God's Sovereignty & Human Responsibility

In my Sunday School class on Prayer this Lord's Day (4/9/06), we discussed the phrase in the Model prayer, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. (I am leading the class in a verse by verse study of the model prayer Christ gave the disciples in Matt. 6:9-13.) The question becomes is God's will inevitable? Why should we pray for God's will to be done if He is sovereign? This is where the discussion began in class. In short this boils down to the issue of sovereignty and free will. Some individuals try to set this question as “is God sovereign OR do humans have free will?”

The simple answer is that the Bible teaches both. God is sovereign over all things and he has allowed humans to have the freedom to choose good or evil, obedience or disobedience. In Isaiah 14:24, 26-27 we see God is sovereign and His plan for the universe, Satan and sin will come about.
24 The LORD Almighty has sworn,
"Surely, as I have planned, so it will be,
and as I have purposed, so it will stand.
26 This is the plan determined for the whole world;
this is the hand stretched out over all nations.
27 For the LORD Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him?
His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?

This is clearly a biblical mandate for God's sovereignty. At the same time we see passages like Matt 4:17, From that time on Jesus began to preach, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near. This shows an expectation on Christ part that individuals would choose to abandon disobedience and follow God’s laws. In our human logic we see God’s sovereignty and human responsibility as two irreconcilable ideas. However, they are two biblical truths we do not comprehend. In a recent article on Calvinism Dr. Daniel Akin articulated it this way. Is there a tension here? Yes. Is there divine mystery? Absolutely! Many believe this is what Paul felt when, at the end of his magnificent treatment of this subject in Romans 9-11, he concludes with a doxology of praise and says, Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments and untraceable His ways (Romans 11:33). If you find it a challenge to fathom the depths of this doctrine then you are in good company!

In this same article Dr. Akin quotes Charles Spurgeon on the subject of God’s Sovereignty and human responsibility.
"I see in one place, God presiding over all in providence; and yet I see and I cannot help seeing, that man acts as he pleases, and that God has left his actions to his own will, in a great measure. Now, if I were to declare that man was so free to act, that there was no precedence of God over his actions, I should be driven very near to Atheism; and if, on the other hand, I declare that God so overrules all things, as that man is not free enough to be responsible, I am driven at once into Antinomianism or fatalism. That God predestines, and that man is responsible, are two things that few can see. They are believed to be inconsistent and contradictory; but they are not. It is just the fault of our weak judgment. Two truths cannot be contradictory to each other. If, then, I find taught in one place that everything is fore-ordained, that is true; and if I find in another place that man is responsible for all his actions, that is true; and it is my folly that leads me to imagine that two truths can ever contradict each other. These two truths, I do not believe, can ever be welded into one upon any human anvil, but one they shall be in eternity: they are two lines that are so nearly parallel, that the mind that shall pursue them farthest, will never discover that they converge; but they do converge, and they will meet somewhere in eternity, close to the throne of God, whence all truth doth spring.... You ask me to reconcile the two. I answer, they do not want any reconcilement; I never tried to reconcile them to myself, because I could never see a discrepancy.... Both are true; no two truths can be inconsistent with each other; and what you have to do is to believe them both."

I am with Spurgeon on this.

Dr. Akin’s full article can be found at the site below.
http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=22970