When God’s Ways Are Beyond My Understanding
In one of our family discussions recently, I came face to face with a reality that, in some ways, has been fading from my awareness. One of the questions we asked was: What is one thing you know but struggle to grasp from the Bible?
People shared many different things, and it was fascinating to listen to their thoughts and engage with their struggles. When it was my turn, I mentioned that one of the things I struggle to understand is the relationship between the sovereignty of God and human responsibility, particularly when it comes to salvation.
On the one hand, the Bible calls us to repent and come to the Lord. We are responsible for responding to the gospel. Yet, at the same time, Scripture tells us that God is the one who works in us to bring about our desire and ability to respond to Him. Philippians 2:13 says, “for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”
So where does that leave us? We are called to repent, yet God works in us to will and to act. We are responsible for responding, yet salvation is ultimately the work of God. These truths seem to stand together without one cancelling out the other. It is an antinomy that I struggle with, two truths that I cannot completely reconcile with my limited understanding, yet neither truth needs to be removed for the other to stand.
Perhaps this is part of what it means to recognize that God is God and I am not. That same week, I encountered two very different Christians, and their lives made me think about this question in another way. The first was a Christian who has had a very difficult life. Almost everything she has tried, even when it initially seemed promising, has eventually amounted to very little. She has tried many things, yet somehow nothing seems to come together. At this point, she is essentially surviving.
I could relate to some extent because I know what it feels like for life to be simply hard. There have been moments when I have longed for the Lord to return to make all things right, to put everything in its proper place, and to finally bring an end to the suffering that we experience in this world. There have been days when I have thought, Lord, how long must this go on?
Yet, in that same week, I encountered another Christian whose experience of life has been almost the complete opposite. From school to work, from work to starting a business, things have continued to fall into place. Life has been comfortable, and there has been a measure of success and stability.
Interestingly, this person had begun to recognize a danger in that very comfort. When everything is going well, and there is very little to worry about, it can become easy to settle into this world and forget that there is more to life than what we can see and possess. I was encouraged that this person could recognize that something was not quite right, not because comfort is inherently evil, but because comfort can quietly become a substitute for longing for God. These two Christians had very different experiences. One was struggling simply to survive, while the other was struggling with the dangers that can come with having almost everything go well. And it made me think again about the sovereignty of God.
During our discussion, someone raised another difficult question: How do we understand the fact that God seems to give some people much more than others, while others have very little? This question becomes even more difficult when we look at the lives of believers around the world. Think about a Christian living a comfortable life in a place where they are free to worship openly, compared with another Christian who has to worship in secret because their faith could cost them their freedom, or even their life.
One has abundance and freedom. Another has very little and lives under constant threat. Yet both belong to Christ. What do we do with that? Surely, the Lord is God, and His ways are far beyond our ability to fully understand. Paul writes: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Romans 11:33)
There is something humbling about admitting that we cannot always explain why God gives what He gives, to whom He gives it, or why He allows one person to walk through a particular kind of suffering while another experiences a very different life. Recently, I had also been reading the parable of the sower in Luke 8. The same seed is scattered, yet the results are different. Some seed produces a hundred times what was sown, some sixty, and some thirty. The seed is the same. The sower is the same. Yet the fruitfulness is different.
And then I thought about the gifts God gives to His people. Scripture tells us that God gives gifts according to His wisdom and purpose. We do not all receive the same gifts, the same opportunities, the same resources, or the same circumstances. “All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.”
(1 Corinthians 12:11) That phrase “just as he determines” is both comforting and challenging. It reminds me that God's giving is not random, nor is it something I can fully measure according to what I see. He knows what I do not know. He sees what I cannot see. His purposes stretch beyond the limits of my understanding. And perhaps this is where I need to be careful.
When I look at another person's life and ask, “Why does God give them this, but not me?” I am tempted to measure God's goodness by what He gives. But Scripture reminds me that God's goodness is not proved by whether my life is comfortable. God remains good when I have much; God remains good when I have little; God remains good when I understand what He is doing; and God remains good when I don't.
The cross itself reminds us that the greatest demonstration of God's love did not look like comfort, success, or ease. It looked like suffering. Yet through what appeared to be defeat, God was accomplishing His purposes. This does not mean that suffering is easy, or that we should pretend to understand why every difficult thing happens. It means that our inability to understand God's ways does not mean that His ways are without wisdom or purpose. There is still much that I am trying to understand.
I am still wrestling with God's sovereignty and human responsibility. I am still thinking about why some believers experience abundance while others experience tremendous hardship. I am still wondering how God's providence fits together with the different circumstances He allows each of us to experience. Perhaps I will understand some of these things more clearly with time. Perhaps the next article I write will contain better answers.
But for now, I think I am learning something more important than having all the answers. I am learning to trust the One who has them. “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever.”
(Deuteronomy 29:29) Perhaps faith is not always having every mystery resolved. Sometimes faith is being willing to say, I do not understand this yet, but I know the One who does. So, for now, I will keep pondering these things.
