“The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The Lord said, ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.’ But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.”
An frustrated father might say: “I’m sorry that I ever got married” or “I wish I had never had kids.” Obviously, though, they still love their wife and children, but are just lamenting the temporary troubles experienced by human failings in interpersonal relationships. At Genesis chapter 6, God was expressing a temporary emotion over the impact of creating free creatures who abused their freedoms and caused so much evil on the earth. This knowledge, which He possessed from eternity, did not stop Him from creating humanity. However, He did lament the problems along the way—not things that He did wrong or designed to go wrong—but rather things that others did wrong, and how God would have to bear the burden of correcting and fixing it.
God created humanity free, necessary for real relationships so that people could love God from their heart, but in doing so, also makes it possible for people to refuse to reciprocate God’s love and cause evil instead. However, in deterministic Calvinism, where God is literally the only One who can make people choose Him—not simply in the persuasive sense but in the effectual, irresistible sense—then for God to express frustration with people’s disbelief (which He kept them from), to marvel at people’s faith (which He effectually caused), or to grieve over people’s persistent wickedness (from which He alone could release them), is nonsense. In other words, in Calvinism, God decreed “whatsoever comes to pass,” including all of the evil in the world. So, in Calvinism, why would God grieve over getting 100% of what He wanted? It’s a much different picture in non-Calvinism. By creating free creatures, God foresaw the benefits of creation, culminating in His Church, the body of Christ, despite the regretful abuses of fallen humanity along the way, for which Christ suffered and died, bearing the full cost to remedy.
[This post has been excerpted with permission from Richard Coords, Calvinism Answered Verse by Verse and Subject by Subject, © 2024.]
