Nothing God permits can frustrate what God wills. Even what opposes God remains within the bounds of divine providence and in the end must serve God’s purpose. God may permit evil, suffering, sin, death, betrayal, and opposition, but he never permits them as rival powers. They are never ultimate but always remain bounded, contingent, and temporary. God’s will is always creative, providential, redemptive — and final.
The Cross is the supreme example. God permitted betrayal, injustice, mockery, violence, and death — yet none of these thwarted his will. By divine wisdom, they became the very means through which His saving will was accomplished. By means of the Cross, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, no counting our sins against us (2 Corinthians 5:19). For God does not will that any should perish, but that all come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9).
God made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment — to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. (Ephesians 1:9-10)
For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (Colossians 1:20-21)
What God permits can never undo,
overcome, or thwart what God wills.
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