The
Progress of Salvation
For
whom He foreknew, He also predestined … and whom He predestined,
these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified;
and whom He justified, these He also glorified. (8:29a-b, 30)
In delineating the progress of God’s plan of
salvation, Paul here briefly states what may be called its five major
elements: foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and
glorification.
It is essential to realize that these five links in the
chain of God’s saving work are unbreakable. With the repetition of
the connecting phrase He also, Paul accentuates that unity by
linking each element to the previous one. No one whom God foreknows
will fail to be predestined, called, justified, and glorified by Him.
It is also significant to note the tense in which the apostle states
each element of God’s saving work. Paul is speaking here of the
Lord’s redemptive work from eternity past to eternity future. What
he says is true of all believers of all times. Security in Christ is
so absolute and unalterable that even the salvation of believers not
yet born can be expressed in the past tense, as if it had already
occurred. Because God is not bound by time as we are, there is a
sense in which the elements not only are sequential but simultaneous.
Thus, from His view they are distinct and in another sense are
indistinguishable. God has made each of them an indispensable part of
the unity of our salvation.
Foreknowledge
For
whom He foreknew, (8:29a)
Redemption began with
God’s foreknowledge. A believer is first of all someone whom
He [God] foreknew.
Salvation is not initiated by a persons decision to receive Jesus
Christ as Lord and Savior. Scripture is clear that repentant faith is
essential to salvation and is the first step that we take in response
to God, but repentant faith does not initiate salvation. Because Paul
is here depicting the plan of salvation from God’s perspective,
faith is not even mentioned in these two verses.
In His omniscience God is certainly able to look to the
end of history and beyond and to know in advance the minutest detail
of the most insignificant occurrences. But it is both unbiblical and
illogical to argue from that truth that the Lord simply looked ahead
to see who would believe and then chose those particular individuals
for salvation. If that were true, salvation not only would begin with
man’s faith but would make God obligated to grant it. In such a
scheme, God’s initiative would be eliminated and His grace would be
vitiated.
That idea also prompts such questions as, “Why then
does God create unbelievers if He knows in advance they are going to
reject Him?” and “Why doesn’t He create only believers?”
Another unanswerable question would be, “If God based salvation on
His advance knowledge of those who would believe, where did their
saving faith come from?” It could not arise from their fallen
natures, because the natural, sinful person is at enmity with God
(Rom. 5:10; 8:7; Eph. 2:3; Col. 1:21). There is absolutely nothing in
man’s carnal nature to prompt him to trust in the God against whom
he is rebelling. The unsaved person is blind and dead to the things
of God. He has absolutely no source of saving faith within himself.
“A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God,”
Paul declares; “for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot
understand them, because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Cor.
2:14). “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the
unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the
glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4).
The full truth about God’s omniscience cannot be
comprehended even by believers. No matter how much we may love God
and study His Word, we cannot fathom such mysteries. We can only
believe what the Bible clearly says-that God does indeed foresee the
faith of every person who is saved. We also believe God’s
revelation that, although men cannot be saved apart from the faithful
action of their wills, saving faith, just as every other part of
salvation, originates with and is empowered by God alone.
While He was preaching in Galilee early in His ministry,
Jesus said, “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the
one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37). But
lest that statement be interpreted as leaving open the possibility of
coming to Him apart from the Father’s sending, Jesus later declared
categorically that “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who
sent Me draws him” (v. 44). New life through the blood of Christ
does not come from “the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man,
but of God” (John 1:13).
Paul also explains that even faith does not originate
with the believer but with God. “For by grace you have been saved
through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not
as a result of works, that no one should boast” (Eph. 2:8–9).
God’s foreknowledge is not a reference to His
omniscient foresight but to His foreordination. He not only sees
faith in advance but ordains it in advance. Peter had the same
reality in mind when he wrote of Christians as those “who are
chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (1 Pet.
1:1–2). Peter used the same word “foreknowledge” when he wrote
that Christ “was foreknown before the foundation of the world” (1
Pet. 1:20). The term means the same thing in both places. Believers
were foreknown in the same way Christ was foreknown. That cannot mean
foreseen, but must refer to a predetermined choice by God. It is the
knowing of predetermined intimate relationship, as when God said to
Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jer.
1:5). Jesus spoke of the same kind of knowing when He said, “I am
the good shepherd; and I know My own” (John 10:14).
Because saving faith is foreordained by God, it would
have to be that the way of salvation was foreordained, as indeed it
was. During his sermon at Pentecost, Peter declared of Christ: “This
Man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God,
you nailed to a cross by the hands of God-less men and put Him to
death” (Acts 2:23). “Predetermined” is from horizō,
from which we get the English horizon, which designates the
outer limits of the earth that we can see from a given vantage point.
The basic idea of the Greek term refers to the setting of any
boundaries or limits. “Plan” is from boulē,
a term used in classical Greek to designate an officially convened,
decision-making counsel. Both words include the idea of willful
intention. “Foreknowledge” is from the noun form of the verb
translated foreknew in our text. According to what Greek
scholars refer to as Granville Sharp’s rule, if two nouns of the
same case (in this instance, “plan” and “foreknowledge”) are
connected by kai
(“and”) and have the definite article (the) before the first noun
but not before the second, the nouns refer to the same thing (H. E.
