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Predestination.

The Bible tells us that God ‘knows’ His people. This not only means that He has knowledge about them but that He has chosen them and entered into personal relations with them. (The same word for ‘know’ (yada) was used in the Old Testament as a euphemism for sexual relations between a man and his wife (e.g. Genesis 4.1; 4.25 and often)).

For example, in the Bible God says of Abraham, ‘Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him. For I have known (yatha’) him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; to the end that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he has spoken of him (Genesis 18.18-19). Here God’s personal call to Abraham (Genesis 12.1) and His covenants with him are described in terms of ‘knowing’ him, and results in godly living and the fulfilment of His covenant.

This is why God can later rebuke Israel, saying, ‘You only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore I will visit on you all your iniquities’ (Amos 3.2). Because the nation of Israel has been specially favoured by being chosen by Him, and has turned away from Him, it deserves the greater condemnation. And again He says ‘I knew you in the wilderness, in the land of great drought’ (Hosea 13.5). Then He says to the prophet, ‘according to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled, and their heart was exalted, that is why they have forgotten me’ (Hosea 13.5-6). He had chosen the people of Israel and had entered into a covenant relationship with them in the wilderness, and later provided abundantly for them, but because of the abundance they received they became self-satisfied and forgot Him.

So when God ‘knows’ people, He does not just know about them, He chooses them and enters into personal relationship with them. But for that reason they are the more accountable. However, in the case of Israel it should be noted that it was Israel as a nation or ‘family’ that He had ‘known’. So His saving purpose did not fail. It continued in those of Israel who were faithful to Him (the remnant 1 Kings 19.18 with Romans 11.4; Isaiah 10.22; the holy seed - Isaiah 6.13). His choice of Israel was not in vain.

Thus when Paul agonises over the rejection of Israel, he has to ask himself, could God reject those whom He has ‘known’? He answers with a resounding No! For there is a remnant, including himself, who still respond to God and for this reason he declares ‘God has not cast away his people whom he foreknew’ (proginosko - Romans 11.2), for ‘there is a remnant according to the election of grace --- The elect obtained it and the rest were hardened’ (Romans 11.5, 7). So those whom He ‘foreknew’, those whom He has chosen by grace, are still faithful to Him. The verb means in this context ‘to choose and enter into relations with beforehand’.

This is extended to Christians in general in one of the great verses in the Bible. Speaking of those who are ‘called according to His purpose’ he says ‘For those whom he ‘foreknew ’ (proginosko), he also foreordained (proorizo) to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. And whom he foreordained, them he also called, and whom he called, them he also justified, and whom he justified, them he also glorified’ (Romans 8.28-30). So the process begins with God’s foreknowledge. But this is not just to be seen as intellectual knowledge beforehand, but as a deliberate choice in the past by which He, as it were, entered into personal relations with them. Then, because they have been chosen, the rest follows, they are predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, then called, then justified, and finally they are glorified. Their being chosen through God’s ‘foreknowing’ is the precursor of the whole.

The verb to know is used in the same sense in Galatians. ‘But now, after you have come to know God, or rather to be known of God, how do you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elements, in which you desire again to be in bondage?’ (Galatians 4.9). Here again to be ‘known’ by God is distinctly personal. God has ‘known’ them and entered into personal relations with them.

Peter teaches the same thing when he describes Christians as ‘elect according to the foreknowledge (prognosis) of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ’ (1 Peter 1.1-2). They are ‘elect’ because God has chosen them and entered into relations with them beforehand, and the purpose of their choosing is that they might be cleansed and obedient. He accomplishes this ‘through sanctification of the Spirit’. On the one side is God’s activity resulting from His pre-choice, the separating and purifying work of the Spirit, and this results on the other side in obedience and cleansing.

This significance of foreknowledge is illustrated when Peter could say of Jesus Himself that ‘Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge (prognosis) of God, you, by the hands of lawless men, did crucify and slay’ (Acts 2.23). Here the will of God is clearly in action in His ‘foreknowing’. He is not just ‘knowing about it beforehand’, but choosing for it to happen. It results from His determinate counsel. Peter tells us that this ‘foreknowing’ (proginosko) of the Lamb without blemish Who was slain occurred ‘before the foundation of the world’ (1 Peter 1.20). And again he prays to God, ‘For of a truth in this city against your holy Servant Jesus, whom you did anoint, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, in order to do whatever your hand and your counsel pre-determined (proorizo) to come about’ (Acts:4:27-28). So both fore-knowing (proginosko) and pre-determination (proorizo) are part of the same action of God’s will in relation to Jesus as they were in relation to His people.

The will of God lies at the root of His foreknowing. For God ‘has made known to us the mystery of His will, in accordance with His good pleasure which He purposed beforehand (protithenai) in Himself, unto a dispensation of the fulness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, both things in Heaven and things on earth, in Him in Whom also we were made a heritage, having been foreordained (proorizo) according to the purpose of Him Who works all things after the counsel of His own will’ (Ephesians 1.9-11). Here Paul takes us right into the heart of ‘the mystery of the will of God’, and that is that His aim is finally, in His outworking in the fulness of times, ‘to sum up all things in Christ’. And he stresses that this is in accordance with God’s purpose and within His good pleasure. Then he brings out that through Christ we also have our part in this ‘having been foreordained according to the purpose of Him Who works all things after the counsel of His own will’ to become part of God’s inheritance. Here all that we have been speaking about of God’s foreknowing, is set within God’s eternal purposes.

