Lesson 10
Can God's purpose be refused?
The Position
Luke records, in his own narrative voice, that men rejected the counsel of God directed at themselves. God's sovereign plan cannot be derailed, and Scripture also records his purpose toward persons being set aside by those persons. Both are Luke's doctrine, and Luke himself marks the difference.
Luke 7:30
“But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him.”
The Greek: ten boulen tou theou ethetesan. Boule is God's deliberate counsel, his settled purpose. Ethetesan, aorist active: they set it aside. They did it. And the counsel in view is defined by John's mission: to make ready a people prepared for the Lord (Luke 1:17), to give knowledge of salvation unto his people (1:77). Not a bare command. A preparation. A rescue declined.
Supporting Verses
Acts 2:23 and Acts 4:28
“the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God... thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done”
The marking system. When Luke means the counsel that cannot fail, he marks it: the determinate counsel (2:23, horismene boule), thy counsel determined before to be done (4:28). When he writes the counsel men refused, it is bare boule, aimed at them, set aside by them. The author distinguishes his counsels. The one refused is the one he left unmarked.
Luke 7:31-32
“we have piped unto you, and ye have not danced”
Jesus answers the refused counsel with a parable about refusal: children in the marketplace. The rejected purpose is immediately narrated by the Lord as a rejected song.
What They Will Say
“That is God's preceptive will, his revealed commands. Men disobey commands daily. His decretive will cannot be thwarted. Category error.”
What You Say Back
Luke did not write that they broke a command. He wrote boule, the deliberation word, and defined it by John's mission as a purpose toward persons. A command disobeyed exists in every theology. A purpose of God for persons, set aside by those persons, is what the two-wills reading cannot hold without demoting the verse. And count the cost of the demotion. On that reading, God decreed their rejection of his own counsel toward them, so they refused God's purpose in fulfillment of God's purpose, and Jesus then laments the refusal in the very next breath. The system makes Luke's sentence self-canceling and the lament staged. The plain reading needs neither: the plan-counsel stood, the cross arrived on schedule through the very rebels (Acts 2:23), and the person-counsel was refused eis heautous, the loss falling exactly where the refusal was made.
The One Line to Remember
“A counsel that cannot be refused has to explain the verse where it was.”