Acts 2:23—the Greek text: τοῦτον τῇ ὡρισμένῃ βουλῇ καὶ προγνώσει τοῦ θεοῦ ἔκδοτον διὰ χειρὸς ἀνόμων προσπήξαντες ἀνείλατε.

This verse declares that Jesus was delivered up—ἔκδοτον—by means of the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God. The dative τῇ ὡρισμένῃ βουλῇ καὶ προγνώσει τοῦ θεοῦ is instrumental: God Himself is the active agent behind every move. ὡρισμένῃ, the perfect passive participle from ὁρίζω, means the boundary was set, the purpose fixed, before time began—completed, unchangeable. προγνώσει, foreknowledge, is not passive observation but sovereign, intimate knowing that precedes and shapes the event. God did not merely foresee evil; He ordained the entire stage, every actor, every line.
The phrase διὰ χειρὸς ἀνόμω —“through the hand of lawless ones”—shows those “evil men” as instruments. ἀνόμων is genitive plural, substantival, naming the wicked as tools in God’s script.

Their malice, their nails, their betrayal—none of it escapes His control. They are not autonomous; they play the role He assigned. The aorist verbs προσπήξαντες (“having nailed”) and ἀνείλατε (“you killed”) mark the act as punctiliar, yet the whole sequence flows from τῇ ὡρισμένῃ βουλῇ. God orchestrated the crucifixion, including the hands that drove the nails. This is not fatalism—it is total sovereignty. There is no free will as humans imagine it. Every choice, even the darkest, is God working in them to do His good pleasure, as Philippians 2:13 states: θεὸς γάρ ἐστιν ὁ ἐνεργῶν ἐν ὑμῖν καὶ τὸ θέλειν καὶ τὸ ἐνεργεῖν ὑπὲρ τῆς εὐδοκίας. He wills and works through every player—Judas, Pilate, the crowd—without exception. Their evil is temporary, scripted for redemption. All will come to salvation; the “lawless ones” are not damned forever but ordained to act out sin for a season, so that grace might shine brighter. The grammar locks this in: the perfect tense of ὡρισμένῃ seals the plan as eternal; the instrumental dative ties every action to God; the genitive ἀνόμων marks the wicked as secondary agents, not primary. Before any breath was taken, before any heart beat, God preordained Jesus’ delivery, the evil hands, the cross—and the universal restoration that follows. It is all His doing, from start to finish.