What’s the Connection?

Answer: Certainly, since God knows everything, it would have been possible for God to base His predestination and election of individuals upon His foreknowledge of the future. In fact, that is the exact position that many Christians believe. The problem is that it really is not what the Bible teaches about predestination, election, and foreknowledge. In order to understand why the view that “God made His choice based on merely knowing the future” is not what the Bible teaches, let’s first consider a couple of verses that speak to the reason God elected or predestined people to salvation.

Ephesians 1:5 tells us that God “predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.” According to this verse, the basis of our being predestined is not something that we do or will do, but is based solely on the will of God for His own pleasure. As Romans 9:15-16 says, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion. It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.” Similarly, Romans 9:11 declares regarding Jacob and Esau, “Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls.” Then again in Ephesians 1:11 we see that people are “chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.” From these and many others passages, we see that Scripture consistently teaches that predestination or election is not based upon something that we do or will do. God predestined people based on His own sovereign will to redeem for Himself people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. God predetermined or predestined this from before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4) based solely on His sovereign will and not because of anything that He knew the people would do.

But what about Romans 8:29 where it says that those “He foreknew, He also predestined”? Doesn’t that seem to say that predestination is based upon the foreknowledge of God? Of course, the answer is yes, it does teach that predestination is based on the foreknowledge of God. But what does the word foreknowledge mean? Does it mean “based upon God’s knowledge of the future,” meaning God simply looks down through the future and sees who will believe the gospel message and then predestines or elects them? If that were the case, it would contradict the verses above from Romans and Ephesians that make it very clear election is not based on anything man does or will do.

Fortunately, God does not leave us to wonder about this issue. In John 10:26, Jesus said, “But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep.” The reason some people believe is that they belong to God. They were chosen for salvation, not based on the fact that they would one day believe, but because God chose them for “adoption as sons in Christ Jesus” before they ever existed. The reason one person believes and another person does not is that one person has been adopted by God and the other has not. The truth is that the word foreknew in Romans 8:29 is not speaking of God’s knowing the future. The word foreknowledge is never used in terms of knowing about future events, times or actions (God’s omniscience). What it does describe is a predetermined relationship in the knowledge of God whereby God brings the salvation relationship into existence by decreeing it into existence ahead of time.

The word know is sometimes used in the Bible to describe an intimate or personal relationship between a man and a woman. In a similar sense, before God ever created the heavens and earth, and a long time before we were ever born, God knew His elect in a personal way and chose them to be His sheep, not because they would someday follow Him but in order to guarantee that they would follow Him. His knowing them and choosing them is the reason they follow Him, not the other way around. The issue really is not whether or not God knows who will believe, but why some believe and others do not. The answer to that is God chooses to have mercy on some and others He leaves in their sinful rebellion.

The following quote by John Murray is excellent in dealing with this issue:

“Even if it were granted that ‘foreknew’ means the foresight of faith, the biblical doctrine of sovereign election is not thereby eliminated or disproven. For it is certainly true that God foresees faith; He foresees all that comes to pass. The question would then simply be: whence proceeds this faith, which God foresees? And the only biblical answer is that the faith which God foresees is the faith He himself creates (cf. John 3:3-8; 6:44, 45, 65; Eph. 2:8; Phil. 1:29; 2 Peter 1:2). Hence His eternal foresight of faith is preconditioned by His decree to generate this faith in those whom He foresees as believing.”

From: GotQuestions.org

Recommended Resource: Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God by J.I. Packer.

“No one can come to Me unless that Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.” John 6:44

“… Edwards distinguished between moral and natural inability. Because man’s inability is moral and not natural, according to Edwards, the individual is responsible for the choices he or she makes. Here is a simple illustration: in the natural world there are animals that eat nothing but meat. They are called carnivores, from caro, carnis, which means “meat.” There are other animals that eat nothing but grass or plants. They are called herbivores, from herba, which means vegetation. Imagine taking a lion, who is a carnivore, and placing a bundle of hay or a trough of oats before him. He will not eat the hay or oats. Why not? It is not because he is physically or naturally unable to eat them. Physically, he could munch on the oats and swallow them. But he does not and will not, because it is not in his nature to eat this kind of food. Moreover, if we were to ask why he will not eat the herbivore’s meal, and if the lion could answer, he would say, “I can’t eat this food, because I hate it. I will only eat meat.”

Now think of the verse that says, “Taste and see that the LORD is good” (Ps. 34:8), or of Jesus saying, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eat of this bread, he will live forever” (John 6:51). Why won’t a sinful person “taste and see that the Lord is good” or feed upon Jesus as “the living bread”? To use the lion’s words, it is because he “hates” such food. The sinner will not come to Christ because he does not want to. Deep in his heart he hates Christ and what he stands for. It is not because he cannot come naturally or physically.

Someone opposed to this teaching might say, “But surely the Bible says that anyone who will come to Christ may come to him. Didn’t Jesus invite us to come? Didn’t he say, ‘Whoever comes to me I will never drive away’ (John 6:37)? The answer is, “Yes, that is exactly what Jesus said, but it is beside the point.” Certainly, anyone who wants to come to Christ may come to him. That is why Jonathan Edwards insisted that the will is not bound. However, this liberty is what makes our refusal to seek God so unreasonable and increases our guilt. Who is it who wills to come? The answer is, No one, except those in whom the Holy Spirit has already performed the entirely irresistible work of the new birth, so that, as a result of this miracle, the spiritually blind eyes of the natural man are opened to see God’s truth, and the depraved mind of the sinner, which in itself has no spiritual understanding, is renewed to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.”

