Semi-Random Musings (51)

Does God’s will ever change in response to the actions of man? Mull that one over for a moment. I can give you at least one incontrovertible example to consider.

Ready? Okay, here we go. A young man wants to know the Lord’s will about the woman he has been dating. He belongs to Christ, while she is unsaved. I can tell him easily what the Lord wants from him, and so can you: “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.” It is never the Lord’s will that a young Christian man violate that command. We can be sure of that 100% of the time.

So then, he goes ahead and marries her anyway. What’s the Lord’s will for him now?

I can tell you that too. It’s not difficult: “If any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her.”

Whoa! How did THAT happen? The will of God for that young man just changed overnight. This too is the teaching of scripture, and I see no easy way to make 1 Corinthians 7:12 disappear even if I wanted it to. Even if he realizes the magnitude of his mistake, to put his wife aside in a show of repentance would now be disobedience. The marriage has changed his obligations to God and the Lord’s expectations of him, perhaps for the rest of his days.

This is a good thing. For one or two of my unwise young friends, I find it reassuring to know that the Lord is working with them in their efforts to win their unsaved wives to Christ, assuming they have repented of their foolishness.

In fact, we can take that scenario further. Let’s say the unsaved wife departs for greener pastures. What’s the Lord’s will for the young fellow now? Now, it’s to let her go without a fuss. God has called us to peace. So we have yet another variation in the divine plan for this believer’s life.

Don’t you find that interesting? God’s will appears, in some instances at least, not to be some eternal, unchangeable edict, but to be dynamic, responding in real time to the choices of human beings, the eternal God adjusting his preferences in accordance with time-bound human agency.

How are we to think about that? I will leave it with you to consider.

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I was in Isaiah 59 this morning, and was struck by these words:

“Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.”

I had to go back and read them a second time. I was writing earlier this week about God and necessity. The paradox is that we have an omnipotent God bound — or so it appears at least — by self-imposed restrictions related to his own character and purposes. Scripture teaches that certain things simply have to be the way they are, God being who he is and, perhaps, reality being what it is too. This is yet another.

I know in context this is about God and his relationship with the erring nation of Israel. That was Isaiah’s burden, and that’s who he’s addressing most of the time. But these first two verses could just as easily be speaking to any of us when we find our prayers unanswered, and they identify the problem in the plainest of language.

When God appears not to hear, there may be many reasons. The timing may not be right. The Lord may decline to override someone else’s bad choice in the interests of protecting their agency. The thing we are asking for may not be the thing we ought to be asking for, or perhaps receiving it would not be to our benefit in the way we think it would. It may be that in seeking the Lord’s will about a particular matter, he is drawing us closer into fellowship with him, and we have not quite grasped how the Lord is thinking about the situation yet.

Then there is this whole “iniquities” thing. The word has a particular meaning in Hebrew. It’s not the generic word for sin that refers to missing the mark. It’s not an “Oops, I did it again.” Not the kind of slip that occurs because something happened too fast and you just failed to react to it as a Christian should. The word ʿāôn refers consistently to a load of accumulated guilt, the kind of thing that happens when you have sinned, and know you have sinned, and have determined to speak no more of the matter and hope it will go away on its own.

Judah used it when Joseph found his silver cup planted in Benjamin’s sack. He cried, “God has found out the guilt [ʿāôn] of your servants.” Yes, he sure had. Judah and his brothers had sold Joseph into Egyptian slavery, lied about his death to their father, and then carried on for years as if nothing had happened. That’s what iniquities are all about, and if you think a Christian can’t quietly bear them, sometimes for years or even decades, you either don’t know many Christians or aren’t paying close attention. So you pray, and God appears not to hear, because your iniquities have separated you from a holy God in whom you firmly believe, but who can have no fellowship with a person who simply refuses to deal with his sins.

Isaiah assures Israel (and us) of two things. It’s not about ability. The Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save. God is entirely able to answer your prayers. It’s not that the Lord is uninterested in you, or isn’t paying attention. His ear is not dull, that it cannot hear. He loves you every bit as much as he always did, and he’s eager to respond. But sin that we refuse to deal with makes a separation between man and God. He doesn’t hide his face from us: it’s our sins that are obscuring it.

It’s just how things work, and there’s only one remedy: confession and repentance. The problem will never go away on its own.