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Twin Truths: God’s Sovereignty and Man’s Responsibility (John 3:11-21)

https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/43-15/twin-truths-gods-sovereignty-and-mans-responsibility

So you have then as clear a presentation of sovereign salvation in verses 1 to 10 as anywhere in Scripture, and right against it you have a clear presentation of human responsibility. And the question that if I don’t answer today, you will be asking in every verse, is how do those two things fit together? I’ve done questions and answers through the years in every place I’ve ever gone in the world, and every time there is an open question and answer session, I am asked this question: “How can salvation be solely a work of God and me be held responsible for believing or not believing?How can those two go together?”

Now I want to say this to you, first of all. Most people in doing evangelism would avoid that question all together, assuming that Christians who have been Christians for a long time don’t even like to face that question. They would do everything they could to keep a non-believer in the dark about it, and they would be doing exactly the opposite of what Jesus did. Jesus is talking to a non-believer and He presents to him the twin parallel truths of divine sovereignty in salvation and human responsibility, and He does it at the very beginning of the conversation. This is a work of God, solely a work of God, but you will be held responsible if you do not believe, and you are called to believe and eternal life awaits you if you will believe. Those are twin truths that run parallel.

May I tell you? They will always run parallel. They will always run parallel. They will never come together. They will never intersect. They will never be diminished; legitimately, they are what they are. The fact that you don’t understand how they go together only proves that you’re less than you should be. It doesn’t say anything about God. Your inability to harmonize those things is a reflection of your fallenness, my fallenness. People ask me all the time, “How do you harmonize those?” And my answer is, “I don’t. I can’t.” They can’t be harmonized in the human mind. But realize this, you are a puny mind and so am I, and collectively we are puny compared to the infinite, vast, limitless mind of God. All I can tell you is that in the Word of God, these truths run parallel. And the answer is to believe them both with all your heart. And the one, divine sovereignty, will inform your worship and the other, human responsibility, will motivate your evangelism.

So how are we to understand these things? Well, we’re going to get into the text and I’m going to show you the condition of unbelief, the commendation of belief, and the condemnation of unbelief,but we’ll leave that for next time. I want to talk about this particular issue ’cause, as I said, if I don’t, in every verse you’re going to have this dilemma in your mind about how does this work? How could we be saying these things about you must believe, if you believe you can be saved, and make that square with what we already know about divine sovereignty in salvation. How do those things come together? They don’t. I say it again, they are parallel truths, they are both true. I’ve been around a long time and I have seen every imaginable, every conceivable effort to harmonize those things done by people, well-intentioned people, very gifted people, well-known preachers, theologians, writers, commentators who tried to harmonize it. Anybody whoever tries to harmonize those two things destroys one or the other of them, or both of them. You can’t change them, you can’t tamper with them. You must be content to believe them both.

Now how can I help you to deal with that? I can’t harmonize it. I can’t bring it all together. I can’t solve your dilemma. I can’t answer the apparent paradox. So what am I left with? I want to make you comfortable with your inability not to get it. Okay? That’s my objective, okay? I just want you to be completely happy that you don’t get it. Okay? Just put you to rest, stop fighting that. That’s where we’re going today. I want you to be comfortable with the fact that, wow, you just might not understand something. I know that’s a big pill to swallow because of human pride, but get over it and be content not to get it.

Now I want you to understand that when the Bible deals with these things, it doesn’t explain itself.It isn’t self-conscious. You don’t read—I know this is really tough to get—you don’t have caveats like that. You don’t have underlying statements. You don’t have efforts to make explanations. These things are stated in Scripture as parallel realities and never really explained or harmonized because they both exist. And the fact that we can’t understand them leaves us with one option, and that is to believe them both and be content with that.