Predestination? Romans 8:28-29
We're in Romans 8:28 and now we are getting into one of the other key words in Romans 8:29 and that is predestination. It's a concept that is often misunderstood and the reason it's misunderstood is because we all, including me, have this tendency, no matter our background, is that when we think we understand it, we create a Scriptural paradigm or a theological paradigm or grid. We then become intellectually lazy and rather than looking or studying or trying to discern what that verse is saying in context, we try to interpret that in light of our theology, not in light of its context. And that's bad. We all do it to one degree or another but there are some systems that are more prone to it.
Probably a good deal of systems are more prone to this, especially some of the great systems such as Calvinism on the one hand and Arminianism on the other. Interestingly enough, in one of Wesley's commentaries, he actually inserts concepts into the translation of this verse so that it works within his system and he can avoid the implications of eternal security. He did this because it's a great verse related to eternal security. On the other hand, among Calvinists, there is also the equal egregious error of taking a term like foreknowledge and making it equivalent to foreordination or election. While these are concepts that are similar and that relate to one another, they're not synonymous, they're not identical. Otherwise the Apostle Paul would be redundant in what he is saying in this verse. He is clearly spelling out a progression that occurs in terms of the thought or the planning of God as we look at it from a human perspective.
So in Romans 8:28 and 29, we read, "And we know that all things work together for good…" One thing that really hit me today as I was going over this for the umpteenth time the last few weeks, is how important it is to understand that Paul is writing this verse to comfort those who are going through adversity and going through suffering. It's not just the comfort that comes from the first part of the verse. The first part of the verse that we know all things work together for good is where we stop of stop, at least I have over the years. We're thankful that God's in control, He works all things out together for good. But there's more to it than that.
As you go through the rest of verse 28 and its connection to verse 29, it expresses the fact that what is going on and our response to it is all part of a plan that has been laid out and is overseen by God the Father so we can take comfort in knowing that the adversity we're going through is part of a plan. It's part of a blueprint that is designed to ultimately bring about the construction of spiritual maturity or edification within our own souls and the construction of something new in our souls called the image of His Son. So the adversity is the only way we can get there. This gives us a fresh perspective on this verse.
Paul is not writing a theological treatise related to election and predestination and foreknowledge. He's not writing as a Calvinist or an Augustinian or as an Arminian or any other school of thought. He's laying down a principle for comfort in the midst of adversity. That often gets lost as we get through dealing with these other terms. Now understanding these other ideas must be set in that particular context. I think when we look at some of the other passages, that becomes clear. We always have to go back to that important rule of context, context, and context. "So we know that all things work together for good…" In context all things are suffering and adversity we go through as we pursue the objective of being a joint-heir with Jesus Christ so we're prepared to rule and reign with Him. So, "All things work together for good to those who love God to those who are the called according to His purpose…"
There's another plan there. He has a blueprint, a plan. He has a roadmap to spiritual maturity, if I can use that as another analogy. Spiritual maturity is then defined as "being conformed to the image of His Son" in the next verse. Who is he talking to here? Is he talking to unbelievers or believers? He's talking to believers, isn't he? Now that's one thing that just really hit me today because as we get into this and we're talking about foreknowledge and predestination, there are too many people, who when they start talking about this in terms of election and predestination are focused on these doctrines as they pertain to identifying the saved. See, Paul isn't worried about identifying the saved here. He's focusing on comforting the saved but he is focused on the fact that these terms that he uses—"called" "foreknew" and "predestined"—are terms related to a spiritual life issue.
He's talking not here about how to become saved. This isn't a soteriological justification issue. He's talking about sanctification, how the believer is to be conformed to the image of His Son. That's the whole context here. We're not talking about making sure you're among the elect or making sure you're among the predestined. What we're talking about is the fact that as a believer there's a plan and that plan is to conform you to the image of His Son so that shifts the focus a little bit. It's easy how its gets kind of slippery when we're dealing with these issues here. All of a sudden we're talking about soteriological issues related to phase one, justification, rather than the second stage which is what happens after we're saved. Too many people spend all their time talking about phase one and justification without ever going past it. That's one of the failures in a number of denominations. You can go there and learn how to be a Christian for years but they never answer the question, "after salvation, then what?" That's what this is focusing on, that phase after salvation.
