Predestination

6 min read

38 “If you do whatever I command you and walk in obedience to me and do what is right in my eyes by obeying my decrees and commands, as David my servant did, I will be with you. I will build you a dynasty as enduring as the one I built for David and will give Israel to you.”
— 1 Kings 11:38

The “you” here is Jeroboam. He was in charge of all the the labor forces of Ephraim and Manasseh under King Solomon. He was a very capable leader, but capable leadership does not mean good leadership. What matters in leadership more than anything else is to walk in obedience to God and to do what is right in His eyes by obeying the word of God. Obviously, that is the case for all of God’s people. But the stakes become much higher for the leaders of God’s people.

Because of Solomon’s idolatry, God would take ten of the tribes away from Solomon and make another nation out of them—the nation of Israel, also known as the Northern Kingdom. Jeroboam would be their first king. The Southern Kingdom would be called the nation of Judah, and Judah would continue to be led by the descendants of David, because of God’s promise to David.

The schism between Judah and Israel and God’s faithfulness through all of that provides us with a good lesson about election and the sovereignty of God. Election, with respect to the sovereignty of God, does not mean that God has decided before time began of who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.

The sovereignty of God has everything to do with God’s purpose for humanity to fill the earth with the glory of God in Jesus’s name through God-fearing, God-honoring, God-worshiping, God-loving communities and families, the church.

Everything that God has revealed to us in His word according to His sovereign grace and everything that God does in this world according to His sovereign grace is for the sake of fulfilling that sovereign purpose.

And so God’s election is His decision to provide a means to reconcile humanity with Himself so that we might participate with Him in His sovereign purpose. In other words, when we take seriously and literally the evidence of human “free will” in the Bible, how can we say with absolute certainty that God has predestined some people to go the heaven and others to go to hell?

IMHO, it makes more sense to me to say that God has predestined the way by which people may be reconciled to Him so that we might participate in His sovereign purpose for our lives—that is, through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as our Lord.

And so, the idea of “election” is the manifestation of God’s sovereign plan and God’s sovereign grace as revealed in His people, the church. Or to put it another way, the “elect” are those who respond positively to God’s sovereign grace and plan for their lives.

Father, Your ways are high above. Your thoughts are high above. We are bound by space and time, but You are not. You have revealed Your glory to us through Your word, through our Lord, Jesus. And yet we are still so often confused concerning Your revelation. Help me and help this Canvas family to focus on what is absolutely clear to us—that Jesus Christ is Lord and that You have called us according to Your purpose to bear witness to the world how much we need Him. In Jesus’s name. Amen.