What Is Predestination?
… 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.” Ephesians 1:4-7
What is the theological belief for which the Presbyterian Church is most known? It is predestination. This is not incorrect. Though predestination is not the sole foundation of Reformed theology, it is one of the essential beliefs of it.
You may have heard the story of the Presbyterian elder who fell down the steps. When he got up, he said, “Thank goodness that’s over!” Is that what predestination means? Does it mean that everything that happens to us is foreordained and inevitable? No. That is fatalism. Nothing in Christian theology is fatalistic. Predestination has to do, not with the everyday occurrences of life, but with the question of eternal salvation.
Predestination says that human free will is so corrupted by the fall that no person turns to God without the work of God’s grace in his or her heart. We cannot accept the call to salvation in our own free will because we always reject it. Someone has suggested that it is like a person having a choice between a delicious meal and a disgusting pile of garbage. While one might have free will to choose the disgusting pile of garbage, one never does. Without the grace of God, we never choose the way of salvation because, with spiritually blinded eyes, it does not look appealing, and we cannot see the great advantage it offers.
How then can a person be saved? The answer of Christianity is that God has chosen us, not because of any merit on our part, but only because of his love and mercy. God chose us and worked faith in our hearts so that we might turn to God, believe in Jesus Christ, and be saved. Protestant reformer Martin Luther noted that faith is the only work of God in us that he does without our help. All other works are ones God does with us, through us, and in cooperation with us. Saving faith, however, is the work of God in our hearts without our help.
The scriptures make a remarkable and mysterious assertion. It is that God chose us for himself before the foundation of the world. This means that our election was not a matter of our good works since we were chosen before we were born. It was an act of God’s sheer grace. That God chose us before the foundation of the world also means that God’s great plan of salvation is not something hurriedly put together at the last moment. It was God’s plan from the beginning, even before there was a heaven or an earth. From eternity God has chosen to make his grace known to us in Jesus Christ, calling us by his Spirit, and working saving faith in us. What does it mean to be chosen in Christ? It means to be chosen by the One who is eternally appointed to be the Head of the body of the elect, our brother and our high priest, who is also bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, our divine Helper, and our Bridegroom.
How do we recognize God’s election? It is best done in retrospect. As we look back on our life and particularly our coming to faith, we see God’s hand. How did faith first arise in us? Was it something we did? No. It was the work of God’s Spirit, whether as a child, a teen, or an adult. In the fabric of our life, God made his presence known to us. It may have started softly and quietly, only the echo of a voice calling to us. But over time the faint voice became louder so that we recognized it as the voice of God himself. This is the work of election in us and the call that, when we hear it, we do not refuse because we recognize it as the winsome, lovely call of the voice of God himself.