Although Christ is active and determined in building his church, and although this means that the forces of hell are unable to diminish or destroy it, this should not encourage complacency in us, and it does not follow that we have no responsibilities or that our actions as individuals are meaningless. And confidence should not lead to indolence or negligence.

Sometimes people think that they are responsible or that their actions are meaningful only when the entire enterprise stands or falls with them. If the outcome is not directly, necessarily, and proportionately related to their effort, then they throw up their hands and conclude that it is pointless for them to do anything. This attitude is foolish and wicked, because it implies that unless the outcome ultimately depends on the human person – unless that person replaces God – then he finds no reason to do the right thing, or to obey God's commands.

Incidentally, this evil attitude is a controlling premise in many arguments for human freedom, including some arguments in favor of compatibilism and the doctrine of secondary causes. Their assumption is that the meaningfulness of an action and the responsibility of a person necessarily depend on some kind of human freedom. Few perceive the arbitrariness of this premise because of its wide acceptance. But there is no justification for it. Nevertheless, our present concern is not with human freedom, but with the relation between action and effect, and how that relates to responsibility.

The biblical and rational position is that it does not undermine moral responsibility to say that a person's action has no direct, necessary, or proportionate effect on anything, but that, when we must speak on the metaphysical level or speak relative to the ultimate reference point, God is the direct and necessary cause of all things. There is no necessary connection between our responsibility and the effect or outcome of our actions. The assumption that there is a relation between the two is based on a misguided existential desire for meaning rather than a biblical or rational demonstration of a relationship between the two. Rather, our responsibility relates only to God's commands and judgments.

All this is to say that we are morally responsible to do the things that his commands tell us to do, and not to produce the effects that we think his commands are intended to produce. There is a big difference between the two – God wants us to obey him, not to replace him. Of course, God will often relate the effects that he produces with the efforts that we exert into following his commands, but the two are not related thus by necessity, but only by God's sovereign arrangement. The point is that although the survival of the church does not depend on our actions, we are still responsible and our actions are still meaningful because responsibility and meaning should be measured relative to God's commands and not relative to the effects that we can produce.

So we say that Christ will build his church and that the church will stand and succeed "no matter what," but this is not a doctrine of fatalism, which teaches that events are determined by an impersonal force, and that effects will come about regardless of means. Contrary to fatalism, we insist that a rational and personal God determines all events, and that he often uses means, including human instruments, to produce the effects that he intends.

Against some who hold to an incoherent and incomplete doctrine of divine sovereignty, we also affirm that God has direct and total control over human instruments, so that these have no freedom. But again, this doctrine does not thus become fatalism, since our God is still personal, and his means are still effective. By definition, it cannot be identified as fatalism. This doctrine is not only different from fatalism, but it is a stronger form of determinism than fatalism. In fact, this biblical, rational, and coherent formulation is the strongest form of determinism possible. Where the state of the church is concerned, as a general principle we can say that God will fulfill his decrees by his sovereign direction of human instruments as they relate to his divine commands. However, God is not required to employ human instruments to produce every effect. It is an error to assume that he does or that he must always use means.

Therefore, although the church does not stand or fall with us, and although we can have unshakable confidence when it comes to the construction and perpetuation of the church, we still carry many responsibilities since we have received commands from God about what we should believe, how we should live, how we must treat people, and what we must say to them. In our context, we must consider the proper reaction toward the attacks of the enemy against the Christian faith. What are our responsibilities when all the forces of hell are unleashed against us, as if to destroy us? What should we do when we come face to face with skepticism, immorality, persecution from without, and dissension from within?

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