In Sunday school class last week, a visiting preacher made a comment that I found somewhat disturbing. Because it was said in passing in the midst of a class discussion which quickly moved to other points, I was unable to question him about his statement. So, I will do so here. In speaking of the fact that non-Christians dismiss Christians often with contempt since, as Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18), he went on to say that non-Christians cannot understand how predestination and free will can exist together. Nor can they!
Predestination was a major doctrine of the Calvinists who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It simply meant that God had already pre-determined, before the birth of each human, whether that individual would be saved to go to heaven or condemned to the fires of hell. All members of the communities were expected to attend church, which often lasted for hours, but the evidence of their predestination for heaven was their behavior outside of church. Those who were good (and most tried to be very, very good) were assumed to be among the chosen, while those who were reluctant church goers or displayed too much enjoyment in life were assumed to be lost.
But as more and more colonists arrived on the American shores, religious fervor in many of the colonies became pushed aside by the introduction of other forms of worship and the rigors of making a living in a newly prospering society. Thus, beginning in the 1730s and lasting for nearly 40 years, a religious revival known as the Great Awakening swept through the Colonies, rekindling the religious fervor of the colonists. Many of the great preachers of the Great Awakening were themselves Calvinists, which caused somewhat of a conundrum. They continued to believe in predestination, yet ministers like Jonathan Edwards preached “fire and brimstone” sermons that frightened their listeners into dedicating their lives to God. The most famous of Edwards’ sermons, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” which often appears in literature anthologies as both an example of early American writings and of superb metaphors and imagery is replete with sentences such as this:
“The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.”
To these ministers, predestination and the emotional call to salvation of the revivals of the Great Awakening were not incompatible, for if those individuals who rushed to the altar to confess their sins and be saved were among those predestined for salvation, then the revival had simply hurried their decisions and brought them earlier to God. For those individuals who were not among those pre-chosen by God to be saved, it didn’t matter. The revival might cause them to live better lives for at least a while before sinking back into sinful ways, thus benefitting the community without hampering God’s will in any way.
But what Calvinists and any who still believe in predestination seem to ignore is that the very fact that God created man with free will, that is the ability to choose to live for God or to deny God’s existence, which precludes the possibility of predestination. In predestination, one’s free will could not even be simply limited to the time when one came to God, for every moment, every thought, every choice of man under predestination is ordered by God before we are even born.
Certainly, in the Bible, God says to the prophet Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations,’” (Jeremiah 1:5). But God here speaks not of predestination, but of pre-cognation or pre-knowledge. God, because He is omniscient, knows what we will do in the future, but because He has made us creatures of free will, He does not determine what we will do. He knew Jeremiah would be the kind of man who would indeed carry His Word to the nations and so He chose Him for that task.
If predestination is in fact the way that God deals with man, why would we find the following scriptures in the Bible?
“that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved,” (Romans 10:9). (Note it says you will be saved, not that you will be saved if you are already predestined to be saved.)
“Peter replied, ‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,’” (Acts 2:38).
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast,” (Ephesians 2:8-9)
And of course,
“ For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned [at the final judgement]; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God,” (John 3:16-18).
Salvation comes through our act of repentance and our acceptance of the sacrifice of Jesus for our sins. Then we are expected to live our lives from then on according to His example. We do good works not to win salvation, for we are clearly told in Ephesians that salvation is a gift from God that we cannot earn. Nor do we do good works because we have been predestined to do so. Our good works are the result of our changed lives once we have come to Christ. As James explains; “But someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works.’ Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works,” (James 2:18).
Predestination not only negates the free will with which God has gifted us, but it also can lead to the idea of fatalism: it doesn’t matter what I do in life or how I treat people, because if I am predestined to go to heaven I will anyway, and if I am predestined to go to hell, then why should I care how I live since it won’t matter at all!
Luckily for us, God chose to give us free will instead of imposing predestination upon us. While He knows what lies ahead for us and the choices we will make, He still leaves us free to make them, good or bad. We cannot earn Heaven, but we can choose to accept His gift of salvation. The choice is ours to make.