Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Can God Do the "Impossible"?

Yesterday, I mentioned the omnipotence of God and how it is not open for debate. But though all things are possible with God, that doesn’t mean that he will do all things or that he does not allow us to have freewill. Since all things are possible, one of the “all things” that he can allow is for us to make our own choices about many things, including whether to accept or reject his Son. We know that it isn’t his will that any perish. We know that he could force us to accept his Son. But he doesn’t. Why doesn’t he? I don’t know, but he doesn’t.

One of the questions people ask is whether God could create a rock that he could not push. Yes, I’m sure he could, but I don’t think he is going to. What we see instead is an even bigger problem. God created man. God wanted a relationship with us, but he gave us the ability to sin. God cannot have a relationship with sinful beings. That makes it seem like there truly is a rock that God can’t push. So God got creative. Instead of writing us off or going back on what he said (the wages of sin is death), he got around the problem by becoming a man and dying on the cross for our sins.

So let me put it this way. God is omnipotent, so he could create a rock that he could not push. Let’s suppose then that God decides to do that. God is more than capable of creating something that meets all of the constraints we might put on it and still come up with a means that our minds can’t think of to do whatever he needs to do with it. How silly and arrogant people are to imagine that they can create a challenge that the God who created the Universe can’t master.