We looked at Romans 8:29 and 29. We went to 1 Peter 1:12 to show that election is that process of God's choosing a group. Here it's applied to a group of Jewish believers, members of the diaspora, who are Jewish converts to Christianity. That's what makes them that "choice" group. That choice is according to a norm or standard or pattern. That's what the Greek preposition kata means. It's translated "according to" here and that's what you find in every Greek lexicon. It means according to a norm or standard or a pattern and the election, the choice, occurs on the basis of something. You can even say it's almost cause, not quite but close to that idea, because of the foreknowledge of God the Father.
So the foreknowledge, God's knowledge of what will take place in the future as part of His omniscience, is abundantly clear that that is what precedes election. That informs God's choice. That's even more clear when you get down to 1Peter 1:20 which is talking about Jesus Christ. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, not foreordained but foreknown, same word, that this must be informed by the meaning and use of the word back in 1 Peter 1:1. This is only nineteen verses later. It has that same idea.
Foreknown has to do with God's knowledge of how things will be in the future. Now let's just stretch our brains a little bit. In God's omniscience He doesn't ever learn anything. He doesn't perceive things in terms of a progression. He perceives things as they will be all at once, simultaneously. For us we look at them in terms of this before and after and succession of events. But in the omniscience of God He knows all things instantly and completely and intuitively and He's always known it this way so that His knowledge is exhaustive and it is complete. It never increases. It never decreases. It is intuitive while our knowledge is discursive. We learn things in pieces and we learn things over time and we constantly come to greater knowledge.
So we looked at foreknowledge last time just to see that foreknowledge or prescience, the idea that God knows what will happen ahead of time, but He doesn't make His selection of believers because He sees faith. I pointed that out last time and I can't make this point strongly enough. Within Calvinism we have to understand that a system is a system. It all hangs together as an integrated system. Within Calvinism faith is meritorious. Faith is doing something good. It has merit. It has value to have faith and therefore for the unbeliever to be able to do anything of value, including to believe, God must first change the nature of the unbeliever. That's called regeneration. In high Calvinism regeneration precedes faith. God the Holy Spirit has His effectual grace, irresistible grace, which works upon the heart of the unbeliever and changes it. As an inevitable result, according to Calvinists, he will believe in Jesus as Savior and he will also inevitably grow.
They reject our view of foreknowledge and they would say that anything God does on the basis of foreknowledge is letting man know what it ultimately works. They don't understand faith is something anyone can do. Therefore it's not special. It's a means, not a cause. That's reflected in the grammar of the New Testament. When we have verses like Ephesians 2: 8-9, "For by grace you have been saved through faith…" The grammatical construction in the Greek is the preposition dia plus a genitive which means through. If cause were the idea then Paul would have used an accusative case because dia plus the accusative means because. So we're saved not because of faith but through faith. The cause is God's love and the cause is Jesus Christ's death on the cross. That's the cause of our salvation.
So we looked at Romans 8:28 that "we're called according to the purpose of God." That's explained as to "those whom God foreknew, He also predestined." ((CHART)) So I closed out last time with this double circle which is a subset of everything God knows. God knows all the knowable. He's always known all the knowable. And all the knowable includes not only what will happen but might happen, what could have happened. We'll look at that in a minute.
