Is God really in control?

To say that God is sovereign is to say that He is the supreme Lord over all creation; that He is absolutely free and independent, working His will without resistence or reprisal. Whatever He wills will come to pass, whether on earth on in heaven. Though some have attempted to usurp Him, every creature on earth will eventually bow before His sovereignty. He is unrivalled in majesty, unlimited in power, and unaffected by anything otuside of Himself. Yet how do we reconcile the truth that God is an absolutely free being with the idea that man has free will as well?

Having determined to create humanity in His own image, God of necessity had to endow man with freedom, for God Himself is free. Yet being a creature and not creator, man is naturally subordinate to the creator God. So man the creature has limited freedom while God the creator is absolutely free and independent. To see these truths work in coordination we go back to the Garden of Eden. Having been placed in paradise, Adam was given maximum liberty and limited prohibition. God instructed him, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die" (Genesis 2:16-17). Help yourself to the fruit of the trees of the garden, but not of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The choice itself represents the fact of man's freedom, but the consequences that would result speaks of the limitation of that freedom.

God sovereignly placed man in the garden as a conditional being, with limited free will. And regardless of how man exercies his freedom, God's sovereign purpose will be achieved. In his classic work, The Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer offers an illustration of God's absolute freedom verses man's conditional freedom. He writes.

"An ocean liner leaves New York bound for Liverpool. Its destination has been determined by proper authorities. Nothing can change it...On board the liner are several scores of passengers. These are not in chains, neither are their activities determined for them by decree. They are completely free to move about as they will. They eat, sleep, play, lounge about on the deck, read, talk, altogether as they please; but all the while the great liner is carrying them steadily toward a predetermined port. Both freedom and sovereignty are present here and they do not contradict each other."

Human freedom is set by and based on the sovereign decrees of the only absolutely independent being in the universe. Man is free to make choices, but not free to evade the consequences of his choosing. Within the sovereignty-freewill dynamic, God allows humanity to choose the salvation He offers through His Son. To accept Him in faith is to receive everlasting life; to reject Him in unbelief is to receive everlasting death. If you have not chosen Him, may you do so today.