God Won't Make You Do What You Don't Want to Do

“God is a gentleman and won’t make you do anything you do not want to do.” This is the quote I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post. I considered in that post the first portion of the quote,; viz, God is a gentleman. Today I want to address the latter clause: “and won’t make you do anything you do not want to do.”

Again, we must examine the statement in the light of the Scriptures. What does the Bible have to say about that? Does the Bible make any direct statements supporting that quote? Does it allude to the possibility of it being true? Does it make any direct statements to the contrary? Does it allude to the possibility of it being false?

In yesterday’s blog I presented evidence that God is not a gentleman and, more than that, not always gentle. Today I will show that the second part of the quote is just as false.

Let us start with the book of beginnings, Genesis. In the first chapter of Genesis God created Adam and Eve. Did He consult with them and get their permission to bring them into existence? Did God consult with you and ask if you wished to be born? When Adam sinned and fell from grace, did God commiserate with him about leaving the Garden? Did He not summarily expel them? Did He ask Eve if she would like to endure agony during childbirth? Did He ask Adam if he’d like to pull weeds the rest of his life?

We look a little farther in Scripture and we come across the prophet Jonah. “Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me,” (Jonah 1:1-2)
Did God make Jonah go to Ninevah? You may answer, “No,” and you would be correct. God expects His people to obey Him. Did Jonah go? Sure, after God made him willing to go. Did Jonah do what he did not want to do? He sure did.

Now, let’s go to our day and age to people like you and me. Does God make us do things we do not want to do? He certainly does. Does anyone you know want to go through the torture of cancer? No one in their right mind would. Yet how many people experience the debilitating diseases of cancer? This is done against our will.

And how about death? All of us are bound to die. Just the other day a young man of my acquaintance died. He was having fun, living life to the fullest. His recreation was innocent enough yet it led to his demise. He had no desire to die. He had no anticipation of death. He did not know that his life would be required of him. He left behind a beautiful wife and an infant son. This was not what he wanted. God made him do what he did not want to do.

We forget that God is sovereign. He owns us. “Look, every life belongs to Me,” God says to the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 18:4). God owns us because He made us; He is our Creator. As our Sovereign, God can and often does make us do what we do not want to do. Sometimes God gives us the option of disobeying Him, as He did with Jonah, but makes us pay through the nose (or the whale’s belly) for our disobedience. In the end, God will have the final say, rewarding us for what we have done whether good or evil.