Monday 11 April 2011

Acts 4:27-28 and Predetermination

Acts 4:27-28
27 For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together,
28 For to do whatsoever THY HAND and THY COUNSEL DETERMINED BEFORE to be done.



I think the mood of it is that Peter was declaring that the things Herod and Pilate did against Jesus - which they did with their own motives - actions for which they themselves shall be held fully responsible - were the things which the Prophets had already said would happen.

They were the things which God was pleased to allow - things which He was pleased to subject the Messiah to, rather than deliver Him from from them - because those were the very sufferings which were necessary for the procurement of our eternal salvation.

It means God predermined not to intervene and stop those things from being done to His Son, by those people.

It means Scripture had been fulfilled.

It meant God had a reason for commanding His Son to subject Himself to their cruelty.

Man meant it for harm, but God achieved good out of it.

The wording of the text allows this meaning. And the rest of Scripture supports it.

Someone may object: "In the Greek, it says that he DETERMINED these things to happen."

Yes, He did. He determined it should happen, by commanding His Son to subject Himself to it. By not intervening to stop it. By hiding as it were His face from Him. By declaring it ahead of time, by the Scriptures of the Prophets.

But He's not the author of sin. He tempteth no man with evil. God even gave Pilate's wife bad dreams, prompting her to warn Pilate not to do any harm to Jesus. Why would God do that if He was actually spurring Pilate on to do what he was going to do? That's contradictory.

Someone may respond: "There are lots of contradictions in Scripture......unless you believe in antinomy."

I don't believe in antimony. I believe Scripture explains Scripture.

But even without comparing other Scripture, the wording of the text in this passage in Acts 4, as a stand alone verse, is able to convey the meaning I explained above. It's only contradictory to the rest of Scripture if you take it differently to how I've explained it. And the grammar of the wording itself allows the explanation that I've given.

The way I've explained it fits gramatically, ethically, morally, historically and it fits with the rest of Scripture. But to take it another way immediately brings one into conflict.

It's not rocket science.

It might not have been easy for me to see, once, either. So I'm sympathetic about that. It sometimes takes years for the penny to drop, but when it does, a Bible verse shines so clearly and with it a multitude of other Scriptures verses finally become clear too.

I may see it differently in several years from now. But as for now I personally feel really satisfied and thrilled with the grasp I seem to have of it - satisfied gramatically, intellectually, ethically and Scripturally, about it.

The best key I think I can give to help a person grasp the way I understand predestination is this:

I think the concepts of predestination & election, as taught in the New Testament, were given as a response to a specific objection that was... huge in the first century: namely, that the message of salvation by faith was never something God had previously planned.

Wherever you see the words election, predestined, etc in the NT, it was used in order to simply say that the Gospel actually really was something God had planned in advance.

It wasn't used to answer the Calvinist/Armenius dilemma. That question was not an issue in the first century, and it wasn't something Paul ever addressed.

The big concern in the first century was to answer the question: was all this really part of God's own plans? Did the Messiah really have to come meek, and die? Were Jews really going to largely miss out? Can Gentiles really be saved through faith without the works of the law? Did God really envisage the Church?

Yes He did. God always planned, elected, predestined, purposes, promised to save Gentiles through faith.

If you don't identify what the question was, you won't understand what the answer was meant to mean!

Romans 9-11 answered that issue - now read it again and see how it answers that question, instead of trying to see how it answers Calvin's and Armenius' unrelated question centuries later. It will start to fall into place.

Back to Acts 4, here is an illustration:

I have determined that tomorrow morning, I shall place some break-flakes in our fish tank. The hungry fish shall gather around the bread-pieces, tear them to bits, and consume them.

I determined what should happen to the bread. But I didn't make the fish do it. It's just what fish do! All I had to do was put the bread in the fish tank, and it happened.

If I wanted to, I could withold the bread from putting it into the fish tank. But I chose to, knowing full well what would happen if I did, because I had a purpose in it.

In the same way, God pre-determined to send Jesus, and place Him at the hands of the Jewish and Roman rulers, to do what they did - but that doesn't mean God made them do it. It was their nature. Just like it was the fishes' nature to swarm around the bread and tear it to bits.

That's the sense of the word "determined" in Acts 4.

This was all allowed to come to pass, in accordance with God's "counsel" - that is, He had a plan in allowing Jesus to be subjected to such treatment.

And thank God, that plan has saved us all, who believe!

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