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truth is possible. This we hope to consider more fully when we come to the creation of
man in the image of God. It is blessedly true for us, who know God, that a thing is true
simply because He says so, but this is because we have learned to know Him as the God
of truth.
The influence of a wrong conception of God's sovereignty is every evident in the
theology of Calvinism, of which it has been said:
"Calvinism is not accidentally, but essentially immoral, since it makes the distinction
between right and wrong a matter of positive enactment, and thereby makes it possible to
assert that what is immoral for man is moral for God."
The apostle, in Rom. 3:, repudiates the principle of "Let us do evil that good may
come" not only for himself, but for the Lord he served (Rom. 3: 4-8). God overrules
evil, and for this we cannot be too grateful, but to teach that He definitely plans evil that
good may come, or that He will beat down all criticism simply by the weight of his
omnipotence, is utterly false.
"Is God unrighteous Who taketh vengeance? . . . . . For then how shall God judge the
world?" (Rom. 3: 4-6).
This is the attitude of Scripture and of all who believe its teaching.
If omnipotence were all, God could have saved sinful man without an atoning
sacrifice, yet we know that He spared not His only Son, but freely gave Him up for us all,
in order that He might be just and the Justifier of the believing sinner.
The scriptural doctrine of omnipotence is that God can do all things, except that which
His own rational and moral nature forbids and that which would violate His purpose in
making man in His own likeness. Those who emphasize God's omnipotence are
sometimes apt to deny His right to create a moral creature with the power of saying
"Yes" or "No".
We hear little of the condescension of God, and His voluntary self-limitation, but
without these things neither creation nor salvation would be possible or rational.