1. The chance happening of fortunate or adverse events. 2. Good
fortune or prosperity; success....to gain success or something
desirable by chance: "I lucked out in finding that rare book."
The main question is, do things happen by chance? If they do, then one
can speak of someone being lucky or unlucky. But if they do not happen
by chance, then it is inappropriate to use those terms. Ecclesiastes
9:11-12 states, "I have seen something else under the sun: The race is
not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to
the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time
and chance happen to them all. Moreover, no man knows when his hour
will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a
snare, so men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon
them." Much of what Ecclesiastes shares is from the perspective of a
person who looks at life on earth without God, or life "under the
sun." From such a perspective—leaving God out of the picture—there
seems to be good luck and bad luck.
A runner in a race may be the swiftest, but because someone in front
of him stumbles, he trips over him and falls and does not win the
race. How unlucky for him? Or a warrior king may have the strongest
army but some "chance" arrow shot up into the air at random by a
no-name enemy soldier just happens to pierce his armor in its most
vulnerable location (2 Chronicles 18:33) resulting in that king's
death and the loss of the battle. How unlucky for King Ahab? Was it a
matter of luck? Reading the whole of 2 Chronicles 18, we find that God
had His hand in the matter from the beginning. The soldier who shot
the arrow was totally unaware of its trajectory, but God in His
sovereignty knew all along it would mean the death of wicked King
Ahab.
A similar "chance" occurrence takes place in the book of Ruth. Ruth, a
widow who was caring for her widowed mother-in-law, seeks a field to
glean grain to provide for them. "So she went out and began to glean
in the fields behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she found
herself working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of
Elimelech" (Ruth 2:3). Elimelech had been the husband of her
mother-in-law, Naomi, so Boaz was a relative of hers and was generous
to Ruth. As Ruth returns home with a great deal more grain than Naomi
expected, "her mother-in-law asked her, 'Where did you glean today?
Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you!' Then
Ruth told her mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been
working. 'The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz,' she said.
'The LORD bless him!' Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. 'He has not
stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.' She added,
'That man is our close relative; he is one of our kinsman-redeemers.'"
(Ruth 2:19-20). So Naomi did not see it as a "chance" occurrence but
as the providence of God, as do others later on (Ruth 4:14).
Proverbs 16:33 states a general principle: "The lot is cast into the
lap, But its every decision is from the Lord." This refers to the use
of casting lots (similar to the tossing of a coin or the rolling of
dice) to settle certain judicial cases. The case involving Achan in
Joshua 7 is an example in which the principle of Proverbs 16:33 is
used to find the guilty party. Proverbs 18:18 states something
similar: "Casting the lot settles disputes and keeps strong opponents
apart." Again, the idea is that God's providence plays the determining
role in the results of the casting of lots so that judicial conflicts
can be resolved no matter how great the contention. Proverbs 16:33
would indicate that something as random as the rolling of dice or the
tossing of a coin is not outside of God's sovereign control. And,
therefore, its results are not merely of chance.
God's sovereignty involves two aspects. God's active will or
sovereignty would involve something He causes to happen such as the
leading of wicked King Ahab into battle (2 Chronicles 18:18-19).
Ahab's death was not merely the result of a randomly shot arrow, but
as 2 Chronicles 18 reveals, God actively directed the events that led
Ahab into battle and used that randomly shot arrow to accomplish His
intended will for Ahab that day.
God's passive will involves Him allowing, rather than causing,
something to happen. Chapter1 of the book of Job illustrates this in
what God allowed Satan to do in the life of Job. It is also involved
in the evil that God allowed Joseph's brothers to do to Joseph in
order to accomplish a greater good, a good not apparent to Joseph
until years later (Genesis 50:20).
Because we do not have the curtains drawn back to see what is taking
place in heaven, we cannot always determine whether God's active or
passive will is involved in the events of our lives, but we do know
that all things that take place are under the umbrella of His will,
whether active or passive, and, therefore, nothing is a matter of mere
chance. When a person rolls the dice to play a board game, God may
sometimes cause the dice to land a certain way, but more often than
not in such inconsequential matters, He may allow the dice to land as
His laws of nature would determine without any active involvement. But
even when He is not actively involved, how the dice land is still
under His sovereignty.
So it is for any event of life; no matter how small (Matthew 10:29-31)
or how large (Daniel 4:35; Proverbs 21:1), God is sovereign over all
(Ephesians 1:11; Psalm 115:3; Isaiah 46:9-10), and thus nothing is
merely the matter of chance.
From an earthly perspective, things may seem to happen at random, but
throughout the whole of Scripture, it is clear that God is in control
of all of His creation and is somehow able to take the random acts of
natural law, the free will of both good and evil men, and the wicked
intent of demons and combine them all to accomplish His good and
perfect will (Genesis 50:20; Job chapters 1 and 42; John 9:1-7). And
Christians, specifically, are given the promise that God works all
things, whether seemingly good or bad, together for good to those who
love Him and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28).
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