Thomas Edgar put it this way in his article, Foreknowledge, "God knows everything that will happen if he causes it." See the Calvinist says God only foreknows what will happen. Only because it will happen can God foreknow it, meaning God can only foreknow what He has predetermined will happen. So therefore God really doesn't know all the knowable, according to them. That it's not such infinite possibilities that His omniscience can grasp. But omniscience can grasp it because it's infinite. What Edgar is saying is that God not only knows everything that will happen if He causes it, He knows what will happen if he causes only some of it. He knows what will happen if He merely allows it to happen. Since He's omniscient He knows what will happen even if He allows the universe to be completely random. He knows what will happen regardless of the cause. Whether man can philosophically explain how this works is irrelevant since man has no ability to explain something that only God can possess, without which God knows nothing apart from the Scripture.
One of the problems I pointed out last time is too often we try to impose our view of cause and effect on the Creator. Now let's look at a couple of passages in Scripture that give us some examples of how God knows what would have happened otherwise. In technical philosophy these are called counter factuals. A factual is a fact, what happened. A fact is that on March 6, 1836 the Alamo fell. But what would have happened if the Alamo hadn't fallen? God knows. See, that's not a fact but it's a counter factual. What would have happened if George Washington had been killed when he was fighting in the French and Indian War? What would have happened under any number of circumstances that you can think of in history? Those are counter factuals.
What would have happened if you'd gone to another school or university than the one you went to? What if you had chosen another job than the one you chose? What if you had married someone different from the one you married? Those are the counter factuals and God knows all of those. Counter factuals is the technical term that philosophers use. Let's turn to 1 Samuel 23. This is that horrible period in David's life between the time he knew that God had anointed Him in 1 Samuel 17 to be the king of Israel but Saul is still on the throne. Saul is still God's man to rule Israel and during part of this time David was Public Enemy Number One and most hated by Saul. Saul has all of his army out looking to kill David.
David has been hiding now among the Philistines. He fled to Gath. Gath is a city down in what is now the Gaza strip. If you know anything about Israel you know where that is. It's not in the land. It's down in the land of the Philistines, the enemy of Israel. He fled down there and then after that in the beginning of chapter 22 he escaped to the cave of Abdullam. Then it's after that that Saul murders the priests. In chapter 23 the Philistines are fighting against another town, Killah, and they are pressing it much like Sderot today, a tiny town in Israel that is the closest town to the border with Gaza and the Hamas are standing missiles and rockets over to Sderot on a regular basis. Fortunately they have Iron Dome to defend themselves now but it was that kind of thing.
Keilah was under the thumb of the Philistines who were stealing their grain and so David now inquires of the Lord in verse 2, "Shall I go and attack these Philistines? And the Lord said to David, "Go and attack the Philistines and deliver Keilah. But David's men say to him, Behold, we are afraid here in Judah. How much more then if we go to Keilah against the ranks of the Philistines?" They're saying they don't have the resources to fight the Philistines. Verse 4, "So David inquired of the Lord once more. And the Lord answered him and said, "Arise, go down to Keilah, for I will give the Philistines into your hand." Verse 5 says, "So David and his men went to Keilah and fought with the Philistines, and he led away their livestock and struck them with a great slaughter. Thus David delivered the inhabitants of Keilah."
Then Abiathar the son of Ahimelch the high priest came down to David at Keilah. He went down with his ephod which was a sign he was a high priest. Saul was told that David had gone to Keilah and in verse 7 "Saul said, "God has delivered him into my hand…" Saul is saying I know where David is and I can attack him. He's vulnerable militarily and we can lay siege to the town and capture him. "So Saul summoned all the people for war, to go down to Keilah to besiege David and his men." Verse 8, "Now David knew that Saul was plotting evil against him, he said to Abiathar the priest, "Bring the ephod here." So now he's going to inquire of the Lord. "Then David said, O Lord God of Israel, Your servant has heard for certain that Saul is seeking to come to Keilah to destroy the city on my account. Will the men of Keilah deliver me into his hand?" So he asked a very specific question. With the ephod I believe he had access to what was called the "urim and thummin". We're not sure exactly what they were but they were stones that the High Priest had that maybe changed color, maybe they glowed, maybe they vibrated. We don't really know but somehow God communicated direct revelation through the urim and thummin.
