Home Topics Index Download
Transcript 526A — Are Predestination and Foreknowledge One and the Same?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Good evening. I would like to ask you if you would speak on predestination and foreknowledge. Are they one and the same, or are they two different things? And if predestination is correct, then are we robots? I would like to take an answer on the air, please.
HC: The question that is raised is concerning the matter of predestination. Now the word predestination sends shudders in the lives of many who believe that they are followers of Christ. They don't like the word predestination. They immediately say, "Well, if you believe in predestination, that's some kind of a Calvinistic term," or whatever.
This is very very unfortunate because the word predestination is a word that is found in the Bible. It is a Biblical term. It is not a term that was designed by theologians trying to explain some doctrine of the Bible. It actually is the word that the Bible itself uses.
Now the word predestination is actually speaking of God's program whereby before the foundations of the earth God chose those whom He would save. We read in Ephesians 1:4: "According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will."
Now this, you see, is the language of the Bible. This is the language of God. He predestinated us, those who are to be saved. He chose us (in vs. 4) in Him, and according to His good pleasure (verse 11 of Ephesians l) "in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will, that we should be to the praise of His glory who first trusted in Christ."
Now we can't get around this language. The Bible does speak of predestination. And therefore if you love the Lord, if you are a child of God, then by all means don't skirt around the word predestination. Don't be appalled at the word predestination. The word predestination is a concept that God Himself has set forth for us in the Word of God.
And you'll notice, and let me underscore this, that predestination has to do with being chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, as we read in verse 4 of Ephesians 1.
Now the idea of predestination as we find it set forth here in Ephesians 1, is an idea that is not very acceptable to many, because this infers that it is God who has saved us and we had nothing at all to do with this. And yet we feel (many of us) that after all, we did have something to do with our salvation. Didn't we accept the Lord Jesus Christ? Isn't it true that God has done all that He can do and now it's up to us? Isn't it really a fact that this business of salvation is some kind of a partnership, where God has done what He was supposed to do and now we also have to do something about it?
After all, again and again, as we bring the Word of God we tell people that they are to accept the Lord Jesus Christ. And the inference is that God now has provided salvation. It's here for the taking, for the asking, and it's up to us now to reach out and accept what God has planned. And so this requires an action on our part. And it depends finally upon us. In some sense God has limited Himself to our will, because isn't it true that we have to accept the Lord Jesus Christ?
But this idea of predestination goes against this idea of the fact that God has done everything He can do and now it's up to us. This idea of predestination as we find it outlined in Ephesians 1 is emphasizing that God chose us and predestinated us to His glory.
Well now, those who struggle with this conflict look at Romans 8 and feel that they have some kind of a solution to cut the Gordian know that separates these two ideas of the predestinating love of God on the one hand and the fact that God gives us a free will so now we have to choose and do our part in accepting the Lord Jesus Christ. And so they turn to a verse that speaks of predestination in Romans 8:29. There we read, "For whom He did foreknow He also did predestinate, to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren."
Aha! Here we have a solution to the problem of the work that we have to do in trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ and matching that with the predestinating love of God, because doesn't it say here that God foreknew who would want to be saved? Doesn't this say that He looked down the corridors of time and He saw you and me who would become born again, and saw that we would incline our hearts to Christ, and therefore He did predestinate us to be conformed to the image of His Son?
And many feel that this solves the problem. But does it solve the problem? After all, if God predestinated, and the idea of predestination has to do with election or choosing whom He's going to save, if He looked down the corridors of time at those who would believe on Him and then decided to elect them, or choose them to salvation, then there is no election anymore, is there? Then God is not electing who He's going to save. The decision as to who is going to be saved depends entirely upon us. We are the ones who finally are the final deciders as to who is to be saved. If we decide to come to the Lord Jesus Christ, then we will be saved. If we don't decide to come to the Lord Jesus Christ, then we are not saved. If we decide to come to the Lord Jesus Christ, then God will have predestinated us because He saw that we would be one of those who would decide to come to the Lord Jesus Christ. And you see the total difficulty here with the language of the Bible. God can't choose or elect or predestinate someone with whom the decision to be saved rests.
If God elects someone to be saved, it means that the decision to save is God's decision. Now secondly, we have the problem of the condition of man as God looks at man. Those who would want to teach, and there are many who teach this, and they feel very confident in what they're saying. They teach that after all, God has done what He's supposed to do, and now you have a free will. You make a choice. You have a choice to come to Him.
But the problem is that the Bible tells us that there is none that seeketh after God. That's Romans 3:10: "As it is written, there is none righteous, no not one. There is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good, no not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre. With their tongues they have used deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes."
In other words, God is saying that as He looks at the human race there is not one that seeketh after God. They're all unrighteous and unprofitable and in rebellion against God. So if by God's foreknowledge He was looking for someone who would turn to Him and these He would predestinate, God would have to look forever and never find one, because God reveals to us that there is none that seeketh after God.
