To Know Beforehand or to Lovingly
Choose: Part 2
Romans 8:28-29
Now we're
continuing our study in Romans 8:28 and 29 and we're focusing on understanding
these important terms that are used in Scripture. Now they’re not used a lot in
Scripture. Terms like foreknowledge and predestination are words that are used
just a few times. They represent God’s plan. The most important thing to
remember is that they represent God’s plan. Now over the course of the history
of the church there have been various positions that have been taken regarding
the understanding of these concepts. There have been major battles and splits
in churches and denominations over many of these things that are taught.
For some people
they just go way over their head and that’s fine. It’s tough sometimes to try
to think our way through these issues related to God’s control of history and
God’s control of His plan, on the one hand, and human responsibility and
responsible freedom of choice on the other hand. Both are true. We began the
study in this section two or three lessons back. I think that a God who can
allow man freedom to make decisions and yet oversee all of the circumstances in
history so that, despite the chaos that is there from sin and despite the chaos
that is there from evil decisions from human beings, a God who can still
orchestrate the affairs of history to bring about His desired ends is greater
than a God who is in control of every decision and every action and every
aspect of what is going on in history.
I do not
believe that God is a deterministic God in that sense. Scripture teaches that
He is a personal God and He is sovereign over the universe and He has the plan
that He is working out. Within that plan He allows for free will decisions but
He’s constructed reality in such a way that He is still able to handle the
chaos that comes as a result of free agents making decisions. Now I always have
to caution people by saying we’re free but only in a limited sense because of
sin. There are certain things that we are unable to do and sin does impact
that. Ultimately when it comes to the most important issue in life, which is
our salvation, there is an aspect of our responsibility that comes into play in
terms of making a decision.
Even in explaining
that, we have to recognize that in the division of theological camps in this
area, one side, usually referred to as the Calvinist side or the Lordship side,
view even the act of faith as something that has merit in and of itself.
Therefore the faith that saves is not the same as the faith we use to, for
example, get up in the morning and go in and, however bleary-eyed
and stumbling we might be, when we hit the button on the coffee maker we
have faith it’s going to start. I don’t know about you but at my house I hate
those little breakers which they have all over the kitchen. I’m not always sure
although I always have faith that when I press that button it’s going to start.
However, about once a week something has happened overnight when nothing’s been
on to pop that breaker hidden away on the countertop in the kitchen somewhere
and the coffee pot doesn’t turn on. I then have to find that little button and
press it in and then the coffee pot comes on. But that’s faith.
We have faith
that when we go to start the car in the morning, that the car will start. We
have faith in lots of different things. Faith, in and of itself, in contrast to
the Calvinist position, doesn’t have merit. Anybody can believe anything and
everyone believes things. That’s why at one level you have a picture used many
times in Scripture of faith that is compared to eating. Jesus even talked about
this in relation to himself as the Bread of Life. “He who eats my flesh…” He’s
not talking physically eating His flesh. He’s not using a literal figure, he’s
talking about taking something to make it part of our own selves. Anybody can
eat; anybody can drink; so it is not the act of faith itself that has merit. It
is the object of faith that has merit.
The object of
faith in salvation is the work of Christ on the Cross so that faith is
non-meritorious. It does not bring us any credit because we believe. It is the
object of belief. Our ability to understand the gospel is enhanced through the
enlightenment of God the Holy Spirit who works in and through the preaching of
the Word of God and the explanation of the gospel. He opens the eyes of
the unbeliever, enabling them to be able to understand the gospel and then make
a choice as to whether to accept or reject it.
So when we
explain the issues related to God’s sovereignty and human responsibility
they’re both true. One does not cancel the other because they, in another
sense, operate in different spheres. For example, in the sphere of creation and
human activity we think about cause and effect, but that is a creation sphere
idea of cause and effect when everything operates on a timeline continuum and
one thing causes another. You often hear Calvinist say that if God does not
determine the decisions of the creature then the creature makes the ultimate
determination and therefore, God simply responds and He becomes a responder to
the decisions of the creation. That is a cause-effect issue. Embedded is that
is an assumption that cause and effect in the realm of the Creator is identical
to cause and effect in the realm of the creature. When they use the terms cause
and effect they don’t mean the same thing.
