If God Has Determined All Things, Then Is He Responsible for Sin?

Let us be unequivocal: Scripture says that God has determined all things, from the beginning of the universe to eternity future. He Himself says, "I declare the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all My purpose'" (Isaiah 46:10). We also read this: "Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand" (Proverbs 19:21). Short of being deliberately obtuse, we cannot miss the meaning here. God has determined all things according to His own plan, not according to ours. 

OK, so He has determined all things. Does He change course midway, whether because He has thought of a better way or because men have not approved of His plans? "Also the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for He is not a man, that He should have regret" (I Samuel 15:29; see also Numbers 23:19). To claim that God would change His mind is to make Him like us, to bring Him down to man's level. And Scripture says that any such attempt is based on a false view of God. 

Then comes the question, what of the wicked acts of men? God could not have predetermined them, because that would make God responsible for sin, right? Well, no, not right. First, let us say that Scripture affirms that God has predetermined even the wicked acts of men: "Truly in this city [i. e., Jerusalem] 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 plan had predestined to take place" (Acts 4:27-28). So, in a prayer to God, Peter and John, while addressing God, confess that He had planned all of the events around the suffering and death of Jesus, even in planning the evil actions of Herod and Pilate. But what was the goal in those actions? The atonement of God's people. In other words, our salvation is dependent on God's predestining the evil actions of particular men! 


Look also at Paul's words in Romans 3:7: "If through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner?" Using the words of a hypothetical unbeliever, Paul has that unbeliever confess that his lies, his sins, glorify God. "However," the unbeliever pleads, "then I shouldn't be punished for them." The first part is true. His wickedness glorifies God, both through His justice to the unrepentant unbeliever and by His mercy to the repentant elect sinner. However, that wasn't the purpose when the sinner committed his wicked acts, just as Herod and Pilate planned nothing good by their murder of Jesus. That is why God is still just in bringing them under judgment. His bringing about good from their evil is to His praise, not theirs.

And it is also why God cannot be said to be the author of sin.