Our purpose in covering this topic?
Hey guys we are just wrapping up our What is Sin? series where we took a look at differing views of what sin is claimed to be in different denominations of the Christian Church.
We mainly dove into the belief system held by prominent Reformed pastors that all sin is predestined by God. We quoted extensively from the worlds leading calvinistic pastor on how his beliefs of Gods Sovereignty leads him to believe God has decreed (done, preformed, authored) every sin that has ever occurred.
Because of a propensity to define Sovereignty (not as the dictionary describes it) but as “Meticulous control over all things” those who hold to a reformed worldview in order to remain consistent must render that everything includes all sins that have ever taken place.
To quote one of leading calvinistic pastors in the world once again “Yes, every horrible thing and every sinful thing is ultimately governed by God.”
We believe this to be false, an affront to God’s character, and worthy of being dismissed immediately upon hearing as a contradiction to the biblical narratives truth claims about who God is.
Why should we reject this teaching?
Ultimately we must reject this teaching because it is not founded within the pages of scripture.
The Devil
In our Thinking Aloud sessions on this topic we took a look at the three main passages that deal with the fall of The Devil, Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28, and Genesis 3.
We pointed out how in each of those passages there was a benevolent action by the Creator to create this spiritual being as something unique and gave him a position above all other created beings, but because of pride by the malevolent actions of his own free will sin was found in him and he was cast from the mountain of God.
Thus God wanted this anointed guardian cherub to remain loyal in the position that God himself appointed him. There is not even a hint in the texts at the possibility of God being responsible nor meticulously controlling this spiritual being to rebel from what he had initially intended for him. This is wholly unfounded in the pages of scripture.
In the end we made the observation that even if we were to suspend our verdict from the lack of scripture evidence and entertained this worldview to be true we would still have another problem. That is that the Chief Adversary to God only becomes loyal and obedient to the meticulous control of Gods decree in this systematic.
The Sovereignty of God defined as meticulous control over all things turns the ultimate rebel against Gods decrees to that of the completely faithful to Gods will and unwavering in his commitment to the most high.
We are ultimately here to critically think over these doctrines and I will leave you to decide if this what the biblical narrative relates to us about spiritual warfare.
Man
We also looked at Romans 1 in light of the belief that God has predestined all sins ever to see if this thought laid behind what St. Pauls was writing in the opening to this beautiful book.
We pointed out that similar to the devil God seemingly showed great benevolence to his creation, making himself known to them and for them to have a possibility to still know who he is. He apparently wants to be known by His creation and left them with out an excuse for not knowing him.
Again we noticed that it was mans who “who suppress the truth by their wickedness… but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened…they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles… Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts… They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen…Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts…Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done…They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”
I don’t think Paul could have been any clearer about who he is holding responsible for the sins of ungodly people. Even though “they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death” is the calvinistic systems claim that God is responsible for predestinating every sin that ever came about with his meticulous control over all things true?
The Bible
Finally we took a look at the uniqueness of the bible. If God truly is responsible for everything and has predetermined “every tiny detail in the universe, such as dust particles in the air and all of our besetting sins” how is the Bible different from every one book that has ever been written.
The Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, The Book Of Mormon, The New World Translation of the Jehovah Witnesses, are all alike under Reformed Theologies definition of Gods Sovereignty. They are all authored by God. The only question that remains is for what purpose? A topic for another day.
Again we reject this to be true and look again at the writings of St. Paul to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 which states:
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
Paul seems to be drawling a clear distinction here to the young pastor Timothy that it is the scriptures that are uniquely sufficient in its ability to accomplish that which is stated. In Pauls mind it is the scriptures alone that we God breathed and there for can have these effects on those who hold them to be true.
The Reformed theologians system reduces the extraordinary nature of the scriptures as being only that which is authored by God, and makes it just as standard as the manuel that was written to instruct you about your car or TV or any other appliance.
If all books are meticulously controlled and authored by God, does it account of what the scriptures itself claim to be true about its origin or for the way it has stood out against the other books authored throughout the ages?
What do we Believe?
We believe that this type of thinking is not warranted in the pages of scripture. The faulty definition of Gods Sovereignty as “meticulous control over all things” presented by the Reformed doctrines does not need to be swallowed hook, line, and sinker.
The Biblical text rejects this notion and upon critically thinking about the logical conclusion to these doctrines we are able to surmise that Gods sovereignty does not mean meticulous control over all thing. Sovereignty in the bible means that God can rule how he pleases, but we must not make the mistake to assume he always wants to meticulously control all things including all of our begotten sins, or any sins at that.
To drive our point home that we are trying to make here, that the Holly God of the Bible is as far removed from sin as the east is from the west, we but only have to quote Jeremiah 19:5 “and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it come into my mind”.
If this was not meticulously controlled by God then the whole system comes crashing down upon itself and a new worldview or at the very least a new definition of Gods Sovereignty is needed.
Check out this short video series on Spiritual beings by our friends over at The Bible Project by clicking here. They are amazing and super helpful to better grasp what we will be covering in this series.