According to
Foreknowledge
1 Peter 1:1
“Father,
we’re thankful for the opportunity we have to come together and focus upon Your
Word and be reminded of your grace, to be reminded of Your character, Your
attributes, and to be reminded that You control history. Even though things
look chaotic and out of control from our perspective, we know that
nevertheless, You are working out Your plan and purpose. We know that nothing
man can do can override Your plan and purpose. On the other hand we’re not automatons;
we are not robots. You do not decree every decision and every act, and You
allow human beings the freedom to utilize their individual responsibilities and
volition to make decisions. And for that, we often suffer many consequences.
Father, as we face negative consequences, whether it’s personal or nationally,
we know the only way to recover is to trust in You. The only way to have peace
and stability in life is to walk consistently with You. We pray that we might
always be reminded of that, and that we might keep our focus on You, because
You are the only source of hope and stability. Now Father, as we study Your
Word tonight in a very difficult doctrine, we pray that You will help us to
understand as we seek through these things, and that the Holy Spirit will make
them a little bit more clear to us each time we go through this material. We
pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.”
Before
we get started on our study of 1 Peter tonight, we’re going to have a couple of
areas of social commentary today. Remember on Tuesday night when we were in
Samuel I, was focusing on the whole issue of hope in the midst of despair. The
focus of that particular message was not on the fact that we despair. We all
despair. We all have times when we’re overwhelmed by circumstances. It’s what
we do with it that matters. Everyone faces that as part of life. It’s part of
being a fallen creature, but we all fall prey to these negative emotions or
these temptations to negative emotions because of the pressure of the
circumstances around us.
We
live in a generation now where I think this is going to become more and more of
a challenge for every believer to keep their mental attitude focused on the
rock that is our source of stability and not on the ever-changing shifting
sands of political leadership. This is an important theme I’ll be hitting again
and again over the next eighteen or twenty months as we are entering into
another presidential campaign.
I
think it’s important for us to be reminded that ultimately God is in control,
and the ultimate solution isn’t political. That doesn’t mean that politics
isn’t important and crucial. We saw that in our lesson on Esther not long ago;
that God was in control of the situation of the Jews in Persia, but Esther got
involved. She didn’t just say, “Well, I’m just going to pray about it because
God’s going to solve the problem.” God works in and through the individual
involvement of people. He worked in and through the spiritual involvement of
Hannah. We saw that on Tuesday night. God’s working out of His plan and purpose
is not apart from our individual responsibility. We can’t get so focused on
these things that when things don’t go the way we might like or the way we
might hope, we just cave into despair and anguish and frustration.
We’ve
got a couple of things facing us that have been dominating the news this week.
It used to be I remember when there was one or two things like this a year, not
two or three things like this every week. I think that’s an indication of the
internal collapse of western civilization as a whole, and the United States in
particular. It doesn’t mean it’s hopeless. I think there have been times in
this country when times were a lot worse.
In
the 1850s things got a lot worse. In the early part of the 1800s things were
certainly dicey in terms of the spiritual life. This is what led to the Second
Great Awakening when the level of atheism or secularism as we might call it
today, and immorality that was occurring on the university campus, increased.
That’s where part of the Second Great Awakening began.
What’s
important is what I taught the other night. We have to humble ourselves under
the mighty hand of God. And God uses believers. Now, more than any time in
history, we need to be responsible citizens. We have two situations we need to
be aware of. The primary one I just wanted to mention tonight is this situation
with this “religious freedom act” that has been so attacked in Indiana, and now
when the Arkansas legislature signed it, it’s been attacked. Both of these
weasels who are governors have crawfished because of the pressure that’s put on
them.
I’ve
read different analyses of the pressure and it’s coming from a very small
minority who have figured out how to win the PR campaign and to put out a lot
of disinformation. They twist the reality of the situation. I just thought I
would comment here. I’ve got a website up here on my laptop from the Alliance
for Defending Freedom. According to their website, they take the position that
this act was originally signed into national law by Bill Clinton, back in 1993,
I believe. There’s a little verbiage that’s different, but it’s not verbiage
that allows or permits discrimination.
The
lesbian, gay, transvestite community is all up in arms about this. They’re
trying to tell everybody this is anti-gay legislation. Number one, it’s not
designed to be anti-gay legislation. It’s designed to protect people from
discrimination, not to authorize discrimination. According to the website, they
say that not only do they reject the notion that this act could be used to
refuse LGBT from services but they make the
point that there’s never been any instance where business has refused to serve
a person based on their sexual orientation.
