01.02. ESSAY NO. 2
ESSAY NO. 2
Paul’s magnificent anthem on God’s grace (Ephesians 1:3-14) shows that God exercises his grace in a three-tense program; namely, past purpose, present workings, and future consummation. This mighty song begins in the vast eternity past with God’s purpose, proceeds with his purpose throughout time, and enters eternity future with it brought to fruition. No other sentence in all the Bible involves more time, digs more deeply about the very roots of Christianity, or reveals more of the riches of God’s wisdom and grace. It sets forth Christianity as the masterpiece of God’s combined power, “wisdom and prudence,” and goodness. The sentence may be thought of as the first chapter of Paul’s spiritual Genesis. The Doctrine of Predestination The Bible teaches that God before he created Adam knew that he would sin. Some say that God’s foreknowledge deprived Adam of a choice, and therefore he was not responsible for his disobedience. But the Bible teaches that despite God’s foreknowing man’s sin, man is a responsible, guilty sinner when he disobeys God. Peter on Pentecost, although Christ was “delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23) convicted the Jews of crime in crucifying him. Neither Peter nor his hearers saw any inconsistency between God’s foreknowledge and man’s responsibility for his deeds. Foreknowledge is not causation. A farmer’s foreknowledge that the wheat he sows will become bread, is not the cause of the bread. The doctrine that divine foreknowledge and human responsibility are consistent, cardinal truths so permeates the Bible throughout that to deny it, is to deny the Bible. Without it, God and man and Bible, as they are, would cease to be. A Fallacious Difficulty Examined
If the relationship between God’s will and man’s will, involves intellectual difficulties, what of it? A man who thinks that what is above his reason is of necessity unreasonable is ignorant, proud, and foolish. “Upon what meat doth this Caesar feed, that he has grown so great” as to think he can revise God? Were he consistent, he would not eat bread until he knows all the mystery back of producing bread and of its becoming part of his body. A man who eats bread, mystery and all, should likewise believe, mystery and all, the revealed truth that God’s foreknowledge and man’s freedom of will are compatible doctrines. Holy men of God, knowing that omniscience and prescience are essential attributes of deity, even when God goes beyond their understanding, still believe and trust him. Things are not necessarily unreasonable because they transcend human reason. Mystery does not rob them of their merit and utility. Mark Twain said that, not the things in the Bible which he did not understand, but the things which he did understand were what bothered him.
Predestination Explained This scripture in Ephesians says that God “fore-ordained” before he made the world. But foreordained what? Not that he would arbitrarily save some men and condemn other men, but that according to his prevision he would make provision to save all men by faith in Christ. Christ was “foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world” (1 Peter 1:20) as the Savior of men. It was also foreordained that men in the process of being saved by Christ should become like him. “Whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). This shows that “the elect” are men who by faith will to elect God’s Christ as their Savior, and the “non-elect” are faithless men who will not to do so. Thus, the great Biblical doctrine of foreordination and predestination is stripped of all divine partiality and all fatalism that have through the centuries grown up around it. The simple truth, practical and practicable and adequate, is that God before time foreknew that sin would invade man’s world, and that he already had his mind made up as to how he would deal with it. Tennyson, wrestling with this matter, humbly wrote:
“Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make them thine (Christ’s)”