God, Evil, and Suffering: The Crucifixion

The post below is excerpted from God, Evil, and Suffering: Understanding God’s Role in Tragedies and Atrocities, a mini-book written by Dr. David A. Harrell, and published in the Compact Expository Pulpit Series, an imprint of Great Writing Publications and joint venture with Shepherd’s Fire Ministries.

Dave is currently the senior pastor-teacher of Calvary Bible Church where he has served since 1994. After attending the Moody Bible Institute, he graduated from Grace College, Grace Theological Seminary, and the Omega (formerly Oxford) Graduate School where he earned the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Integration of Religion and Society. He is a former Associate Professor of Biblical Counseling at the Master’s University, Santa Clarita, CA., and founder of Shepherd’s Fire, the mass communication arm of his ministry. He and his wife, Nancy, have three children and seven grandchildren.

Many thanks to Dave for contributing this post. Readers are welcome to share this provided they include the content at the beginning and end of this post.

The Tragedy and Atrocity of the Crucifixion of Christ

Reflecting once again upon my short conversation with the Sunday School class, it was obvious to each of them that indeed the crucifixion of Christ was the greatest of all evils; that God was more, not less, glorified because of it and, as a result, sinners are able to experience more, not less, happiness. But several in the class struggled, and understandably so, with the idea of God’s providential working in the lives of evil men who, by His sovereign decree, independently chose by their own free will to act wickedly in participating in heinous acts. Most indicated that they had never thought about it that way.

Obviously, none of what happened caught God by surprise nor were the choices of those wicked men a violation of His sovereign will. This was evident in the prayer of Peter and John when they stated, “For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur” (Acts 4:27).

Every Christian would do well to remember that the Father’s wrath of judgment against sin was poured out upon His Son and our substitute, Jesus Christ. Notwithstanding the responsibility of wicked men who cried out for Him to be crucified, Peter made it clear that God ordained His murder when he said, “this Man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death” (Acts 2:23).

What an amazing concept: Jesus willingly chose to suffer and die on a cross because God ordained Him to do so. He was delivered up by the “predetermined plan.” The word predetermined is the Greek word horizo, meaning “to mark out a boundary beforehand,” from which we get our English word horizon. The word plan translates the Greek word boule used in Scripture to describe God’s will of purpose; that which He has designed, ordained, or decreed in eternity past. Sometimes this is referred to as His decretive or sovereign will. So Peter is literally saying that our sovereign God decreed that Jesus would die on the cross; it was His predetermined plan.

Furthermore, he attributes His sacrificial death to the “foreknowledge of God.” The word foreknowledge is the Greek word prognosis meaning “to foreordain”—a meaning that far exceeds the English concept of merely knowing something ahead of time. Moreover, grammatically speaking, since the term is in the instrumental dative case, it must be understood that Peter was actually saying, “It was God’s foreknowledge (foreordination) that was the sole cause or the means by which the men nailed Him to a cross.” Stated simply, Jesus did exactly what God ordained Him to do, yet those who called for His death and hung Him on the tree were responsible for His murder. Here again we see not only the mysterious convergence of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility, but also God deliberately ordaining an evil event to exist as a part of His plan and purpose to glorify Himself—the greatest act of evil in all of history: the murder of Jesus Christ.

Unlike the misguided musings of the Sunday School class, the testimony of Scripture plainly reveals that God is indeed sovereign over His creation. And though He is never responsible for sin, He does bring it about through the voluntary choices of men and He holds them accountable for their actions. Moreover, not only is God removed from actually doing evil, but never do we find an instance in Scripture of any act of evil surprising God and requiring Him to react with a “Plan B.”

In light of all this, it is obvious that no example can be found supporting the Arminian notion that God merely allowed the possibility for evil to exist in order to give His creatures freedom of choice, thereby guaranteeing that man’s choices would always be meaningful, as some would suggest. Instead, we see a sovereign God orchestrating His universe through the use of both good and evil.

This excellent little book (and several others in the series) may be purchased from online vendors such as Amazon HERE or directly from the author HERE.