The Bible teaches both the doctrine of God’s sovereignty and also that of man’s responsibility. They are both weighty doctrines which men neglect only at their peril. They are to be received in faith as part of that divine revelation that God has been pleased to give to man for his salvation. Only by the teaching of God the Holy Spirit can we be brought to give our cordial assent to what the Bible teaches about the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man.
To many these doctrines appear contradictory. To the natural mind of man it would appear that if God is absolutely sovereign in His actings, then this leaves no room for responsibility attaching to man. Or, on the other hand, if man is wholly responsible for his acts, then God cannot be absolutely sovereign in His dealings with men. As a consequence, emphasis is placed on one of these doctrines rather than the other. One is stressed, the other is neglected or toned down. In this way the teaching of Scripture is perverted and the truth of God set aside.
In the light of these things, how are we to regard or deal with these seemingly contrary teachings of God’s Word? We are required to accept these doctrines in their entirety without cavilling at them. Faith receives the Word of God as the Word of God i.e. as infallible truth. We are to believe the doctrine of God’s absolute sovereignty and we are to believe the doctrine of man’s responsibility because these doctrines are revealed truth. They are glorious and solemn truths and we are not to mutilate them to our own hurt. We are not to pit them one against another in a rationalistic way so as to evacuate one or other of them of all or part of their meaning.
But how, you will say, are we to reconcile them? God does not ask to reconcile them but to believe them. Has God stated them? Then that should be enough for us. We are not to assume that what appears irreconcilable to the mind of man is so also to the divine mind. There is no confusion with God, nor any contradiction in the teachings of His Word.
The teachings of the Bible concerning the sovereignty of God is a revelation of one aspect of the glory of God and one fitted to lay the sinner low in the dust before God. Once the sinner sees that God is a sovereign Lord, that soul will see that only by an act of the free favour of God can he be delivered from everlasting death. It is this that brings the sinner to the mercy seat to intreat the favour of God.
The teaching of the Bible concerning man’s responsibility, when it is borne home upon the conscience of the sinner by divine power, leaves the sinner without excuse. Responsibility and accountability are bound up together, and the judgment seat of Christ stares the sinner in the face. But what of man’s inability? Does not this have some mitigating effect upon man’s responsibility? In no way, for the sinner sees his inability only as an aggravation of his offence. Self-inflicted inability is culpable inability. The sinner consequently is closed in to condemnation for his sin — sin that is inexcusable.
These two doctrines of God’s Word — God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility — are both necessary in their own place in bringing poor sinners down to the dust of self-abasement and self-abhorrence before the majesty of a sovereign Lord. It is these teachings that will bring sinners to abandon all schemes of self-help and close sinners into that only way of deliverance — the way that the infinite wisdom of a sovereign God who holds man responsible has devised — that is, the way through a crucified, risen and exalted Saviour. The end result will be that man will take all the shame to himself, and give all the glory of His salvation to the Lord Jesus Christ.
There is no legitimate ground in the doctrine of predestination, or in any other doctrine taught in Scripture, why any man should despair, — should renounce all hope of salvation, — should act as if his condemnation were unchangeably determined, and on this account should refuse to comply with the offers and invitations of the gospel.
Wm. Cunningham