God’s Foreknowledge and Election

Pastor John, isn’t Divine election (God’s choice to save sinners) based upon the fact that He knows everything, even the end from the beginning, and therefore knows ahead of time what man will choose? Though it is a choice made in eternity past, God simply chooses (elects) those He sees ahead of time will choose Him. Correct?

Thanks for your question. God certainly does know everything, including all the future actions of man, but the quick answer is “no,” election is not based on God’s foreknowledge of man’s choice.

Let me start by quoting two key texts:

“For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son…” – Rom. 8:29

“chosen, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father…” 1 Pet. 1: 1, 2

These two texts are often used to suggest that because predestination and election are clearly based on God’s foreknowledge (which is a true statement in itself) then man’s choice is the deciding factor. The mistake made here is not to suggest foreknowledge comes before election (it clearly does) but in mistaking the meaning of foreknowledge and how it is used in Scripture.

Assumptions and misunderstandings abound concerning the doctrine of God’s foreknowledge. If we are to come to a biblical understanding of the subject, we need to apply diligence as we allow for the Holy Spirit to lead us into His truth.

All Christians believe in election and predestination. These are biblical words. The disagreement concerns the basis or grounds of election. In this regard, there are two main views held by Christians today: Continue reading

Irresistible Grace

“For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.” – John 5:21

“…those whom he called he also justified…” – Romans 8:30

“The doctrine of ‘irresistible grace’ is easily understood. It is simply the belief that when God chooses to move in the lives of His elect and bring them from spiritual death to spiritual life, no power in heaven or on earth can stop Him from so doing. It is really nothing more than saying that it is God who regenerates sinners, and that freely. The doctrine has nothing to do with the fact that sinners “resist” the common grace of God and the Holy Spirit (they do) or that Christians do not live perfectly in the light of God’s grace. It is simply the confession that when God chooses to raise His people to spiritual life, He does so without the fulfillment of any conditions on the part of the sinner. Just as Christ had the power and authority to raise Lazarus to life without obtaining his “permission” to do so, He is able to raise His elect to spiritual life with just as certain a result.

Objections to irresistible grace are, by and large, actually objections to the previously established truths of the doctrines of grace. Obviously, if God is sovereign and freely and unconditionally elects a people unto salvation, and if man is dead in sin and enslaved to its power, God must be able to free those elect people in time and bring them to faith in Jesus Christ, and that by a grace that does not falter or depend upon human cooperation. Those who disbelieve God’s right to kingship over His creation or the deadness of man in sin and put forward the tradition of man’s autonomous will can hardly confess that God’s grace actually saves without the freewill cooperation of man. From their perspective, the autonomous act of human faith must determine God’s actions. That act of faith becomes the “foreseen” act that controls God’s very decree of predestination, and, of course, that act of faith becomes the “trigger” that results in one being born again.

Neither side in the debate will deny that God is the one who raises men to spiritual life. The question is: Does He do so because men fulfill certain conditions, or does He do so freely, at His own time, and in the lives of those He chooses to bring into relationship with Himself through Jesus Christ? This question is normally framed in the context of the relationship of faith and regeneration. Do we believe to become born again, or must we first be born again before we can exercise true, saving faith? Can the natural man do what is pleasing to God? Can the dead choose to allow themselves to be raised to life? This is the issue at hand.”

– Dr. James White, Debating Calvinism, p. 197- 198

Evolution – A Theory in Crisis

Stephen J. Gould, in “Evolution Now: A Century After Darwin,” ed. John Maynard Smith (New York: Macmillan, 1982), p. 140, wrote, “The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.”