He Also Did Predestinate

We learned last week that God foreknew a people from eternity whom He determined, lovingly, wisely and unconditionally to honour and bless with glory and eternal life. We noted God’s foreknowledge is personal and distinguishing. It is not what but whom He did foreknow. These individuals are saved and called, Paul tells Timothy, ‘according to his (God’s) own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began’. 

In Christ Jesus

Today, we shall learn about predestination and what it means to be ‘in Christ Jesus before the world began’. We shall speak about the mystical union God has formed in the covenant of peace for the eternal good of His people. We shall learn how God’s sovereign and unchangeable ‘determinate purpose’ governs all events and circumstances in creation to ensure His desired end. 

Love made perfect

In wisdom God purposed that salvation for His beloved people would be provided in, and secured by, the Lord Jesus Christ. Accordingly, men and women are chosen at God’s good pleasure, set apart in Christ, and predestinated to be conformed to His image, that is, ordained to be righteous and holy as He is righteous and holy. John calls this the perfection, or completion, of God’s purpose of love (1 John 4:17). This is our election and those thus chosen are God’s elect, or ‘the elect of God’ (Colossians 3:12). 

A clear Bible doctrine

Predestination is explicitly taught in Romans 8:29, 30 and Ephesians 1:4, 5 where it is said God hath chosen us in Christ ‘before the foundation of the world’ having predestinated or ‘foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ’.  Our predestination is ‘the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure’ which He purposed in Christ. This ‘eternal purpose’ to save the elect through Christ is referred to in Ephesians 3:11 and we should always think of predestination as being in Christ; never outside of Him.

A positional doctrine

Paul tells us in our verses that God has chosen and ordained some to eternal life by placing them in Christ that they might be conformed to His image, that is, for righteousness. For reason of God’s everlasting love and wise counsel, the elect are positionally placed in Christ, located in Him from before the world began. Thus found, God’s elect are forever viewed in Christ, from eternity to eternity. 

Christ’s agency

Christ is the Representative Head of all God’s elect and all God’s dealings with them is mediated through God’s Son the ‘one Mediator’. All the purposes of God concerning the redemption and reconciliation of the elect, consequent upon their Fall in Adam, were first formed in and laid upon the Lord Jesus who was set up in the everlasting covenant as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Because of election and predestination God’s people have always been viewed under the representative headship of their Surety and Substitute.

A secure place

Predestination is God putting the elect into Christ. When we speak of being ‘in Christ’ this is that we mean. In Christ all the benefits and blessings secured by the perfect obedience and sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus become the inheritance of the elect. ‘If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.’ All who have been predestinated according to God’s eternal purpose will come, in time, to know the effect of grace in their lives. They will experience the converting power of the Holy Spirit and ultimately the glory of eternal life in heaven. 

Broad implications

Predestination assures the achievement of God’s intended purpose. Conformity to Christ and adoption into the family of God are explicitly referred to by Paul but there are other implicit effects, too. Our Lord Jesus is the firstborn among many brethren and these brethren He brings to glory. To accomplish adoption He took a body like our body and united Himself to His brethren, Christ being the proper Son and we, His brethren, the adopted sons (1 John 3:2). 

A precious doctrine

There is much more. We are predestinated to be holy and without blame before Him in love. We are chosen to have faith in Him. We are called to believe in Him for the receiving of eternal life and ordained to good works that we should walk in them. We are not appointed to wrath but to salvation and glory by our Lord Jesus Christ, according to the electing and predestinating purpose of God, and we shall worship and enjoy Him evermore.

Amen.