Elect According to Foreknowledge

"Come on, guys," some have suggested, "this just isn't that hard. Look, Peter clearly said that we 'are elect ... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.' It was Paul who said, 'Those whom he foreknew he also predestined ...' This isn't rocket science. God is omniscient. He knows everything that will occur. Looking down the corridors of time, He saw who would choose Him and then, from the beginning of time, chose them. There you go! Election and Free Will. It's just not that hard!" And there are some very bright, respectable believers who go with that. It's quite popular. I should know -- I used to believe that, too.

Let's think that through for a moment. What does it take to "choose Him"? What does it take to become one of the saved? Well, there are three basic ingredients that all of us agree about. It requires coming to Christ in faith and repentance. Slower. It requires 1) coming to Christ in 2) faith and 3) repentance. Not that hard, really, and we're all on the same page! Doesn't get much better than this, right?

Hold on. (You knew that was coming, I'm sure.) Where do these three components come from? The Bible is not silent on this. According to Scripture, believing is a gift from God. It doesn't come out of our own efforts. It's given to us. As much as we'd like to think otherwise, we're just not up to the task of placing our full confidence in Him as long as we're dead in sin. So He grants it. Jesus said it (John 6:65). Paul said it (Phil 1:29). It is, despite our preference to the contrary, a repeated concept in the Bible. Oddly enough, so is repentance. Paul told Timothy to keep on "correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth" (2 Tim 2:25). Note that repentance is granted by God, and note especially that He may grant it ... or He may not. The Jewish Christians thought that the Gentiles were not going to get salvation until Peter told them about his experience with Cornelius. They responded, "Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life" (Acts 11:18). As for coming to Christ in the first place, Jesus said categorically, "No man can." Thanks be to God that He didn't end His sentence there. "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day" (John 6:44). Now if it's a given that the Father draws everyone, then we have two things to consider. First, why make the statement? It would be like saying, "No man can walk unless he has bones." But ... we all do have bones, so what's your point? Worse, according to Jesus, those whom the Father draws will be raised up on the last day. So if this is a universal drawing, you've just subscribed to Universalism.

As it turns out, salvation is quite simple. It requires only three components. And from there it gets even easier. We don't drum up those three parts; God gives them to us. How nice!

So, back to the original concept. Here's the suggestion. God will give to the elect the necessary pieces to be saved. Knowing that they will then come to Him (because He drew them) in faith and repentance (because He gave these to them), He will choose them. Well ... I suppose so ... if that's how you wish to phrase it. Seems a little odd to me. It would be like a team captain thinking, "I'm going to give this kickball to Timmy and then, because he's holding the kickball, I'm going to choose him for my team." Did Timmy get chosen because he was holding the kickball? Well, yes, but it wasn't Timmy's "free will" that got him there, now, was it?

One other thought here on the foreknowledge according to which God elects to save. The word is simple in Greek -- prognosis. (Yes, the forefather of our modern "prognosis".) It's a two part word with "pro" meaning "before" and "gnosis" meaning "know". And if it were a simple English translation we'd be done. But it isn't. You see, there is a fundamental difference between "knowing" facts and "knowing" people. Surely, even when I say it in our own English vernacular you see a difference between the two. When Jesus told the false prophets, "I never knew you; depart from Me", He was not telling them "I have no knowledge of you." He was not suggesting ignorance. No, when used in terms of people, there is more than being cognizant of; there is familiarity. When Adam knew his wife, it wasn't an "Aha!" moment. It was intimacy. And when the Bible talks about God knowing us, it would be redundant to speak of an omniscient being who knows us. No, when the Bible talks about God knowing us -- as in prognosis -- it is not "prescience", but familiarity, friendship, intimacy, connection ... in advance in the case of prognosis.

Are we chosen on the basis of His foreknowledge? Absolutely! But that doesn't mean that we're chosen because He saw in advance what we would do. It means that before we existed He had laid His affection on us and determined to provide for us all that would be required to be saved. He didn't do it because of our lovable nature. He did it in order that His purpose of election might continue (Rom 9:11). We weren't just so adorable He couldn't help Himself. In fact, He chose the losers, the foolish, the ones who wouldn't have any room to say, "He chose me because I'm so valuable." It's grace alone. Yes, it's His foreknowledge, but it's His prior love and awareness of what He would do. Yes, it really is all about Him.