So David inquires of God, "Will the men of Keilah surrender me into his hand?" He's asking if he's going to get betrayed. His second question is whether Saul is really going to come and then he says "O Lord God of Israel, I pray, tell Your servant. And the Lord said, "He will come down." God doesn't answer his first question but he answers the second question and David says again, "Will the men of Keilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul?" And the Lord said, "They will deliver you."
So what does David do? He leaves. "Then David and his men, about six hundred, arose and departed from Keilah, and they went wherever they could go. "When it was told Saul that David had escaped from Keilah he gave up the pursuit." So see God in His omniscience says this is what's going to happen. Saul's coming and yes, the people will betray you. But David does something different and that changes the whole scenario. So Saul doesn't actually come and the people never betrayed David. So we have flexibility within the plan of God. There's the function of volition. David could have stayed there and had a fatalistic attitude, saying, "Whatever happens God will protect me." Or he could take action and leave and then none of the other things happened. God knew what would happen under other circumstances. It's not set in stone.
2 Kings 13:19 is another example. So let's turn there. This is a situation that occurs at the time of the death of Elisha. Elisha was the second great prophet in the Northern Kingdom during its worst period of spiritual apostasy under Ahab and his descendants. So Elisha becomes sick with an illness. He's about to die. Joash, the King of Israel, the Northern Kingdom, came down and wept over him. He was fairly positive. He said, "My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen. And Elisha said to him, "Take a bow and some arrows." So he took a bow and arrows. Then he said to the king of Israel, Put your hand on the bow." And he put his hand on it. Then Elisha laid his hands on the king's hand. He said, "Open the window toward the east". He opened it. Then Elisha said, "Shoot." He shot and he said, "The Lord's arrow of victory, even the arrow of victory over Aram [Syria]; for you will defeat the Arameans [Syrians] at Aphek until you have destroyed them."
Elisha is using this as sort of an object lesson to show that shooting the arrow shows military victory over the Syrians. And he makes the point over them that you're only going to destroy them if you strike them until they are completely defeated, totally defeated. You're not going to have a peace with them and a line of demarcation like we drew back in the 50s between North Korea and South Korea. We still have a problem today. You completely, totally defeat the enemy so they don't come back later. So Elisha said, "Take the arrows" and he took them. And he said to the king of Israel, "Strike the ground…" Elisha didn't tell him to stop. He didn't tell him how many. He just told him to hit the ground. "So he struck the ground three times and then he stopped."
Elisha got mad at him. In verse 19 he says, "You should have struck five or six times, then you would have struck Aram until you would have destroyed it. But now you shall strike Aram only three times." So what does Elisha know? He said, "If you had only had the courage and stamina to keep hitting the ground, then you would have destroyed the king of Syria. But since you only struck the ground three times you're only going to defeat him but it's not enough for total defeat so it's going to be a problem." Elisha shows that he knows what would have happened if he had only chosen to hit the ground more than three times. So God has made him privy to that information. He knows the counter factuals which would have happened.
Isaiah 48:18 is another passage that says God knows what would happen under other circumstances. It says, "Oh that you had heeded my commandments [if you'd only obeyed me; if you'd listened to my commandments, then your well-being would have been like a river and your righteousness like the waves of the sea]." He's talking to the nation Israel saying that if you'd only listened to Me [God] you would have had peace and righteousness but you didn't. God knows what would happen if you'd made other decisions.
Then we have Jeremiah 38:17 and following. The time is toward the end of the Southern Kingdom. Zedekiah is the king, the last king, and Zedekiah had Jeremiah brought to him at the third entrance that is in the house of the Lord. Jeremiah's been in prison, put there by the king. The king told Jeremiah he was going to ask him something and not hide anything from him. Jeremiah said, "If I tell you, will you not certainly put me to death?" But Zedekiah swore secretly to Jeremiah saying, "As the Lord lives who made this life for us surely I will not put you to death nor will I give you over to the hand of these men who are seeking your life." Notice he knows the doctrine of creation. Zedekiah understood some truth. He might have been a believer but an extremely apostate believer.