Now
immediately they say there is a popular case on this. I’ve read two or three
articles on this, and what you read from a lot of conservative and Christian
websites is not like you’re even talking about the same case in the news. I’m
going to read what they say so we can be aware of this side of the story. “Take
the popular case involving Barronelle Stutzman, a florist. Barronelle lovingly
served her friend, Rob Ingersoll, whom she knew, identified as a gay, and his
partner for nearly ten years. She’s their florist and their friend. She
arranged flowers the couple sent to one another for birthdays and other
occasions.
In
one very specific instance, when Rob asked her to design the flowers for his
same-sex wedding, Barronelle gently told him that because of what her faith
teaches her about marriage, she could not use her artistic talents to celebrate
a same-sex wedding. She kindly referred him to other florists who she knew
would do a good job for him. Does that mean that she was turning LGBT people away and not serving them?
Absolutely not; that did not happen. Again, she served the same sex couple for
years, and they were counted as friends.
As
I was reflecting on this, there is a foundational belief that undergirds the
First Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights. That is “freedom of
conscience”. Now that doesn’t mean that everyone is just free to do whatever
they want to because they can claim that’s violates their conscience. This has
been argued and established as precedence in legal courtrooms for several
decades. I’ll give you two examples of this. The people who claim something is
their religious belief, my conscience according to my religious belief, are
people who are identified and been a part of a religious denomination. It’s not
just something that popped up. They’re not just a member of the “what’s
happening now” church. A Quaker, for example, and a Mennonite as well, have
pacifist convictions. They believe the Bible is against violence or
participating in war. The United States Supreme Court has recognized that the
government does not have the right to impose itself on their conscience and
violate their freedom of religious expression.
Another
example relates to Jehovah Witnesses who believe it is against their religious
convictions to say the Pledge of Allegiance. That also was adjudicated and the decision
was that asking them to violate their conscience was a violation of the First
Amendment. That’s really the issue. I haven’t heard anyone bring this out.
If
you have a business, a privately-owned business, not like Walmart or Apple or
some publicly owned corporation, but an individual who is selling a product and
in the selling and the use of that product, they would be seen as endorsing the
situation or circumstances in which their product is being used, it says they
have a right according to their individual religious conviction to say that you
cannot force them to violate their religious conviction.
That’s
a violation of their First Amendment rights. It has nothing to do with
discrimination toward anyone. It has to do with protecting their rights in the
same way we protect the rights of various beliefs and various organization.
This has been eroded and attacked over the last thirty or forty years by the
secular left. From the atheist, agnostic, anti-secular left, Christian belief
is the enemy because we’re viewed as those who will stop them from what they
want to do. This is an attack specifically on Christianity, but it’s also an
attack on Islam. How many of you have heard anyone bring Islam into this whole
equation? Muslims are greatly hostile to the LGBT community, much more than Christians are. Christians
just say you can do what you want to. That should be our attitude.
There
are some Christians who have wrong attitudes and they’re hateful and spiteful,
but that’s not Biblical. What is Biblical is that we recognize that there are a
lot of different sins that people commit, homosexuality being one of them. It
has a public persona. We’re being asked to approve of something we can’t
approve of. That’s ultimately their agenda: that Christians need to validate
what they’re doing. Christians don’t need to validate what they’re doing any
more than they validate other sins.
We
have to take a stand. What happens when you get into a culture of
post-modernism where there aren’t any absolutes and no one has a frame of
reference to establish their belief system, then does everyone have the right
to do whatever they want to and impose that upon everyone else? I remember when
I was in high school in civics, the basic issue was that everyone had the right
to do what they wanted to, but it stops when it forces someone else to violate
their personal convictions. We can’t do that. That’s foundational for the Bill
of Rights.
Once
this changes, then this has a domino effect legally. The precedent that has
been set legally is that freedom of conscience is foundational to the First
Amendment. You may agree or disagree with that. I really don’t care. That’s the
legal precedent. Once we start violating that, then the only alternative is for
the government to step into the vacuum and be the ultimate determiner of what
is morally acceptable or not, and what is spiritually acceptable or not. That’s
the purpose of the First Amendment, to keep the government out of the church,
and keep the government out of establishing morals.
There’s
some fresh news out and I’m not sure exactly what the situation is going to be
other than it’s bad. Through a lot of legerdemain, the powers that be in
Lausanne, Switzerland managed to work out some sort of deal to keep the talks
going between the western European powers (P5 + 1), and that represents our
side in talking with Iran. Basically what’s happened in this little shift that
took place today, it validated all of the compromises the Obama administration
has been making up to this point. This now becomes the framework for working
out a deal.
