Again, it might be forewarned that PL has a different take...
The Bible knows very little about the “free will” of man, and certainly nothing as far as it is described by Arminians and Pelagians. The very meaning of God's sovereignty is that “He does whatever He pleases.” (Psalm 115:3). “He does according to His will in the army of heaven And among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand Or say to Him, “What have You done?” (Daniel 4:35). “The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; He makes the plans of the peoples of no effect. The counsel of the LORD stands forever, The plans of His heart to all generations.” (Psalm 33:10-11).
God decrees and wills all things that have been and will ever be, “Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, 'My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure,” (Isaiah 46:10). God controls the steps (Jeremiah 10:23) and words of man (Proverbs 16:1) as well as heart of a king (Proverbs 21:1). In God “we live, and move, and have our being,” (Acts 17:28). He upholds “all things by the word of his power,” (Heb. 1:3), that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without the will of his Father (Matthew 10:29). God fashioned the days of man, before they ever existed (Psalm 139:16). This is the God of the Bible, not the poor helpless being who sits on some distant throne hoping that His people will use their "free will" and let Him save them.
Romans 11:33-34
“Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the LORD? Or who has become His counselor?”
God wills all that happens, even man's evil deeds. Not only that, but he uses the wickedness of man to bring about His Divine, immutable decree. According to Scripture, even Satan himself is in the hands of a Sovereign God. It is for this reason that many have sought to distinguish the will of God from the “permission” of God. However, God Himself has repudiated this distinction with His own Word, stating that He "works all things according to the counsel of His will” (Ephesians 1:11). God does not alter His decree based on our “free-will”, but acts totally independent of this idol.
While feeble-minded man attempts to remove God's purposeful will from all calamity and replace it with only His distant permission, Job, after passing through his many trials at the hands of Satan, his friends, his family, and his enemies, declares, “Who among all these does not know That the hand of the LORD has done this?” (Job 12:9) Thus the idea of mere “permission” is fiction.
As punishment for David's sin God proclaimed direct responsibility for Absalom's incest, declaring it to be His work (2 Samuel 12:12).
Christ was the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” (Revelation 13:8) It was not only the permission, but the will of God for His Son to be slain (Luke 22:42). It was the Will of God that Judas betrayed Christ, the Jews plotted to kill Him, and that the Romans carried out their act, for all these did nothing but what the hand and counsel of God had decreed (Acts 4:28). This is affirmed by Peter, that Christ was delivered to death by the
determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God (Acts 2:23); in other words, that God, to whom all things are known from the beginning, had willed (not just permitted) what the Jews had executed. He repeats the same thing elsewhere, “Those things, which God before had showed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he has so fulfilled,” (Acts 3:18). They were all "disobedient to the word, to which they also were appointed. (1 Peter 2:8).
These are just a few passages that show that God not only created all things, but sovereignly governs all things according the council of His will, decreeing even sinful acts without being their author. Any other belief is an attempt by rebellious man to remove God from His throne and thrust His church into Deism, or even fatalism.
"To suppose that whatever God requireth of us that we have power of ourselves to do, is to make the cross and grace of Jesus Christ of none effect." - JOHN OWEN
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