The Sovereignty of God (Benton)
by Terry Wane Benton
I recently saw someone suggest that Calvinists would change John 3:19 to read: "And this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, but I sovereignly chose not to regenerate them, so they had no choice but to love darkness instead."
This would need to be the reading if the doctrine of Calvinism and its spin on God’s “sovereignty” were true. Their take on God’s sovereignty is that God rules every moment and every thought and action, and therefore, if any are lost forever or saved forever, it will be because God ruled and made it happen that way. The word “sovereign” means ultimate authority with no higher power above it. God has ultimate authority, which includes the authority to give us certain powers of choice, and we can never be as high or higher in authority than God.
Even when we exercise choice, or think we did, God has the power to manage and direct that choice and still accomplish His will. In the case of evil, He can overrule it by destroying an evil city like Sodom and Gomorrah so that the evil those people choose will not overrule God’s greater plan. If He sees that the world is becoming so evil that it needs to be destroyed by a flood to manage His promised plan to bring a “seed” into the world and thereby to give a blessing to the cursed world, a blessing to reverse the power of sin and death on those who choose life over death, it is accomplished because He is sovereign. Evil will never be victorious over God. In the end, God ultimately wins over evil.
God sets before us life and death and urges us to “choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). Therefore, we really have a choice, the power to choose either life or death. If we choose death, that does not overrule God's sovereignty. It just means that we choose death and suffer the consequences of our choice. God has a right to set up the world however He sees fit. If He wants to give us freedom to make our own choice, He has the sovereign right to set it up that way.
Joseph had some brothers who chose to hate Joseph and sell him into slavery in Egypt. They “meant it for evil,” but their choice did not interfere with God’s sovereignty. He still had the power to turn their evil intentions into something good for Joseph and the world. Joseph understood the sovereignty of God and said to his brothers, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20) to save many people alive. God is never overruled in His plan just because humans have free will to make evil plans.
If sovereignty means that God has to program every thought and action in every human, to have control, then why would He ever grieve at how He programmed us? It grieves God when we choose evil, but He would never grieve that we did what He programmed us to do. See the many passages that speak of “grieving” the Spirit.
In the tenets of Calvinism as expressed in such creeds as the Westminster Confession of Faith, God has preordained “whatever comes to pass.” If someone is not regenerated, it is because God did not want that person to be saved. People cannot choose to adopt the things that would initiate a new direction and a new heart. It all has to be God’s reprogramming of the thoughts and intentions He previously programmed. We have no choice but to love the darkness unless God arbitrarily chose us to be among the fortunate divine selections. In this case, the blame that “men loved darkness rather than light” becomes the fault of no man, since he cannot do other than what he was designed to do. The false spin on sovereignty can only mean that “I (God) sovereignly chose not to regenerate them, so they had no choice but to love darkness instead.” Many modern Calvinists will insist this is not what they believe, but they are simply refusing to accept the logical consequences of their doctrine. Under their spin on God’s sovereignty, I really had no choice in writing what I wrote! You had no choice but to read it and respond positively or negatively. Think about it! I have no choice but to reject such thinking!
