Understanding divine incomprehensibility—that we can know God truly but not fully—will help us make sense of the next attribute of our Creator: His will. Answering the question “What is the will of God?” is no simple matter, and the basic truth is that much of God’s will is unknown to us.

Scripture talks about the will of God in different ways. In fact, the totality of the Lord’s Word seems to indicate both that God’s will is always done and that sometimes it is not done (e.g., see Job 42:2; Ps. 115:3; Jer. 19:4–5; Eph. 1:11). To understand how Scripture can speak in both ways about the will of God, theologians turn to texts such as Deuteronomy 29:29, which makes a distinction between the things that God has revealed and the things that He has not. From this text and many other passages, we see that there are two ways that we can understand God’s will: His hidden will and His revealed will.

The hidden will of God—also known as His sovereign will, secret will, decretive will, or will of decree—refers to His plan for creation, those things that He has foreordained will come to pass. He works out all things infallibly according to the counsel of this hidden will (Eph. 1:11). His hidden will operates in line with His complete sovereignty over all things. Nothing that occurs in history is outside this will. It includes everything from the rise and fall of world empires to the appointed lifespan of insects whose mature form endures for only a few moments. This will of God ordained that you would be reading these words at this very moment in your life and in the very location where you are now. This will includes every detail in creation. It also includes the sins of human beings, which have also been ordained by the Lord. God is the great Potter (Isa. 64:8), in complete control of all things—no exceptions.

Not everything in God’s hidden or decretive will is in itself pleasing to Him. He can ordain sin without approving of sin and without taking away our responsibility for our transgressions, though we cannot fully explain how this is possible. God can do no evil Himself, but He can ordain evil to achieve His good and greater purposes. The best example of this is the Lord’s ordaining His Son’s crucifixion in order to save His people (Acts 2:23). God did no evil in this, but He ordained the evil that was to be done, and He did so without forcing the enemies of Jesus to act against their own wills.