Next we get to verse 17, "Then Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, "Thus says the Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel, "If you will indeed go out to the officers of the king of Babylon, then you will live, this city will not be burned with fire, and you and your household will survive [if you surrender]. Verse 18, "But if you will not go out to the officers of the king of Babylon, then this city will be given over to the hand of the Chaldeans and they will burn it with fire, and you yourself will not escape from their hand." Then Zedekiah, the king, said, "I dread the Jews who have gone over to the Chaldeans, for they may give me over into their hand and they will abuse me." But Jeremiah said, "They shall not give you over. Please obey the Lord in what I am saying to you that it may go well with you and you may live. But if you keep refusing to go out, this is the word which the Lord has shown me." In other words God has shown that if you obey Him and surrender then you're going to live and Jerusalem will not be destroyed. But Zedekiah disobeyed so he was destroyed; Israel was destroyed; the first temple was destroyed. So we see once again that God knows what would happen under certain circumstances. The point is that God's foreknowledge includes alternate scenarios.
We see this in the New Testament. Matthew 11:21 and again in verse 23, Jesus pronounces a judgment on these small towns along the Sea of Galilee because they had witnessed some great miracles. They knew Jesus was who He claimed to be but they had rejected Him. Jesus says, "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had occurred in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. It wouldn't have taken as much. They would have changed their minds long ago and regretted their position if they had seen what you had seen". God knows the alternative. Then he pronounces a judgment on Capernaum in verse 23, "And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will descend to Hades for if the miracles had occurred in Sodom which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day." Of course, we ask the question, "Then why didn't God give those kinds of miracles to Sodom and Chorazim and Bethsaida? I don't know. But what this does show is that God knows what would happened under other circumstances and other conditions.
That means that there are variables within history. As I pointed out last time, just as God created the design of the universe that even though sin brought this incredible amount of chaos into the universe and introduced an unbelievable amount of chaos into the DNA of the human race and brought death and disease and suffering, God so structured our DNA and our biological makeup and the makeup of the world to have the ability to handle that and for the world to not be completely destroyed by it. So God is able to deal with all of the variables that come as the result of what appears to us to be randomness of human free choice.
Note foreknowledge then leads us to the next category in Romans which is predestination. "Those whom God foreknew…" These are the same group of people. He doesn't lose any. He doesn't get any more. That's what Charles and John Wesley couldn't get around. It tells you that the same group that He called, that He foreknew, that He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He justified, those are the ones that are going to be glorified. He doesn't lose any. Wesley introduces a phrase in there, "These He will justify if they persevere." He believed if they don't persevere, they won't be justified, they won't be glorified. He didn't believe in eternal security. He's not listening to what the passage is saying.
I have a couple more quotes for you from well-known historical Calvinist theologians and documents. This first one is from A.A. Hodge. Archibald Alexander Hodge, the father of Charles Hodge. A. A. Hodge was named for Archibald Alexander who founded a school called Log College. It was a small in-house training school for pastors in Princeton, New Jersey. Today we know of it as Princeton University. A. A. Hodge was named for Augustus Alexander who was the first theology professor at the Log College. There were a string of Hodges, Augustus Alexander Hodge, Charles Hodge, and then Casper Hodge who went into the early part of the 19th century and then one of Charles Hodges' students, Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield. This was a theological dynasty in the northeast. In many ways, though we would not agree with their degree of Calvinism, because of their staunch defense of the truth of Scripture inerrancy and infallibility of the Word of God against the onslaughts of liberalism and liberal theology in the 19th century, their impact has lasted until the present time in evangelical Christianity among those who are conservatives and fundamentalists because they are the ones who were the brain and trust who really laid down the foundation and the theological arguments for the inspiration, inerrancy, and infallibility of Scripture. To that we owe them a great and tremendous debt. They put their finger in the dike even though everybody else around them was pulling their finger out and running for cover. They did a great job. But we do not agree with everything they say.
