Reflections on sin and the nature of God

As Dana and I were traveling home from New Mexico and Arizona (which trip I may write about next week), the news came down of a very well-known preacher in evangelical circles being fired from his church for committing adultery. He has been married for forty years, preaching for that long or longer, and rather ironically, had recently preached on sin, temptation, and the need to guard against our flesh.

My heart broke; it always does when I hear something like this. Anyone who takes joy in a man’s fall and the devastation it wreaks on a marriage, a family, and a church is a sick, twisted individual.

The preacher in question (I will call him Bob) is a very prominent Calvinist, sometimes referred to as Reformed Theology. I thoroughly disagree with that belief system—always have. Among other reasons for that disagreement is the way that it makes God responsible for a lot of horrible things, all while denying that it makes God responsible for all of those horrible things. And the fall of this prominent preacher exposed that practice yet again. Another reasonably well-known pastor of Reformed persuasion, debating with a prominent non-Calvinist over what happened, tweeted, “You first have to assume God decreeing (planning) adultery somehow impugns God’s character. Without that assumption, there’s no need to assume the character of God is impugned. And we, too, who affirm the sin of Bob was in fact decreed by God, completely agree that the responsibility of the sin lies in Bob and not God.”

Let that sink in, and try to wrap your mind around it. We are supposed to believe that God plainly and vehemently commanded against anyone, anywhere, ever committing adultery, and that he was so serious about how awful it was that he commanded the death penalty for anyone who did it. We are then supposed to believe that the God who commanded against anyone ever committing adultery has sovereignly decreed every single act of adultery, thereby making it impossible for those adulterers to avoid committing adultery. We are then supposed to believe that the person whom God gave no choice but to commit that adultery is absolutely responsible for doing what he had no choice but to do. We are then supposed to glorify God for the judgment that falls on a person for doing what God gave him no choice but to do. Finally, we are to believe that, in the words of the Reformed tweeter above, God decreeing, planning the very sin he commanded against, making sure that sin happens, does not impugn his character in any way.

Extra Strength Tylenol, please, and make it a double.

This is not an aberration. It took less than five minutes after posting about this online for a Reformed pastor in my area to back up the belief of the tweeter I quoted and then comment, “God ordains whatsoever he wills, and holds those who rebel against him accountable for their sin.” But if you have the slightest ability to think clearly, you have already seen the tractor-trailer-sized hole in his reasoning. How does one write “God ordains whatsoever he wills,” and then one phrase later write the words “those who rebel against him”? Which is it? Does God ordain everything, in which case no one has the ability to rebel against him, or do people rebel against him, in which case he clearly does not ordain everything? No amount of polysyllabic babble can make such a logical absurdity any less absurd; it can only make it eloquent sounding absurdity.

The truth is the sovereign God made a sovereign choice to give mankind a free will. Fifty-nine times in Scripture, he gave man this simple, one-word instruction: “choose.” And that included this choice as found in Joshua 24:15, “Choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”

All of our sin is known by God from before the foundation of time. But not a single one of those sins is decreed by God. Our sin is on us, not him. God does not like sin, God does not tolerate sin, and God certainly does not cause sin. Even in Acts 2:23, a favorite proof text of Calvinism, God determined that Jesus would die on the cross, but he did not decree that those particular men who put him to death make the choice that they made. He simply determined for Jesus to die for our sins and then put him in the place where he knew men would make the choice to do that very thing, as the last half of the verse makes abundantly clear.

And this means that we need to give practical attention to not sinning. This is why Scripture instructs us to make this choice as well, Romans 13:14, “Make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust therefore.” Simply put, refuse to give yourself the opportunity to sin. In the case of Bob, a young preacher in my church asked me why I thought he fell, and my answer was immediate: “Do you know anything at all about his wife?”

He shook his head. Neither he nor I nor anyone else I know knows her name, or what she looks like, or anything about her. I have seen his picture a million times; hers, never. And this is a huge mistake for a preacher. On every social media site I have and on every book I write, the picture is of Dana and me together. We travel together. We work at the church together. I constantly mention her in my messages and in my writings. It is pretty hard to do something stupid when there is not any space between you and your spouse.

I could still fall. So could you. And if any of us do, it will break the heart of the God who neither wanted it to happen nor decreed it to happen. So, let’s all make the right choices.