Whom He Did Foreknow
Our Bible passage, introduction to Sunday 29th September service and hymns are below.
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Our principal verses are:
Rom 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
Rom 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Rom 8:30 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
Rom 8:31 What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
Rom 8:32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
Whom He Did Foreknow
Luke tells us in Acts 15:18, ‘Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world’ and certain it is we cannot begin to comprehend the infinite glory and transcendent majesty of the eternal God if we do not confess His unbounded knowledge. Yet, we must always be humble and careful in trying to understand the nature of God. We are mere spectators, fallen and corrupt at that, before the revelation of the One true God who is essentially unknowable beyond what He is pleased to communicate to us in His word.
Omniscience
The God of the Bible is the God whose knowledge, wisdom and understanding is unconstrained and whose awareness of persons, events, times, places, eventualities, outcomes and eternal realities is in every way full, perfect and complete. We call God’s comprehensive knowledge of all things His ‘omniscience’. It is vastly different from human foresight! Luke calls it ‘the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God’ (Acts 2:23).
‘None like me’
God’s omniscience is an attribute of His nature; it compliments His omnipresence and omnipotence. ‘I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure’ (Isaiah 46:9, 10). Peter writes, ‘According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue’ (2 Peter 1:3).
Foreknowledge and freewill
By these verses we understand that nothing is hid from God. He sees and knows all things because He planned and ordained whatsoever comes to pass. We must not imagine God’s foreknowledge to be based upon prescience or prediction as if God at some past time looked passively into the future and discerned what would unfold. Or, as some would say, made His plans upon discovering the outcomes of man’s freewill as if the Fall had never happened. God knows what will transpire in this world because He has mandated it to be.
A known people
Our reading today speaks of God foreknowing a people upon whom He works to accomplish His will and purpose in their lives. We note it is not what but whom He did foreknow. Here Paul is speaking of specific individuals known by God before time, before they were created or even the world was created. It is His gracious purpose that those whom He foreknew should be conformed to the image of Christ and accordingly He predestinates them to that end.
A blessed people
God’s foreknowledge is His everlasting love towards the people upon whom He delights to bestow His blessings of grace and glory. Notwithstanding the Fall, some men and women are, says Peter, ‘Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father’ (1 Peter 1:2). God’s foreknowledge pre-determines and prepares those who are chosen to salvation according to the Father’s infinite love and wisdom.
A loved people
We cannot see beyond, or probe beneath, the Father’s foreknowledge. Love and wisdom are the foundations upon which the plan of redemption was devised, the incarnation of Christ conceived and the covenant of peace established. God told Jeremiah, ‘Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee’ and informed the remnant people of the Old Testament, ‘The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: But because the LORD loved you’ (Deuteronomy 7:7, 8).
A joined people
The joining together or union of God’s chosen people to Himself in Jesus Christ is God’s heart of love towards us. According to His love He willed our election, ordained our union and joined us with His Son, Jesus Christ. Christ is the Head, ‘mine elect’ (Isaiah 42:1) the first-chosen in the covenant of grace and peace, and we are His body, chosen in love and united to Him.
Amen
Our hymns are below.
Hymn 1
Gadsby selection 575
“Called of God.” Heb. 5. 4; 2 Tim. 1. 9; 1 Pet. 5. 10
W. Gadsby 7s
1
Called to see God’s righteous law
Holy is without a flaw;
Called to feel its vengeful power,
And to tremble in that hour.
2
Called the cleansing blood to feel;
Called to know it me can heal;
Called to feel my guilt depart,
Through the Saviour’s bleeding heart.
3
Called, and called by grace divine,
In full glory I shall shine.
Called while here, to sing and tell,
Jesus has done all things well.
4
Called to part with flesh and sin,
And eternal life to win;
And, when Jesus bids me fly,
Sing his praise beyond the sky.
Hymn 2
Gadsby selection 66
Free Election. John 17. 23, 24; Rom. 8. 29
W. Tucker L.M.
1
Deep in the everlasting mind
The great mysterious purpose lay,
Of choosing some from lost mankind,
Whose sins the Lamb should bear away.
2
Them, loved with an eternal love,
To grace and glory he ordained;
Gave them a throne which cannot move,
And chose them both to means and end.
3
In these he was resolved to make
The riches of his goodness known;
These he accepts for Jesus’ sake,
And views them righteous in his Son.
4
No goodness God foresaw in his,
But what his grace decreed to give;
No comeliness in them there is
Which they did not from him receive.
5
Faith and repentance he bestows
On such as he designs to save;
From him their soul’s obedience flows,
And he shall all the glory have.
God’s foreknowledge is not merely knowing the future. It is His eternal loving wisdom. It is personal, purposeful, particular and perfecting for the people He loved before time and whose salvation and glory He has ordered and secured.