As Paul puts it elsewhere. ‘He saved us and called us with a holy calling, --- according to His own pre-purpose (prothesis) and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal and has now been fully made known by the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus’ (2 Timothy 1.9). So our calling was ‘before times eternal’. Or as Paul puts it in Ephesians 1.4-5, ‘He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before Him in love, having foreordained (proorizo) us to being adopted as sons, according to the good pleasure of His will’. Here again His foreknowing us and choosing us is placed directly in eternity.

This explains the words of Jesus where He says, ‘All whom the Father gives to me will come to me’ (John 6.37). And ‘this is the will of Him Who sent me that of all that He has given me I should lose nothing’ (John 6.39). And ‘no man can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him’ (John 6.44). Here Jesus clearly teaches that there are those who have been given to Him by the Father, whom the Father will draw to Him.This is confirmed in John 17.6. ‘I have made your name fully known to the men whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word’. Note the order. They were the Father’s, then He gave them to the Son. The belonging comes before the outward response. Note further that it results in them keeping His word. Salvation is God’s gift, but there is no salvation without transformation.

In most cases the work of election is imputed to the Father. It is God as Father Who calls, enters into relationship with His own, adopts them and gives them to the Son. This does not mean that the whole Godhead is not involved in the work. It is because the Son is the mediator of God’s saving purposes that the Father is shown as the source. Jesus makes clear that He and the Father work together in all aspects of God’s saving purposes.

The question will no doubt be asked. Where does man’s free will enter? That man is able to act ‘freely’ is demonstrated by the fact that without freedom there would be no guilt. When the first man made his basic choice and tainted the human race with sin, he chose freely (Genesis 3.6; Romans 5. 12). But we must beware of thinking that we always act freely.The vast majority of our so-called choices are simply the result of our following our programming. Our very genes give us a strong tendency to act in a certain way, and this has been further reinforced by our environment. Thus when we ‘opt’ to do something, what we ‘opt’ to do could have been forecast by anyone who knew these factors. In all these decisions God knows the choices we will make.

The only time when we possibly actually exercise our free will is when our conscience conflicts with what we want to do, and we are faced with a moral choice, or when we use our intellects to solve a problem. But even in these cases our free will may not be called on. We may simply go along with what we want to do or think. In the first case we may not follow our conscience, in the second we may not follow the facts. Thus we exercise free will rarely, and many of us not at all. Those who do so are rare creatures. The truth is that we freely chose to follow our genetic and environmental programming in our earliest years and have done so ever since. And even those who do at times follow their conscience and again exercise their free will (Romans 2.15), do so too late from the point of view of being guilty before God. They began the path of sin long before, and they know it. With man’s sin, sin has entered into the human race (Romans 5.12), and the practical result is that, from the first, all of us freely opt to follow his path. This is a practical fact - ‘there is none righteous, no, not one’ (Romans 3.10). ‘All have sinned’ (Romans 3.23; 5.12).

There was only One exception, and He was the Divine child, sharing our manhood, but not born of a human father. He alone, though He was tempted in all points like we are, was without sin (Hebrews 4.15 compare 2 Corinthians 5.21; 1 Peter 2.22; 1 John 3.5). He alone from His earliest years did not choose the path of selfishness.

Thus, having sinned, we are no longer free, we are slaves of sin (John 8.34). But God offers salvation freely to all who will. ‘Whoever will may take the water of life freely’ (Revelation 22.17). ‘Whoever put their trust in Him will have everlasting life’ (John 3.16). The offer is there. But who will accept it? The slaves of sin? Never. They are set on a course of selfishness and sin. Thus all are doubly guilty. They are guilty because they have gone against what they know to be right (Romans 3.10) and they are guilty because they do not believe on Jesus (John 16.9). They have both sinned, and spurn the offer to come. So God has to step in in His unmerited favour and call some and empower them that they may respond to Him, giving them to His Son (John 6.39) and drawing them to Him (John 6.44). Those who come to Him are those whom He has chosen from the beginning for salvation ‘through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth’ (2 Thessalonians 2.13).

But did God purpose that man should sin? The Bible nowhere suggests so, and to do so would make God the author of sin and invalidate both free will and guilt. However, it is clear that He knew that man would sin, for He provided for it from the beginning. Indeed He knew that if His purpose of sharing eternity with mankind was to come to fruition, that was the path that must be followed. Thus He permitted sin, but did not decree it. It was within His overall will but not His specific will. It was allowed so that His hatred of sin might be revealed, and thereby the greatness of His compassion was also revealed in that He saved ‘chosen’ sinners (Romans 9.22-23). But the consequences for the unforgiven rests on their freewill decisions alone. If they are hardened it is because they have first rejected Him. No one is positively predestined to damnation, it is because they choose to be so.