The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. | Deuteronomy 29:29
This week I preached on the sovereignty of God; specifically, that God does as He chooses based on His own will. This tends to bring up a lot of questions, about why God does this and what this looks like in practice. One of the questions that I believe is especially poignant is: why does God do things that He tells His people not to do? Does this mean that God has a double-standard?
To put a little more context on this: doesn’t God show partiality to Israel as He tells us not to do the same in James 2:1? He takes life and encourages the Hebrew nation to do the same, even as one of the 10 commandments forbids it. God’s wrath is poured out on His enemies as He tells us to love ours. What is going on here? How are we supposed to operate under such mixed messages? A few things to think about as we try to make sense of this:
First, we need to be clear that one of God’s main concerns is that we not lose sight of the Creator/creature distinction. He alone is Creator; we are creation. His consistency does not require that He hold the same standard for Himself that He has for us. As a matter of fact, a different set of rules is a good way to keep Himself distinct.
Second, He understands our limitations better than we do. We think that we are much more capable than we are, and that leads us to believe that we should be trusted. We don’t need rules and guidelines and stipulations; we can discern for ourselves what is right and wrong. This is exactly what led to Adam and Eve’s actions in Genesis: the belief that we have all we need to be holy and right apart from God.
Third, God wants what is best for us. He is not playing games or holding out on us. When He holds us to a standard, it is because obedience is what will produce the best outcome.
With that, let’s think through why God may not follow the standard He puts in place for us. As God, He plays a different role in creation than we do. He is sovereign and functions according to His own perfect will. Which means, when God does something, it is right; He is the standard for what is good. This means that He is also our standard, though we cannot understand why He does what He does, because we are not omnipotent. God gives us laws, not to operate as He does, but to be creation. He directs us in a way that not only brings about a thriving creation, but also keeps us rightly submitted to the Creator. He guides us to be able to live in our limitedness without having to ‘become like God’ (Genesis 3:5). We should do as He commands, not always as He does.
The practical outworking of this in the building of our worldview, is that we need to be careful not to read too much into God’s action for our own application. Too often, people say: but God did that, not understanding how or why He did. Instead, we should build our moral framework out of what He has purposely reveled to us. As the verse above reminds us, there are things we will never understand, but God has given us an understandable law to practice as a means of obedience and worship, trusting that God will use it to accomplish His good work.
Does God have a double standard? Yes. But He should, because He is far greater than us. He is God, we are not. The more that we recognize this, the better we will be able to trust Him and marvel at the fact that He loves us.