As
I understand it, the sanctions aren’t going to end today or tomorrow, but if
agreement is reached, that’s when the sanctions will immediately end, and a
number of other things will happen. It puts a lot of pressure on the Senate
right now to pass the Menendez-Corker bill, which entails a lot of folks. Those
of you here in Texas don’t have a big deal because all of our congressmen are
all on board. Folks who live in a part of the country where they have Democrat
senators, if they feel so inclined, should pick up the phone and ask their
senators to co-sign on this bill.
This
is how we stand in the gap. Politely, under the responsibility of our
citizenship we exercise those rights and privileges to tell our representatives
in Congress how they should represent us. Christians need to be heard. If we’re
not heard, we’re going to be not like Esther, but like those who cave in, keep
their mouths silent, and suffer the consequences.
Okay,
with that said, let’s open our Bibles to Acts 26 as we get started here. I have
a couple of rules. Any of you who watch NCIS know that Gibbs has his list of thirty or forty
rules. Well, I’ve got a couple of my rules. I don’t know if I always keep them
but rule number one is the degree to which someone is excited the first time
they visit the church is directly proportional to the time they will be there.
That’s been confirmed by a lot of people. I have people who come in here, and
they just effervesce when class is over saying, “This is the best thing. I’ve
been looking for a church like this all my life.” I look at my watch and say,
“They’ll be through the door in thirty seconds and we’ll never see them again.
That’s what happens. The people who just sit in the back and they’re happy and
they never say anything that first Sunday, after two or three weeks they’re
probably going to stick around a while. The ones who come up and say something
about how great it is, they’re out of here.
The
other rule, rule number two, is that when anyone asks me to review something
and go over it again because they just need to hear it one more time, that when
I review it and go over it again, they will not be here. Always happens.
Okay,
we’re back to some review on election and foreknowledge because I’m sure that
if one person had their head swimming in a fog last week, there were probably
quite a few others. So we’re in 1 Peter 1. We’ve gone through the initial
salutation where Peter identifies himself as the Apostle to Jesus Christ. The
word in the Greek, EKLEKTOI,
comes prior to the identification of the recipients. So it’s “elect to the
pilgrims of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia
according to the foreknowledge of God by the sanctification of the Holy Spirit
for the obedience and the cleansing of the blood of Jesus Christ.”
That’s
broken down into three prepositional phrases here, each of which modifies the
adjective “elect.” So it’s not just elect according to the foreknowledge of God
the Father, but in the same way and the same level syntactically, it’s elect by
sanctification.
We’ve
looked at this word elect quite a bit and I want to remind you it’s not just
this idea of selection or making a choice like going down to the polls in
November or March whenever we have an election and selecting one from many.
One
of the major meanings or nuances of the word is the idea of choice. It’s
qualitative. That someone is elect means they’re choice. They have a degree of
excellence or quality about them. This is always also reflected in the Old
Testament in the word bachir, meaning
“chosen,” or “choice,” or the “most excellent one.” It’s talking not so much
about choosing someone, but having been chosen but someone that has a very high
quality.
Of
course, by now we all know the doctrine of the Magnum bar, understanding how I
saw this in modern Hebrew, that choice almonds means select or excellent almonds.
The highest quality are what is used in making the Magnum bar. I also
emphasized that in studying this, we have to understand the importance of
corporate identity in relation to both Israel and the church. They are choice.
Israel is choice because God selected them for a high purpose. It is not
individual election or choosing to salvation. Then the church is select and
excellent because of its relationship with Christ.
We
worked this out by looking specifically at the parable of the wedding banquet
in Matthew 22:14 which concludes that “many are called but few are chosen”. Chosen,
as I pointed out, introduces the idea that the host of the banquet made a
selection of who would be there. When you read the story, the only people who
are making a choice are the ones who are unwilling to respond positively to the
invitation and go to the banquet. As I put up on the screen, the choice ones
are choice because of the quality of their robes. They’re dressed correctly.
Those robes represent imputed righteousness, not their works. The only mention
of anyone making a decision in the parable is of those who are unwilling to
respond to the invitation and attend the banquet.
Thus,
the issue in the conclusion (that many are called but few are chosen) is that
many are invited, but few are choice, emphasizing that those who are there have
a higher quality because they’re wearing the right dress, the robes of
righteousness, the imputed righteousness. This is seen in an Old Testament
passage talking about “God has covered me with a robe of righteousness.”
All of this is just a way of introducing us and reminding us of this important
concept.
So
we go back to our slide that we’re elect according to a standard, according to
the foreknowledge of God the Father. We have to understand this word
“foreknowledge.” I pointed this out last time looking at a number of different
definitions. I’m just going to look at the last one in a work called The Five Points of Calvinism. It points
out that when the Bible speaks of God knowing certain individuals, it often
means He has special regard for them, that they are the object of His affection
and concern. The question we need to ask is what is the basis for that special
regard? Why does He regard them that way? Based on the parable we looked at in
Matthew 22, He regards them that way because they possess righteousness, not
because He’s chosen them ahead of time to give them righteousness.
