Predestination

What does the Bible mean by predestination?

My premise is that Bible-predestination simply means that it had always been God's plan to grant salvation to those who BELIEVE IN JESUS - irrespective of ethnicity and without the works of the Law.

It had always been God's plan that the Church - comprising of everyone who believes in Jesus, irrespective of ethnicity and without the works of the Law - would emerge as the true people of God.

Terms like predestination, election, foreknowledge, calling, choosing and ordaining to eternal life, were used in order to defend the validity of the good news that salvation is by faith alone.

Such terms defended against the mistaken notions of the Judaizers who were seeking to infiltrate the first-century Church and insist that believers should start keeping Moses' Law - for salvation by faith had always been God's intention, even before the Law was given.

Such terms also defended against the opposite notion that God's promises to the Hebrew forefathers had been ruled ineffective, or that salvation was no longer available to Jewish individuals - for God had already stated that receiving His promise would not be dependent upon ethnicity nor the works of the Law but upon another basis of His own choosing - namely, the basis of faith in Jesus.

Salvation by faith didn't make ineffective God's promise to the Hebrew forefathers, and neither was it unjust - for such a plan had always been foreseen and stated to the fathers in the Old Testament Scriptures.

The message of the Gospel - and the emergence of the Church, as the people of God - on the basis of faith in Jesus, irrespective of ethnicity and without the works of the Law - was no mistake or afterthought: it is the very plan that God had promised all along to the forefathers in the Scriptures.

Because salvation by faith irrespective of ethnicity and without the works of the Law is the very message that God had always promised, foreseen, elected, predestined and foreseen, the early believers in Jesus in the first century could therefore rest assured that despite the taunts of the Judaizers, their confidence in Jesus would eventually yield what it was promising - resurrection from the dead and salvation in the day of judgment - eternal salvation - eternal life - and entry into the kingdom of God.

Predestination was a defence of the message of salvation by faith.

Now let's look at numerous texts, and seek to understand them in that light: (this blog post will be added to over time...)