I recall theologian R.C. Sproul, while teaching on the sovereignty of God admitting that if knew there was one molecule that was outside of God’s control, he would be terrified. It would mean that God was not God because there was something operating outside of his influence and power. Now, if God were a despot, then the realization that something was outside of his control would be good news. It would mean that there was hope for revolution, a change of regimes! But as God is a loving, wise, just, and merciful father, the knowledge that he is in absolute and total control brings peace. And it should allow us to say, "God willed," as easily as we say, "God willing."
What would it have sounded like to Philemon when Paul suggested that the thievery and flight of his slave, Onesimus, happened as part of some divine plan so that he might be received back by Philemon not as a slave but as a beloved brother? (Cf. Philemon 15-16) His initial evaluation might have been, “NONSENSE!!” But this dance of human will and divine will that Paul alluded to is, in part, what we considered in our church this past Sunday under the term "providence."
Though hard to mentally
grasp, we are to know that all of God’s creation is enveloped in his will. All
that comes to pass, therefore, is never due to chance, fate, or some other
impersonal force. Rather, in the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, God’s
ever-present power “rules in such a way that leaves and grass, rain and drought,
fruitful and unfruitful years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and
poverty, and everything else, come to us not by chance but by his fatherly
hand” (Question 27). If this is true, then even the sin of Onesimus is
encompassed within the over-arching will of God. This does not alleviate the
sinner of his responsibility, but it does mean that no matter what transpires,
God’s will, which is always good, will be done.
Paul’s soaring language in
Romans 8 resonates with confidence in divine providence. I urge you to read it,
mediate upon it, pray over it, so that you might affirm with him that
nothing “in all creation, will be able to separate [you] from the love of God
in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
