Predestination and Free Will

"The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever..." - Deuteronomy 29:29

The paradox of the sovereignty of God's will vs. free will is a paradigm that can make one's head spin. Some emphasize that God is in total control of everything and that nothing can happen that He does not plan and direct, including man’s salvation. Others teach that man has free will and that God will never interrupt or take that free will away, and that God has obligated Himself to respect the free moral agency and capacity of free choice with which He created us. I think both are true. This is much like the concept of God is one; and, yet he exists in three persons. In our finite minds we can't understand how 1=3 or how God can be all powerful and all knowing and yet we, who are made in the image of God, are given the freedom to make choices for ourselves that have eternal consequences?

Certainly, the Bible does teach that God is sovereign, and that believers are predestined and elected by God to spend eternity with Him. Nowhere, however, does the Bible ever associate election with damnation. Conversely, the Scriptures teach that God elects for salvation, but that unbelievers are in hell by their own choice. Every passage of the Bible that deals with election deals with it in the context of salvation, not damnation. No one is elect for hell. The only support for such a view is human logic, not Biblical revelation.

Election and predestination are both Biblical doctrines. God knows everything and therefore He cannot be surprised by anything. He is beyond the constraints of mass, acceleration and gravity, therefore He is outside time. He knows, and has known from “eternity past,” who will exercise their free will to accept Him and who will reject Him. The former are “the elect” and the latter are the “non-elect.” Everyone who is not saved will have only himself to blame: God will not send anyone to hell, but many people will choose to go there by exercising their free will to reject Christ.

On the other hand, no one who is saved will be able to take any of the credit. Our salvation is entirely God’s work, and is based completely on the finished work of the Cross. We were dead in trespasses and sins, destined for hell, when God in His grace drew us to Himself, convinced us of our sin and our need for a Savior, and gave us the authority to call Jesus Lord. Is this grace, this wooing, this courtship, irresistible? No, we have free will and we can (and do) resist, even to the damnation of our souls, but God does everything short of making us automata (preprogrammed puppets) to draw us into His forever family.

This subject will never be understood fully or revealed completely this side of life. However, someday, every person who has ever lived will stand before the throne of judgment and then comprehend fully what the Bible reveals to all within the context of each person's life.