Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 4:28

"to do whatsoever thy hand and thy council foreordained to come to pass." — Acts 4:28 (ASV)

To do whatsoever thy hand. . . .—The great problem of the relationship between God’s purpose and human free agency is stated (as before in Acts 1:16; Acts 2:23), without any attempt at a philosophical solution. No such solution is indeed possible. If we admit a Divine Will at all, manifesting itself in the government of the world, in the education of mankind, and in the salvation of individual souls, we must follow the example of the Apostle and hold to both the facts to which consciousness and experience bear witness, without seeking a logical formula for reconciliation.

In every fact of history, no less than in the great fact of which St. Peter speaks, the will of each agent is free, and he stands or falls by the part he has taken in it; yet the outcome of the whole works out some law of evolution, some “increasing purpose,” which we recognize as we look back on the course of events, where the actors were impelled by their own base or noble aims, their self-interest, or their self-devotion.

As each man looks back on his own life, he traces a sequence visiting him with righteous retribution and leading him—whether he obeyed the call or resisted it—to a higher life, an education no less than a probation.

“Man proposes, God disposes.” “God works in us, therefore we must work.” Aphorisms such as these are the nearest approximation we can make to a practical, though not a theoretical, solution to the great mystery.