One other thing
that really helped me to understand some things is to realize in Genesis,
chapter one, when God created the heavens and the earth, the seas and all that
is in them, and all of the plant life, Adam and Eve, and all of the physical
laws that operate on Planet Earth, it was absolute perfection. There was no
corruption in the human race or in the animal kingdom of creation or in the
inanimate aspect of creation. Yet, because of His omniscience and His
foreknowledge, God embedded within the DNA structure of all living things and within the laws of
physics that operate and govern everything else, a flexibility so that when
Adam sinned as a result of the free exercise of his volition and set a
reverberating spiritual tsunami through all of creation, it reverberated in
such a way that it changed the inherent nature of creation. Everything became
corrupt. Not just man dying spiritually but it impacted the animals. In the
curse in Genesis the word ‘curse’ often brings to mind some sort of juju black
magic but that’s not the sense of the meaning of the word in Scripture. It’s
more the idea of the divine judgment on something.
God said that
the serpent would be cursed more than all the beasts of the field. Note that is
a term of comparison. It implies that all the beast of the field would also
come under judgment but the serpent more so. In Romans 8 as we have already
studied, we’ve seen for example in verses 20 through 22 the creation is subject
to futility. It’s under the bondage of corruption. The whole creation groans
and labors with birth pangs until now.
So we see all
of inanimate creation is depicted here as groaning and suffering because of the
judgment of God on the entire universe for sin. But into every aspect, from the
smallest subatomic particle to the largest galaxy of the universe, God built
flexibility into everything physical and spiritual to handle the chaos that
would come when spiritual death entered the universe. That helps us to
understand that God created man, the human race, in such a way that even when
they made free will decisions and go completely off the rails, God’s
sovereignty is great enough to incorporate that chaos into His plan without
losing control and without losing the ability to bring His plan to its intended
end.
How He does
that we don’t know but we can understand that both principles of God’s
sovereign control and free human responsibility can take place without them
being contrary to one another, especially when we understand how things
function within the realm of the creator and how things function within the
realm of the created are not identical. So when we extrapolate from our frame
of reference within creation to the creator, we often enter into logical
fallacies and irrational leaps because we’re trying to compare an apple to a
cactus prickly pear fruit instead of two apples. They’re not the same. The
realm of the creature doesn’t function like the realm of the creator. They are
two completely different things. There may be some similarities but they’re
only analogous. They’re not identical or as philosophers like to call it,
univocal. They are different. They are not completely opposite one another,
which is another term called equivocal, which means they have nothing in
common; they’re analogical. But that gets into a lot of other technical
vocabulary and we’re not in Philosophy 201 here so I’m not going to go any
further down that road.
But I hope that
kind of gives you an understanding or a framework because I know we have at
least three people here tonight who haven’t been part of this study in the last
three weeks. I want y’all to understand that I know this is a tough, tough
topic and subject to encounter. It’s easy if you haven’t listened to the whole
framework to maybe misunderstand. I hope I’m a clear teacher. In fact, one year
when I was probably about twenty –one or twenty-two years of age I went
to a large Bible church here in Houston just to visit and the pastor, whom I
have since come to know very, very well and we actually believe pretty much the
same thing, taught on this passage. I thought he was taking a very high
Calvinistic position and I couldn’t have been more wrong. He’s never taken that
position but that’s what it sounded like coming out of the pulpit. It’s easy to
misunderstand some of the things being said sometimes.
This is a
mature doctrine. Peter in 1st Peter talks about the fact that the apostle
Paul has said some things that are very difficult to understand and this is one
of them. There are many other things that Paul teaches that are also difficult
to understand so if this is a tough thing to understand for you, then just set
it aside and think about it later. Eventually as you mature and reflect on
these things, then you will gain greater insight and understanding. We’re in
one of the great passages of Scripture: Romans 8:28 and 29. This is a
tremendous passage for understanding God’s provision for us and that God is in
control.
The context is
dealing with suffering. There are a lot of people going through suffering. I
know of people in this congregation who are going through a lot of difficult
times. As a congregation, it seems right now that we are going through a period
where’s there’s a lot of health testing that I’ve observed. Some people know of
some and not of others but there’s a lot of health testing going on right now.
We need to be in prayer for one another. There are other difficulties going on
in terms of financial challenges, in terms of just physical educational
challenges and job challenges. We all face those things. These are all part of
the adversities of life. Starting in verse 17 of this chapter, Paul shifted to
introduce the topic of suffering to challenge believers to recognize that if we
endure in the Christian life, if we press on toward spiritual maturity,
suffering and adversity have a purpose and we will be rewarded at the judgment
seat of Christ.
