Predestination should be studied by every Christian. It is a
vitally important doctrine because it has to do with who God is and how
He saves us. Martin Luther said that it was at the heart of the gospel.
To think that what we believe about predestination is not important is
like saying "God, I'm glad that you saved me. But I don't care how you
did it." How could a child of God not take delight in understanding the
plan that God put in action to save him or her?
As we will see, having a right belief about predestination is a
matter of giving God the glory that He deserves. And it can open up the
wonderful experience of knowing what it truly means to be eternally loved
by God. But before probing the glory and love of God highlighted in
predestination, it is important to define what predestination is and
where the Bible teaches it.
What is predestination?
In its most basic form, predestination (sometimes called
election) simply means that God decides whom He will save. That aspect
of the doctrine is not controversial. The controversial aspect comes
when we ask the question: "On what basis does God decide whom to
save?"
There are two basic positions on this. One is called the Arminian view,
which holds that God chooses to save those whom He foreknows will first
choose Him. On this view, it is ultimately up to the individual
to be saved or not, and then God chooses in response to the individual's
choice. This is not what I mean by predestination.
I believe that the Bible teaches what is commonly called
"Calvinism." God unconditionally decides whom to save apart from any
condition found in the person. This means that it is God who ultimately
decides who will believe in Christ and be saved. God bases His decision
on Himself and His holy purposes only, not on any foreknown faith
that a
sinner will exercise of his own "free-will." In fact, humanity is so
sinful that if God left the ultimate choice for salvation up to us, we
would all reject Him.
Where is it taught?
This teaching, called "unconditional election," is abundantly
taught in the Bible. Jesus said to His disciples "you did not choose Me,
but I chose you..." (John 15:16). In John 10:26 Jesus tells the
unbelieving Jews "you do not
believe, because you are not of My sheep." He did not say "you are
not
of my sheep, because you do not believe." He said the reverse. Clearly,
you do not become a sheep by believing. God must chose to make you a
sheep before you will believe. And those whom God makes to be Christ's
sheep will always come to Him. "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them,
and they follow Me, and I give them eternal life, and they shall
never
perish" (John 10:27-28). "And I have other sheep, which are not of this
fold; I must bring them also, and they shall hear My voice"
(John 10:16).
Acts 13:48 gives us the reason that many who listened to Paul's
preaching believed: "And as many as had been ordained to eternal life
believed." In Romans 9:16 Paul tells us that election "does not depend
on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy."
Arminianism says that election is of him who wills. Calvinism says
that
it is not of him who wills. Doesn't the apostle Paul settle the
issue once and for all in this verse?
In Romans 9:10-13 Paul gives Jacob and Esau as examples of two
types of people, the elect and the non-elect, and then says "for though
the twins were not yet born, and had not done anything good or bad, in
order that God's purpose according to His choice might stand, not because
of works but because of Him who calls, it was said to her, the older will
serve the younger.' Just as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I
hated.'" Paul is clear that God's choice is not based on anything in the
individual. If that is not clear to you, I encourage you to read the
verse again.
Romans 9:18 is also very clear that salvation is ultimately God's
choice, not man's. "So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He
hardens whom He desires." Romans 11:6 says that the believing Jews in
Paul's day were "a remnant according to God's gracious choice." In 2
Timothy 2:25 we learn that repentance is caused by God and that He
ultimately decides whether a person will repent or not: "...with
gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may
grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth."
In Ephesians 1:4-6 Paul tells us that "He chose us in Him before
the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before Him. In love
He predestined us to adoption as sons through Christ Jesus to Himself,
according to the good pleasure of His will." Notice that predestination
is based upon the good pleasure of God's will, not our will.
God is able to save whomever He pleases, which makes Him the one
who ultimately determines the recipients of salvation. "The Son also gives
life to whom He wishes" (John 5:21). If God purposes to save a person,
He will accomplish His purpose every time: "All that the Father gives Me
shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast
out" (John 6:37). According to this verse, who comes to Jesus? Answer:
the ones that the Father has given Him! The reason a person comes to
Jesus is because the Father has first chosen to give him to Jesus, and
none of those chosen for salvation will fail to come. Clearly, human
beings do not have ultimate veto power to overthrow the saving will of
God. Job said to God "You can do all things and none of your purposes
can be thwarted" (Job 42:2).
Predestination is God-centered
Because God is the most valuable and worthy being in the
universe, the goal of God in everything He does is to glorify Himself.
