Day 2. You Are Not an Accident

Day 2. You Are Not an Accident.

What we believe about God matters, yet what we believe is at best limited by our meager capacity. God is unknowable and without boundaries. Even the ancient Hebrews would not give Him a name because naming by its nature would impose boundaries on an unbounded God. What we believe foremost about God is that He is unknowable. Most would say the following:

• God is Holy—he defines holiness. He is Holy Other. He is the epitome of morality and ethics, the basis of goodness in the universe.


• God is Love—Agape, unselfish, giving. God is the source and definition of all that is good and noble and sacrificing about love.


• God is omnipotent—He possesses the power to create the universe and all there is in it. Beyond that is unknowable, except that God’s power is not without limit. It is limited by His very nature, that of love and holiness. God cannot act immorally or unlovingly.


• God is omnipresent—He is a very personal God. As Jesus showed us, God is available to us in an intimate yet informal way (Abba).


• God is omniscient—His knowledge is without boundaries and unknowable to us. He knows more than we can imagine.

What we believe about God matters. Our limited understandings about God’s unlimited foreknowledge have led to raging theological battles like predestination, determinism and limited atonement. John Wesley adamantly believed with sound Scriptural basis the Christ died for all. His atoning sacrifice was unlimited, it was for all. God’s grace is available to all. That is John 3:16 love.

In His love, God has given us free-will. God created us to be loved by Him and he chose to give us the freedom to love him in return. To predestine our love for him would make us marionettes on a string, and make creation’s love for God a mockery. We must be free to love God or to resist His love. That is our choice and often our brokenness.

Therefore we must accept that even though God has exhaustive and complete foreknowledge, that he does not determine the future.

When we endeavor to write a book like Warren’s, we must accept paradox because we are dealing with a God without boundaries. We have a God who knows all of our lives before we are formed (Psalm 139:16) yet we are charged (Ph 2:12) with working out our own salvation with fear and trembling! The paradox we deal with on day 2 of Warren’s book is that God has a detailed plan for our lives yet we are endowed with free-will. I can live with that.

Warren without a doubt allows us choice (see page 21, top), what he argues is that God has an intentional purpose for our lives. The book in its entirety is about us discovering that eternal purpose and acting to accept it. Accepting it is our response to grace. Acting on it is free-will. From the beginning, it was God’s intention to create us to be loved by Him (that is grace), and we are to love him in return (that is our purpose) however feeble our efforts.

Because our free-will choices are often counter to God’s intentional purpose, I chose in my sermon this week to paraphrase Leslie Weatherhead’s Will of God, that God’s intentional will (purpose) for us is without flaw, but then we live in a broken, sinful world of choice. We live in a world of accidents and catastrophies and disease and deformity. Under those imperfect circumstances, God meets us with His circumstantial will (purpose) that leads to His ultimate purpose which will not be thwarted. (Remember, Christ has overcome the world!)

But there is danger here. If we are to accept free-will, we must accept the fact that we are free to resist grace (The unforgivable sin is resisting the Holy Spirit.). We run that risk if we do not know our purpose!

There is paradox when we hold God’s foreknowledge and our free-will in opposite hands. If John Wesley was comfortable with it, so am I.

Rick

PS. This is by far the longest posting I will make. Day 2 is a difficult reading. Know, however, that you are not an accident. God has a perfect purpose for you!