Here's how Hodge defines predestination. "Predestination is that which is designating only the counsel of God concerning fallen men, including sovereign election of some and the most righteous reprobation of the rest." It's called double predestination. According to this view some are predestined to heaven, the elect. The others are predestined to reprobation.
There is an English document from the 17th century called the Westminster Confession of the Faith, which was where Presbyterians and Anglicans came together and hammered out basic theology of the Reformed Anglican Church in the 1600s. Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 3, paragraph 3 states, "By the decree of God for the manifestation of His glory some men and angels are predestined to everlasting life and others foreordained to everlasting death." Again that is predestination in their view. If you ever deal with a strong Presbyterian orthodox church or a strong Calvinist, this is their doctrinal statement, the Westminster Confession of Faith. Under paragraph 5, we read, "Those of mankind who are predestined unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to His eternal and immutable purpose and the secret council and good pleasure of His will, hath chosen in Christ unto everlasting glory, out of His mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works or perseverance in either of them or any other thing…" That excludes anything, no foresight whatsoever is involved in God's election. It continues "…any other thing in the creature, its conditions or causes moving him thereunto and all to the praise of His glorious grace." So you see they are saying God selects who will be saved and who will not be saved but He doesn't act on His knowledge to do it. There's no room for his foresight or His actual knowledge of the way things will be.
Another definition from the Dictionary of Theological Terms states, "Thus reprobation has two parts to it: "preterition…" That's a good word for you. I have an app on my iPad™ that gives you a new word of the day every day and preterition showed up as the word for the day last week. I knew what it meant. I said, "Give me a new word. Give me something I don't know." "…preterition or the passing over of some in the decree of election. This is the sovereign prerogative of God, as Calvin long ago pointed out, God owes no man anything and no man can justly argue against the righteousness of God in passing him by in election, so leaving him to his own sinful self-determination." The second part of reprobation is condemnation, the act of the sovereign judge. It is passed upon sinners. No man will be damned except for sin." That's the negative side of predestination.
Then from the Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms, predestination is defined as "the sovereign determination and foreknowledge of God. Some theologians connect divine predestination with the central events of salvation history, especially the death of Jesus as foreordained by God. In Calvinist theology the doctrine of predestination more specifically holds that God has from all eternity chosen specific people to bring into eternal communion with Himself. Some Calvinists [high Calvinists] add that God has also predestined or ordained the rest of humankind for damnation." Now just a word. One of the reasons I call them high Calvinists although some people call anybody who's a little more Calvinist than they are a hyper-Calvinist, but that's not an exact term. Actually these terms, low Calvinists, high Calvinists, and hyper-Calvinists are technical terms. A hyper-Calvinist is someone who believes that God has decreed who will be saved and they will be saved whether you give them the gospel or not. As one Baptist leader told the young missionary at the end of the 1700s, "God is going to save the elect in India whether you go there and take them the gospel or not." That's hyper-Calvinism. High Calvinism is just five-point supralapsarianism Calvinism. We won't get into all of that.
So we have the Greek words for election, the term proorizo, the prefix pro which means ahead of time or beforehand and the second term is horizo which is the root of the word. Again, it's a compound word which we saw with proginosko. proorizo means to decide on something beforehand, or to decide beforehand, according to Arndt and Gingrich Lexicon or to predetermine. The point that we will see is that predestination really isn't a correct term to translate proorizo at all. It implies some things that are not in evidence in the passages. The issue is what are we deciding upon ahead of time?
