Sin and Repentance Are Both Willed by God
We must acknowledge that God controls all things
No doubt, there is something beautiful about the person who in humility acknowledges their flaws and inadequacies before their Creator. However, there is a need to discuss the peculiar Christian tendency towards sin and repentance and the idea that our failings are intrinsic to us aside from the will of God.
In a world where in reality we are puppets in the hands of a sovereign God, we must acknowledge that God is in control of every aspect of our lives. Whatever we do is what God is willing us to do.
We may experience regret about things we have done, but this does not negate the fact that those things were willed by God. So the Christian life of sin and repentance is curious indeed, as God causes us to do things, then to feel guilty about them, then to repent of them and ask for forgiveness for those things He has willed us to do.
In light of the doctrine of predestination, these things can be made sense of in relation to Biblical theology. If we accept the idea that God wills some to be saved and some to be damned, according to His foreknowledge, before they are even born, then we can understand sin and repentance as part of the divine play and the way in which God has chosen to unfold the story of individual lives and of creation.
There are attributes that characterise human beings, because God has decreed He will create human beings in such a way as to give them certain characteristics. One of those characteristics is that we feel guilt related to actions we feel have been improper, and the Christian faith provides a structure for understanding that guilt (often conceived of in terms of the story of the fall and original sin). Christians believe the whole story of the world, centred around the remedy for guilt and sin which is the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, is the way in which God has chosen to unfold the story of humanity and of Earth.
My purpose in this short article, and in much of my writing, is to restore a correct and high view of the sovereignty of God to the Christian story. We do not have free will, and the free will problem has caused untold confusion among theologians who have failed to realise the reality of God’s control over everything we do. They have made this mistake often to try to absolve God of responsibility for sin and evil, but it is only with a correct understanding of God’s sovereign control over everything that happens that we can begin to form a logical theology of sin and evil.
Free will is an illogical idea. I am not free to control my bodily processes or how my body grows and develops, and I am not free to choose which thoughts and emotions I will have. Although my thoughts may make me feel that I do in a sense have control of my mind, I strongly believe that the reality is that it is God who manifests our thoughts, emotions, and physical processes, and that He is the animator of entire selves.
By appreciating our lack of freedom, we elevate God to His right position as Master of reality, and acknowledge that we are dust, and to dust we will return. This is not to deny that God may have great plans to bless us, it is simply to correctly understand and acknowledge that the whole of creation is from Him and to Him and through Him.