There are two
categories of rewards covered under the concept of inheritance in these
passages. One is the level that’s provided for every believer as heirs of God
[verse 17] and the second are joint-heirs with Christ and that’s conditioned
upon suffering with Him. That is going through the various levels of adversity
in life and applying the word of God to those levels of adversity so we can
grow and be rewarded with Him and be glorified with Him in the kingdom when we
will rule and reign with Christ. All of that I covered before. That’s the
context.
So suffering,
the suffering we go through as believers, the suffering from sin on creation,
all of these things are the context. When Paul says we know that all things
work together for good, the all things, in context, is talking about all of the
difficulties, adversities, challenges that we face in life. God brings about
something that’s part of His plan in our life. This is not purposeless. There
is a purpose for this. There is a plan. You and I do not perceive the plan. We
don’t understand how these things are working together but God does. When we
get to heaven we may see how these things have all worked out and come
together. But we don’t know the plan. Every now and then we get little glimpses
of things that happen. Every now and then we recognize that there are things
going on in our life that are just sort of unusual and they’re not coincidental
but we have no idea where God is taking us or how He’s going to use some of
these circumstances.
We know God is
in control, but God is not in control to the exclusion of our volition. So
Romans 8:28 just basically emphasizes the fact that God is in control. God has
a plan. You and I may not perceive it or understand it but God does and that’s
all that matters. Our responsibility is to trust Him and to remain obedient in
the midst of those challenges. So Paul says in verse 28, “We know that all
things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the
called according to His purpose.” As I’ve said before Paul addresses his
readers as if they’re all pursuing spiritual maturity. Now he knows that there
are some who haven’t quite made that decision yet. There’s some who won’t ever
make that decision. There are some who will decide to make it to the second
grade. There are others who will decide to drop out at the fifth grade level.
Others make it to the seventh grade and others are still going to be pursuing
spiritual growth all the way to the day they die. But Paul always addresses
everyone as if they are high achievers.
I understand
that as a pastor. I treat everyone in the congregation as if they’re all
pursuing spiritual maturity. If they’re not here on Tuesday and Thursday night,
I assume they’re all watching it at home. I know some aren’t but I treat the
congregation as people who are all on the same train, as it were, going to the
same destiny, which is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ to the maximum. I
expect everybody to get on that train at some point or another. So that’s whom
he’s talking about.
These are the
called. The called is a term which simply summarizes those who have responded
to the invitation of the gospel to believe in Jesus Christ as Savior. If they
have responded, they are the called. They are the invited ones and they have
been called according to a purpose, which is God’s plan for the human race. And
then he’s going to explain this a little more in verse 29. “For those whom He
foreknew…” Verse 29 brings us back to the word called. He’s going to plug
the concept of being called into the stream of decision making within the plan
of God.
He starts out
saying that first of all in this stream of events, there’s foreknowledge,
second there’s predestination, then there’s calling, then there’s justification
and then there’s glorification. That comes in verse 30. He says, “For whom He
foreknew he also predestined…” Then here’s another observation I didn’t make
clear last week. In a minute I’m going to go over the quotes from a couple of
Calvinists who have written commentaries on Romans and their quotes are typical
of the way Calvinists interpret predestination. They usually interpret
foreknowledge as some sort of choosing or as a synonym for election and
predestination. The problem is this verse and another verse we’ll look at
tonight clearly distinguishes these activities.
Foreknowledge
cannot be defined as being chosen or lovingly selected because that comes under
the purview of the next word. We have to keep these activities distinct from
one another because they’re not treated as the same thing. Douglas Moo, the
well-respected theologian scholar and professor of theology at Trinity
Evangelical Divinity School, has a general framework of high Calvinism that I
do not agree with. Nevertheless he does say some good things on some points
based on word studies and language but he falls apart here. The main thing
I looked at last time was his definition of foreknowledge. He says it does not
mean “to know before in the sense of intellectual knowledge or cognition or
what we would call prescience.” Prescience is a compound word made up of “pre”
meaning before and science meaning knowledge, to know something ahead of time.
He says it doesn’t mean prescience but that it means to enter into relationship
before or to choose or determine before. As I pointed out, that is not evident
in the way the word is used.
