Lesson 17: God’s Sovereignty Allows Difficulties to Expose Our Sin Nature

Romans 7:7 “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.’"

The Apostle Paul had no idea of the sin in his life until he came face to face with the Law of God. It was God's Law that forced the sin in Paul to "spring to life." And if we are honest with ourselves, it is when you and I encounter the difficulties of life that we also see what we really are made of. When life is going "great" according to our definition we can appear to be calm, cool, and collected and act like we have it all together. When everything is going "our way" we think we have this sin thing mastered and being a Christian is "easy," when all the while we have major problems.

So, out of mercy, He orchestrates a few difficulties or a few difficult people to come our way, and our sin nature rears its ugly head. We find out with the Apostle Paul just how sinful we really are. So is God being uncaring? No, not at all. In His sovereignty, He orchestrates events so our sin can be exposed and hopefully done away with.

We find an example of this in the life of Peter as he watched Jesus being tried before His crucifixion. Earlier, Jesus had warned him that he would betray Him, but Peter objected. Yet, as the crowd listening in on the accusations against Jesus met him and asked whether he was one of Jesus’ disciples, he denied it. He denied it three times, just as Jesus had said would happen (John 18:15-27). Peter discovered through his failure that he was not as strong and faithful as he thought himself to be. It was the event through which Jesus could purge this pride from Peter’s heart and make him stronger and more faithful than he had ever believed he could be.


When the shots of life come flying at us, our flesh is often tricked into coming out into the open. Even though it is humbling to see and painful to endure, just as it was for Peter, the poison becomes the cure. Whether we like it or not, or whether we want to admit it or not, our difficult circumstances have served as an opportunity to deal with the sin in our lives. If we take advantage of the opportunity and surrender it over to God, we find that we have actually grown closer in our relationship with Him. Is that not what we all pray for? Of course it is! All because God is Sovereign.

* Read these verses, too: Psalm 34:17, John 8:32, Romans 6:14-19, 2 Peter 2:19, Psalm 40:2