If He did not ultimately act for His glory in all things, He would not be
righteous. This is because He would be placing the value of something
else above the infinite worth of His glory. Predestination is no
different. His ultimate goal in it is to glorify Himself "He predestined
us...to the praise of the glory of His grace" (Ephesians 1:5, 6).
But God seeking His own glory in all things is not unloving.
Instead, "When you stop to think about it, this is the most loving thing
that God could ever do; because the greatest benefit that human beings
could ever receive is to know and share in the glory of God."[1] God's
purpose to glorify Himself is not at odds with His love for us! For God
is acting in superior love precisely when He acts for the sake of His
glory! The God-centeredness of God's love is a wonderful thing! Even in
loving us, the superior value of God's worth is magnified.
The greatness of God's electing love
Thus, election is both glorifying to God and it is also the
ultimate expression of God's love. Therefore, if we do not have a
proper
understanding of election, we will not have a proper understanding of the
way God loves us. But if we understand and believe that God
unconditionally chose to save us it will open us up "to the overwhelming
experience of being loved personally with the unbreakable electing love
of God."[2]
In the New Testament, God's individual, unconditional election of
His saints is again and again connected to His love for each of them
individually.[3] "For we know, brothers, loved by God, that he has
chosen
you" (1 Thessalonians 1:4). "Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and
loved, compassion, kindness..." (Colossians 3:12). "But God, who is
rich
in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even
when we
were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by
grace
you have been saved" (Ephesians 2:4-5). The Greek construction in John
13:1 indicates that God loves His children to the fullness of His
capacity to love creatures. "...having loved His own who were in the
world, He loved them to the end."[4] Further, God's love for His
children
has had no beginning and will have no end. He did not start loving you
when you were born, but if you are one of His sheep, He has loved you
eternally. "I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have
continued my faithfulness to you" (Jeremiah 31:2-3). "But the
lovingkindness of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those
who fear Him" (Psalm 103:17). Now consider this great truth: if you are
a believer in Christ, this is because God has personally, individually,
unconditionally, and lovingly chosen you for salvation from before the
beginning of the world.
The special electing love of God is great
comfort and strength to the heart. "Many people have no personal
experience of knowing that they were loved by God eternally and will be
cared for by Him with omnipotent, all-supplying love forever and ever.
Many people think of God's love only in terms of a love that offers and
waits, but does not take us for Himself and work with infinite enthusiasm
to keep us and glorify us forever. Yet this is the experience available
for any who will come and drink the water of life freely (Revelation
22:17)."[5]
While it is true that God loves all people (not just His elect),
He does not love all people in the same way. He loves His elect with a
special, unbreakable, intense, affectionate, electing love that cannot
fail. Have you been accustomed to believing that God loves those who are
condemned eternally in hell in the same way that He loves you, one of His
sheep? If so, erase that view from your mind so that it will no longer
cloud your experience of your Father's love. Rejoice in the greatness of
His special love for you. For God to love His saints in the same way
that He loves those whom He condemns eternally in hell would be like a
husband saying "Sure, I love my wife. But I love her in the same way
that I love every other woman."
God's unconditional election of you is an expression of His deep
love for you. Being chosen unconditionally simply means being loved
unconditionally. Many American evangelicals love to talk about God's
unconditional love, but then rob themselves of the comfort and delight of
the full implications it has--that unconditional love is manifest in
unconditional election. J.I. Packer describes how the denial of God's
unconditional and invincible electing love has resulted in a reduction of
the greatness of the gospel in the minds of many Americans: "We speak of
[Christ's] redeeming work as if he had done no more by dying than make it
possible for us to save ourselves by believing; we speak of God's love as
if it were no more than a general willingness to receive any who will
turn and trust; and we depict the Father and the Son, not as sovereignly
active in drawing sinners to themselves, but as waiting in quiet
impotence at the door of our hearts' for us to let them in."[6]
We too often end up toning down God's love into powerless
wish to
save a person that cannot act decisively to actually bring the
person to
Christ. That is not the kind of love the New Testament teaches. God's
love saves. "All that the Father gives Me will come to
Me" (John 6:37).
