Competence seems to be in short supply today.  Many people have criticised the government in recent months for incompetence concerning the handling of the COVID-19 crisis.  Others blamed epidemiologists for providing flawed mathematical models or criticised journalists for not reporting the news accurately.  Whatever your political viewpoint is, we all want to know that those in power have at least some measure of control over the difficult situations that we face. But could the same criticism of incompetence be made against God?  Is He incompetent in handling the day-to-day workings of this universe? I want to suggest that God demonstrates His competence in at least two crucial ways: competence in His creation and competence in His plan of salvation.

Competence in Creation 

First, let us consider God’s good design in His creation.  After creating the universe with its billions of galaxies of stars and our world with its spectacular array of plants and animals,  in Genesis 1:31 we read, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” The fact that creation was good in the beginning is no accident. It is a reflection of God’s perfect character. Just as a master carpenter is able to produce a beautiful table using his woodworking tools, so too God is capable of creating an entire universe using only His words. The table is a reflection of a carpenter’s craftmanship and the goodness of this universe is a reflection of God’s perfection and unrivalled ability. God not only created the world perfectly but the world in which we live reveals the existence of a personal God who has made himself known to us.  As Psalm 19:1-2 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.”

            Moreover, the incredible precision with which God made this universe displays His awesome power and the perfect design of His creation. The structure of our universe is determined by a number of constants and scientists have come to the amazing realization that each of these numbers appears to have been “finely tuned” to an incredibly precise value.   For example, if the force of gravity was a tiny fraction smaller (one part in 10 to the 14th power) at the beginning of creation, the universe would have kept expanding without forming galaxies and therefore we would not be here.  Antony Flew was a world-renowned philosopher who spent most of his life as an atheist but then converted to belief in God later in life.  He concluded that the fine-tuning of the universe was too precise to be the result of chance so he accepted the existence of God, saying, “An intelligent being is involved in some way in the design of conditions that would allow life to arise.”  God made our universe, and it was good.

Competence in Salvation

The second way in which God proves His competence is in His plan of salvation.  Whilst God’s creation was undeniably good in the beginning, it didn’t stay this way for long.  Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God brought darkness and decay into the world, enslaving all human beings to sin and death (Romans 5:12, 6:20). If human beings were to be made right with God they needed a Saviour, a Messiah.  And throughout the Old Testament we read of God promising a Messiah, a person who would come and deliver His people. The New Testament tells the story of this coming Messiah, Jesus, and the establishment of God’s Kingdom (Mark 1:1, 15).

            It is undeniable that Jesus defied many people’s expectations as Messiah.  Many Jews in Jesus’ day expected the Messiah to be a great, triumphant military ruler.  They longed for someone who would liberate them from the oppressive regime of the Roman Empire. At first, it looked like Jesus would be this triumphant Messiah.  On Palm Sunday he entered Jerusalem to the acclaim of the crowds. At last, it seemed, he was going to make his move and lead the Jewish people in a war of liberation against the Romans before being enthroned as King of Israel. Yet before the week was over he was arrested and executed like a common criminal and abandoned by his followers. It’s little wonder that many people in Jesus’ day would have viewed Jesus as a failure.  The idea that the Messiah would suffer a humiliating death at the hands of the Romans was unthinkable. As Paul would later say, the cross is “foolishness to those who are perishing” (1 Corinthians 1:18). However, the problem was not with Jesus but with the people’s flawed expectations.

            Far from being a failure, Jesus’ death was in fact history’s greatest victory because, as John Owen puts it, the cross meant “the Death of Death.”  It is because of Jesus’ death that Paul could say, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). Jesus’ death was the way in which God demonstrated both his love and holiness: through it He both punished sin and saved us from sin’s penalty. If we are in Christ, then we have been adopted into God’s family and been forgiven from all our sins (Ephesians 1:5-6).  And Christ was not bound by death but rose back to life and is now seated at the right hand of God the Father (Hebrews 10:12). What looked like a failure to the uninformed observer was actually God accomplishing His mission plan.

            If anyone deserves the label of “incompetent” it is human beings.  We are the ones who brought sin into the world and spoiled God’s good creation.  We are the ones who have a total inability to attain God’s standard of holiness and to save ourselves. But it is God who makes a way through Jesus’ sacrificial death to atone for our sin and give us everlasting life.  What a reliable hope we have in a God who is competent over His creation and who through Christ has achieved salvation for us.