Some Questions About Predestination

 

Some Questions About Predestination

Predestination is the Christian doctrine that God has chosen specific people for salvation from before the creation of the world.

Verses like Ephesians 1:4 speak to it: "He chose us in Christ from before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him." Or the description of how God's salvation of a person unfolds in Romans 8:30: "Those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified."

Predestination puts our salvation where it undoubtedly belongs: in God's hands. But it's not unreasonable for us to have some questions about it.

If God has predestined me, why should I bother to do good?

First of all, if you're only doing good in order to receive a reward or avoid a punishment, there is space in you for great spiritual growth. Do we love someone because we think they will reward us for our love? Though God gives us every spiritual blessing, our love isn't something he's bought. Love is given freely, and our good deeds in honor of God and in service to other people come out of love, not mere transactionalism.

Therefore, in terms of a transaction, it is strictly speaking true that if God has chosen to save you, you would not lose that salvation by sitting around and doing absolutely nothing good your entire life. But this doesn't happen because those whom he predestined he also called, and justified, and glorified. The Holy Spirit renews each believer, not to make her perfect (not yet anyway), but to continually transform her from the inside out.

As a person chosen and loved by God, you should bother to do good for God and others because God has done so much good for you.

How do I know that I am predestined?

Look to your own life: do you have faith in God? Have you put your trust in Jesus? Then you have no need to doubt: God has saved you forever.

Romans 10:9 puts it like this: "if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."

This is not so much a trick formula (sometimes people treat it like that, as magic words that force God to save you if you say them just right) as it is a reflection of God's saving work in your heart. If you are willing to let Jesus be the lord of your life and be open about that with others, and if you really believe in his Easter resurrection, then you will be saved. What's more, people who haven't yet believed may still be predestined. And you and I may be the means to share the faith with them.

The Bible never encourages people to doubt their salvation, or to doubt God's love for them. If you have faith, then you should be reassured that for all your doubts and sins and worries, God's plan for you started long ago, even before creation itself.

If God chooses people before the creation of the world, is salvation really not about what I do?

It really isn't. 

Ephesians 2:8-9 says "By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast."

We live in a culture that claims "meritocracy" as a guiding principle. People earn what they get. They have merit, so they receive a benefit. Outside of the family, the world is viewed through a transactionalist lens, rather than loving relationship.

This makes it hard for us to accept what the Bible says about salvation: that God saves us when we don't deserve it. It's a radical concept, but that's exactly what grace - a free gift - has always meant. 

God adopts us into his family, and being children means that it's not what we do, it's whose we are that determines where we go when the day is done.

You can listen to my recent sermon on Predestination in Ephesians 1:3-11 here.