Dear Friends,
Many people are painfully confused over the question how can God be
sovereign and yet man act freely? If you are puzzled by that question,
don’t be discouraged for it has been a difficult knot to untie for lots
of folk. Today’s attached devotional will give you lots of help with it.
God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Acts 2:22-24 (ESV)

  22 “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— 23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. 24 God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

“If God cannot effectually control the acts of free agents, there can be no prophecy, no prayer, no thanksgiving, no promises, no security of salvation, no certainty whether in the end God or Satan is to be triumphant, whether heaven or hell is to be the consummation. Give us certainty ¾ the secure conviction that a sparrow cannot fall, nor a sinner move a finger, but as God permits and ordains. We must have either God or Satan to rule. And if God has a providence, he must be able to render the free acts of his creatures certain; and therefore certainty must be consistent with liberty. Was it not certain that Christ should, according to the Scriptures, be by wicked hands crucified and slain, and yet were not his murderers free in all they did?” [Charles Hodge in S. Donald Fortson III, Charles Hodge, (Darlington, England: EP Books, 2013), p. 86]