Here’s
a contrast. When we look at Calvinist theologians they will say that the word
group “foreknowledge” means to choose, to determine, to enter into a
relationship beforehand, or to elect. PROGINOSKO means to choose. The root word there is GINOSKO. It has a prefix PRO, which means before. One principle we need to try to
understand that probably applies to most languages, and it does to Greek, is
that the root word there is knowledge.
Whatever
else we say about the meaning of PROGINOSKO, guess what has to be part of the meaning? Knowledge. Choose has
nothing to do with knowledge. To determine ahead of time has nothing to do with
knowledge. For every letter you add to the root word in Greek, small or large,
it changes the meaning of the word. So you add the prefix PRO, it changes to some degree the
meaning of the word, but the meaning still has to include the word knowledge.
Just by adding the prefix PRO, which means beforehand, doesn’t change the core meaning of GINOSKO, which is the word for knowledge. It
means to know beforehand. All of the lexicons emphasize this idea that it means
to know beforehand. In their discussion of these words, sometimes they bring in
their ideas and try to read that into the meaning of the word; but they run
into various problems.
Another
thing I pointed out last time is that one major problem in determining the
meaning of any word is the assumption on the part of many Calvinist
theologians, that when you take this verb and you change the subject, the one
who performs the action of foreknowing from man to God, it changes the meaning
of the word. Now that’s just a logical fallacy. A word means the same thing
whether man is doing it or God is doing it. The idea that the change from man
to God changes the whole meaning of the word doesn’t even make sense. That’s
just poor linguistics. We looked at the fact that the main idea has to do with
knowledge.
I
pointed that out looking at a couple of lexicons last time. In the Liddell,
Scott, Jones lexicon, which covers classical as well as Koine Greek, they
emphasize that the primary meaning is to know or to perceive or to understand
something beforehand. They give a second definition, which means to judge
beforehand, which basically means to evaluate something ahead of time. Neither
or these definitions have the idea of having a relationship with someone ahead
of time. It doesn’t have the idea of loving something ahead of time. It doesn’t
have the idea of choosing them or electing them or predetermining anything
about them. It just isn’t there. The conclusion we reached from that is that
nowhere looking at the Liddell, Scott, Jones lexicon is there a meaning for PROGINOSKO that implies choice or election, a
loving relationship, or predestination. It’s not listed there at all.
I
went back and looked at some other lexicons this last week because I had a
little more time. I picked up a new one, via Logos. It’s an older lexicon from
the late 19th century or early 20th century by Cramer.
Cramer lists the primary meaning of PROGINOSKO as to perceive or recognize beforehand, to know previously, or to
foreknow. That’s at the very beginning of three or four paragraphs of analysis
of the word. What’s interesting is that he then changes the meaning of the word
as he deals with different passages based on theological suppositions. He says
about Acts 2:23, “In its simplest form, it is simplest to take PROGNOSIS as a resolution formed beforehand.
See, he wants to introduce determinism to that. See, he says it’s simplest to
take it that way. “Though this meaning is foreign to classical Greek.” Hello!
How can you just arbitrarily assign a meaning to a word just because of your
theology? He says that that kind of deterministic meaning is completely foreign
to classical Greek. This is typically what happens in these kinds of things.
Let’s
look at Acts 26:5. Turn in your Bibles there, and let’s think our way through
the context a little bit. This is one of two passages where everyone agrees
what the meaning is. It’s very nice to start here because a basic rule of word
study, and the basic rule even of exegesis, is that when you are in areas where
the area is ambiguous, you always go from meanings that are clear to define
meanings that are ambiguous. In other words, if a word predominantly means one
thing in 95% of its uses and in 5% of its uses it could conceivably mean that
or something else, then the way you determine its meaning is by usage. It
probably means that in those 5% of its uses, it could mean something else; and
it probably means what the 95% of its uses mean. You have to have extremely
good contextual evidence to say that it means “y” when it means “x” 95% of the
time.
These
two passages we’re going to look at indicate very clear statements. In Acts
26:5, Paul says when he’s addressing Herod Agrippa, “They knew me [PROGINOSKO, knew ahead of time] from the
first. They were willing to testify that according to the strict sect of our
religion I lived a Pharisee.” Now let’s look at this context. Acts 26:1 says,
“Now Agrippa said to Paul [when he was in Caesarea-Maritima under arrest and
being held waiting being taken to Rome. Herod Agrippa II is the king and he
says to Paul], ‘You are permitted to speak for yourself’.”
