Fatalism Or Faith Series

A young man driving through the rich part of the city could not believe his eyes when he saw a

sign on a Mercedes Benz that said, "For Sale $100.00. He pulled into the driveway and went to the

door, and he asked if the sign was correct. The woman assured him that it was. He asked, "Is there

something wrong with the car?" She told him that it ran perfectly. He whipped out his checkbook

and bought it on the spot. As he stuck the title into his pocket he asked the lady, "Why are you

selling this car so cheap?" She said, "Well, I'll tell you. My husband ran off with his secretary a few

days ago, and he just wired me from Hawaii this morning asking me to sell his car and send him the

check."

Nobody gets everything they ask for or hope for, and in cases like this we can say thank God.

But the fact is, the good guys don't always get what they want either. Paul wanted all who heard

him on Mars Hill to repent and become followers of Christ. But the text says that there were only a

few who responded. This was no second Pentecost with three thousand coming to Christ. Only a

handful came, and so we see that the best of evangelists with the best of skills, and sharing the best

of messages, do not always achieve the best of success. Nobody gets what they want all the time-not

even God.

Jesus wept over Jerusalem saying, "I would have gathered you as a mother hen gathers her

chicks under her wing, but you would not." Jesus wept for the rich young ruler because He loved

him and wanted him to be a follower, but he turned and went away." If God always got what He

wanted, there would be no disobedience to His will. If God got His will done in all lives, then His

will would be done on earth as it is in heaven, but we know this is not so, for there would be no need

to pray for it if it was so.

If even a sovereign God, who has all power, does not get all he does desire, then it is obvious

that he chooses this as a possibly. In other words, the only way an all powerful God could not get

His will done is by a sovereign choice to let it be possible that His will not be done. If He chooses

this, then even the not doing of His will is His will. If God says, "I do not want anyone to murder

another human, but I will let men be free to defy my will and do it anyway," then you have God's

will being done even in murder but lets keep in mind that we clearly have two levels of His will.

God's first priority is that nobody murder, for this is His command. His will, in the sense of

what He wants to be, is that nobody murder another person. But He does not in His sovereign power

do what He could do, and that is to make sure that by sheer force nobody ever breaks that command.

What He does is permit men to do what He does not want. When they do this it is called His

permissive will. His priority will is what He wants, and His permissive will is what He allows

whether He wants it or not. These two wills are often opposites, for the priority will is always right

and just, but the permissive will can be neutral or evil. If I eat an apple rather than an orange, that is

God's permissive will. He leaves the choice to me. I do not please Him more by eating one or the

other. But if I choose to steal an apple from the store, God will permit it, but I am out of His priority

will, for I have broken His law. It is His will that I be free to do so, but it is not His will that I

actually do so.

So what we have here is the fact that everything is God's will in some sense, but the sense may

be radically different. It is God's priority will that I not steal, but it is His permissive will that makes

me free to steal. To be in God's will means to be in His priority will, and that means to be doing

what He wants me to do. The distinction of these two wills is vital to a biblical theology, for if one

does not make this distinction it leads to fatalism. Fatalism is the belief that all events are

determined by necessity or by fate, and so everything is God's will.