When we recognise that ‘things that happen’ are actions that exist, every action is also under God’s sovereign control, and so everything that happens is also designed to maximise God’s glory. The world in which we live has been sovereignly ordered by God as the world in which his glory is maximised. If we accept this is true, then it necessarily follows that we cannot miss God’s best for us. Our best is tied up in God’s glory.

There is a thought that does the rounds with some frequency. I have heard it in the context of people affirming God’s ‘wonderful plan for your life’. I have heard it whenever somebody sins and it is cast as our having ‘made a mistake’. I have heard it said whenever things happen that (from our vantage point) are less than excellent. It is said that we have missed God’s best for us. Some frame it as having strayed from God’s path or plan for us.

But the reality is that we cannot fall short of God’s best for us. We cannot walk off the path that God has laid out for us. Everything that happens is, in fact, God’s plan and God’s best.

I can hear the objections already. ‘Surely, it isn’t God’s will for us to sin?’ Haven’t we strayed outside of God’s plans for us when we don’t do as he commands? It is certainly true, when we sin, we have wandered away from God’s commands. But it is not true that we have somehow managed to circumvent his plans and best for us if and when we sin.

Let’s start with one basic truth affirmed repeatedly throughout scripture: God is ultimately sovereign. He isn’t just sovereign over some stuff, or the things he is most worried about, but he is sovereign over everything. Even the very laws that govern the universe only function because his word upholds them (Heb 1:3). As Spurgeon was aprt to note: ‘I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less than God wishes’. God is sovereign over absolutely every atom in the universe.

Just taking that truth by itself leads us to affirm that even the most heinous sin that occurs is ultimately under God’s sovereign control. This is a point affirmed by scripture directly. The death of the Lord Jesus Christ was no accident.

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