Summary
God is My Co-Pilot?
The phrase was born in a cave in wartime China. Robert Lee Scott Jr., a Flying Tiger ace pilot, lay having shrapnel pulled from his body when a doctor told him, "You are never alone up there. Not with all the things you came through. You have the greatest co-pilot in the world, even if there is just room for one in that fighter." From that moment came the bumper-sticker theology many Christians have carried ever since: God is my co-pilot.
It is a comforting picture, but it gets the seating chart wrong. When the bills loom, when health fails, when relationships stay broken, the co-pilot God seems strangely passive—and we find ourselves asking why he hasn't done more. A second bumper sticker tried to correct the first: "If God is your co-pilot, switch seats." Better, but still not quite right. Even that slogan assumes we hold the controls and may, if we are wise, hand them over. It treats God's sovereignty as something we grant.
Scripture does not. "In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind" Job 12:10. "Whatever the LORD pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps" Psalm 135:6. God does not wait for our permission. "If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine" Psalm 50:12. His ways and thoughts are higher than ours as the heavens are higher than the earth Isaiah 55:9. The little word if—"if God is your co-pilot"—is the problem. There is no if. He is not a possibility we approve. He is the great I AM, before whom Israel could not even draw near at Sinai.
This matters because we are not, by nature, capable pilots who have invited God along. We are Lazarus in the tomb, four days dead, already decomposing. Lazarus did not knock on the stone from inside and ask to be raised. Jesus stood outside and called, "Come out," and the dead man lived. So it is with us: born dead in sin, we cannot offer, allow, or invite Christ to save us. He calls by his own authority, and the dead hear and follow Ephesians 2:1-5. As “God is My Co-Pilot?” 6-25-23 puts it plainly, the question is not whether we will hand God the controls, but whether we will see that he has always held them.
Who, then, is this Lord who flies the plane? Paul answers in Colossians 1:15-20: Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, in whom all things in heaven and on earth were created, and in whom all things hold together. The Word who spoke creation into being in Genesis is the Word made flesh in John 1:1-14. In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell—and through him God was pleased to reconcile all things to himself, making peace by the blood of his cross.
Here is the wonder. With every power and authority in heaven and earth at his command, Christ chose you. He chose to enter humanity, to walk to Calvary, to be mocked and nailed to two beams of wood, to be numbered with the cursed, and to give up his spirit—"for the joy that was set before him" Hebrews 12:2, the joy of your forgiveness. He rose triumphant over your sin and your death so that you might live eternally with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
That is why we splash water on our faces in the morning and remember our baptism: God has called us by name, sealed us with his Spirit, and said, "You are mine." It is why the absolution lands as good news—your sins truly are forgiven. It is why we come with empty hands to the altar, where the body and blood of Christ are placed into them. In every one of these, Jesus is choosing you again, telling you that you are reconciled to the Father.
So obedience is no longer the white-knuckled grip of "or else." It becomes the grateful "so that" of Luther's catechism: I will not murder, because I love and fear God, so that my neighbor may live. The command flows from a God who is already Lord, not from a deity awaiting our authorization. God is my co-pilot? No. God is—and by his grace, we have been chosen to follow.
Video citations
- “God is My Co-Pilot?” 6-25-23 — In World War II, there was a squadron of pilots called the Flying Tigers. And the Flying Tigers was a group originally of pilots of these ace fighter pilots that volunteered to defend China against…