Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Is it God’s will when people like Charlie Kirk get killed? What is the difference in God’s sovereign will and His moral will? Hey, welcome to Grace in Focus. That’s what we’ll be talking about today, and we are glad that you’re joining us. This is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Find us at faithalone.org. Lots of information there on our website about our Grace in Focus magazine, our free online seminary, and our bookstore where you can find Bob Wilkins’ latest book, The Gospel is Still Under Siege. That’s faithalone.org. Go there today. 

And now with today’s question and answer discussion, here are Bob Wilkin and Sam Marr. 

SAM: All right, Bob, we have a couple questions. Both of them are related to God’s will. And the first question is related to the shooting of Charlie Kirk, but it’s really more of an illustration because we can kind of substitute any heinous sinful act here. But this person’s question is, you’ve seen a lot of people saying after the shooting that the Lord called Charlie home or it was God’s will for him to die a martyr, things like that. Greg is asking, is it correct to say that it was God’s will that Charlie Kirk was killed? And like I said, we could substitute any tragedy, any sin. Is that God’s will? 

BOB: We’ve talked about this on the show before, but it’s the whole question of what is God’s will? There’s a good book by Gary Friesen called Decision Making and the Will of God that I would recommend. And basically what he suggests is there’s no dot out there where God says, you’re supposed to marry this person, you’re supposed to take this job, you’re supposed to have this parking space, you’re supposed to wear this shirt today, you’re supposed to have this pair of glasses, yada, yada, yada. 

No, Friesen’s point is that God gives us in bounds areas and out of bounds areas. So God says, don’t take this kind of job, don’t be a hit man, don’t be a drug dealer, you know, don’t be a prostitute or a pimp. But if you want to be a doctor or if you’d like to be a lawyer or if you’d like to be a trash collector or if you’d like to be an architect or if you wanted to say, mow yards, all of that is within the moral will of God. And Friesen points out that there’s a difference between God’s sovereign will and His moral will. So are you familiar with that, Sam, that distinction? 

SAM: I am somewhat, but it’d be great if you could explain the distinction. 

BOB: Basically, His sovereign will is whatever He allows to happen. He doesn’t cause everything to happen. He didn’t cause Hitler to kill six million Jews and another five million other people. He didn’t cause Stalin to kill upwards of a hundred million people or similarly in China, Mao Tse Tung killed a couple hundred million people. We’re not sure how many he killed. That wasn’t God’s moral will, but that was God’s sovereign will. Whatever God allowed to happen is part of God’s sovereign will. 

So was it God’s sovereign will that Charlie Kirk die or that JFK die? Yes, that was God’s sovereign will, but it was not his moral will. God wishes that none should perish, but all should come to repentance, 2 Peter 3:9, and perish there refers to physically dying prematurely. 

So it wasn’t God’s will that Charlie Kirk be killed from a moral standpoint. But since it happened, God allowed it. Why did Trump get shot in the ear and Charlie Kirk got killed? I don’t know, but God is sovereign and God could have allowed Donald Trump to be killed and he could have allowed Charlie Kirk to get hit in the ear. So why all those things happen, we don’t know. And if we say we know, we’re going beyond Scripture. 

SAM: Yeah, is the book of Job, a good example of this? It was God’s sovereign will that Job was, you know, went through every trial and tribulation, but it wasn’t God inflicting harm or suffering on Job. 

BOB: That’s a good point. And the book of James says God tempts no one. So God allows people to be tempted and Job is a good example of this. Remember in Job 1 and Job 2, Satan comes before God when all of the sons of God, which sons of God there in Job 1 and 2 refers to the angels, they’re coming before the presence of God. Evidently that included Satan and possibly fallen angels as well. And Satan asked for permission first to attack Job. And God gave him permission, but he couldn’t touch Job’s body. He couldn’t touch Job himself. Then secondly, Satan says, well, he hasn’t cursed You yet because You haven’t let me attack him. Let me attack his body. And so God says, okay, you can do that, but don’t kill him. God allowed him to strike him with these very, very painful boils. 

And so yeah, I think Job is an illustration of God’s sovereign will, but notice it had restrictions. In each case, God restricted what He allowed Satan to do. 

SAM: And that book ends with Job and God’s dialogue. He doesn’t end it by saying you’re going to be included in this great book that your going to be read about for thousands of years, so other believers can read your story and they can understand your suffering. He doesn’t tell him any of  that. 

