Foreknowledge

One of God's attributes, by virtue of His omniscience, is His foreknowledge. What is foreknowledge? Well, that's easy. It's knowing in advance. Or ... is it?

The biblical use of the term is interesting. Every reference in the New Testament to God's foreknowledge is in terms of people. Never events. Now, why would that be so? If God is omniscient, He would know every event in advance. Foreknowledge, right? As far as it goes, it is true. But apparently Scripture means something slightly different, slightly more.

In Acts 2:23, Peter speaks of "this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men." Christ is the object. In Romans 8:29, "For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son." That "whom" is "those who are called according to His purpose" (Rom 8:28). In Romans 11:2, Paul says of Israel, "God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew." Israel is the point of that foreknowledge. Peter writes to those "who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father" (1 Peter 1:1-2). Biblical foreknowledge is not about merely knowing things in advance; it's about God's relationship with people in advance.

Even the unbelievers know the concept "to know someone in a biblical sense". You remember how that works. Some time after Adam and Eve were evicted from Eden, "Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived" (Gen 4:1). It's a repeated phrase. This use of "know" is not merely knowledge, but intimacy. Jesus uses it in a similar way in Matthew 7 when He speaks to the false prophets who claim to be His followers, "I never knew you" (Matt 7:23). Well, of course He knew them. He's omniscient. But He never had a relationship with them.

That's the biblical concept of God's foreknowledge. It isn't knowing events in advance. It's not a prior knowledge of what you will or won't do. Oh, He has that information, to be sure, but that's not what's in view. The concept is that God has a relationship with His own before they have one with Him. His love extends to the elect before they share theirs with Him. And this foreknowledge -- this prior relationship -- was "before the foundation of the world" (Eph 1:4) ... just as Jesus "was foreknown before the foundation of the world" (1 Peter 1:20).

Listen, that's all good news. God chooses whom He will. He does it based on His own purposes and plans. He does it aside from your merit. "It does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy" (Rom 9:16). That is such good news!