God's Sovereignty is the Saint's Exceeding Comfort

It is a difficult thing to reconcile God's Sovereignty, whereby He ordains all things after the counsel of His own Will, and man's accountability, wherein God judges him for his actions.

Yet the Scriptures teach them both. Paul in Romans 9 forever repudiates the notion of a pure free will in which man may go against God's purposes; yet Paul makes clear that God is righteous to judge wickedness in men even though no man hath resisted His will.

Man is lost and blinded by sin. Indeed, man is dead in trespasses and sins, and cannot of himself know the things of God or choose the right path.

The notion of pure free will can never solve the dilemma of accountability and sovereignty. Paul solved the dilemma by declaring the right of the Creator to make His choices and to control the destiny and judgment of His Creatures.

Most references in Scripture to election and predestination and sovereignty are meant for the comfort and consolation of believers. Because God has chosen us from eternity and fixed His love upon us, our Salvation is completely in His hands. He is for His people - nothing else matters.

Not only that, but the 'mystery of His Will' He delights to reveal to His people. The fact that He chose us forever and loved us and determined without fail to redeem us is a glorious truth that God delights to show us!

We are not responsible to save anybody, but to obey God and become means by which He will accomplish His eternal purpose. No man's salvation will fail for the failure of a Gospel witness. Indeed, all the events in the chain of each man's salvation - the preaching and the witness - are foreordained and worked out after His perfect will.