Acts 2:22-23 NASB95
“Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know—this Man, when handed over [to the Roman authorities] according to the predetermined decision and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross and put to death by the hands of lawless and godless men.
Acts 4:27-28 AMP
For 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, [28] to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined [before the creation of the world] to occur [and so without knowing it, they served Your own purpose].
Acts 3:17-18 NASB95
“And now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers did also. [18] But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled.
Jesus was and is the author and the perfecter of faith. One aspect of his life of faith when he walked on the earth was trusting in his Father’s sovereign reign in the events of his life. He knew that the Father was ordering his steps and that neither human beings nor circumstances were in control of his story. The verses above make it very clear that godless people made choices that impacted the affairs of Jesus’s life, but those verses also make it very clear that sovereign God used those things to fulfill His predetermined plan and purpose for Jesus. It was not in spite of the great injustices and concerted evil against Jesus that the Father achieved his redemptive purposes in Christ, but it was through those very acts of injustices and evil that the Father accomplished them. What a mind boggling mystery! Don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that the Father initiated these people to commit evil against Jesus, or to make evil choices that affected the life of Jesus. What I am saying is that God has foreknowledge and he is so big and so brilliant that he doesn’t just work around what fallen people do, he uses their very actions to accomplish his glorious purposes in each of our lives. God’s goodness is so huge that it is manifested not just in delivering us from evil ever happening, but from delivering us from evil’s intended purpose, and turning around to accomplish His purposes in us. Just as Joseph said, “What the enemy means for evil, God means for our good.” Christ is our example of a life of faith and in his life of faith there were imperfect situations and imperfect people that impacted his daily life, but in those moments Jesus manifested his life of faith by trusting that He was in the Father (thus the Father was in control of his daily story) and that the Father was in him, and therfore anything the Father ordered or allowed, the Father was more than big enough in him to handle.
Jesus said in John 20, “As the father has sent me, so send I you.” Jesus wasn’t just saying that we are sent also. He aws saying that we are sent to live as he lived, a life of faith; faith in him the same way he was sent to live by faith in the Father.
Jesus’s example in those verses above is the simplest description of what it means to walk in the Spirit. Step-by-step, because we are in Christ, trusting his sovereign leadership and reign in our lives, and trusting his limitless ability in us to handle whatever he orders or allows.
Living from Christ, not for Christ.