The No Kool Aid Zone

Confusing the “Will of God”

Posted by Byron January 29, 2006 at 10:20 pm
Filed Under Life as a Jesus-follower | 1 Comment |

The End of the Spear/Chad Allen controversy has produced, by a factor of five, the most comments on any one post I’ve ever posted. What’s bad for the body of Christ is apparently good for my blog…hmmm. At any rate, one of the issues that has surfaced has been what is in my judgment a significant confusing of the term “the will of God.” I’m writing this post to try to set the record/understanding straight.

First of all, I’ll lay my cards on the table: I do not believe that there exists an “individual will of God” for each person’s life. Mention this to some, and they’ll treat you as if you’ve just denied the deity of Jesus. I’ll refer those individuals to the excellent book Decision Making and the Will of God, by Garry Friesen, a book I’ve recommended before. Friesen takes the position that the popular teaching that God has an “individual will” for each person’s life, a will that is found by extra-Biblical means (inner impressions, “hearing the voice of God”, etc.) cannot be substantiated Biblically. I concur with his analysis; I’m not going to argue that here, but merely refer you to the excellent book.

What I do want to talk about is the confusion people seem to have regarding the difference between God’s sovereign will and His moral will. Here’s how the confusion (conflation, actually) comes out: “God’s ways are higher than our ways. If Chad Allen is in this film, it’s because it’s God’s will that he be there.” And the answer to that is, “yes”, and “maybe, but very possibly not”—depending upon what you mean when you use the term “the will of God.” Here’s the deal (courtesy of Friesen, but pretty hard to argue—maybe unlike his take on the “individual will”): God’s sovereign will—sometimes called His “permissive will”—involves anything that He allows to happen. We can say that 9/11 and the Holocaust were “God’s will”—if we are talking about His sovereign will. We can say that the world exploding yesterday is not according to His sovereign will. What happens, then, regardless of what it is, is allowed by God: the good, the bad, the ugly, Charles Schumer, the designated hitter, etc.

God’s moral will, on the other hand, is revealed in the Bible, and involves God’s will from the standpoint of right and wrong in human behavior. It is never God’s will for two people to live together in sexual union apart from marriage. It is always God’s will that we pray without ceasing. What we are talking about in this sense of “God’s will” is the difference between good and evil. God’s sovereign will is never thwarted; His moral will is thwarted regularly and in ever-more-creative ways, it would seem, all the time.

Back to Chad Allen and EOTS: was “God’s will” done? Sovereignly, of course, because it always is: God knew before the beginning of time that Chad would be cast in this role. Morally? This is where the debate lies; I argue that His moral will was violated; others take the opposite position. That’s fine; that’s what honest debate is all about. But to conflate the two, the moral with the sovereign will of God, into this massive lumpy term “the will of God” is to wind up in a no-man’s-land, an untenable, impossible position, because to wind up here is to wind up in a world in which there is no such thing as right and wrong—a position that no person on the planet can take (well, except for maybe Brian McLaren—cheap shot!!! Love ya, Brian, you wonderful, confused little balding dude!).

So next time you talk about “the will of God”, remember that clarifying terms is quite important, and remember the difference between God’s sovereign will and His moral will.