Understanding God - 19

Fellow partakers of God’s grace,
 
Greetings to you in the Name of our Lord Jesus. With love and prayers, we send you another instalment of our series on “Understanding God.” Thus far, we have explored the Person and attributes of God, the make-up of the Godhead and the resultant distribution of roles. This has led to a focus on “The Sovereignty of God.”
 
         UNDERSTANDING GOD 19
 
In continuation of our focus on “Understanding God,” we have been considering “The Sovereignty of God.” So far, we have explored the basis and extent of God’s sovereignty, which led us to a consideration of “The Place of Satan,” “Understanding Tribulation” and “The Place of Creation.”
 
In our last two mails, we began to consider the pillars upon which God’s sovereignty is hinged. So far, we have explored the foreknowledge and election of God. In this mail, we are commencing a focus on predestination.
 
3. Predestination
The word “predestination” has no known equivalent in the world of men. The doctrine of predestination establishes that, before the foundation of the world, God had ordained the course of things or determined the way things should go.
 
Before we consider the details, we need to establish that, like election, predestination is based on God’s foreknowledge: “For whom He foreknew, He predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son…” (Rom.8:29). The implication is that God did not order things in an arbitrary manner. Rather, He ordered the entire universe based on diverse factors, including His knowledge of the following: Specific individuals, their future dispositions and choices.
The natural order of things, already determined by Him. All future attempts by man (knowingly or unknowingly) to disrupt that
order.

Drawing on His limitless store of knowledge and wisdom, God has made alternative (or contingency) plans to manage the human factor and has taken adequate measures to neutralise the effects of human error. An example of this is the fall of Adam and Eve. Even as God pronounced judgement, He made allusion to the existence of a contingency plan: “And
the LORD God said unto the serpent…I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen.3:14-15). And to confirm that this alternative plan was not an afterthought, we learn that the Lamb was “slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev.13:8).
 
It is pertinent to know that there are areas of overlap between election and predestination. The major difference lies in the fact that, while election relates to persons, predestination extends beyond persons. As we will soon confirm, predestination has a wider scope of application.
This leads us to consider some major areas that fall within the ambit of predestination.