“The way “sovereignty” is taught today can be a real faith killer. If God controls everything, then our actions are irrelevant, and our efforts are meaningless.”
Andrew Wommack

This has to be one of the dumbest and meaningless objections to God’s absolute sovereignty I come across. The objection is answered in the very statement the critic uses.

For example. “All men have sinned.” If it is true that all men have sinned then to say, “Oshea has sinned” is a logical deduction and thus is true. But if I say, cats have sinned, then we know we have a category fallacy, and thus the conclusion is irrational. Deduction is application of knowledge. “Oshea has sinned,” is knowledge contained in the original statement, “all men have sinned.” All I did was point out this specific knowledge and bring it to your attention.

Unfortunately, basic deduction is lost with most pastors and theologians so that if you say “All men have sinned,” they can say “therefore black cats have sinned.” They are then called intelligent and given a book deal.  Strangely, if I put forward an argument that mixes up categories like the able, that says, “All apples are eatable,” therefore, “because the sun is round like an apple the sun is eatable,” people would mock me? Maybe I should give it a religious terminology and I could get a book deal myself. Maybe something like this, “if God is sovereign over all things, then God does not control squires and human thoughts.” I see millions of copies already being sold.

As for the objection above the major premise is saying “God is sovereign over all things.” Wommack is saying this as the Reformed tradition would mean it. Martin Luther in Bondage of The Will says God is as directly sovereign in causing faith as He is unbelief or sin, as in the Elect or Satan. Thus, we will mean God is sovereign over all things as truly an “all” statement. A category statement is “all,” “some,” or “none.” Here we mean God directly and absolutely controls all things.  When the bible says the category statement “all have sinned and fallen short,” it does not mean only “some,” but “all” have.

And so “if God is sovereign over all things,” then according to Wommack the conclusion is that “our actions are meaningless.” His conclusion has new information in it that is not contained in the premise(s), thus it is irrational and stupid. He makes a category error with the term “meaningless.” It is a fourth term that is thrown in the conclusion with a slight of hand.

I will add an additional premise here that I believe the Bible easily teaches and is presupposed by the statement “God is sovereign over all things.” This premise is that “if God does something, it is meaningful by definition that God is the one who does it.” If not, am I to presuppose that God doing something is not meaningful because He is the one doing it? But I digress.

If God is sovereign over all things and whatever God does has infinite meaning and value, then God controlling my choice is by definition infinitely meaningful and valuable.

God is the only one with intrinsic worth and whose value is without measure. God’s Will, Word and Power are one in the same. As Vincent Cheung says in Only  Believe, “God can never lie, not because there are things that omnipotence cannot perform, as some would put it, but because lying is inapplicable to God, since the will, the power, the word, and the truth are one in him. If God says something, then even if it was not true before, it would become the truth.” Thus God who alone has value creates and controls all things by His thoughts.

Whatever God does by definition is “just” “good” and “meaningful or valuable.”

This should not be a surprise. Even with humans we are similar. When I played in the sand, or played with my Legos and made things and new people and new made up stories, it was meaningful to me, precisely because I was the one doing it.

Wommack is so arrogant that he thinks God’s sovereign control over him is the very thing that makes his choices meaningless, when it is the only thing making them meaningful. He supposes his choices apart from God’s sovereignty control have intrinsic value. I will ignore the issue of ontology on this, for it is impossible for any created thing to move without God’s doing it. God is the only real cause for everything; there is no such thing as secondary causes in the ultimate sense. God is the only real cause. God’s thought and power are the same thing in essence, or there is no dividing them. If God does not think of something, then it does not happen. If God thinks of something and wills it, then it happens. There is no other real causality other than this.

We are responsible and accountable because we are not free relative to God’s command and His sovereignty over us. Romans 9 answers the question why we are responsible even though God can harden or soften our hearts. The answer is that He is the Potter and we are the clay. He does this from a neutral lump of clay, that is neither good or bad. Thus, the Scripture’s answer for why we are accountable is because God sovereignly controls us.

As Vincent says in “More than A Potter,” if you say man is more than a pot, then God is infinitely more than a Potter.  And so the sovereign control aspect is therefore made infinitely stronger. The fact that we are accountable to God is therefore a limitation of our freedom, in the sense it makes it nonexistent. God controls us like a Potter over a pot. Does God form a good pot from a good lump? No. Does God take a nasty lump of clay and form a nasty toilet with it? No. God takes from the same lump of unformed (before they were born) clay and molds it to His own design (good or bad). Thus, there is no paradox, because Divine sovereignty negates human freedom and is the very thing that makes accountability work. The fig tree did not have any freedom, but Jesus held it accountable. Even without freedom, the everything that made it accountable was Jesus being sovereign over it and holding it to a standard. Freedom had no relevance to accountability. Romans 9 refers to our accountability in the same way. This is the opposite of how most understand it; thus, many are in direct public rebellion against God.

God is not accountable because of the very reason He is free.

In summary, God is the ultimate cause of everything. There are no other real causes. We are accountable to God because He has complete control over us. We are like clay in the hands of a potter. God’s sovereignty is what makes us responsible.

The criticism is essentially this, “if I am not the one who ultimately determines my reality then it is not meaningful.” Arrogance. That is, “if God does not give me His divinity then I will hate Him.” They don’t like that fact God has such exhaustive control and they don’t. What fool told you that meaningfulness is by your ultimate determination? The bible? The bible that says God hated Esau and love Jacob before they had made any choices and before they were born. The bible teaches what God does is meaningful, because God does it.

So prayer in the ultimate sense does not change anything. But this is true for all created things. However, on the relative level my prayers moves the heart of God, uproots mountains and makes the waves obey me.

Even though the Scripture informs me of God’s sovereignty over me, God mostly addresses me on the human or relative level. That is, God moving the chess pieces is the very thing that makes such things meaningful. However, God mostly addresses me on the relative level of “(Oshea) went to space b4,” rather than saying, God moves “White Knight to space b4.” Because God is mostly addressing me on this level, it is therefore good, just and meaningful by definition of God doing it. Because God wants me to mainly have relationship and fellowship with Him on this level, then it is good, just and meaningful.

What God has done is atone for all our sins by His only Son Jesus and gave us His Son’s righteousness. What He has done is commanded us to be forgiven and blessed by receiving His Son and all the glorious benefits contained therein. Therefore when I use faith and receive forgiveness, healing and miracles, then it is good and has immeasurable value.