Another writer
I referred to last time was Thomas Schreiner and he said, “The idea of
foreknowledge really is determined by the word knowledge.” As I read through
this last week I read the word “forestall.” Stall is the root word but the
meaning of forestall cannot be determined and is not the same as the root word,
stall. We’ll look at some other examples. What I mean by that is that
foreknowledge cannot be determined by the meaning of its root, knowledge. This
is called a root fallacy in terms of word study or a fallacy related to
etymology. This is typical reasoning for the Calvinists who will shift from
foreknowledge to just knowledge and go back to the Old Testament where they
look at just the word know and try to derive the meaning of foreknowledge from
the word know. Schreiner concludes that “foreknowledge relates to His
covenantal love in which He sets His affection on those whom He has chosen.”
Choosing is
election or selection, which is a totally different word in the context and in
the process. They tend to muddy these things up. They try to take these words
that are used in their sense for election and they give them such synonymous
definitions that they’re all really saying the same thing. That’s not fair to
the writers of Scripture. Palmer in his book, The Five Points of Calvinism,
says, “When the Bible speaks of God knowing a particular individual, it also
means He has a special regard for them, that they’re the object of His
affection and concern. So that again shows what I’m talking about.
Then I just
gave you some definitions, “to know beforehand, or to choose something
beforehand.” That’s the basic meaning of the word in all literature outside of
the passages we are looking at. As I pointed out last time, when you have a
word in Scripture that you’re not sure what it means in this context, you can’t
assume a meaning and say that’s what it means in this context where in every
other context it means something else and you list this one context as the
exception and it means what you want it to mean. You can’t do that but that’s
essentially what they’ve done. They say the subject of the verb here is God so
the word has a completely different meaning when God is the subject than when
anything else or anyone else is the subject of the verb. That is another
fallacy in word study. The word is going to mean the same thing regardless of
who’s performing the action. So I pointed that out last time and I pointed out
some other dictionaries and some key verses that we went through. Acts 2:23, 1
Peter 1:2. I stopped right about here looking at 1 Peter 1:20. I went through
all of these and I stopped right about here.
Let’s turn in
our Bibles to Acts 2:23 to begin. The way that you know the meaning of a word
in Scripture is that you look at how the word is used. That’s the same thing in
English. When you go to Webster’s Dictionary or Collins or the Oxford English
Dictionary, the lexicographers, the men who are writing the lexicons, are
simply studying how people use a word. That’s why you will sometimes see new
words enter into a dictionary or you will see new meaning enter into a
dictionary. In some dictionaries you will even see words like “ain’t”. I
remember in elementary school teachers would say that wasn’t in the dictionary
because it’s not a word. Well, if a word enters into the language of the people
often enough, it becomes a usable word and it will have a dictionary meaning.
It may be improper grammar or other things may be problems but what determines
meaning is not the dictionary. The dictionary is simply organizing and
categorizing the way people are using a word.
Over time,
words change in meaning. For example, in the early 1600s when the King James
Version was translated, the word charity was equivalent to what we would refer
to today as unconditional love. Love that was not determined by the behavior of
the object of love but was determined more by the objective character of the
person who was doing something to benefit the other person. Today the word
charity usually refers to some sort of benevolence type of ministry that’s
provided for people who are in need. It is a form of love, but charity is no
longer considered a synonym for love. The word has changed its meaning over
time. So the meanings that are listed in the dictionary change to reflect the
usage.
When you do a
word study in Scripture, which is what I try to teach pastors and students of
Greek, you don’t start by going to the dictionary. You start by going to a concordance
or using a Bible study program to give you a listing of every place that word
is used. Then you analyze that word usage in those verses to determine its
characteristics, its qualifications, and the range of meaning within that word.
After you have thoroughly investigated all of those verses so that you’re
familiar with the data, much like a crime scene investigator shows up at a
crime scene on NCIS or CSI or CSI New York, or
any of those other shows we like to watch, the investigators are just presented
with a lot of data but they don’t know what it means yet. They have to analyze
each piece of data to see what they can learn from it in what is called an
inductive study. Once they have analyzed all of that and come to thoroughly
understand the evidence, then they begin to make associations and then come to
conclusions. Then they have to check and double-check those conclusions against
other facts to make sure they didn’t miss something.