“Paul
stretched out his hand and answered for himself saying, ‘I think myself happy,
King Agrippa, because today I shall answer for myself before you concerning all
the things I’m accused of by the Jews.’” So he starts off thanking him for the
opportunity to speak, and in the next couple of verses he addresses Agrippa and
reminds him that Agrippa is knowledgeable about the Jews and the issues facing
the Jews. [Verse 3]. “You are expert in all the customs and questions that have
to do with the Jews.” So he butters him up a little bit and tells him he knows
all that’s going on and that Herod Agrippa was knowledgeable about the issues
and challenges and conflicts between the Sadducees and the Pharisees and the
Essenes and all the other groups.
Then
in verse 4, Paul goes on to inform Agrippa that he had been living in Jerusalem
from the time he was a young man, probably not long after he was bar mitzvahed
when he was about thirteen or fourteen. All the Jews knew this, he said. This
would be a reference to the Jewish leadership. Then in Acts 26:5 he says, “They
knew me from the first [NKJV].” That’s our word PROGINOSKO. They knew me ahead of time. Here we see that PROGINOSKO only refers to knowledge. Words are so important. It
doesn’t refer to having a relationship. It doesn’t refer to having an intimate
relationship or a loving relationship. It doesn’t refer to the Jews making a
choice about Paul. It doesn’t refer to the Jews having a predetermined plan or
anything, other than they are cognizant of certain facts about Paul. Okay? It’s
knowledge about Paul. It’s not a personal relationship.
They
knew certain things about him just as I know certain things about some of you,
but I don’t necessarily know you very well. I know certain things about you. It
doesn’t mean there is an intimate relationship involved. Paul says, “They knew
me from the first. If they were willing to testify then according to the
strictest sect of our religion, I lived a Pharisee.” So what did the Jews know
about him? They knew he’d been a Pharisee. They didn’t have to know he was from
Tarsus. They didn’t have to know a lot of other stuff. Paul is saying that they
knew that Saul of Tarsus, later Paul the Apostle, was a Pharisee.
The
grammar here is also important. The grammar says that they “knew me.” Me is in
the accusative case. That means it’s the object of the verb. It’s the object of
the knowing. In this verse it introduces the content for knowing me. They knew
me ahead of time. The object there makes it clear that by knowing “me,” what we
could supply to make it more intelligible in English is that they knew about
me. It doesn’t have that word “about” in the text, but that’s what it means.
This
is something that is common in Greek. I went over this last time, and that
might have just blown right by some people because again, this gets a little
technical. I know when I start talking about grammar; I can see eyes glaze
over. People start thinking about what they’re going to have for breakfast in
the morning, or what time they’re going to sleep, or whatever it is. But this
is important. In this verse the writer of Hebrews says, “But brother we are
confident of better things concerning you.” We’re not concerned about exegeting
this passage here, just understanding the Greek. In the Greek that word “of” that
is in italics here isn’t really in the text itself. The text basically has a
verb that means we are confident and the object, the accusative case, is
“better things.” We are confident better things. Does that make sense to
people? The verb really means we are confident of better things.
Usually
we associate that English preposition of like the “love of God” with the
genitive case. This is just supplied in order to communicate the relationship
between the verb and the object of the verb just as in Acts 26:5 where we read,
“They knew about me from the start.” So we supply this kind of verbiage in
order to clarify the verb.
Another
verse we could go to is Matthew 12:33 which we’ll be getting to in the next few
weeks in our study of Matthew on Sunday morning. “Jesus said, ‘Either make a
tree good and its fruit good or else make the tree bad and it’s fruit bad; for
a tree is known by its fruit.” Here we don’t have the word PROGINOSKO. We just have the root word GINOSKO. The point I’m making here is that
whenever you read, or a Calvinist is teaching, about foreknowledge, they make
the point [an exegetical fallacy, as well] that to understand the meaning of GINOSKO, we have to go back to the Hebrew.
Now
often times Hebrew shapes the nuance of Greek words that are used in the New
Testament. It’s not always a one-to-one correspondence. The Old Testament word
doesn’t equal the New Testament word. You have to demonstrate it. You can’t
just assume that. You have to demonstrate it exegetically by looking at the
context. That’s what pastors do who know the original languages. You could
spend all day reading hundreds of examples of the use of the word knowledge in
the Old Testament. Guess how many times “know” is used in the Old Testament? A
lot! You sit down, and you classify all of them. There are only about 90 of the
450 something that indicate some kind of relationship. That’s all it is. It’s
not a loving relationship. It’s not a predetermined relationship. It’s just
talking about a situation where there’s a relationship, like God says to Israel,
that “I knew you.” It’s talking about God’s previous relationship to Israel.
