THE betrayal, mock trial, and condemnation to death of our blessed Lord form together the most colossal miscarriage of justice in all history. Yet everything was foreseen by God, and all was in accord with the sure Word of prophecy. Those who participated in this infamous crime were all playing the parts long since predicted, little as they realized it. It is not that they were foreordained to act as they did. They were free moral agents in one sense, because they acted deliberately according to their own wills. But they were slaves of Satan, the great arch-enemy of God and man, who led them on to do what God Himself had declared should be done. There is a difference between His foreknowledge and His foreordination—a difference that Peter made clear in his sermon that day. Every adverse actor in that most awful drama of the ages was individually responsible for his behavior toward the Holy Saviour, even though it was by their means that He was brought to the cross, where He offered up Himself as a propitiation for our sins.
I saw One hanging on a tree,
In agony and blood;
Who fixed His languid eyes on me,
As near the cross I stood.
Sure, never, till my latest breath,
Can I forget that look:
It seemed to charge me with His death,
Though not a word He spoke.
Alas! I knew not what I did—
But now my tears are vain;
Where shall my trembling soul be hid,
For I the Lord have slain!”
—John Newton.