When the Apostle Paul writes, “We know that all things work together for good,” he is not implying that every single thing that happens in our lives is good. What he is saying is that, ultimately, even that which is bad can be transformed, through the power of God, into something good.

In a similar fashion, when we affirm that God is sovereign, we are not claiming that everything that takes place in the world is necessarily God’s will. Frankly, there are a number of things that I would have serious trouble attributing to a loving God. I do not believe, for instance, that God sends—or even wills—floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, diseases, cancer, or tragic accidents, to name but a few.

Because life is both fragile and finite, there will inevitably be suffering and death in one form or another, at one time or another. However, I do not believe that God wills or causes the particular way and time that such things occur. And I am absolutely positive that God does not will or cause any form of sin, evil, and injustice—or for that matter, the personal and collective suffering that results there from. Sickness, sin, suffering, evil, injustice, and death are, by definition, what God does not will, what God is adamantly against—indeed, what God has always been at work in this world to overcome and destroy!

How can we know this for sure? We know it because God—our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer—desires life for us, not death. Even the outright rejection of God’s love that eventually led to Jesus Christ being crucified was not, in my estimation, what God willed, but precisely what God did not will.

Think of it this way—Was it actually God’s intention that Jesus be mocked, mistreated, and killed like a common criminal? If people had listened to Jesus, and followed the example he set, instead of hanging him from a cross, would God’s plan have been ruined? Of course not. The crucifixion is not the fulfillment of God’s plan; it is the rejection of God’s plan. Nevertheless, because God is sovereign and all-powerful, God is able to take even that which is contrary to God’s will and transform it into a sacrificial act of saving grace!

To affirm God’s sovereignty does not mean that we must piously accept of our own suffering, or that of others, as being the unquestioned will of God. Neither does it mean that we shrug our shoulders at the world’s sorrows and injustices and conclude, “That’s just the way things are.” Rather, it means that we remain hopeful and confident—and therefore continue to work—for the way things were intended to be, and one day will be, and for that time when we can finally say, not only in expectant prayer but in actual experience, “Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.”