That’s there in some contexts.
What
you’ll hear Calvinists say is that this is always a primary nuance within the
word. Adam knew Eve. See? That’s not just academic knowledge. He didn’t just
know about Eve. It’s an intimate knowledge. But there’s only about five or six
cases in the Old Testament where you could indicate intimate knowledge as
possibly being part of the nuance of the word. It’s a secondary, tertiary idea.
You get to Matthew 12:43, and we see that a tree is known intimately by its
fruit. Is that what it’s saying? You know the tree by having a relationship
with the tree? Maybe if you’re a member of Green Peace and you’re a tree hugger,
but no! A tree is known by its fruit; you know about the tree by looking at the
fruit.
My
whole point in going through all of this is simply to make the point that
knowledge is often about something. It is not knowledge that necessarily
entails relationship, choice, or intimacy. There’s no sort of electing love. A
tree is chosen by its fruit? This doesn’t even make sense. This is part of the
problem. What we see in the context of Acts 26:5 is that there’s no indication
of relationship, a deterministic plan, electing in love, or any of these things
implied. It is simply having cognition of certain facts about Paul.
Then
we go to a passage in 1 Peter. 1 Peter 1:20 states, “He [Jesus Christ], indeed,
was foreordained [PROGINOSKO]
[NKJV].” The NASV translates it “foreknown”. The word is PROGINOSKO, to know something ahead of time,
prescience, prior knowledge. “He was foreordained before the foundation of the
world.” Notice the object of foreknowledge here is an eternal person, Jesus
Christ. So the person who does the foreknowing is God the Father who is also
eternal. There are certain aspects of this particular illustration that are a
little different, but nevertheless, it serves for an illustration.
One
Calvinist commentator says that “this word should be understood to refer to a
loving, committed relationship.” Jesus Christ was indeed known in a loving,
committed relationship before the foundation of the world. That has nothing to
do with the context. This writer goes on to say it can’t possibly mean
prescience. It is talking about God the Father’s plan and purpose for the
Second Person of the Trinity when He entered into human history. Too often what
we see is the idea of “electing love” into the meaning of the word, when
basically what’s its saying is that God knew ahead of time. He knew about what
would take place when Christ came.
Another
thing we see here is that when we just look at the structure of this verse, we
see that there’s a contrast between something that happened, a completed action
in the past, was before the foundation of the world. The word “was” is a
perfect tense participle indicating completed action which is contrasted to the
next phrase which is “was manifest in these last times”. What we see here is a
contrast between something in the far past and something in the recent past
which is in the present, these last times. A conclusion here is that this isn’t
talking about election, but that God knew something ahead of time about what
would happen now. That’s what fits the context.
The
next verse, 2 Peter 3:17 is very obvious. No one argues over the meaning here.
“You therefore beloved, since you know this beforehand, beware lest you fall
from your own steadfastness being led away with the error of the wicked.” This
is clearly not talking about having a relationship beforehand, being determined
beforehand, elected beforehand. It’s talking simply about knowing ahead of
time. I think everyone is riding along with me pretty easily right now. We
haven’t hit any little speed bumps along the way for our thinking and
everything is pretty smooth.
Fasten
your seatbelts. Now we get to one that’s a little more complicated, a little
more fun. This is in Acts 2:23. Again this is Peter speaking. One of the previous
examples we’ve used and another one, of course, is the one in our passage, 1
Peter 1:2, all come from the mouth or the pen of the Apostle Peter. Talking
about Jesus Christ, he says, “Him being delivered by the determined purpose and
foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands and put to death.” In
this verse, what we have is a statement related to two actions: one by God, and
one related to the Jewish leadership in their complicity, along with the
Romans, to kill Jesus.
This
isn’t an attack on the Jews saying they wanted to kill Jesus. The Jews could
have wanted to kill Jesus all three years, but they had to have permission from
the Roman authorities. It was when the Roman authorities gave permission that
Jesus was crucified. So if you’re going to assign blame, the Romans had the
lion’s share of the blame. There’s no basis in the Scripture for going around
and punishing Jews for being “Christ-killers.” That was a horrible lie that
developed in the early Middle Ages that is to be rejected by every Christian.
So
what we have here in Acts 2:23, is that Peter is telling the Jewish leaders
that the killing of Jesus on the God side was by the determined plan and
foreknowledge of God. We have two words here. The word translated “determined”
is the word HORIZO
in a perfect tense, indicating a completed action in past time; and the word
“purpose,” which is the word BOULE, meaning will or purpose. That’s where we get that first compound
phrase, determined purpose or determined will of God.
