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John 6:44 = “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him: and I will raise him up on the last day.”
That wasn’t all that He said but this is the part I wanted to focus on for this article. Over the centuries, tradition based in part on this verse says that God has chosen to draw only certain people to Himself to the exclusion of others and that He decided from the beginning who He would draw and who He wouldn’t. In other words, everything is already predestined to happen because God decreed from the beginning which of us would be saved and which of us would be consigned to a fiery lake for eternity (Revelation 20:11). Said yet another way via my own interpolation, God has created some good people along with a bunch of bad people who had no chance at eternal life in the Kingdom of God because He particularly designed them for unbelief, rebellion and failure.
One of the challenges we have in the Body of Christ is that hardly any of us pursue our own understanding of the Bible aggressively enough. Consequently, we tend to rely passively on input from other folks and on church-tradition instead of studying things out for ourselves. Of course, that hasn’t stopped us from occasionally constructing whole theologies (even at times “binding” doctrine) based on a bible verse or two that may have numerous other verses in obvious opposition.
I’m not meaning to attack anybody or any church denomination(s) with this article and I may even be wrong in my view of things. I just challenge you to go study it out for yourself and come to your own conclusions. Back in history when the Church was first being formed well before we had a written New Testament assembled and available, believers needed knowledgeable ministers to announce and explain the Gospel to them. But after a while, God started expecting believers to go into the Word for ourselves and find the truth there so we could take personal ownership of it. Consequently, the role of today’s local church ought to be providing a general overview of Scripture to a community of like-minded believers from whom we draw encouragement and inspiration to pursue the Word of God on our own. By doing that we could finally move on from a diet of milk to solid food (1 Corinthians 3:2, Hebrews 5:12) and start looking more like Jesus!
We All Make Our Own Choices
Look, Scripture clearly says that God created people with the ability to make our own choices and decisions. Yes, God is omniscient which means He knew before He created us whether we would choose to come into His family or stay in rebellion. But knowing something ahead of time doesn’t necessarily take away the ability of free choice. Why is it so difficult for some of us to embrace the idea that God Almighty, not limited with human reasoning and emotions, could create somebody with a free will and know ahead of time how that person is going to decide? God doesn’t make the choice for us nor does He make flawed individuals that can only choose evil. You won’t find that idea anywhere in your Bible. But what you will find there is the special attribute that God does not show partiality among people (Acts 10:34) along with the following 15 example verses that instruct people to decide things for themselves:
1 Corinthians 10:13
2 Peter 3:9
Galatians 5:13
John 7:17
Joshua 24:15
Mark 8:34
Revelation 3:20
Romans 13:2
Romans 10:9-10
Galatians 5:16-17
Genesis 2:16-17
Isaiah 55:6-7
John 1:12-13
Deuteronomy 30:19-20
Ezekiel 18:30-32
The bottom line is that Jesus shed His blood and died on a Cross so that everyone, believers and unbelievers alike, would have a choice: life or death, sin or righteousness, good or evil, truth or untruth, Jesus or Satan, heaven or the lake of fire. That’s why the Bible says that Jesus died in substitutionary payment for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2). It’s our choice. He certainly could have decreed this for us if He had wanted to. He has the power to do that. The planets and the stars operate that way but the Bible CLEARLY says that people are free to choose where we want to be now and where we want to wind up at the end of things. God doesn’t determine our “orbit.” He created us with a free will and sent Jesus so that we could be FREE to make our own journey.
Question: If God made the choice for us, why would He send His Son to the Cross to pay for the sins of ALL people including those who were predetermined to fail? Another question: if God is only drawing good people, why does the Bible say that when Jesus has been lifted up, He will draw ALL people to Himself (John 12:32)?
A Balanced View
So, when the Bible talks about predetermination/predestination, what is it actually talking about? Has everything already been decided, or not? Is the great majority of people on the earth defective, created for evil with no chance for forgiveness and eternal life? Here is the key scripture on this subject that must be looked at in a balanced context with the fore-mentioned 15 verses which seem to clearly establish that people have been created with the ability to choose God or reject Him:
Romans 8:29-30 = “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the first born among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified He also glorified.”
Before I discuss my view on this, I feel led to mention that the root of the theology that says God has predetermined everything is Calvinism. John Calvin was a French theologian who lived from 1509 to 1564. The Protestant Reformation officially started in 1517 through the work of Martin Luther. John Calvin converted from Catholicism to Protestant faith around 1830-32 and became a rival of Luther. Rev. Calvin did accomplish a lot for the early Protestant movement but by no means was he given some perfect revelation of all things Protestant. Indeed, understanding the Word of God has been an ongoing and gradually enlarging revelation from the time of the Apostles until now and John Calvin was essentially a Protestant novice, albeit a really smart one. I have personally met hundreds of ministers over the years who have studied the Word longer than Brother Calvin was able to and appear to possess deeper insights of New Testament understanding which is not meant as a criticism but as a partial reality-check for assessing his qualifications.
In sum, my view of this topic is this: God DOES know everything, but He created mankind with the ability to choose for ourselves. That’s because the Father was/is wanting children, not robots. Nevertheless, from the beginning of all things, He foreknew how we would choose and based on that foreknowledge, He predestined/determined that those of us who would eventually come to choose Christ would be conformed to the image of Christ. Being conformed is a process that we are presently going through (Romans 12:2) and we will eventually come into the likeness of Christ as His sibling brothers and sisters (2 Corinthians 3:18 with Romans 8:15-17). For those who will someday be conformed, He has placed a calling on our lives which means He has “summoned” us (believers) to enter into His family and Kingdom since by the work of Christ we have been declared guiltless (justified) and only the guiltless can finally be “glorified.” In sum, this is a balanced view of these things that takes into account both ideas of free will and predetermination.
What does it mean for a Christian to be glorified? Good question! To be “glorified” means to be “honored” which according to Scripture will happen when Christ presents to Himself the Church in all her glory, holy and blameless and having no spot or wrinkle (Ephesians 5:27). Thus, it has been predetermined that all true believers who have personally chosen Christ and become ONE with the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17) will be honored by being included in the assembly (the Ecclesia) of believers that will govern the activities of the Kingdom forever. That’s about as awesome as it can get for the people who make the right choice!!
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