Human Responsibility

I had a conversation with a friend yesterday concerning the sovereignty of God and how it plays out concerning the responsibility of humans. I find that whenever I get into conversations like these, the hunger to learn more about God overwhelms me. I often wish that learning about God and his character could be as simple as plugging into the Matrix and downloading all of the necessary information!

However, seeing as how I haven't invented the Matrix........yet.........I'll leave you with a few passing quotes that grabbed me when studying from Pink's work from The Sovereignty of God.

How can it remain consistent with His mercy that God should require the debt of obedience from him that is not able to pay? In addition to what has been said above, it should be pointed out that God has not lost His right, even though man has lost his power. The creature’s impotence does not cancel his obligation. A drunken servant is a servant still, and it is contrary to all sound reasoning to argue that his master loses his rights through his servant’s default. Moreover, it is of first importance that we should ever bear in mind that God contracted with us in Adam, who was our federal head and representative, and in him, God gave us a power which we lost through our first parent’s fall; but though our power be gone, nevertheless, God may justly demand His due of obedience and of service.

God's decrees are not the necessitating cause of the sins of men, but the fore-determined and prescribed boundings and directings of men's sinful acts.

In connection with the betrayal of Christ, God did not decree that He should be sold by one of His creatures and then take up a good man, instill an evil desire into his heart and thus force him to perform the terrible deed in order to execute His decree. No; not so do the Scriptures represent it. Instead, God decreed the act and selected the one who was to perform the act, but He did not make him evil in order that he should perform the deed; on the contrary, the betrayer was a "devil" at the time the Lord Jesus chose him as one of the twelve (John 6:70), and in the exercise and manifestation of his own devilry God simply directed his actions, actions which were perfectly agreeable to his own vile heart, and performed with the most wicked intentions. Thus it was with the Crucifixion.