Acts 4:28

28. To do… thy counsel Happily, most happily, the rage of all these elements is limited and mastered, though not inspired or impelled, by the God which made heaven, Acts 4:24. Upon the rulers there is an Overruler. Here, as in Acts 2:23, (on which see our notes,) the dividing line between the human side and the divine side is so exquisitely drawn that God as Overruler is not made author or predeterminer of man’s sin. “It is not said,” Limborch well remarks, “that these powers gathered to do what thy hand and counsel decreed that they should do, or should by them be done, but simply to be done. God decreed that his Son Jesus should redeem the human race by his own sacrificial death, and that the Christian Church should be led through crosses and sufferings to life eternal. To this end it was not necessary that God should by his own decree or providence determine and powerfully direct the wills of certain particular men that they should slay Jesus or persecute his followers. But inasmuch as the kingdoms and powers of this world are, without divine prevention, in the hands of the wicked, to their power he simply leaves his Son. The very piety of Jesus and his followers becomes an incitement to men’s free voluntary malice, so that of their own wicked wills they accomplish the divine counsel of the sacrifice of Jesus, although God has neither foreordained their actions by his decree nor secured them by his providence.” And this distinction, we may add, is so carefully drawn by the disciples as to be plainly intentional. (See note on Acts 2:23.)