Then
we have a conjunction. Remember Conjunction Junction on Sesame Street? Okay,
that joins two things of equal weight. This is important for understanding the
grammar here. You have a couple of nouns, and then you have a conjunction. And
then you have another noun. That second noun is PROGINOSKO, which is foreknowledge. HORIZO and BOULE are on one side; then you have this conjunction, and you have PROGINOSKO on the other side.
The
issue then becomes: how do we understand determined purpose? First of all, if
you follow the Calvinist argument that the meaning of determined purpose has to
relate also to foreknowledge, then you would take foreknowledge to mean: having
an intimate, loving relationship. Let’s see how that works. “Him being
delivered by the determined purpose and intimate, loving relationship of God”
Does that work? That doesn’t even make sense.
Okay,
let’s do another word substitution. “Delivered by the determined purpose…” We
don’t have any problem with the concept that God had a determined plan for the
Lord Jesus Christ to be crucified from eternity past. Not a problem. “By the
determined purpose and election of God.” Does that fit the context? Not at all.
This is what happens when you come along and you reach theological deductions
and then go back and read those theological deductions into the text, rather
than exegeting, which means to draw the meaning out of the text. You’re
exgeting and reading your theology into the text. Here we have this phrase. How
do we understand this?
Let’s
point out another problem. Another problem that they have is that often
Calvinists want foreknowledge to mean a determined plan. Then the passage would
read, “Being delivered by the determined purpose and determined plan of God.”
See a problem with that? That’s what they call a tautology. You’re just
repeating yourself. Their ideas for how foreknowledge should be translated when
God is involved just don’t make sense. It doesn’t fit the meaning of the text.
It doesn’t follow the lexical data. It doesn’t follow usage, and it doesn’t fit
real time meaning of the text. So how do we handle this?
One
way to handle this, which I pointed out in Acts, lesson 23, when we went
through this in our study of Acts, is I made the point that one way that could
solve this that has some value is to understand this as what we call a
hendiadys. You’ve probably heard me use that once or twice, and you had no idea
what it meant. You just moved right on down the road and figured I knew what I
was talking about. Hendiadys refers to a structure similar to a Granville-Sharp
rule.
It’s
very similar. You have an article, a definite article and a noun, then a
conjunction junction with KAI and then another noun. The Granville-Sharp rule only applies to proper
nouns; and in those cases, under certain rules and context, the two nouns are
equated as being synonymous. But in common nouns, they’re not synonymous. And
in other circumstances, they’re not synonymous, so people say it’s a hendiadys.
But in a hendiadys, the article really is irrelevant to the idea of a
rhetorical device. If you go through a lot of grammars, they don’t even touch
hendiadys because there are so many different definitions of what a hendiadys
is that it’s not always that useful. But we’ll talk about it anyway.
In
a hendiadys, it would make these two nouns related to each other. Let’s make a
couple of observations. First of all, if you had a hendiadys here, one of these
would function adjectivally to modify the other. They’re not of equal weight. I
pointed out in Acts, lesson 23, that when it does this, one noun expresses a
dependence on the other noun, but 75% of the time the first noun is dependent
on the second noun. That would mean that determined purpose would be dependent
upon foreknowledge.
You’ll
often find Calvinists trying to use this hendiadys argument, but it falls apart
in terms of the majority use, although it’s kind of weak to make a hendiadys
argument. Bottom line on this is that in Acts 2:23 it mentions two things. It
mentions that God has a determined plan, but it also mentions that the plan is
based on and related to His knowledge of future events.
What
you typically have in Calvinism is God doesn’t know all the knowable. You’ve
heard me say that many times. The things that will actually happen, the things
that could possibly happen. In Calvinism God only knows what will actually
happen, and His knowledge determined what will actually happen. Calvinism
rejects the whole notion that God knows an infinite amount of possibilities. I
have a little problem with that, because despite the claims of Calvinism, that
really expresses a lower view of God’s omniscience than my view.
Let’s
put it this way. I’m going to ask you a question. Think about this in the last
couple of minutes. Put your thinking cap on, and don’t get scrambled brains. Is
it a higher view of God to claim that God knows all things, but the “all
things” are what He has determined? That God in eternity past determined on
some unrevealed basis that some would be saved and He would send His Son to die
only for them? That’s the high view of God in Calvinism - that God knows
anything, but the only thing He really knows is what He’s determined, because
that’s all that’s actually going to happen, is what He determined. He’s going
to save only a set number of people, and He’s going to send His Son to die only
for them?
