The Sovereignty of God:

His Place and Ours

By Gary Fakhoury

Not long ago I received an email from an uncle of mine complaining about God. As my uncle has grown older he has been thinking more about ultimate questions; life, death, the nature of the universe and what lies beyond.

His question for me was somewhat rambling but essentially boiled down to this: Why doesn’t God have to keep the same rules as everyone else? Why can He kill people and that’s okay? God has killed far more people than Hitler (my uncle says); why is Hitler called “evil” and God is considered so holy? If He’s so holy why can’t He manage to keep his own rules?

I told my uncle that I believe the answer to this question lies in a concept we don’t often hear or think about today: God’s sovereignty. Sovereignty is something of an archaic word now, and we don’t often use it in everyday conversation; but it conveys something critically important about how we view our Creator, and there really isn’t an equivalent word in the English language.

Aside from the word itself, the very concept of sovereignty, as it applies to God, is a bit out of date as well. Sovereigns, we know, are those who wield royal power and prerogatives over a group of subjects; kings and queens and the like. This conjures up visions of feudal times—less enlightened times, we would say, in this egalitarian age of ours.

We moderns prefer our gods warm and cuddly, endlessly forgiving, even indulgent. The idea of an all-powerful potentate ruling the universe with unbridled authority from a mighty throne in Heaven leaves many people—even many Christians—cold.

Yet, there is no escaping the fact that this is the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible, simply by virtue of His having created us and everything we see, indeed the very earth we stand on, has earned the prerogative to rule His creation—including you and me—with complete and unquestioned authority.

This is part of my response to my uncle:

God cannot commit murder because He owns all life; just as when you purchase a television and take it home, it is understood that it is your right to do with that television anything you please, because you own that property and paid for it. You can look at it and enjoy it or smash it with a sledgehammer. It’s yours and it is your right, as owner of that property, to do with it as you please.

So it is with God and His creation, which includes you and me. That’s why applying rules that God gave to humans to God Himself does not always work because God occupies a different position in the universe than we do. He is sovereign; we are not. God can do whatever He cares to do with His creation. We cannot do whatever we care to do with His creation, simply because it isn’t ours to begin with.

Now there are many passages in Scripture which bear on this subject but let me just focus on a couple. First and foremost is, well, the first—Genesis 1:1:

“In the beginning God…”

This passage is so familiar to us it’s easy to miss the implications here. “In the beginning God…” What this means to us is this: before there was anything else, before there was a beginning to what we see and enjoy here on earth, there was God. God was there, before anything was here. And everything here arrived only because He was there.

There are many sermons tied up in just this one phrase, because it sounds the keynote for all of Scripture. Nothing in Scripture makes much sense without this key piece of information: God owns everything.

He owns not only everything we see, but everything we are. That’s why there is such a thing as sin. Sin can only exist because there is someone out there who owns us and therefore possesses the right to expect of us certain ways of behaving. Sin cannot exist without God; it’s an altogether meaningless concept if we are indeed accidental creatures, as some suggest today. Indeed, “If there is no God, everything is permissible.”

I believe there is one book in the Bible which is entirely devoted to the subject of God’s sovereignty: the book of Job. Job is a much misunderstood man, it seems to me, and the book which bears his name is a much misunderstood book as well.

In the beginning of Job, we are offered God’s assessment of Job’s character: “ ‘Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?’ ”

(Job 1:8, NKJV throughout).

So right from the start we know God’s opinion of Job: there is nothing lacking in the man morally; he is, in God’s estimation, “blameless.” No sin or shortcoming can be laid at his door.

Many of us have been taught precisely the opposite; Job was self-righteous, the theory goes, and he needed to be knocked down a peg or two to finally glimpse his moral superiority complex; that is why God allowed all these tragedies to occur to him.

There are only two problems with this idea. The first is that it contradicts God’s own testimony about the man. The second is that viewing the book this way obscures its true meaning.

I believe this common misconception of Job’s self-righteousness is really an attempt to perform theodicy—explaining God’s goodness in light of the existence of evil. Much evil occurred to Job, and since we are uncomfortable with a God who allows such things to happen to good people, we want to believe that somehow Job deserved it. But that’s precisely the point; God says Job didn’t deserve it. When we miss this fact we miss the message of the book.

We begin to see the book’s central idea when we arrive at God’s response to the many days of theorizing and opining offered by Job and his companions. In chapter 38:1-4, God finally speaks:

“ ‘Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now prepare yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer Me. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?’ ”

Nearly the entirety of God’s address to Job is centered upon this theme: Who are you, a created being, to question the actions of Me, the creator? (See also Rom. 9:14-21; 11:33-36)

So we arrive at the main point of the book. If you are the Creator, you possess the prerogative to do or allow whatever you want. If you are created, you possess the prerogative to accept what the Creator has decided to do, or allow.

That’s it.

Ouch. I don’t know about you, but this idea really smarts. I don’t like having my prodigious capacity for questioning God short-circuited like that. I’m a pretty smart guy, I like to think, and an Arab at that—we were born to argue. It’s one the few things we do well (along with baklava, hummus and really really strong coffee).

You mean I lose this right when it comes to God? Do you mean to say, Book of Job, that I can never question anything God does?

Yes, that’s what the book means to say. This hurts because it slices open my pride gland. It exposes me for what I really am—a mere creature of profound limitations. It puts me in my place; a place I prefer to wander from. Compared to other creatures, I am no less than any other, but compared to God—well, there isn’t any comparison to be made.

Where was I when God laid the foundation of the earth? I was nothing. Neither were you.

“Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him? He who rebukes God, let him answer it” (Job 40:2).

We would all be wise to pass on this offer.

Obviously, the things we are speaking of are pregnant with implications for our daily lives as Christians. So often, our faith flags when things don’t go well for us. We lose jobs, we lose our health, our kids rebel despite our best efforts, our churches rebel despite our best efforts. Money always seems tight and many of us are unsatisfied with our marriages and with our place in the world.

Life is hard business, and we Christians carry an extra burden, if you will, because we believe we have a hotline to the Almighty; One who, we are told, loves us dearly. So when things go badly for us, when tragedy strikes, our first inclination is to question Him.

Our better choice, if we heed the wisdom of the Book of Job, is to remind ourselves of who we are and how we got here. We are contingent, dependant beings. Everything we have, and everything we are, has been given to us by God.

Every breath of air we breathe is a gift. Every day we wake up and can see is a gift. Every morsel of food we have ever put in our mouths were gifts. Every morning we can lift ourselves out of our beds, we have been given a gift. Should the day come when we can no longer do this, we can count the many days we were able to do so, and be thankful for them.

When we get to this stage of maturity in our spiritual development, we will have become the faithful, thankful men and women with whom God has always wanted to share eternity. An eternity which will always be ruled by a sovereign God who never makes mistakes, and who has given us everything.