Who's really in charge?

Several weeks have elapsed since colleagues of Boris Johnson withdrew their support of his leadership and this resulted in his resignation. We will know who his successor is to be in a matter of days. Sajid Javid has explained that it was listening to a speaker at a Parliamentary prayer breakfast that was the prompt in his own decision to resign his Cabinet post. He said, ‘I was listening to (Reverend Les Isaac) talking about the importance of integrity in public life and, just focusing on that, I made up my mind. I went straight back to my office and drafted the resignation letter and went to see the Prime Minister….’

I believe God’s Spirit was at work here and that he directs the affairs of we humans, whether we recognise it or not. Jewish and Christian scriptures repeatedly speak of the fact that God is really sovereign over his world. This being the case, God raises up leaders and then subsequently takes away their power as He determines. Such overruling doesn’t absolve any one of us from personal responsibility and all will be answerable to God for their conduct. How these two things (God’s sovereign overruling and our human responsibility) can be so at one and the same time has challenged theologians century after century. Everywhere within its pages, however, the Bible sets before us this perceived tension without explanation.

Such ‘tension’ is clearly seen in the New Testament when one of Jesus’ disciples, called Peter, was speaking about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. He said, ‘This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.’

Why would God not restrain wicked people from carrying out such a crime? More shockingly, God actually purposed that Jesus be killed in this way. Jesus was the only truly righteous man ever to have lived. So why did he submit to God’s will by not resisting the spiritually-ignorant men who were determined to crucify him? Quoting Peter again, ‘Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.’

A few lines from the children’s hymn, ‘There Is a Green Hill’ puts it simply:

There was no other good enough

To pay the price of sin;

He only could unlock the gate

Of heaven, and let us in.

Have we the humility to trust a God as unfathomable as this? He says that we must, then gives grace that we may.