That’s
the same thing we do in a word study. You look at all the places where it’s
used. You look at all the conditions. You weigh the data and then the last
thing you do is check it against some of the dictionaries and some of the other
sources which have extended discussions and analysis and then you may discover
that you missed something. You may discover that the dictionary says this word
means something and you haven’t found any evidence of that. I can point out at
least three examples, this word being one of them, in Arndt and Gingrich where
they have introduced a category of meaning to the word that, I believe, is read
into debatable passages. But if you look at how the word is used outside of
those debatable passages, there’s no evidence anywhere else that it has that
meaning. Everywhere else where foreknowledge is used in Biblical Greek, other
than about three passages in the New Testament, it always has the idea of
knowing ahead of time, knowing beforehand. So you can’t say that you think that
in Romans 8:29, 1 Peter 1:2, and Ephesians 1, that in those passages it means
God has a prior, loving relationship that He’s chosen and that’s the meaning of
foreknowledge. Where’s your evidence for that? There is none. You can’t use
those verses to be your evidence.
So we come to a
passage like Acts 2:23, one we’ve studied before, and this is in the midst of
Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost. This is the first day of the church,
the day the church was born and God the Holy Spirit descended upon the eleven
disciples and the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem when they were together. He
hovered over them like a flame of fire and they heard a rushing wind so they
were having a full sensory experience. Peter then began to explain what was
going on. He does so in light of Old Testament passages but what’s really
important is his analysis of God’s plan that we’re looking at. He says,
starting in verse 22, “Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the
Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs
which God performed through Him in your midst, [empirical, confirmatory
evidence] just as you yourselves know this Man [Him, Jesus Christ] delivered
over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God…”
In this first
phrase we see the role of God in His overriding plan of human history. But who
is the object of God’s foreknowledge? It’s Jesus Christ. Is His foreknowledge
of Jesus Christ here related to salvation? No, it’s not. It’s related to the
role that Jesus Christ would play in history. Now a little later on we’re going
to look at how foreknowledge is used in relation to the nation, Israel, and in
relationship to the Jews. God had a plan for them within human history. God
selected them for a plan and a purpose within His plan. The context is not
related to individual selection of people for salvation or for justification.
It has to do with God’s general plan and purpose for their life.
On the one
hand, there’s a plan of God that His Son, Jesus Christ, would be delivered over
to the authorities and He would be crucified but that doesn’t negate the
individual responsibility and free choice of the Jewish leadership, and not
every Jewish person because many were believers in an Old Testament sense by
this time of the Cross. Their leadership, the Pharisees and the Sadducees and
the Herodians, made their determinative choice as the representatives of the
people to reject the Messianic claims of Jesus. So they had a responsibility.
Peter says that on the one hand God had a plan of redemption and this was the
plan and on the other hand he says, “You [accusing the audience as part of the
responsibility of the Jewish leadership] you nailed Him to a Cross by the hands
of godless men…” He was emphasizing their role and responsibility.
It hasn’t been
diminished one little bit because God had a plan to do this and they did it,
they chose to do it, they went along with the plans and the rejection of the
leaders so they are fully culpable in the death of Jesus Christ. “…you nailed
to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.” Now the word
boule simply means a
will, purpose, an intent, or a plan to achieve something or to bring something
about. It adds an adjective to the word purpose, “determined” which is not
within the context. It doubles the meaning in order to emphasize a determinism,
I think, within the passage. It is simply that He was delivered according to
the plan or the purpose or the intent of God and this intent, this boule often
indicates a choice, a will, a determination to do something based on reflection
and deliberation. God had a plan that was well thought-out in terms of the
particulars. So Christ is delivered over on the basis of this plan of God and
the foreknowledge of God. The plan of God clearly took into account information
available to God through His omniscience.
Omniscience,
as we’ll see in a minute, includes all the knowable, everything that God knows.
His knowledge is not like our knowledge. His knowledge is direct. It’s
intuitive. It’s immediate. He does not add things to it. He does not ever
acquire knowledge or lose knowledge. He immediately, directly, and intuitively
knows everything in terms of all its relationships, all of its causes, all of
its effects. Nothing is left out. He knows all of the actual things that will
happen and all of the potential things that will happen. So, typically, in
Calvinism, they will say that God elected, He chose some to salvation. Now
in some systems they don’t go as far as to preterism which is double
predestination, that is, predestining some to eternal life and some to eternal
death in the Lake of Fire. They’ll just say that God elected some to salvation
and He passed over the others. They were already condemned so He just didn’t
elect them.
Others will say
He actively elected to send them to the Lake of Fire, that’s what’s called a
“higher” form of Calvinism. Then when you ask them on what basis God chose some
to eternal life, they’ll say that’s in the secret counsels of God. The problem
is that they’re excluding knowledge. Anything available to God through His
omniscience is excluded because they have this weird way of talking about God’s
knowledge, that God can’t really know something unless He’s determined it. And
He can’t determine it if there’s freedom because you can’t know what’s going to
take place if you can’t determine that it’s going to take place. They get
caught up, I think, in to a logical cul de sac that has to end up in determinism.