"My sheep shall never perish" (John 10:28)."I am convinced that
neither
death, nor life ... nor any other created thing shall be able to separate
us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans
8:38-39). "For those whom He foreknew (i.e., fore-loved and
chose), He
also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son...and whom
He predestined, these He also called, and whom He called, these he also
He justified, and whom He justified, these He also glorified" (Romans
8:29-30). God's "foreknowledge" spoken of in this verse does not mean
that He looked down the corridors of history and predestined those whom
He foreknew would choose Him. This verse speaks of God knowing persons,
not facts. In the Bible, God's knowing of someone is a personal,
intimate knowledge that involves personal commitment and selection on His
part. This is made clear from the use of the word many places, including
Jeremiah 1:5 and Amos 3:2. In Jeremiah 1:5 God says, "Before I formed
you in the womb, I knew you," and in Amos 3:2 He says "You only
[Israel]
have I known [i.e., chose] from all the families of the earth").
Jesus
said "I know my own, and my own know me" (John 10:14). What Romans
8:29-30 is saying, then, is that "`All those whom God chose to set His
love upon and personally commit Himself to before He even created the
world,' ...He also glorified."
The popular statement "God will love you straight to hell (in
order to preserve your free-will)" insults the greatness of God's
electing love and makes it man-centered. Believing such a statement can
rob you of fully appreciating and delighting in the truth of God's deep,
unbreakable love for you.
J.I. Packer does a masterful job of showing the radically
different conceptions of God's love between Calvinism and any view that
makes salvation ultimately depend upon a person's own decision to believe
instead of God's sovereign choice. "Whereas to Calvinism election is
God's resolve to save, for Arminianism salvation rests neither on God's
election nor on Christ's cross, but on each person's own cooperation with
grace, which is something that God does not himself guarantee."[7] As a
result of the Arminian view, "Our minds have been conditioned to think of
the cross as a redemption which does less than redeem, and of Christ as a
Savior who does less than save, and of God's love as a weak affection
which cannot keep anyone from hell without help, and of faith as the
human help which God needs for this purpose..."[8] In contrast, the
biblical view seems to be that "Calvary...not merely made possible the
salvation of those for whom Christ died; it ensured that they would be
brought to faith and their salvation made actual. The cross saves.
Where the Arminian will only say; `I could not have gained my salvation
without Calvary,' the Calvinist will say, `Christ gained my salvation for
me at Calvary."[9]
Which conception of God's love is greater (not to mention,
biblical)--the one which says that in His love, the most that God can do
is make salvation possible, or the one which says that God's love
is so wonderful and great that it can always work effectively to make a
person's salvation actual? How can God's love ever be a rock of
security if its effectiveness ultimately depends upon our sinful wavering
will? If God loves me and desires with all His heart to bring me to
heaven to be with Him and experience His love eternally, what good is
that if He is powerless to guarantee that it will happen? "Arminians
praise God for his love in providing a Savior to whom all may come to
find life; Calvinists do that too, and then go on to praise God for
actually bringing them to the Savior's feet."[10]
Clearly, predestination gives us a proper understanding of God's
amazing grace and love. His love does not merely make our salvation
possible, but makes it actual. God doesn't barter with
people; He
doesn't just offer salvation to those He deeply loves and stop there; He
makes the offer effectual--He saves them. We can take comfort in
this
strong and powerful and intense and affectionate
love of God that will
stop at nothing to keep the one who is loved from perishing. If we do
not understand God's election of us, we will not fully bask in and
delight in His great love for us. Furthermore, we cannot give God all of
the glory for His grace that saved us if we think that all God could do
was make salvation possible for us but could not take the necessary
measures to make our salvation certain. If we think that our choice was
the decisive element in our salvation, we are not giving all of the glory
to God.
There is perhaps one problem in your mind about this portrait of
God's love. "In Reformation days, as since, treatments of God's love in
election were often given shape, overshadowed, and indeed preempted by
wrangles of an abstract sort about God's sovereignty in reprobation
[choosing not to save everyone]. But in the New Testament, most notably
Romans 8:28-11:36 and Ephesians 1:3-14, election is a pastoral theme,
spelled out for the believers' encouragement, reassurance, support, and
worship."[11] I implore you to let the Scriptures stand. Let them tell you
about God's love instead of shaping your understanding of it around
presuppositions of how you think God should and should not love. Don't
let the fact that God has not chosen to love everyone in the same way
keep you from rejoicing in the special, perfect, unbreakable love God has
for you.
In conclusion, a proper understanding of God's love, especially
as manifest in unconditional election, will "provide for a strong,
faithful, confident, and joy-filled church. ...Strength of character,
faithfulness in conduct, courage of conviction, humility of spirit, and
hope for the future all stem from these glorious doctrines of grace.
With these, the church is strengthened; without them, the church is
hindered."[12]
