Our Salvation Story, Foreknowledge and Predestination

OSS-Foreknowledge and Predestination

We have started a new series entitled Our Salvation Story and I have divided it into three sections, what God does for us before Salvation, what he does for us at the point of Salvation, and what he does for us after Salvation.  In our first lecture we discussed why salvation was necessary and I gave an overview of the great spiritual war afoot as Satan is trying to usurp God’s Kingdom. We then noted God’s redemptive plan of sending his Son, Jesus, to inhabit human flesh, and die to take our rightful punishment for joining Satan’s rebellion and thus redeeming us.  We then asked the question, why is it that some believe this message and some do not? And for those that do what goes into that decision making process? The answer to these two questions lies in understanding 5 concepts presented in God’s word.  They are understanding God’s will, our free will, and the theological concepts of foreknowledge, predestination, and election.

Last week we covered God’s will and our will.  Today we will cover Foreknowledge and Predestination, and next week we will summarize and integrate all we know in discussing Election. Now a quick review before we start.  Last week we noted the following about God’s will and our will.

God’s Will

1. Preferred Will: what He desires or prefers, 1 Tim 2:4, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. 
2. 2 P 3:9, The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
3. His Sovereign Will: what He purposes to happen such as Acts 2:23, This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men,^[d] put him to death by nailing him to the cross. God had a plan before the world began

Our Will

1. Since we are made in the image of God, (Gen 1:26-27) we have a will. 
2. This means we are free to make choices (both in the material and moral realms).
3. 1 Thess 5:23 says we are made of body, soul, and spirit.  Our bodies are our physical selves. Our spirit is what relates us to God.  Our soul consists of our emotions and mind (our will, conscience, and intellect).
4. Theologians have wrestled with this idea of who we are, and how we decide, and came up with the idea of faculty (in the sense of our mental composition) psychology. Basically, they said our minds (in the broadest sense) consisted of three independent yet fully interacting components consisting of emotions, will, and intellect corresponding to the Biblical idea of heart, soul, and mind. Renee Girard told us we are imitative creatures. So, what our eyes see, and our ears hear, informs the thoughts of our minds to imitate others.  And these thoughts inform the heart, which create affection and attachments (in short, desire). These desires inform our will and conscience, and these dictate our actions.
5. Therefore, our decisions are conditioned by the state of our hearts and the weight of our love. If we love goodness we will choose goodness. If we love other things, we will choose that.
6. After the fall, our decision-making machinery became corrupted, so that the occupation of our minds and the state of our hearts became ourselves. We make decisions in our own self-interest.
7. Nevertheless, despite the Fall, God has given us choice, and the freedom to freely choose Him and His ways.  We are not automatons. God wants us to freely choose him and thus express our love and desire for him. Love coerced is not love.
8. God is big enough to allow our free will and His sovereign plan to coexist with one another (Pr 16:9, In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps).

Foreknowledge

1. God is Omniscient and Omnipresent (1 Jn 3:20, Jer 23:23-24).
2. God is the Alpha and Omega (Rev 1:8): He is before and after time and exists outside the dimension of time.
3. Fore means before, knowledge is to know, so God knows beforehand all that is to happen in the future. In other words, before the world began, and taking our free will into account, God knew every choice of every human being, yet He planned out the course of history to fulfill his purpose for it.
4. Foreknowledge, then, refers to God knowing in advance that we would exist, how we would live, and what choices we would make. Here are some examples,
5. Nathaniel was foreknown, Jn 1:44-48, Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. ⁴⁵ Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” ⁴⁶ “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked. “Come and see,” said Philip. ⁴⁷ When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” ⁴⁸ “How do you know me?” Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”
6. The Crucifixion was foreknown, Acts 2:23, This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men,^[d] put him to death by nailing him to the cross.
7. Israel was Foreknown as God’s Earthly People, Rm 11:2, God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew.
8. The Church was foreknown, 1 P 1:1-2, To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, ² who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.
9. There are two ways to define foreknowledge as foreseeing and foreloving (we will discuss this more fully under the topic of Election).

Predestination

1. A caution: Calvin warned those who “inquire into predestination are penetrating the sacred precincts of Divine Wisdom. If anyone with carefree assurance breaks into this place he will not succeed in satisfying his curiosity and he will enter a labyrinth from which he can find no exit” (Calvin Inst 3.21.1).
2. God Is Omnipotent and Sovereign (Is 45:7, Dan 4:35)
3. The word predestined consists of a prefix, pre, which means before, and the word destination (which comes from destiny) which means place. Literally, the Greek word is “Pro-orizo,” and means “to previously mark out a boundary line, to pre-determine, decide beforehand.” In other words, the place which you lay out, or to which you are going, is pre-determined. It is also translated as foreordained.
4. Compared to foreknowledge, predestination is used to refer to a determination made before its actual coming to pass and which carried with it the power to make it come to pass. Thus, it is an action of will only to be attributed to God Himself. Herbert Lockyer defines predestination very similarly. He says, “Predestination is the exercise of divine sovereignty in the accomplishment of God’s ultimate purpose or decree.” (from Ken Birks)
5. In theological terms, Predestination is the certainty that everything will happen according to God’s purposeful plan.
6. Foreknowledge and Predestination are intertwined. For example, through foreknowledge God saw that Adam would fall and as a result predestinated man’s reconciliation through Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, and predestined that Christ would go to the cross (1 P 1:20).  Now notice I put these in a linear relationship (i.e. foreknowledge led to predestination) as it is easier to understand, but God’s ways are not our ways, and these concepts co-exist with one another simultaneously.
7. Predestination is not mentioned in the OT.  It is used only six times in the NT, Acts 4:28, Rm 8:29-30, 1 Cor 2:7, Eph 1:5,11.
8. The events that God set out as being predestinated are those events that relate to God’s ultimate purpose. These events are as follows,

1. The Crucifixion and Atonement of Christ: Acts 4:28, Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. ²⁸ They did what your power and will had decided beforehand (determined) should happen.1 Cor 2:7, No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined (determined) for our glory before time began.

• 2. The Church is predestined to exist, Eph 1:11, In him we were also chosen,^[e] having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, ¹² in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.
• 3. Believers were predestined to be adopted into God’s family, Eph 1:5, he^[b] predestined us for adoption to sonship^[c] through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.
• 4. Believers are predestined to be conformed to the image of God’s Son, Rm 8:29-30, For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. ³⁰ And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
• Note the word predestination, when referring to believers, speaks in terms of a group.
• There are other events God has laid out beforehand where instead of using the word “predestined”, God uses the word “appointed”.  Examples include
• A day of judgement (Acts 17:30-31, In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. ³¹ For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead),
• Believers to salvation (1 Thess 5:9, For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ),
• and our death (Heb 9:27, And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment -NKJV).
• Predestination does not teach who should be saved and who shouldn’t be saved but simply teaches that God has determined or predestinated that each person who is born again by the Spirit of God will be adopted into His family and will be conformed into the image of Jesus Christ completely at His appearing (1 Jn 3:2, Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is).  

This is where we will end today. Remember, We are exploring why some individuals are saved while others are not, and what factors contribute to this process. Today we learned God has a will, man has free will, God has foreknowledge, and determines things to occur according to his purposes.  Next week we will answer these two questions by seeing how all these factors hold hands in the third theological idea we mentioned which is the doctrine of Election. Let’s pray.