Here Peter clearly says that God, in terms of His planning, takes into account information
available to Him in His omniscience and His knowledge about what will take
place and what might take place in human history ahead of time.
Now let’s go to
the next passage which is in 1st Peter. If you don’t learn anything
tonight, you’ll learn at least where Acts is and where 1st Peter is.
1st Peter is near the end of the New Testament after Hebrews, James,
and then 1st Peter. Now there’s something interesting about 1st
Peter, James, and Hebrews, which we’ll see in this first verse. This may be a
brand new insight for some of you. I first hit this reading through a
commentary and some writings by Arnold Fruchtenbaum who I respect for many,
many things. When I first read this, because of my training and everything I’d
heard before, I said, “I don’t think that’s right.” Then I started doing a lot
of research and reading and I went, “Oh well, I think Arnold’s right here.”
You have to pay
attention to where the words are. What’s happened in a lot of these
interpretations related to these epistles is that we have a history of
interpretation that’s sometimes affected by bad exegesis. In 1st
Peter 5:13 Peter concludes with a greeting saying, “She who is in Babylon,
chosen together with you, sends you greetings, and so does my son, Mark.” He
mentions Babylon and from the 2nd century B.C. and on there has been a trend to interpret that word
Babylon allegorically, that it’s not referring to the literal Babylon on the
Euphrates River in what is now modern Iraq but that this is just a code word
for Rome. That is how numerous people have interpreted 1st Peter:
that he’s writing to the churches in Rome. They say he’s actually in Rome when
he’s writing this but the reality is Peter was an apostle to the Jews and Paul
was an apostle to the Gentiles. If you haven’t learned anything in our study of
Acts I hope you’ve at least learned that much. Paul is the apostle to the
Gentiles. That doesn’t mean he never spoke to Jews, as we know, but that was
his primary target audience. Peter is primarily responsible for taking the
gospel to the Jews.
Outside of
Jerusalem, the largest population of Jews in the first century was in Babylon.
How did they get there? They got hauled there during the first destruction of
the temple in the three deportations conducted by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of
the Babylonians, 605, 597, and 586 B.C. That’s when Daniel and his three friends were taken
over in 605. So a huge number of Jews were taken over when Jerusalem was
destroyed, the temple was destroyed and they were taken to Babylon. Until 1948
of this last century, just 66 years ago, there was always a large contingent of
Jews in Iraq.
In 1948 a lot
of Arabs living in the area of the West Bank fled the war that approached prior
to the beginning of the War for Independence in March and April of that year.
Some were forced to flee because they were in strategic, significant
geographical locations and the Haganah, which is what the Jewish army was known
as at the time, ran them out of their villages but the vast number of them left
because they believed the propaganda of the five Arab nations that invaded
Israel that the war would be short-lived and they would defeat these horrible
Jews and the Zionist entity would be destroyed and they would come sweeping in
and everybody could come back home. That created this so-called refugee problem
of Palestinian Arabs. They chose to flee. They chose to believe the lie. They
chose to leave their homes and as a result, they became refugees and they’re
still refugees. There were about 750,000 Arabs who were displaced.
The other part
of that story is that only the Palestinian refugees are given inheritable
refugee status. You have refugees from any other conflict in the world and it’s
limited to those individuals and their refugee status is not passed on to their
descendants. Today we have about three and one half million Palestinian
refugees. Now how did we get there from 750,000? Because they had babies like
rabbits and those babies were given refugee status and they’re put under a
special UN Refugee committee
that only oversees that one and only refugee problem which is the Palestinians
and they give them lifetime benefits and their children lifetime benefits. If
they leave and they come to Canada or the United States or Mexico or Brazil or
wherever and they become successful doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs, then
they continue to get their subsidy from the UN and they continue to be identified as Palestinian
refugees. This is part of when they talk about the right of return and try to
figure out the conflict between the Jews and the Arabs in the Middle East
that’s what they’re talking about. It’s a never-ending problem because they’ve
created a unique standard of refugees.
