Knowing that God works in unsearchable ways may not satisfy our agitated hearts and troubled soul in the short term. However, it points us to a larger reality where our circumstances play only a small part.

You confess sound doctrine and know your Bible reasonably well. However, when reality confronts beliefs, there is a crisis. You want to be sure that God is wise, but everything around you seems to indicate the opposite. You are hesitant to admit it, but sometimes God’s wisdom does not make any sense to you. What is the point of a broken friendship in God’s plan? Or why would God allow a prodigal son? Does any good come from a dry marriage relationship? What about a severe medical diagnosis or financial bankruptcy? It does not make any sense, and you cannot see where your pointless situation leads you to a better place.
Some people find comfort from popular wisdom, such as “God writes straight with crooked lines.” But popular wisdom cannot take us very far. Sooner or later, popular wisdom will show its insufficiency, draining our hope and spiritual strength. But our experience does not need to be one of confusion. The solution is far superior to popular common sense (or should I say nonsense?).
Even when it does not make sense to you, I encourage you to revisit your faith and theology to find Someone who makes sense of everything. We can rely on theological truth that points us to a truly wise God who puts every detail of our lives in place. In God’s Word, we find the Redeemer of our troubled souls.
Therefore, consider the fertile ground where questions about God’s wisdom flourish—the gap between expectation and the reality of daily life. Then, reflect upon the wisdom of God in the truth of the gospel.
The Gap Between Expectation and Life Circumstances
Psalm 72 vividly describes a righteous King and His eternal kingdom. A righteous King “delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and him who has no helper,” and “has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy. From oppression and violence he redeems their life, and precious is their blood in his sight” (Ps. 72:12-14). And, in addition to that, Psalm 72 creates some expectations for the people of God: “May there be abundance of grain in the land; on the tops of the mountains may it wave; may its fruit be like Lebanon; and may people blossom in the cities like the grass of the field! May his name endure forever; his fame continue as long as the sun! May people be blessed in him; all nations call him blessed” (Ps. 72:16-17). The second book of Psalms ends with a theological expectation of blessedness under the wise ruling of the righteous King.
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Sin isn’t just a series of errors or poor judgments with momentary consequences. Sin is taking you somewhere. It’s leading you down a path of decay, a path that ends in spiritual death.

Hyperbolic, isn’t it? “Sin is death” sounds like something you’d hear echoing from a bullhorn in a city that embraces noise as part of its culture. Philadelphia and New York come to mind (no offense, by the way; it’s just that I hail from a quiet fishing town in Canada). In the context of so much physical turmoil and death in our world, calling sin “death” seems almost offensive, as if we’re insulting people struggling with leukemia or COVID, the real death threats. How can we claim something so serious about a problem that seems more conceptual than physical?
It all depends on how you define life and death. What is life? If life is measured only in blood flow and heart beats, then “Sin is death” sounds ludicrous, like a misinformed battle cry of pre-modern street preachers. Sin might be a hindrance, a nuisance, or even a threat to moral flourishing in society at large, but death? Hardly.
But what if life has more to do with bonds than with blood? What is life is more deeply about a relationship than it is about our respiratory system? What is life is about an active (even if neglected or forgotten) bond of communion between us and the God whose breath gave us our breath? That would change our perspective on the whole “Sin is death” thing, wouldn’t it? And doesn’t Jesus refer to himself as the life (John 14:6)? Living would thus be a relationship with him, not a set of physical and mental animations.
And what is death? If it’s not just about the stillness of the body, the absence of animation, or the fading pulse beneath your skin, then what is it? Maybe if life is all about relationship, then death is really about the ending of that relationship, or at least the most dramatic change imaginable.
Sin as Death
Now, what struck me as I read Romans is just how direct Paul is in linking sin with death. He clearly views sin as more than a behavior problem that can be remedied by a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality. Sin is far more serious. Sin is lethal.
What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.Rom. 7:7-11
For Paul, sin kills. It brings death. This doesn’t mean that sin is an actual substance, some soul disease that spreads like wildfire. Sin is ethical, and it has no independent existence. It’s parasitic; it can’t exist on its own, so it follows around the good things of God’s creation and distorts them, deforming us in the process. As Bavinck put it in The Wonderful Works of God, sin is “a manifestation which is moral in character, operating in the ethical sphere.” Sin is moral and ethical. Yet, the fact that it’s moral and ethical doesn’t mean it’s not lethal. Paul’s language makes it clear that sin brings death. It destroys us.
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Don’t assume that because you don’t see it right now that God is inactive. At the right time, every knee will bow before God’s king. Sometimes we see glimpses of God working, and at other times we don’t see it. God’s ways are bigger than ours. Have confidence; God works, even on the days we cannot see what He is doing.
We know that God continues to work in His world, but if we’re honest, we’d like to see Him do so more spectacularly. It would be great to see more of the miracles of Elijah’s time perhaps, or the signs and wonders of the apostles. We’d love to see whole cities change their economies because so many people have come to know Jesus, like happened in Ephesus in Acts. Yet God often works in quieter ways that we don’t see so readily.
In 2 Kings 11, a disaster struck the kingdom of Judah. After the death of their king at the hands of Jehu, the queen mother Athaliah claimed the throne as her own. Athaliah was the daughter of Ahab and the dominant personality in the royal court. She killed most of her late husband’s family, which meant most of the descendants of David. She would have killed all of them, but one baby, Jehoash, was rescued in secret by his aunt. This baby was then raised by the high priest and his wife, with the help of a nurse, until he was seven.
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