Predestination

Andy Fehler

Is God in control, does he decide all that will happen or do we have free will and a choice? Put more specifically – does God decide who will and who won’t become a Christian or do we have some say in the matter?

This is the issue of predestination and it seems a thorny issue for Christians and is often a stumbling block for interested non-Christians. It somehow seems unfair if God chooses who will become a believer, because that implies there are some he hasn’t chosen. On what basis does he make the decision? If I am a Christian can I be sure that I have been predestined?

But, if we push this initial idea a little bit we see that if it is one or the other – both leave us in a scary position. If we have free will and what we do is outside God’s control, then God is not sovereign, there can be no confidence that all things will pan out the way God has said they will. On the other hand if God is totally in control then surely we are just puppets, I only do something because God made me do it – if that is the case then how can I be culpable for what I do? It is not me doing it, but God forcing me to do it!

Well, the Bible clearly teaches predestination – but rather than holding God’s choice and human free will as two opposites, the Bible actually holds them both together, something which we find hard to get our heads around.

Speaking to Christians in Ephesus, Paul writes:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

Ephesians 1:3-6

This passage clearly speaks of God choosing those who believed from the beginning, and yet what is the gospel call? It is to turn to God – Jesus’ first words in Mark are recorded as “Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15b)

On one hand we are called to make a decision on the other hand we are told those who believe are those God predestined or chose before the Creation of the World – is it one or other? No surely the Bible is consistent – it must be both.

There are many good examples in the Bible where we see a person choosing to do something and there seems no question of coercion, the decision was the one made by the individual and was in keeping with their previous actions and intentions, but the Bible then reveals that that had always been God’s plan. A perfect example is that of Judas handing Jesus over to the Jewish leaders – it was his decision – which is why he is held accountable for his actions – but God decided it would happen and it was part of God’s plan to bring about salvation through the Cross.

That we don’t completely understand how this works should not be a complete surprise to us – understanding completely the workings of a sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient God would be a tall order for us created beings! That is not meant as a cop-out – well, we just can’t understand anything about God so let’s not try – on the contrary we should try to understand as much as we can through what God has revealed of himself in Scripture, but we shouldn’t be surprised if it holds two things together that we find hard to accept.

Predestination should have no impact on the way we go about telling others the gospel, we don’t need to figure out who is and isn’t chosen, we just take the good news to all and those that believe are those who are chosen. In Acts, Luke tells us that after one of Paul’s sermons “as many as were appointed to eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48)

Indeed predestination is never spoken of in the Bible in a negative way; it is only ever an encouragement to believers. There are no examples of someone wanting to become a Christian but God not choosing them. The way it works is that we make a decision to follow Christ, but once we have we find that we were chosen from before the Creation of the World. We can’t become a Christian if God hasn’t chosen or predestined us, but we wouldn’t want to if he hasn’t. That is pretty staggering – but it should be a huge encouragement because if God is all powerful and supreme and he has chosen me then nothing I can do can change that, nothing can snatch me from the hands of the Creator God who has chosen me!