It All Comes Back to Providence

There is an underlying theme that runs throughout the Bible, and once we begin to understand it, it can produce a remarkable peace in the Christian life: nothing that happens catches God off guard.

God is never surprised. Somehow, even when we cannot understand how, He is able to take what happens in a fallen world—both good and evil—and weave it into His ultimate purposes for His glory and the good of His people.

The theological word for this is providence.

But that immediately raises a difficult question: How can God be sovereign over events involving human sin, foolishness, and suffering without making Him responsible for evil?

Jesus gives us an important starting point. He tells His disciples that not even a sparrow falls to the ground apart from the Father’s care (Matt. 10:29–31). His point is not merely philosophical. It is pastoral: “So do not be afraid.” God’s providence is meant to give His children confidence in their Father’s care.

Yet Scripture never achieves that confidence by pretending evil is good.

Consider the political disaster recorded in 1 Kings 12. After Solomon’s death, his son Rehoboam inherited the throne. When the people asked him to lighten the burdens Solomon had placed upon them, Rehoboam rejected the counsel of the older men and followed the foolish advice of his younger advisers. The result was the division of Israel.

Humanly speaking, the catastrophe resulted from sin, arrogance, and foolishness.

Yet God declared, “This thing is from me” (1 Kings 12:24).

We may not understand what God is doing. We may not understand why He permits what He permits.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, preaching from this passage, acknowledged the tension. The division resulted from Solomon’s sin and Rehoboam’s folly, yet, he observed, God was somehow “in it all.” Spurgeon’s point was not that God produced their wickedness or foolishness, but that even human rebellion could not overthrow His sovereign purposes.

This gives us an important distinction:

God does not have to cause something to be sovereign over it, and He does not have to call something good in order to bring good out of it.

Joseph understood this.

After being betrayed and sold into slavery by his brothers, Joseph eventually stood before them as one of Egypt’s most powerful men. Looking back upon everything they had done, he told them:

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Gen. 50:20).

Notice the two intentions: You intended. God intended.

Joseph does not minimize his brothers’ evil. Their intentions really were wicked. Yet their evil intentions operated within a larger providential purpose they could neither see nor prevent.

Their intention was evil. God’s intention was good.

And God’s intention won.

We find an even more startling example in David’s sin involving Bathsheba and Uriah. Scripture never excuses David’s actions. His sin brought terrible consequences. Yet following David’s repentance, Bathsheba gave birth to Solomon, whom “the LORD loved” (2 Sam. 12:24). Matthew even reminds us of the scandal when tracing the genealogy of Christ: Solomon was born to David “by the wife of Uriah” (Matt. 1:6).

God brought grace out of circumstances produced by terrible sin without ever calling the sin good.

But the supreme demonstration of providence is the cross.

Jesus was betrayed, falsely accused, mocked, tortured, and crucified. The murder of the only completely innocent man who ever lived was an act of extraordinary human evil.

Yet it became the means of humanity’s redemption.

John Piper has described the paradox memorably: at the pivotal moment of history, humanity’s greatest sin served God’s purpose of displaying Christ’s glory and accomplishing His saving grace. Put more simply:

The worst thing that ever happened produced the best thing that ever happened.

At Calvary, God did not merely recover from an unexpected tragedy. The early church proclaimed that Jesus was handed over according to God’s “deliberate plan and foreknowledge,” while those who crucified Him remained morally responsible for what they had done (Acts 2:23).

Here divine sovereignty and human responsibility meet without either being erased.

This is why Paul can write:

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28).

Paul does not say all things are good.

They are not.

Christians need never minimize evil or offer shallow explanations for another person’s pain.

Sin is not good. Betrayal is not good. Suffering is not good. Death is not good. Christians need never minimize evil or offer shallow explanations for another person’s pain.

The promise is greater than that.

God works in all things for good.

We may not understand what God is doing. We may not understand why He permits what He permits. Providence does not answer every “why.”

But it assures us that God is not surprised, God is not defeated, and God is not finished.

The Christian does not have to understand everything God is doing in order to trust the God who is doing it.

In the end, it all comes back to providence.