There are only a few instances of this word in the New Testament so you go to the root to see if you can get some insight into the meaning because meaning should come from usage and if there aren't very many examples then we're somewhat limited. You have to be careful not to commit what is called a root fallacy, which is where you take the meaning of the root word and that shapes the meaning of the compound word that is built upon it. So horizo is the basic meaning of separate entities and to establish a boundary and it has the idea of defining ideas of concepts or setting limits or explaining something. The second meaning is it means to make a determination about an entity, to appoint something ahead of time, to fix something ahead of time. It has a range of meanings, so basically it means to decide upon something ahead of time and it relates to God determining something beforehand or it means to decide a destination or a destiny ahead of time.
God has decided that the church is a body of believers ahead of time. He has a plan, a roadmap and that roadmap is that everyone who trusts in Christ has to grow to spiritual maturity so they can rule and reign with Him in the future kingdom and the only way you're going to have the capacity to do that is if you have your character transformed so that you are like Christ and not like fallen Adam. That's what Paul states in Romans 8:29, "For those whom He [God] foreknew…" God knew all the options; He knew who would respond in non-meritorious faith. "… He also predestined them [not just as a group but also as individuals] to become conformed to the image of His Son…" He set forth a plan. He appointed them to a destiny.
Does that mean they can say, "I don't want to play that game? I'm going to go wallow in the pig sty like the prodigal son." Yes, they can do that. God has still appointed an endgame. That endgame plan is for them to be conformed to the image of His Son. The purpose is stated, "…so that He [Jesus Christ] might be the first born among many brethren." The many brethren are all of us. He's not the first born alone but that He has a cadre of qualified believers from all the centuries of the church age who will rule and reign with Him in the kingdom. The emphasis here is not that Jesus might be the first born; He is that; He is the preeminent One. That's what the term first born means. But the emphasis is that He will be the first born among or with many brethren. He's not going to be like David with only three or four hundred mighty men out in the wilderness. He's going to have hundreds of thousands of brethren who are qualified to rule and reign with Him in the Millennial Kingdom.
We see some other senses of the word "predestination" in Scripture. There are only six passages, five other than the one we're looking at, where the word proorizo is used. In Ephesians 1:5 we're told that God has predestined us, He has set as our objective, as the goal for every believer adoption as sons, adult sons, by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will. Notice that it's not that we're predestined to spend eternity in heaven; we're predestined to adoption as sons in Jesus Christ. In verse 11 that adoption as sons, not as children, but as adult sons, is related to inheritance, which is what we've been talking about in Romans 8. Verse 11 says, "In Him also we have obtained an inheritance being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things after the counsel of His will." God set a destiny. He said, "I've got a plan. I'm not going to just save them and say they're going to come and be in Heaven with Me forever. Now that they're saved, there's an objective here. Now that they've started to first grade, the objective here is to graduate from high school. Now that they've started the training by becoming part of the family, the destiny is for them to be conformed to the image of Christ. Now that they've entered into the family of God there's a training that has to take place so they can be an adult son and enjoy all of the privileges and responsibilities of being an adult son."
The word is used again in Acts 4:28. It appears from the context that this is not talking about being predestined to salvation. It's talking about something completely different. It's a prayer, "And to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur." God worked out your plan and purpose in history. It's not talking about the individual selection and predestination of some to salvation and some to eternal condemnation. It's not even in the context. In 1 Corinthians 2:7, Paul says, "But we speak God's wisdom in a mystery [never before revealed in history], the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory…" So God had in His eternal omniscience the concept of what would be revealed in the Word of God. That was what God predestined, the Word of God. It's not predestined to eternal salvation or eternal condemnation.
In Luke 22:22, "For indeed, the Son of Man is going as it has been determined…" It has been set forth by the plan of God. This passage is using proorizo but not in a sense of selection for salvation or condemnation. So again we keep running into this particular problem. ((CHART)). Here are some other verses where the noun is used but it basically comes to the same point that it's not based on selection to eternal life or not.
