No Tension Whatever

“When I was first struggling with this issue, Acts 4:27-28 was my undoing. ‘For truly against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Piliate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose determined before to be done.’ The most heinous crime ever committed was the crucifixion of Christ. And no matter how hard some try to get around this important truth, the Bible declares that God decreed that Christ would be executed. But even though God decreed Christ’s execution, He held those who executed Him (those who fulfilled God’s decree) guilty of sin. Acts 2:23 teaches the same truth. ‘This Man [Christ] delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death‘ (NASB). In the same breath, Acts 2:23 declares both that the Christ was delivered up in accordance with God’s sovereign plan and that those who put Him to death were responsible for their godlessness . . . To be true to the plain meaning of Scripture, I had to admit that divine sovereignty and human responsibility live together comfortably in Scripture. Scripture presents no tension between sovereignty and responsibility. It is not either divine sovereignty or human responsibility. It is both divine sovereignty and human responsibility” (Back to Basics, pp. 12-13).