And so for the second reason this idea that God's foreknowledge is seeing ahead of time who would turn to Him and these He predestinated just doesn't work. It will not work, because there is none that seeketh after God. Moreover, in Ephesians 2 God describes those whom He saves. And in the first 3 verses of Ephesians 2 He's talking about people who did become saved. And look what He says of them: "And you hath He quickened (that is, He made alive), who were dead in trespasses and sins." Now how can a corpse turn to the Lord Jesus Christ? Spiritually we are dead. "Where in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." In other words, we were followers of Satan. We were slaves of Satan. "Among whom also we all had our conduct in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others."
Now this is the way God looks at us, those whom He plans to save. Does He see any inclination here that we're going to turn to the Lord Jesus Christ? No, not a bit...not a bit. He says we walk according to this world, just like the unsaved. We follow Satan. We obey the lusts of the flesh and of the mind. We're exactly like the rest of the world, and we're children of wrath like the rest of the world.
Where is God going to foreknow somebody who of himself will turn to Him? That's an impossible idea, you see, when we turn to the Bible. We're dead. We are spiritually dead. And we will not come to the Lord. And so when the Bible says in Romans 8 that God foreknew, "those whom God foreknew He did predestinate," He is not talking, regardless of what you have learned, it cannot be that God foreknew those who would turn to Him, and therefore He predestinated them. No. No, that's an impossibility.
The Bible will not allow this. And I say this dogmatically, because we have read it in the Bible. We've read Romans 3. We read Ephesians 2, did we not? God Himself is speaking, and He's saying that's an impossibility because spiritually we're dead, and we're slaves of Satan, and we will not come to Him. So the idea that foreknowledge has to do with those whom He saw would believe is an impossible idea.
Well then, what did He foreknow? Well, He foreknew that the whole human race...God knows the end from the beginning...He knows every individual that would ever be born in the world, as He views all of history before He ever creates the universe...He knows all of our names, and He sees all of us as being dead in our sins, as being in enmity against God, as having no desire to come to Him whatsoever. And yet these whom He foreknew as being the dirty rotten sinners that we are by nature, rebellious against God, poisonous vipers by nature, out of these whom He foreknew He predestinated us to be saved.
And those whom He predestinated He called. And so the message of salvation comes to the world. And those whom He predestinated, that is, those whom He elected to be saved, they in God's own time will respond to the Gospel, because God qualifies them. God will not be frustrated in His plan.
Remember John 6:37, where Jesus opened the curtain of Heaven, and He said, "All that the Father giveth Me will come to Me," — "will come to Me." God is not limited by our wills in any sense whatsoever. Have you heard this? "God is a gentleman. He'll never force anyone to come to Him.'' What nonsense. What nonsense! When God made a decision to save any one of us, we will come to Him. And how does God make us come to Him? Well, He may use chastisement. He may have to get our attention by bringing severe affliction into our lives. And many of us will have to testify that we were going our own way, and God had to beat down on us very hard. And then finally we began to sense that our spiritual eyes were opening, and we began to see our need of a Savior.
However God deals with us, however He does, we know that when He has decided to save someone, because He foreknew us as rebellious sinners, He in His own time is going to open our eyes, and He will draw us to Himself. We will come to Him.
The way we'll sense this in our lives is that we become uneasy with our sins. We become nervous about hell. We begin to sense that hell is real, and we know we don't want to go to hell. And we're going to get more and more concerned about what this sin and that sin in my life is going to develop into insofar as God's judgment is concerned.
And pretty soon we're going to start asking a lot of questions about what the Bible might teach concerning this. And the day will come, because God is drawing us and the Father is opening our spiritual ears, and the Holy Spirit is cleansing us, the day will come when we'll cry out, "Oh God, have mercy on me." And we will have placed our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, who has become our Savior.
You see, it is God who is doing the work. We will come to Him. And as John 6:39 teaches, "Of all that the Father giveth Me I have lost none of them." There's not a single one who was predestinated to salvation who will not come to the Lord Jesus Christ.
We read in Romans 8:29 that "whom He did foreknow (that is, whom He saw long before He created the world as the one that He wanted to save) He predestinated (He elected them, He chose them to salvation) to be conformed to the image of His Son." And to be conformed to the image of His Son means that we have become like Christ. We have been covered by His righteousness. We have become a son of God again. We are of royal blood. It's a fantastic idea of the nature of salvation.
And then it goes on in verse 30: "Moreover, whom He did predestinate He called (that is, He gave us the Gospel), and whom He called He justified." What does justified mean? To be justified means that we stand before the Judgment Throne of God, and there is no guilt any longer. The criminal who stands before the judge is not just as he stands there. He is guilty. He is to be sentenced to go to jail for his crime. And only after he has paid the penalty can he be deemed just before the judge, because then he no longer has any guilt.
Well, we have been justified by the Lord Jesus Christ in that He paid for our sins, in that He took upon Himself our guilt. And so there is no longer any condemnation that can come against us. And therefore we have been justified. We have been made just. We have been made like those who have no guilt whatsoever before the bar of God's justice.
"And them He also glorified." And that's a marvellous, marvellous promise, you see, to be included amongst those who are glorified. To be glorified means that we are reflectors of the glory of God. There's no intrinsic glory in us except in that God's glory shines through us in that we are the trophies of God's grace. We are the recipients of His mercy.
