Does God Predestine?

Does God predestine some to go to heaven and some not? This question rises from the doctrine that teaches all events have been willed by God and therefore man has no choice. Anyone who reads my blogs on a regular basis can guess that my answer is a resounding NO – God does not predestine, He gave us free will!

Because my answer is based on much scriptural evidence, for the longest time I could not understand why anyone would believe otherwise… Until I went toe to toe a few years back with a very firm believer in this doctrine and was a bit surprised by the strength of his conviction and the rebuttals he was offering. Being too firmly grounded in what I believed was also scriptural meant neither one of us made any headway that day, but I determined with the help of the Holy Spirit that one of these days I would puzzle that thing through!

Welp, that day was a few days ago. It was quite unexpected, too, and yet how perfect it seems to go hand in hand with my other recent posts.

So DOES God predestine all things?

I guess I should take the time to tell you the answer… 😂 Would it shock you if I said yes? Okay just so I don’t give you a heart attack, I will say yes, but there is a caveat (or legal distinction), and I find it funny that God never fits neatly inside of the box I try so hard to shove Him into sometimes!

So the formal doctrine of predestination where some believe that God picks and chooses ahead of time who goes to heaven and who goes to hell stems mostly from passages found in Romans 8 and Ephesians 1, and Ephesians 1 was where I was reading the other day. Let’s look at Ephesians 1:3-12 (I’ve added emphasis around the portions people holding to this belief generally point to):

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight 9 He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him 10 with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him 11 also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, 12 to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. 

Before you make quick conclusions, imagine with me for a moment a mother pregnant with her first child. Let’s say this mother is a violinist in the local orchestra and has a deep love for music. She knows she is having a boy. Having a desire for her son to grow up with a similar music appreciation, long before he was born she was already creatively designing his room. You’ve seen mothers like this, I’m sure. They already have a theme picked out, and everything in the room goes according to the theme – from the wall words and color, to the curtains, the bedding, the toys and mobiles hanging above the crib, to pictures hanging and the perfect complementary gifts already chosen through a registry.

Did this mother predestine her son to be a musician?

Whether he grows up to be a musician or to simply have an appreciation of music was still his choice, but she made sure he had every opportunity to love the things she loved. Consider with me a passage from Acts 17:

26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’;as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring.

Understandably the reference here is about nations but I believe also applies to individuals as well. God has done everything in His power to give us every chance of salvation, to find Him, to know Him, to love Him, and for Him to lavish on us all of His love as well. Every single one of us. The distinction, for me, is that equal opportunity does not guarantee equal outcome. It is still up to us to make that choice.

So… within this perspective, might we read verses from Ephesians 1:3-6 this way instead:

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.
In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

Or to paraphrase, “Long before we were (re)born, He chose that we should be holy, blameless…”. Can you see now why I liken it to the mother decorating her baby’s room? Because he is all-knowing and dwells outside of time, He knows ahead of time who will choose Him and who will not, but that does not mean He forces the choice upon us.

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