resides not within the cerebral kindergarten of man, neither can it be discerned by the mental apparatus affected by the residual disobedience of one called Adam, no, it is a mystery of the Spirit and God condescends to let us feed off the crumbs that fall from His sovereign table. But He beckons us to “come” and with only that in a whisper we press toward the knowledge of the Most High.

How sovereign is God? I fear every description is in and of itself a limitation. The entire treatise of God’s sovereignty is an exercise of apples and oranges by men and women who have an incomplete knowledge of those fruits much less the One represented in that comparison. God is august and sovereign, needing nothing and being everything. Creation is a major expression of His glory to us and just a manifested word to Him. We labor, He speaks. Ours bring thorns, His brings forth the universe. We sweat, He rules. We think, He knows. We reach up, He bends down. God’s sovereignty exists infinitely above all the possibilities that we can present as serotonin puzzles to us but foolishness to Him. Our wisdom, a tongue in cheek satire, is His foolishness. So please open up your confined definition of any parameters that you have come to terms with about the Sovereignty of God, your mind is just a drag on the majestic reality.

God can and does whatever pleases Him. If it pleased God not to create anything the answer would be sovereignty. When people tell you the reason God created they are incomplete at best and wrong for sure. In so many ways describing God and His reasons for most things remind me of Rogers and Hammerstein’s words,

“Who can explain it, who can tell you why, fools give you answers, wise men never try”.

So that means if God so desired He could create everything as His own personal reflection of His own glory with all things directed and orchestrated by His own will with no other will allowed to interfere either directly or even as an apparent alternative. And avoiding having to incorporate any or all the events into His perfect will, all things could have been just for His own pleasure with no interwoven story and with every atom’s movement scripted and empowered by Him and Him alone. His sovereignty surely could have accomplished that if He so desired.

God could have created the universe and all the inhabitants completely apart from Him and His interference and free to go its own way eternally. He could have abandoned it and just observed all the goings on here as an amusement or curiosity. We would be left to our own devices without even the opportunity for the Creator’s help and wisdom, and maybe even the knowledge of a Creator, and if God so desired He could have accomplished it that way. Adrift in the waves of our own sin and hopelessness, and God if He so desired could have effected the story of creation in exactly that way. God answers to no one and is not under any responsibility to give an account for anything. He is God, and that generic name only applies to the One true God, YHWH.

And so God could have created a reflection of Himself, ever so diminutive in comparison, but tiny points of life that speak of Him individually and collectively. The shadow of His image inherent in each and every life, and with a gift that both gives this life a choice while still tethered to His immutability and sovereign authority. And perhaps our definition of a "free will" presents a verbal stumbling block which could be removed by a description of man's choice as an intregal part of God's sovereign will while openly embracing the theological tension inherant in that finite view. A colossal mystery to be sure, far beyond the dissecting abilities of the “greatest” theologians who ever lived or who ever will. This sovereign Creator need not be bound by any “systematic” theology especially when it pertains to His workings before the first creative Word, and to insist that one has realized a full and detailed knowledge of God’s orchestrated plan is to reduce one’s credibility and openly reveal a pride that abrogates the very sovereignty that is supposedly espoused.

Oh yes, God is majestically sovereign in ways about which our knowledge is so deficient it cannot even engender knowledgeable questions since we are so completely ignorant about our ignorance. Explain holiness and if you do not stutter you are a pretender. Explain God’s love and your lips are finite deceivers. Explain God’s wrath and you have no template with which to compare. Explain heaven, explain hell, explain Christ’s sufferings, explain the resurrection, and with all these we are blind idiots strutting our limitations as if they themselves were sufficient answers, and yet, we pretend to outline God’s sovereignty as precise as a schoolboy's science project. Masquerading the paraphrases of men as revelations we “explain” the essence of God, handling Him as everyday earthenware without admitting we only have the gracious glimpse we have been afforded by His Spirit of the eternal fine china of His glory.

God’s Unsearchable Sovereignty.

Do we even know what we're looking for?