Dana and Julius R. Mantey, A Manual Grammar of the Greek New
Testament [New York: Macmillan, 1927], p. 147). In other words,
Peter equates God’s predetermined plan, or foreordination, and His
foreknowledge.
In addition to the idea of foreordination, the term
foreknowledge also connotes forelove. God has a predetermined
divine love for those He plans to save.
Foreknew is from proginōskō,
a compound word with meaning beyond that of simply knowing
beforehand. In Scripture, “to know” often carries the idea of
special intimacy and is frequently used of a love relationship. In
the statement “Cain had relations with his wife and she conceived”
(Gen. 4:17), the word behind “had relations with” is the normal
Hebrew verb for knowing. It is the same word translated “chosen”
in Amos 3:2, where the Lord says to Israel, “You only have I chosen
among all the families of the earth.” God “knew” Israel in the
unique sense of having predetermined that she would be His chosen
people. In Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth, “kept her a
virgin” (nasb ) translates a Greek phrase meaning literally, “did
not know her” (Matt. 1:25). Jesus used the same word when He
warned, “Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart
from Me, you who practice lawlessness’ ” (Matt.7:23). He was not
saying that He had never heard of those unbelievers but that He had
no intimate relationship with them as their Savior and Lord. But of
believers, Paul says, “The Lord knows those who are His” (2 Tim.
2:19).
Predestination
He
also predestined (8:29b)
From foreknowledge,
which looks at the beginning of God’s purpose in His act of
choosing, God’s plan of redemption moves to His predestination,
which looks at the end of God’s purpose in His act of choosing.
Proorizō
(predestined) means
literally to mark out, appoint, or determine beforehand. The Lord has
predetermined the destiny of every person who will believe in Him.
Just as Jesus was crucified “by the predetermined plan and
foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23), so God also
has predestined every
believer to salvation through the means of that atoning sacrifice.
In their prayer of gratitude for the deliverance of
Peter and John, a group of believers in Jerusalem praised God for His
sovereign power, declaring, “For truly in this city there were
gathered together against Thy holy servant Jesus, whom Thou didst
anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and
the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Thy hand and Thy purpose
predestined to occur” (Acts 4:27–28). In other words, the evil
and powerful men who nailed Jesus to the cross could not have so much
as laid a finger on Him were that not according to God’s
predetermined plan.
In the opening of his letter to the Ephesian believers,
Paul encouraged them with the glorious truth that God “chose us in
Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and
blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons
through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of
His will” (Eph. 1:4–5).
Much contemporary evangelism gives the impression that
salvation is predicated on a person’s decision for Christ. But we
are not Christians first of all because of what we decided about
Christ but because of what God decided about us before the foundation
of the world. We were able to choose Him only because He had first
chosen us, “according to the kind intention of His will.” Paul
expresses the same truth a few verses later when he says, “In Him
we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our
trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished
upon us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of
His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in
Him” (Eph. 1:7–9, emphasis added). He then says that “we
have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to
His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will” (v.
11).
Calling
and
whom He predestined, these He also called; (8:30a)
In God’s divine plan
of redemption, predestination leads to calling. Although God’s
calling is also completely by His initiative, it is here that His
eternal plan directly intersects our lives in time. Those who are
called are those in
whose hearts the Holy Spirit works to lead them to saving faith in
Christ.
As noted under the discussion of verse 28, Paul is
speaking in this passage about God’s inward call, not the outward
call that comes from the proclamation of the gospel. The outward call
is essential, because “How shall they believe in Him whom they have
not heard?” (Rom. 10:14), but that outward call cannot be responded
to in faith apart from God’s already having inwardly called
the person through His Spirit.
The Lord’s sovereign calling of believers gives still
further confirmation that we are eternally secure in Christ. We were
saved because God “called us with a holy calling, not according to
our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was
granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity” (2 Tim. 1:9).
Emphasizing the same truths of the Lord’s sovereign purpose in His
calling of believers, Paul assured the Thessalonian that “God has
chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by
the Spirit and faith in the truth. And it was for this He called you
through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus
Christ” (2 Thess. 2:13–14). From beginning to end, our salvation
is God’s work, not our own. Consequently, we cannot humanly undo
what He has divinely done. That is the basis of our security.
It should be strongly emphasized, however, that
Scripture nowhere teaches that God chooses unbelievers for
condemnation. To our finite minds, that what would seem to be the
corollary of God’s calling believers to salvation. But in the
divine scheme of things, which far surpasses our understanding, God
predestines believers to eternal life, but Scripture does not
say that He predestines unbelievers to eternal damnation. Although
those two truths seem paradoxical to us, we can be sure that they are
in perfect divine harmony.
