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in The Gospel Messenger vol.8 no.4 (1886)

AUTHOR:

Holcombe, George M.

FOR TO DO WHATSOEVER thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done. — Acts iv. 28....

The preceding verses teach us of a gathering together of people from the highest to the lowest grade of humanity; in a word, of all classes of unbelievers to do whatever the hand of God had determined should be done—the crucifixion of Jesus. My thought is that this determination was in the counsel or mind of God before the formation of man upon earth; for he was wise enough to declare the end from the beginning and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying my counsel shall stand and I will do all my pleasure. — Isaiah xlvi,10; wise enough to see man in his lost and ruined condition before he was created a good creature. Wise enough to see the needs of fallen man and make preparation for his redemption before his members were fashioned or formed of the dust; and the final consummation of that preparation could not be brought about without the wicked act of those creatures gathered together to do what the hand and counsel of God had determined before should be done.

We are not only taught in this subject the wisdom of God, but also his mighty power to bring to pass his determination. For as he had formed man a good creature, had he not possessed all power, (when man became bad,) to control him, his purposes must have fallen or have come to an end. Not that we believe God controls or compels man to do wickedly, but we think the Prince of the power of the air impels him in that direction. And were it not for the almighty power of God to overrule or restrain, there is no conjecturing by me what would be done. But to be brief, we think out of this desperately wicked people God had a chosen generation, a people he had formed for himself; and seeing them from eternity in their lost and ruined condition, and as he has declared, “children of wrath even as others” and forever debarred from his presence in that condition, therefore he determined their salvation by the sacrifice of his Son, who is represented as being every way equal with the Father. And further, it is declared, “judgment and justice is the habitation of his throne!” Oh, the depth of the mysteries of Godliness! How can it be just in God to lay our sins on one every way equal with him and every way separate from sinners? How can this innocent Son of God suffer in our stead, or justly suffer the just for the unjust, that he might bring us unto God? The law was given by God the Father, and violated by us, the creatures of God, or the subjects of his law; how can the law justly lay hold upon the equal of the giver of the law and in every sense above it, unless there were provisions agreed upon in the lawmaking department before the law was given? This we understand to be the case, consequently the Son of God becomes our surety, hence the language of the text. As the Son,having agreed upon his part to fulfill the law, when the fullness of the time came he was made of a woman, made under the law to redeem them that are under the law.

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