So in closing, just to wrap it up, Genesis 1:26 and 27, God created the human race in His image. When Adam sinned that image was marred, defaced, corrupted, but not destroyed. Every human being is born in the image and likeness of God. We are still finite representations of God. We have self-consciousness so we can have God-consciousness. We have mentality and intelligence so we can think God's thoughts after Him. We have a conscience so that we can know God's will and be obedient to that which is right versus that which is wrong. All of this is related to the makeup of God so this composes the soul which is the way we represent God and we work that out through our physical bodies on this earth so that it is through them that we fulfill the mission to rule over the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the beasts of the field, etc.
We're created in the image of God. That image is defaced and corrupted by sin. How do we get back to where we're supposed to be? The writer of Hebrews states it in five verses quoted from Psalm 8. This is one of the most significant passages for understanding the spiritual life in all of the Bible. He introduces this statement by saying, "But one has testified somewhere, saying, 'What is man, that You remember him?'" God, why do you care about the human race or what is so significant about human beings? Of course, the answer is that we're in the image of God. But the Psalmist is saying what's so special about man? It continues, "Or the Son of Man, that you are concerned about Him? You have made him a little lower than the angels." We don't have the capability of angels. We're lower than angels. "But You have crowned him with glory and honor and appointed him over the works of Your hands. You have put all things in subjection under his feet. For in subjecting all things to him, He left nothing that is not subject to him. But now we do not yet see all things subjected to him."
The point here is that because of the corruption of the fall, while we're still in a position of authority over creation, we can't fulfill our ultimate mission because of this chaos of the fall. The chaos of the fall has to be remedied and creation redeemed by Jesus. [Romans 8:17ff] In Hebrews 2:9, "But we do see Him [Jesus] who was made for a little while lower than the angels [a human being] , namely Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned Him with glory and honor." Because He executed the plan of God and He led a sinless life and because He submits Himself in obedience to the will of the Father [Philippians 2:5-9], in the suffering of death, because of that He was crowned with glory and honor that He, by the grace of God might taste [fully take in or fully enmesh Himself] for everyone. It's not "taste" like taking a little nibble; it's fully taking it in.
Verse 10, "For it was fitting for Him [God the Father] for Whom are all things and by Whom are all things in bringing many sons to glory…" Look, who comes to glory? We have been crowned as human beings with glory and honor and the creation is supposed to be put under our feet but it's been all screwed up because of sin. Then Jesus comes along and He's glorified because of the suffering of death He endured as the payment of sin for everyone and now in conclusion, "It was fitting for God the Father, for Whom are all things and by whom are all things in bringing many sons…" That's all those other believers to glory, their originally intended position, to first make the captain of their salvation mature through suffering."
Jesus had to learn obedience through suffering. Not that He was disobedient. He had to grow up and mature as a believer. He had to learn to eat. He had to learn what utensils to use to eat what food. He had to learn that when His mother said to do something that He did it. Now He never disobeyed her but He had to go through that process. He had to grow up. He had to learn Hebrew. He had to learn to speak it. He had to learn to write it. He had to learn to read the Torah and He had to learn to memorize it. And when He went to the temple when he was 12 years old and He just confounded all the religious leaders, He did that because He was sinless and He did it out of His own human ability. He's not saying, "Okay, I'm going to pierce the wall into my omniscience and I'm going to really screw these guys up by using my omniscience to confound them." Jesus did it from His humanity. If he did that, he would have violated the whole principle of kenosis that's laid down in Philippians, chapter 2. He's living His life on the basis of the Holy Spirit in His limited humanity by depending upon God, not by handling problems and challenges to His spiritual life by depending upon His Divine power. He's doing it in His humanity to show what we can do if we would just trust God.
When you put all these things together we see that the theme that runs along with predestination and with foreknowledge is to handle suffering and to understand the purpose of suffering so that we can be conformed to the image of Christ and that only comes through spiritual growth. We have to learn obedience just as Jesus did. That's what Paul is saying in Romans 8. Next time we'll come back and we'll press on to Romans 8:30 and beyond which won't be quite as rugged and detailed as getting through these two verses.