Why is there a debate over God’s Predestination of His people versus our individual Free Will? I believe if we take all of Scripture into account, we can better understand how they fit together. There is a word that brings clarification to me. It is Foreknew. Strong’s Concordance says the original Greek word means “to know before hand or to foresee”. Psalm 139 says God foreknew each of our lives from beginning to end.
Romans 8:28-30 clearly shows how foreknew and predestination work together.
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, and who have been called according to His purpose. 29 For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified.
God is obviously sovereign. He created everything from nothing and nothing happens in His creation without Him allowing it to happen. He is the Alpha and the Omega, beginning and the end. Those that God foreknew would believe His message of redemption, He predestined to be His children and useful in His Kingdom. He equips and prepares us for His service.
His plan was instituted in the beginning and will be completed in His timing. In the Old Testament, God called the Israelites His chosen people because He chose them to be the people He would use to show the world who He was. However, Scripture clearly shows us not every Israelite chose to follow God. The nation was the “people God chose” to show His Sovereignty, the “individuals had free will” to follow Him and be part of His plan or not. Those that used their free will to follow Him became “His chosen”. Others that chose not to follow Him, He used to show His wrath.
Even Satan cannot act without God’s permission. Think of the book of Job. Satan had to get permission from God to test Job. Job had free will to listen to his wife and friends and curse God, but God, being sovereign and foreknowing, knew Job’s free will choice would be not to give in. So, Satan’s test failed.
Think about a few main characters in Scripture. David the “man after God’s own heart” used his free will and decided one day not to lead his army into battle (2 Samuel 11). Because he was home and not on the battlefield, David used his free will again with Bathsheba. After the prophet called his sin out, David was broken and repented. God knew his heart and knew David would repent. He was still God’s man and his thrown will be where Jesus will reign, but because of his free will he paid the consequences.
Paul is another good example. Before he was Paul, Saul was a devoted prosecutor of the Church. But God “foreknew” that Saul would become Paul and when God’s timing was right God “called” Saul to become Paul and become God’s voice to the Gentile world. God allowed Saul to become extremely knowledgeable in Scripture and a “Pharisee of Pharisees” and then enabled Paul to use that knowledge to preach to the Gentile world.
Jesus’ mother Mary is another great example of God’s Sovereignty and Mary’s free will working together. God’s redemptive plan was started way back in the Garden of Eden. God picked the perfect time for His plan to be fulfilled. He even foretold of Jesus birth by a virgin in Bethlehem through His prophet hundreds of years prior to the birth. He “foreknew” Mary’s free will response to the Angel’s announcement of God’s “call” in her life and “predestined” for her to be the mother of Jesus.
God, knowing everyone’s life from beginning to end, “foreknew” Mary’s and Job’s responses and David’s sin and yet, because He foreknew their hearts, He “predestined” the part they would play in His plan and called them into those roles. It is the same today. God foreknew what our responses to Him will be and where we fit into His plan.
In my own life He has intervened even before I knew Him to keep me moving down His path for me. He allowed me to use my free will, and sometimes pay the consequences, but always directed me away from choices that would not allow me to be ready to hear His voice calling me in His timing. I was always confused when situations happened that stopped me, but God knew I would choose with my free will not to push past the block.
I realize that God made me with certain gifts and abilities as He “knitted me together in my mother’s womb”. He foreknew what He wanted me to do with those gifts and abilities. He even foreknew I would have polio at the age of 5 and how that would affect me. After I surrendered to Him and became His child, He gave me additional spiritual gifts to enhance the natural gifts I was born with. When He calls me to do something, He has already equipped me for the task. That truth is so amazing to me it takes my breath away. Praise His Name.
Christian Life Coach 