– James Montgomery Boice, Philip Graham Ryken, The Doctrines of Grace, p. 85, 86

What does Scripture tell us about ‘self-esteem’?

Hints:

• A specific word search for ‘self-esteem’ won’t get you much, but try it anyway. The poor results of a word search is still instructive.
• Consider what Scripture has to say about the ‘human condition’ apart from Christ.
• For an example of how someone who is growing in their closeness/relationship with Christ prceives himself, look at Paul and what he said about himself.
• Consider what Christ had to say about ‘self’.
• Compare what modern psychology’s elevation of ‘self-esteem’ to near idol stature to the Biblical perspective

Please discuss.

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The vain philosophy of the world will always contain these 5 elements:

1) An attestation (or acquiescence) to the Bible as a helpful book, but not the inspired Word of God (although Catholicism will attest to the Bible as being divine, yet their tradition is placed upon an equal, and most of the time, greater level than the Bible–the church decides what the Word means.)

2) The denial of the Biblical Gospel message of Christ’s vicarious substitutionary atonement on behalf of his elect people which is limited in scope but not its power.

3) The denial of the sinner as morally corrupt, dead in sins, without any ability to will spiritual good, or turn to Christ to repent.

4) The denial of God’s absolute sovereignty in all areas of the created order.

5) A deranged or warped view (or no view) of God in general.

– From “A Puritan’s Mind”

Question for the Blogged Bible Study

Two sons born to Abraham, one son strictly from a union of flesh representing the law, and the son of promise representing the Messiah to come. God even referred to Isaac as Abraham’s only son.

“Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”” – Gen 22:2

I looked up seven translations/versions of the Bible and found thal all but one (The Message) used the term only son, referring to Isaac. Abraham had two sons, and God actually conferred a blessing on Ishmael after he was cast out of Abraham’s camp, along with his mother.

What might God’s reference to Isaac as Abraham’s only son signify to us as believers? I don’t think Is there a principal there that we can apply to our lives?

And by the way, I’m still working on it, in case you think I would be asking questions for which I thought I had an answer.

🙂

Another Blogging Bible Study (BBS) question from Galatians

It is by faith we are saved, not through works of the law – Paul’s teaching to everyone, everywhere he preached. There is perhaps nothing more clearly taught in scripture. Abraham believed God and his faith was counted/accounted/credited/reckoned to him as righteousness. Christ had not yet appeared on the scene.

Yet Jesus said:

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6

and

“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” – John 3:18

The ‘inclusivists’ among us will say that as long as one believes in God, or a creator/supreme being he/she will eventually spend eternity in bliss. They sometimes use Abraham as biblical ‘proof’ of their claim. They will even say that Christ died for ‘sin’ in a very broad sense, so that is it not necessary to have ever heard of Christ, or the name of the Son of God. One needs only believe in a supreme creator/being – they are still going ‘through’ Christ.

Here’s the question:

Did Abraham somehow believe in Christ before Christ was born?

If your answer is yes, what was it that God told Abraham and Abraham believed, that might provide a clue as to how that is possible?

Dan

God is completely sovereign over the affairs of men, including their eternal destiny, AND man is responsible and accountable for the decision to believe in or reject Christ as Lord and Savior.

Scripture teaches both. You can accept that or not – no spoon-feeding on the matter provided here. If you don’t like the idea (and most folks probably won’t), even quoting directly from scripture will be labeled as just ‘my opinion’. Check it out for yourself. This writer hopes that your profession of Christ (if you are a Christ follower) would drive you into Scripture to see exactly what God has revealed to us about the matter, and having done that, just believe it and leave the mystery of it all to God’s secret will.

In the end you will believe what you want to believe, as do we all. The difference between Christians and non-Christians is that somewhere inside of the person who has trusted in Christ for salvation, there is a change in what we want to believe – there’s a new desire to believe what God reveals in scripture, even if we can’t wrap our human brains around it.

Good question. Some folks will tell you that every person who enters the world is a child of God by virtue of having been born. Others will maintain that every person is not a child of God, that only those who behave a certain way or believe a certain way. If we are honest in wanting to know the truth of the matter, we can turn to Scripture and find out God’s answer to this question. After all, He wrote the book.

Most certainly, we are all God’s creation and God loves His creation:

“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things were created through him and for him.” – Col 1:16 

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” – John 3:16

Those who would tell you that we are all God’s children base their assertion on the fact that we are all within God’s creation and therefore must be His children. So what does Scripture specifically about children of God? We turn to the Gospel of John, Chapter 1, and find the apostle saying of Christ:

“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” – John 1:12-13

I encourage you to read from verse one of the same chapter, if you doubt that John was speaking about Christ. I also encourage you to read Romans 8:16 and 1 John 3:1-10. While the above passage from John Chapter 1 should be sufficient to answer the question at hand, if you believe we are all God’s children, the enemy of your soul will immediately invade your mind to cause you to doubt the words on the page. for that reason, I encourage to read John’s Gospel, as well as the additional passages mentioned above.

I intentionally didn’t quote more than a few verses so that you would be encouraged to search the Bible for yourself, and allow God to speak directly to you through the Holy Spirit. It’s kind of hard to argue with God