He says, I’m God, you’re little. I’m big. What’s the quote from Matilda? I’m big, you’re small. I’m right. You’re wrong. I’m smart. You’re dumb. He basically just expresses His sovereignty over creation, over the world over Job himself because He made him and he doesn’t explain all of it. We have the blessing of that revelation being explained to us. We have God’s written word, but once we are with the Lord for eternity, so many things that we question now are going to be revealed to us and it’ll make sense why those things happen that way. 

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BOB: There’s an interesting verse in Ezekiel chapter 14 and verse 14. God says through Ezekiel, even if Noah, Job, or Daniel were here, they would only save themselves. They would not save the nation. Job is specifically mentioned by name as one of three people who were righteous enough so that they could save themselves if there was calamity coming. Like, for example, Noah was saved when the flood came, right? And Job is listed along with Daniel. These are three people you wouldn’t necessarily think were the greatest, holiest people in the Old Testament and yet God singles those three out. 

The second person is also asking about the will of God. 

SAM: Yes, the will of God. I’m sure you and Ken have talked about this before, but this lady’s name’s Stephanie, and her question is, was Adam’s voluntary act of personal disobedience in the garden the will of God? So was it God’s will that Adam disobey him, which sounds like an oxymoron, that God willsl that someone do something against His will.

BOB: But that’s actually not wrong. It’s actually right, what you just said, because everything that happens is part of God’s sovereign will. In other words, let’s look at it this way. God could have created Adam in such a way that he had free will, but his free will was restricted to the point where he would never will to sin. In other words, he wouldn’t have chosen to eaten the forbidden fruit and couldn’t have done that because his free will would have excluded a desire to do anything wrong. 

It’s like in the Millennium. We’ll be there, right? We’ll have glorified bodies and we will not sin at all. Now, there will be people who sin in the Millennium because there will be people in natural bodies, but we won’t sin, but yet we won’t be zombies. We’re going to have free will. We’re going to make choices and some of the choices we make will be better than others. They’ll all be good, good, better, best, but it doesn’t mean everything we do is going to be equal. 

In terms of Adam, God created Adam such that he could sin and so that Adam could choose to eat the forbidden fruit. There’s other ways he could have sinned. God told him to tend the garden. He could have refused and said, no, I’m not going to take care of the garden. When He says, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, he could have said, no, I’m not going to have any children. I don’t want any children. That would have been sin too, but he chose to do this. 

And by the way, it’s interesting. It sounds like he was standing right next to Eve when she ate the forbidden fruit. And you have to wonder why he didn’t urge her not to do that. Don’t do that. What are you thinking? Satan’s lying to you. Don’t listen to this serpent. And then she takes it and she gives it to him and he eats. According to Paul in 1 Timothy 2, she was deceived, but Adam wasn’t deceived. So Stephanie’s right. Adam knew what he was doing. And was that God’s will? Yes. Even though it sounds odd, it was God’s will that he do that. 

And that led to the shed blood of Christ. So was it God’s will that His only Son would go through suffering all these kangaroo courts, beating, scourging, having to carry his cross, having to be on the cross for six hours, being mocked at the cross, was all that part of God’s will. Jesus said, “No, get behind me, Satan” because it was God’s will that He go to the cross. His whole life ministry was pointed to the cross. 

And so yes, even the death of the Lord Jesus Christ was in the sovereign will of God. And so because God’s sovereign will allowed Adam to sin, it became God’s sovereign will that the Lord Jesus Christ would suffer and die on the cross for the sins of the world—that he would remove the sin barrier. 

And by the way, I think Stephanie’s a part of Ken’s online zoom class. And so thanks Ken for having that class and Stephanie for being in it. I want to say thanks to Greg and to Stephanie for these questions about the will of God because they are very, very practical. 

So realize God doesn’t keep us to where we’re in a straitjacket and we’re just puppets. God allows us freedom. But our freedom, fortunately, is restricted. We may sin and we do sin, but if we’re walking in fellowship with God and we’re walking in the light, the Holy Spirit is convicting us and He’s transforming us, Romans 12:2. And even if we get out of the will of God in terms of the moral will of God and we’re walking in darkness, even that is limited. At some point, God is going to keep ratcheting up the discipline and He’ll take us home early if we stay out of line. So the good news is God is in control. God is sovereign, even when something terrible like an assassination takes place. 

All right. Well, thanks. And what are we going to do? 

SAM: Keep grace in focus. 

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On our next episode: have our future sins already been forgiven? Please join us and until then, let’s keep grace in focus.