At the time
that happened in 1949 when those approximately 750,000 Palestinian Arabs left
and were displaced—most people don’t understand the other side of the
story—approximately that same number of Jews were forcibly evicted from
their homes in Morocco and Tunisia and Egypt and Syria and Lebanon and Iran and
Iraq and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and all these other areas. So the Israeli War
for Independence created two groups of refugees, the Palestinian Arabs and all
these Israelis who were forced to give up all their bank accounts, all of their
possessions, all of the things they owned, everything but what they could carry
in a suitcase. They were forcibly deported from Iraq and Iran and all of these
other Arab countries. Until 1948 you had an enormous Iraqi Jewish population
and it traced all the way back to the early part of the sixth century or late
seventh century B.C. It was
centered in Babylon and later it was centered in Baghdad.
This was where
Peter went. Peter was an apostle to the Jews and he went to Babylon where there
were Jews because he was taking the gospel to the Jewish community and so he
went to the largest Jewish community. If we understand Babylon to be literal
Babylon, and since we believe in literal interpretation of Scripture, we’re
forced to do that, it makes sense. It’s historically viable. Then it changes
our understanding of what happens in verse one. Peter identifies himself as an
apostle of Jesus Christ to the elect. To those who are elect, to the choice
ones, residents of the “dispersion” as the King James Version translates it.
The Greek word is diaspora. This is a technical term which has been used since
the sixth century B.C. to designate
the Jews that were scattered from their promised homeland. The diaspora began in 605, 597, 586 B.C. There was a partial return that occurred in
approximately 538 B.C. and a few
more that came back over the years but the ones that returned in 538 when Cyrus
allowed them to return from Babylon came mostly from the area of Iran and
Babylon. They didn’t leave their homes in Cappadocia and in Pisidian Antioch,
Iconium, Egypt, and Rome and all these places where they had established
communities. They came back mostly from Babylon and Iran to resettle on Ezra
and Nehemiah and Zerubbabel. That was the beginning of the Second Temple Period
and it became known more technically as the diaspora. So Peter is writing to
the residents of the diaspora.
Who are the
residents of the diaspora? Are they Gentiles or are they Jews? They’re Jews.
They’re Jewish Christians, Jewish believers. Just like the writer of Hebrews is
writing to a Jewish audience, the writer of James is writing to a Jewish
audience, and so is 1st Peter being written to a Jewish Christian
audience with a Jewish-background. In Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and
Bithynia. This is the area that is now known as Turkey. So he is writing to the
elect who are first defined by their location. He’s writing to these early
churches, which had a primarily Jewish aspect to them, located in the area of
Turkey.
The second
thing he says is to give us a basis for them being called the elect. This is
given in the second phrase, “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father
by the sanctifying work of the Spirit.” The next phrase gives the purpose of
why they are the elect. The issue we need to address here is the phrase,
“according to foreknowledge.” What comes first, elect or foreknowledge?
Foreknowledge, because elect is on the basis of something prior and here it’s
foreknowledge. Foreknowledge comes before election, not after.
The second
thing we need to understand is the nuance or the idea or basic meaning of the
word “according to”. It’s the Greek preposition kata, which usually
means according to a norm or a standard and we see that the preposition usually
qualifies an action idea when it’s used with a verbal term such as elect or
making a choice. So it’s going to qualify that term. Now we have a parallel
verse related to the Antichrist in 2 Thessalonians 2:9, which states that the
Antichrist is coming “according to the working of Satan.” Now that’s our
parallel. What does it mean that the Antichrist will come according to the
working of Satan? That means his position and his power at that future time is
going to be on the basis of or because of Satan working in him. It almost has
the idea of because of Satan’s empowerment or Satan’s enablement. So if we take
that idea that we see in the parallel phrase in 2nd Thessalonians
2:9 or a similar phrase and apply it to 1s Peter 1:2 what we see is
“according to or because of the foreknowledge of God.” The foreknowledge of God
is what shapes the choice. The foreknowledge of God becomes the foundation
for the making of the selection, which is identified in the main verbal idea of
election. So according to the foreknowledge of God qualifies and gives the
foundation for the verbal idea for election. This means that the ground for the
action, or the reason for the action of election, is the foreknowledge of God.
One
commentator, William Kelly interprets is as “Election is grounded in or
election is a result of foreknowledge.” Another tries to explain it as election
depends on foreknowledge. Foreknowledge is the condition. All of these
explanations are trying to get at the same idea, which is that God first knew
all of the knowable in His omniscience, then He knew what would take place
because of His foreknowledge and then He made His choice on the basis of the
information available to Him in His foreknowledge.