Now this idea of predestination comes very very hard to many. Now if you'll notice as we've talked about this...and I think this is an exceedingly important question, and I'm very grateful for the call, that we might talk about this together, because there's such a misunderstanding about this, I'm afraid, in the lives of many, that this is a very difficult doctrine to swallow for many of us. Because, you see, the doctrine of predestination robs us self-commendation.
Now you see, by nature you and I want to be commended for what we have done. If you are a housewife and you bake a beautiful cake, and you put a lot of labor of love in that cake, and now you invite your neighbor over for coffee, and you drink coffee together, and you offer her a piece of this splendid cake which you've baked and which you're so proud of, if she never mentions that cake, if she never refers to it at all in the whole conversation, when she goes home after awhile you're going to feel, "Well, that coffee date sure didn't amount to very much," because really you are waiting for a little bit of praise..."Oh my, isn't this a delightful cake! Did you bake this?" This is the way we're designed, that whatever we have put our labor of love in, we want to be recognized for what we have done. And this is ingrained within us, that we would expect this.
Now the fact is that we believe we've become saved, and we look at the world around us and we realize that all kinds of people are not saved. And so obviously something wonderful has happened to us. And by nature therefore we want to receive a little bit of commendation. Oh yes, we know it's the grace of God. God is the one who saved us. He went to the cross in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ to pay for our sins. But certainly, certainly we can receive a little bit of credit, can't we?
And we desperately want that little bit of credit. But the fact is that the Bible says no, you can't have any credit. You're dead in your sins, you're a corpse. You're absolutely without any hope of salvation in yourselves. And it's by grace you have been saved, not of works, lest any man should boast, as Ephesians 2:9 teaches. There's no way that we can receive any credit. We have to give God all the praise. Even the faith which was the lifeline that tied us to God is a gift of God, as we read in Ephesians 2:8.
Now some would argue, "Well, this doctrine of predestination. All right, you find it in the Bible, but doesn't this make us robots, as if we have nothing to do then with our salvation, we're just without any will?" No, we're not robots. We're corpses. We're dead. We can't even credit ourselves with being a robot. We're dead. Spiritually we're dead.
Do you remember the story of the account of the raising of Lazarus? And if you ever want to see a picture of salvation, just look at the raising of Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha. Now how dead was he? He was dead for 4 days, the Bible says. Three days was the resurrection, the Bible says. Four days means you're beyond the resurrection. You're dead. What was the condition of his body? Mary and Martha told Jesus "he stinketh." He was a smelly, decaying mess. Have you ever had a dead animal under your porch for 4 days? Have you ever had a dead fish someplace around where it wasn't refrigerated? It's a horrible smell, isn't it? It's a terrible thing. It's the kind of thing that makes you say, "Get it out of here! I don't want anything to do with it! Bury it! I can't stand the smell." That's what the condition of Lazarus was when he was raised. And his soul had left the body. There wasn't any life at all in him. Well, that's a picture of you and me before we're saved We're corpses, stinking, dirty corpses. You don't like it, do you? Well, I don't like it, either. My self-respect says, "No, no, no. I'm created in the image of God. It can't be that bad." Well, too bad. We may not like it, but that's what the Bible talks about. We're dead. And God sets up this historical parable of the raising of Lazarus so we see a beautiful picture, a descriptive picture of the nature of our salvation.
Now when Jesus stood outside of that cemetery and said, ''Lazarus, come forth!" was there a tiny bit of life in Lazarus? Was there just a little bit of life there, a little smidgen of life, so that he was able to say after he rose from the grave, "You know, you've got to credit me a little bit, because I heard Jesus speak to me and I decided that I wanted to come forth, and then God poured His love on me and He gave me the strength and the will, and indeed I came out of the tomb"? That's ridiculous, isn't it? Of course that isn't possible. Lazarus was dead. He was a stinking corpse.
And yet Jesus said, "Lazarus, come forth" and Lazarus did come forth. He came forth as much alive as Mary and Martha were alive, and anyone else that was looking at this scene were alive. And that's exactly a picture of the condition we are in before we are saved. We're not robots. We have no life. We're dead. We're corpses.
And yet God has predestinated us to be saved. And so He comes with the message of salvation, He calls us. And then He begins to give us ears to hear. Remember how often you read in the Bible, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear"? And then He gives us a will to respond and a faith to trust. The whole thing, you see, is utterly dependent upon God's action in our lives.
And then in response to all this we say, "Oh Lord, I believe. Help Thou my unbelief. Oh Lord, have mercy on me. I'm a sinner. Oh Lord, what must I do to be saved?" And the next thing we know, we are born again because we find that we have a deep and earnest trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and desire to do His will. And we know that we are saved. It is altogether the action of the Lord
Well then, a question has to be raised. Then if I'm not predestinated, if I'm not predestinated, what about me? Can I be saved? Well, the Bible promises that whoever believes on the Lord shall be saved. The Bible promises, "Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you." And if you are unsaved and are concerned about whether you are elect or not, don't worry about whether you're elect or not. That's God's business. That's altogether God's business.