Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility - Proverbs 16:1-10

This passage serves to commend the righteous and condemn the proud while at the same time attempting to map out the mechanism of just how man’s and God’s will and actions interact. There interaction between man’s will and God’s sovereignty is stated twice, in verses one and nine, where the author credits human beings with intending to do certain things but credits God with what actually happens. I suppose that, by this, the author is asserting that regardless of what a person may plan for his or her life that the occurrences of one’s life are ultimately beyond human control. Therefore it is God who determines all things that actually happen to any given person throughout the course of his life. A person is not even in ultimate control of himself according to the first verse where it is God who determines what a person actually says despite whatever was intended.

However this would seem to contradict verses six and seven where the author asserts that by living rightly then one pleases God. But if we determine what we want to say, and God wills us to say something different, then how can we be responsible for what we do if we are not in control? It seems somewhat unjust to blame someone for those things which are beyond his control. If anything, God seems to sound a bit like the Cartesian demon who fools with our senses in order to make people misunderstand the world around them by radically disconnecting them from it.

I think that the second verse holds something of a clue as to how we are to understand this dilemma. People rarely, if ever, actually think of themselves as villains. We usually consider ourselves to be the heroes of our lives and those who oppose us to be the villains. We rarely consider that we may, in fact, be wrong; which may be part of the reason that God considers a man’s motives. We lack control over the world and even ourselves but we seem to be held accountable for those things within our hearts. We can only do so much, but what we desire to do we may commit to the Lord for His glory and honor (verse 3). In doing such we reveal our motive not to be that of pride, but of love and faithfulness to God and He will therefore enable such a person to avoid evil (verse 6) and punishment (verse 5). We may therefore endeavor to choose what is righteous even though it leaves us poor because of a pious motivation and therefore please God (verse 8). This is not to say that by choosing righteousness we may end up poor also because it is God who determines the course of our lives (verses 1 and 9) and even though someone persist in stubborn pride before the Lord that person’s wrong motivations can still be used by God to further His will for all creation (verse 4).

Therefore we can say that the proverb attempts to delineate the relationship between divine sovereignty and human responsibility as such: we are responsible for our motivations and we may desire to do either good or evil regardless of the cost or personal gain. However, regardless of what we choose God remains sovereign and can use either the best or worst of our motives to further His plan and is therefore never thwarted by human will or deed. By choosing to align our motives for the glory of God we please Him and He may bless us regardless of whether or not our well-meant actions turn out well. The outcome is not in our control, only the attitude of our heart.