The will of God and the will of man.
Divine sovereignty and human responsibility.
Acts 2:22-24
Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know– Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.
These verses say many things.
My comment today is simply to read it for what it says about what God has done and what man has done.
Read it again with that in mind.
Now let’s do the same with the following reference.
Acts 4:27-28
For truly against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose determined before to be done.
Who did this to Jesus? The hands of all the people who gathered? Or the hand of God’s purpose? Yes and yes.
This reference comes on the heels of Peter quoting Psalm 2. We won’t dive all the way in but could mention that this Psalm emphasizes God’s sovereignty over man’s national strategies. The strategies and wills and actions belong to the men and nations. But the sovereign purpose belongs to God alone.
DA Carson
“Observe that God’s sovereignty over the death of Christ does not mitigate the guilt of the human conspirators. One the other hand, the malice of their conspiracy has not caught God flat-footed, as if he had not foreseen the cross, much less planned it. The text plainly insists that God’s sovereignty is not mitigated by human actions, and human guilt is not exculpated by appeal to divine sovereignty. This duality is sometimes called Compatibilism; God’s utter sovereignty and the human moral responsibility are compatible.”
Now, Dr. Carson says it there with greater accuracy, clarity and eloquence than you or I probably every could. But this is what we believe, whether or not we can articulate it quite like that!