Ponderings About Predestination

Some thoughts about Predestination:

"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God" (Ephesians 2:8).

I think it means that God granted that faith should be the door into the saving grace of God.

"...Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life" (Acts 11:18).

I think it means that God granted that repentance should result in eternal life, for Gentiles also.

"...they rehearsed all that God had done with them, and how he had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles" (Acts 14:27).

I think it means that God offered the same arrangement to Gentiles that He had offered to Jews: namely, the opportunity to be saved through faith.

But just because He was granting the opportunity to be saved through faith and repentance, did not mean that everyone was willing to respond to what was on offer.

And it doesn't mean God controlled people either to respond or refuse. I don't think it is possible to derive any such meaning from the text.

Rather, we read in the Scriptures that Jesus commanded people to have faith. He commended them for their faith. He upraided them for their unbelief. He also commanded people to repent. He upraided them for not repenting.

If faith and repentance could be given in the Calvinistic sort of way, why didn't Jesus just give people faith, instead of commanding people to have it? Why didn't He, instead of upraiding those who didn't repent, just give them repentance? And why did He commend those who did, as though they hadn't received it freely?

God gave everyone - Jews and Gentiles - the opportunity to be saved through faith and repentance. But He didn't control whether or not an individual believed and repented. It just means the offer was there - to everyone - a scheme that originated in God's mercy, not man's assertions about how it should be.

As it happened, most Jews stumbled, because they sought it through the Law instead of through Jesus, and the Church emerged instead as the focus of God's dealings with mankind. God's focus centred around believers - either Jew or Gentile - rather than around natural Israel.

But this outcome, Paul explained in Romans 9-11, had long been FOREKNOWN by God. God had always ELECTED that He would save on the basis of faith rather than on the basis of nationality.

Some were confused by this, but Paul futher explains that it was always God's prerogative to offer salvation on His own terms regardless of whose WILL opposed it and regardless of anyone's RUNNING and self-efforts in the Law.

Therefore believers could be assured of their eternal destiny - because God had already planned it that believers (regardless of what nationality they were from) should be destined to glory.

I think that's what Paul was saying. It was all about authenticating his message that salvation is available to the Gentiles through faith. It fits the design of his argument in Romans.

He wasn't discussing the same question that Calvin and Armenius argued over. That topic would be like a baseball suddenly being thrown onto a Grid-Iron field, in midplay! It just wouldn't fit the context.

But I don't know. Just wondering!