Sovereignty and Freedom

The sovereignty of God is a bit of mystery. The amazing thing about it is that God can achieve his purposes without contradicting human freedom. I believe that God sovereignly chose to make us truly free. I also believe that he is sovereignly accomplishes all his purposes.

His wisdom is so great that he can put people together in such away that they freely interact to accomplish his will. He throws in a large dose of influence by the Holy Spirit and his angels. He accomplishes his purposes despite our free will, not by nullifying our freedom.

For example, when God wanted Pharaoh to rescue Joseph from prison, he gave him a dream that he could not resist. Pharaoh did God’s will without God forcing him to do it. I presume that when God wanted Cyrus to invade Babylon, God put the idea in his mind, and being a big shot, Cyrus could not resist the idea.

I can see this pattern working in the way that I became a Christian. I was walking away from God, when a whole lot of things happened that turned me back towards him. This was the Holy Spirit drawing me to him. The pull was strong that it was almost impossible for me to resist. That is the sovereignty of God. Yet at the same time I freely chose to surrender to him. My freedom was not abrogated.

What I did not realise at the time was that before I surrendered to God, I was not free. I was actually a slave of sin. The other thing the Holy Spirit did was to rescue me from the dominion of darkness and bring me to a place where I was free to choose to serve God. I could not have made that choice, if he had not made it possible.

The irony is that we are only truly free when we are submitted to God. When we think we are free from God, we are actually slaves of sin.