Or
is it actually a higher view of God to claim that God knows all the knowable,
all of the potential and possible, as well as the actual, but that His
Sovereignty is so extensive, that in spite of the chaotic decisions enacted by
His creatures, that God can still, without overpowering or violating individual
responsibility, bring order out of chaos, and accomplish His plan? Isn’t it a
higher view of God to argue that God allows His creatures a degree of freedom
that enables them to freely respond to general and special revelation, and on
that basis, either deliver or condemn them? Isn’t that a higher view of God? I
think it is.
I
think this view that God controls everything is a much lower view of God and
smacks of determinism. What we see here is that Calvinists say that God makes
these choices, but we don’t know the basis. That’s why it’s called
unconditional election. There are no stated conditions. They completely exclude
the fact that God would take into account foreseeing decisions of the free
agents of human beings in making those decisions. If He takes into account what
He knows they will do, then that becomes in their mind, the effectual cause of
salvation.
You
will often hear Calvinists say that if you believe, that God looks down the
corridors of time and chooses you because you believe. As I’ve pointed out many
times, no self-respecting theologian would say that, because the Bible never
says we’re saved because of our
faith. We’re saved through faith. To
say that God excludes His omniscience from His choosing and determination of
His plan, is to make God arbitrary. 1 Peter 1:2 says we’re elect according to
the foreknowledge of God. The Greek preposition used here translated
“according” is the Greek preposition KATA which normally indicates according to a norm or a standard.
This
same word, similar phrase, is used in 2 Thessalonians 2:9 talking about the
Antichrist which says, “His coming is KATA, according to the working of Satan.” This preposition is important.
Prepositions are always important. The preposition commonly qualifies the
action when used as a verbal idea such as the noun “elect” which has a verbal
idea. When it says the Antichrist coming is according to the working of Satan,
it means he comes into his position, due to or because of Satan’s working. His
coming into his position as leader of the world is either due to or because of
Satan’s working.
In
1 Peter 1:2 this has the same idea. Elect has a verbal idea, and it
demonstrates that this has the idea that God’s act of making a choice related
to these are according to, or due to, the action of foreknowledge. I’m going to
point out that it really doesn’t have much of a verbal idea. It’s really the
noun idea of choice, but what I’m saying here is that if you want to argue that
it’s a verbal idea, that God is choosing here, then you’ve got to go with the
idea that it’s choosing due to or because of God’s foreknowledge.
I
think the better decision is to look at elect as “choice.” We’re choice,
according to certain things, the foreknowledge of God, His plan. And that plan
focuses on imputed righteousness. Being choice is also by the sanctification of
the Holy Spirit. That’s positional truth. Because we’re sanctified by the Holy
Spirit; that’s the means by which that “choiceness”, that imputed
righteousness, is realized in our salvation; and because we’re choice, because
we have imputed righteous, we are to do something.
There
is a purpose statement there at the end of the verse. We are made choice,
positionally righteous, for the purpose of experiential righteousness,
obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus, which is a reference to
ongoing cleansing. With that, I’m going to conclude what we’re talking about
tonight. Hopefully, that helps you understand foreknowledge a little bit. We’ll
wrap it up a little bit next time, and then we will move forward. This is
always an important verse, one of two verses.
The
other one we’ll look at briefly next time in Romans 8:29. “Whom God foreknew,
knew ahead of time, He also predestined.” Predestination in Romans 8:29 comes
after foreknowledge. As I’ve pointed out many times, I’ll say it again next
week, predestination is to determine someone’s destiny ahead of time. The
destiny here isn’t in the Lake of Fire or even heaven. What are you predestined
to? What is the destiny God sets for every believer? You’re to be conformed to
the image of His Son. That’s character. God says that He has a plan for every
one of us, and that plan is to make us like Christ so that your character
reflects His. It’s also called the fruit of the Spirit, so that your character
reflects the virtue of Christ in your life. It’s based on His omniscience of
what will happen ahead of time. On that, He chooses this destiny, not to heaven
or hell, but to be like Christ. We’ll start there next time.
“Father,
thank you for this opportunity to look at these things. We’re reminded of your
grace. We pray for our country. We pray for our nation. We pray for those in
the senate that they would have the courage to stand up for what will provide
real security, at least temporarily, in terms of the treaty. That they will
take a stand for the security of this country and be wise in handling the
details of whatever comes out of this conference. We pray that you would give
wisdom, and that you would change the mind of the president and his advisers,
if possible. We pray that you will give us the strength, the courage, and peace
to live out our lives in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation that
will increasingly, it seems, be hostile to Biblical truth and Biblical Christianity.
We can have hope and confidence, and we can be happy even in the midst of these
negative circumstances because they’re not the source of our happiness. You
are. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.”