Delegation isn’t abdication. God gives creatures real powers and humans real choices—but never an autonomous veto over His purposes.
Herod and Pilate freely chose evil, yet did “whatever Your hand and Your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:27–28).
A king who delegates remains sovereign. A king whose plan survives only when his subjects cooperate is merely optimistic.
If a malicious witness takes the stand to accuse someone of a crime, 17 the two people involved in the dispute must stand in the presence of the Lord before the priests and the judges who are in office at the time. 18 The judges must make a thorough investigation, and if the witness proves to be a liar, giving false testimony against a fellow Israelite, 19 then do to the false witness as that witness intended to do to the other party. You must purge the evil from among you. 20 The rest of the people will hear of this and be afraid, and never again will such an evil thing be done among you. 21 Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.
Because “dead in sin” doesn’t mean physically inert, unconscious, or incapable of further corruption. Paul explains his own metaphor:
“You were dead in trespasses… in which you once walked, following the prince of the power of the air” (Eph. 2:1–2).
Dead men walking, following, desiring, and disobeying.
God’s hardening is judicial. Satan’s stealing is instrumental. Christ’s parables both reveal and conceal.
The problem disappears once Paul defines “dead” instead of letting a wooden corpse analogy overrule the text.
@DineshDSouza Many just watch your videos, read your slogans and quips, read your books, and say that representation of Christianity sure is stupid. Because yours is.
The “acrobatics” begin only after you quietly replace commanded with decreed. Jeremiah says God never commanded child sacrifice. Calvinists agree.
Now try Acts 2:23: Christ was crucified according to God’s “definite plan and foreknowledge,” yet by the hands of “lawless men.” (You know, lawless like you.)
One event. God ordained it. Men wickedly committed it.
That isn’t a circus trick. It’s reading all the verses instead of making one verse perform alone. What you do each day is take a verse, isolate it, and then try to make it fit your autonomous human reason.