Scripture teaches many truths that seem paradoxical and
contradictory. It teaches plainly that God is one, but just as
plainly that there are three persons-the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit-in the single God-head. With equal unambiguity the Bible
teaches that Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully man. Our finite
minds cannot reconcile such seemingly irreconcilable truths, yet they
are foundational truths of God’s Word.
If a person goes to hell, it is because He rejects God
and His way of salvation. “He who believes in Him [Christ] is not
judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he
has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John
3:18). As John has declared earlier in his gospel, believers are
saved and made children of God “not of blood, nor of the will of
the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). But he
makes no corresponding statement in regard to unbelievers, nor does
any other part of Scripture. Unbelievers are condemned by their own
unbelief, not by God’s predestination.
Peter makes plain that God does not desire “for any to
perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). Paul
declares with equal clarity: “God our Savior … desires all men to
be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:3–4).
Every believer is indebted solely to God’s grace for his eternal
salvation, but every unbeliever is himself solely responsible for his
eternal damnation.
God does not choose believers for salvation on the basis
of who they are or of what they have done but on the basis of His
sovereign grace. For His own reasons alone, God chose Jacob above
Esau (Rom. 9:13). For His own reasons alone, He chose Israel to be
His covenant people (Deut. 7:7–8).
We cannot understand God’s choosing us for salvation
but can only thank and glorify Him for “His grace, which He freely
bestowed on us in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:6). We can only believe and
be forever grateful that we were called “by the grace of Christ”
(Gal. 1:6) and that “the gifts and the calling of God are
irrevocable” (Rom. 11:29).
Justification
and
whom He called, these He also justified; (8:30b)
The next element of
God’s saving work is justification of those who believe. After they
are called by God,
they are also justified
by Him. And just as foreknowledge, predestination, and calling are
the exclusive work of God, so is justification.
Because justification is discussed in considerable
detail in chapters 17–18 of this volume, it is necessary here
simply to point out that justified refers to a believer’s
being made right with God by God. Because “all have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” men can only be
“justified as a gift by [God’s] grace through the redemption
which is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24).
Glorifica1
predestination
Few
doctrines spark as much controversy or provoke as much consternation
as the doctrine of predestination. It is a difficult doctrine that
demands to be handled with great care and caution. Yet it is a
biblical doctrine and therefore demands to be handled. We dare not
ignore it.
Virtually all
Christian churches have some doctrine of predestination. This is
unavoidable since the concept is clearly found in Holy Scripture.
Those churches however disagree, sometimes strongly, over its
meaning. The Methodist view differs from the Lutheran view, which
disagrees with the Presbyterian view. Though their views differ, each
is trying to come to grips with this difficult matter.
What predestination
means, in its most elementary form, is that our final destination,
heaven or hell, is decided by God not only before we get there, but
before we are even born. It teaches that our ultimate destiny is in
the hands of God. Another way of saying it is this: From all
eternity, before we even existed, God decided to save some members of
the human race and to let the rest of the human race perish. God made
a choice—He chose some individuals to be saved into everlasting
blessedness in heaven and others He chose to pass over, to allow them
to follow the consequences of their sins into eternal torment in
hell.
Accepting this
definition is common to many churches. To get to the heart of the
matter one must ask, how does God choose? The non-Reformed view, held
by the vast majority of Christians, is that God makes that choice on
the basis of His foreknowledge. God chooses for eternal life those
whom He knows will choose Him. This is called the prescient
view of predestination because it rests on God’s foreknowledge of
human decisions or acts.
The Reformed view
differs in that it sees the ultimate decision for salvation resting
with God and not with us. In this view, God’s election is
sovereign. It does not rest upon the foreseen decisions or responses
of human beings. Indeed, it sees those decisions as flowing from the
sovereign grace of God.
The Reformed view
holds that, left to himself, no fallen person would ever choose God.
Fallen people still have a free will and are able to choose what they
desire. But the problem is that we have no desire for God and will
not choose Christ unless first regenerated. Faith is a gift that
comes out of rebirth. Only those who are elect will ever respond to
the gospel in faith.
The elect do choose
Christ, but only because they were first chosen by God. As in the
case of Jacob and Esau, the elect are chosen solely on the basis of
the sovereign good pleasure of God and not on the basis of anything
they have done or will do. Paul declares:
And not only so, but
also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather
Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good
or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue,
not because of works but because of him who calls—she was told,
“The older will serve the younger.” … So then it depends not on
human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. (Romans 9:10–12,
16)
A vexing problem with
predestination is that God does not choose or elect to save
everybody. He reserves the right to have mercy upon whom He will have
mercy. Some of fallen humanity receive the grace and mercy of
election. The rest God passes over, leaving them in their sin. The
nonelect receive justice. The elect receive mercy. No one receives
injustice. God is not obligated to be merciful to any or to all
alike. It is His decision how merciful He chooses to be. Yet He is
never guilty of being unrighteous toward anyone (see Romans
9:14–15).2
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2
Sproul, R. C. (Ed.). (2015). The
Reformation Study Bible: English Standard Version (2015 Edition)
(p. 1650). Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust.
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