This study is about foreknowledge and predestination. This is the first place in Romans at which Paul introduces these two terms. God’s foreknowledge of a chosen people and His predestination of them t be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ lies behind everything Paul has been teaching in the seven and a half chapters. But Paul has not discussed these ideas until he has first presented our desperate condition due to sin and God’s remedy for sin through faith in Jesus Christ.

So, where do we start in discussing this doctrine? We have already made a start in the last study, showing that foreknowledge and predestination are two of five great doctrines described as a golden chain by which God reaches down from heaven to elect and save a people for Himself. Paul wrote in verse 28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” Since the word “called” also occurs again as one of the five doctrines in this chain, we are alerted to the fact that the chain of divine actions merely explains how God achieves this purpose. In other words, it’s not foreknowledge or predestination that is primary but the purpose of God itself. What is that purpose? Clearly, it is that from the mass of fallen and perishing humanity God might save a company of people who will be made like Jesus. Or we could put it this way: God loves Jesus so much that He is determined to have many more people like Him. Not that we become divine, of course. But rather that we might become like Him in His many communicable attributes: things like love, joy, peace, holiness, wisdom, patience, grace, kindness, goodness, compassion, faithfulness, mercy, and other qualities. In order to do that, God selects, predestines, calls, justifies, and glorifies this people. That is, verses 29 and 30 tell how God accomplishes the purpose of verse 28.

In the flow of these verses, we are told that God: (1) has a purpose to save certain people, and (2) does something to those people as a first step in a five-step process of saving them. As soon as we begin to look at the word foreknowledge carefully, we discover that it is used in a very specific way in the Bible. And for good reasons! When we use the word “foreknowledge” in relation to ourselves, to refer to knowing beforehand, the word has meaning to us. We can anticipate what a person we know well might do, for instance. But that sense of the word is meaningless in relation to God. Because God is not in time, as we are, He does not know things beforehand. God simply knows. He knows all things. That is what omniscience means. But even if we think in time categories, which is all we can do as creatures locked in time, we have to say that the only reason God can even be said to foreknow things is because He predetermines them. No, the word foreknowledge has quite a different meaning in relation to God than it does in relation to us. It means that God “sets His special love upon” a person or “elects” a person to salvation.

This is a characteristic use of the word in the Old Testament (Amos 3:2). We see the same idea when we examine the use of “foreknowledge: (or “foreknew”) in the New Testament, where the references occur seven times. Two of these occurrences are of man’s foreknowledge, five are of God’s foreknowledge, and they are the determining passages (Acts 2:23, Rom. 11:2, 1Pet. 1:2 & 20, Rom. 8:29). The fifth New Testament reference to God’s foreknowledge is in our text, and the meaning is the same as the other verses. Romans 8:29 means that God set His special or saving love upon a select group of people in order that His good purpose, namely to create a people to be like His Son Jesus Christ, might be achieved.

The second of our five golden terms is predestination, the one that bothers most people, though what bothers them is more accurately included in the word foreknowledge. That is, that God should set His love upon a special people and save them while overlooking others. Predestination means that God has determined the specific destiny of those He has previously decided should be saved and be made like Jesus.

This is a good place to look at the objections people have to this doctrine, whether described by the word foreknowledge or predestination. (1) If you believe in predestination, you make salvation arbitrary and God a tyrant. In other words, does predestination make God a tyrant, crushing justice by some willy-nilly saving of some and damning of others? Anyone who has studied the Bible (or even just the Book of Romans) knows how wrong this is. What will happen if we seek only an even-handed justice from God? The answer is that we will all be lost. In order to be saved, we need mercy and not justice, which is what predestination, is all about. It is God showing mercy to whom He will show mercy (Rom. 9:18). As far as being arbitrary is concerned, we must admit that from our perspective we cannot see why God chooses some and not others or even some and not all, and therefore His foreknowledge and predestination do seem arbitrary. But that is only because we are not God and cannot see as God sees.

(2) If you believe in predestination, you must deny human freedom. This is a common objection, but it is based on a sad misunderstanding of the freedom we are supposed to have as fallen human beings. What does the Bible teach about our freedom in spiritual matters? It teaches that we are not free to choose God (Rom. 3”10-11, Rom. 8:7). Predestination does not take away freedom. It restores it. It’s because God foreknows me and predestines me to be conformed to the image of His Son that I am delivered from sin’s bondage and set free to serve Him.

(3) If you believe in predestination, you will destroy the motivation for evangelism. For why should we labor to save those whom God has determined to save anyway? Suppose God does not elect to salvation and thus, because He has determined to save some, does not commit Himself to create new life within them that will break down their hard hearts and enable them to respond in faith to the message of the cross when it is made known. If God doesn’t commit Himself to doing that, what hope do you and I as evangelists have of doing it? If the hearts of men and women are as wicked and incapable of belief as the Bible teaches they are, how can you and I ever hope to present the gospel savingly to anyone? To put it in even more frightening terms, if salvation depends upon our efforts to evangelize rather than the foreknowledge and predestination of God, what if I do something wrong? What if I give a wrong answer to a question or do something that turns others away from Christ? In that case, either by my error or because of my sin, I will be responsible for their eternal damnation. I don’t see how that can encourage evangelism, on the contrary, it will make us afraid to do or say anything.

But look at the other way. If God has elected some to salvation in order that Jesus might be glorified and that many might come to Him in faith and be conformed to His image, then I can be both relaxed and bold in my witness. I can know that God will save those He has determined to save and will even use my witness, however feeble or imprecise it might be, if this is the means He has chosen. Far from destroying evangelism, predestination actually makes evangelism possible. It makes it an expectant and joyful exercise.

Romans 8:29 Reflection Questions:

How does it make you feel knowing that God’s special love elected you to salvation?

What type of responsibility do you feel to God knowing that He created you to be like His Son Jesus Christ?

How do you feel about evangelizing (sharing the gospel)? Do you feel it to be a joyful exercise?