As we wrap up
here, I was thinking about this the other day. It took me back to something
that happened in Sunday School class when I was in
high school. Pam and Tinker were there with me at the time. We talked about it
the other day. We had a Sunday school teacher named Bill Gleason. I must have
been in about the 9th grade at the time. I don’t remember anything
else we ever learned in that Sunday school class but I remember this. He came
into the Sunday school class and he had a large television set. Do you remember
the old box sets from fifty years ago? He put that up on the table in
front of them and he plugged it in and said this was a special set he had
designed so that it could show what people were going to do that afternoon. As
he looked at that he said he could tell what some of us were going to do. He
picked a couple of kids and told them what they were going to do that
afternoon. He asked them, “Am I, by my knowledge of what you’re going to do
this afternoon, causing you to do what you’re going to do? Not at all.” That
illustration always stuck with me.
Foreknowledge
is that God knows what’s going to happen. He’s not making His choice because He
sees faith in you. Calvinists say that’s what we’re trying to say. But we’re
not. People may say that out of ignorance but the Scripture always says that
we’re saved through faith, not because of faith. The cause of our salvation is
the death of Christ on the cross. We’re saved through faith. That makes faith
non-meritorious. It’s simply the channel. It’s like the pipe or the tube through
which God’s salvation flows to us from the cross. We’re not saved because of
that but that’s the means by which the work of Christ is applied to our life.
We are saved through faith.
So when we plug
that in to Romans 8:28 and 29, “For whom He foreknew…” God in His foreknowledge
is going to elect certain people. We’re going to get into this next week. I’m
going to give you a little foreshadowing here. There are three different views
of God’s plan of election. Over the course of my life, I’ve held all three. The
first is the Calvinist view that God just chooses based on His character and
His knowledge. That’s a determinative knowledge in a Calvinist sense. That was
Lewis Sperry Chafer’s view. When I first read Chafer I thought, “Well, I was
always taught that Chafer knew what he was talking about. I guess I’ll believe
what he says.” I don’t believe Chafer was right on that because Chafer was an
ordained Southern Presbyterian and I think he was more Calvinistic than most
people think. He would be called a light-to-moderate Calvinist. That was his
position.
The second
position is that God elects solely on the basis of his foreknowledge. Again, it
interprets elect as an individual selection to salvation. I don’t see elect
used individually except with the plan for the Lord Jesus Christ going to the
Cross. What I do see is that God has a plan for groups. He has a plan for those
who are the descendants of Abraham. God has a plan for those who are in Christ.
Those who trust in Jesus as their Savior are entered into union with Christ and
therefore become identified with Him as the elect. We are elect
corporately by virtue of our union with Christ. We’ll get into that a little
more as we go through some things coming up.
((CHART)) What we see here is that God knows all of the
knowable. I should have made that circle as large as I could make it but I just
wanted to get across the idea that foreknowledge is just a subset of all that
God knows. Foreknowledge relates to what He knows will take place. Omniscience
has to do with all the things He knows could have, might have, or would have
happened under different circumstances taking place.
Thomas Edgar,
who has taught Greek for many years at Capitol Bible Seminary and is a graduate
of Annapolis, took his commission in the Marine Corps, went to Dallas Seminary
for his Th.M. and his Th.D. Hopefully, he taught Dan Ingraham
everything Edgar knows about Greek which is a lot. Edgar wrote a great paper on
foreknowledge. He concludes saying, “Thus, God knows everything that will
happen if He causes it, if He causes only some of it, or if He merely allows it
to happen. Since He is omniscient He knows what will happen even if He allows
the universe to be completely random. He knows what will happen regardless of
the cause. Whether man can philosophically explain how this works is irrelevant
since man has no ability to explain something that only God possesses and
nothing apart from Scripture.” That’s a great quote. It takes a lot of time
just to think and to ponder that particular quote.
Anyway, next
time I’m going to come back and talk about God and contingency. Now that’s
another fancy term. God knows all the things that could have, would have,
should have, taken place but won’t. Now that’s an incredible concept known as God’s
knowledge of contingent things. What could have, might have, should have, and
would have if you had made another decision: if you’d married somebody else; if
you’d gone to a different school; if you had decided to live in another state
or take that other job. God knows everything that would have happened in your
life. He knows all the variables. God is so great that He is able to still work
out His plan and purposes no matter how you want to use your decision to mess
it all up. You can’t. He’ll work it all out for good.