Is God Sovereign or Do We Have a Free Will?
Part 6d: A Word Study on 'Predestine' & 'Foreknow'
Review of Romans 8:28
In our last post in this series, we took a hard look at Romans 8:28.1 And within the larger context of Romans 8, we discovered that the whole passage is pastoral in tone. Paul was urging the Christians in Rome to persevere through suffering because of their guaranteed, glorious future. And in verse 28, he tells them that they have been called by God for this glorious purpose. Now when Paul says that God called them, what exactly does he mean? New Testament scholar Tom Schreiner provides a succinct answer: “The words calling and called in Paul regularly denote effective initiative in summoning people to salvation.”2 This shows us that salvation is due to God’s gracious initiative.
And the same God who called them to Himself is now using all things for His good purpose for them — which is to bring His own to eternal glory. Even the suffering they’re enduring now is not outside of God’s redemptive plan. Indeed, He uses all things to ensure that this good purpose for them will be accomplished. And the assurance of this promise is found in the word “for” in verse 29:3
For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.
It’s to that verse that we now turn.
Exegesis of Romans 8:29-30
Romans 8:29
In 8:29, the concepts of foreknowledge and predestination are tightly woven. And the key to understanding the latter (predestination) is found in a careful study of the former (foreknowledge). So to understand it, let’s take a brief look at how the word is used elsewhere in the New Testament.
In Paul’s defense before Agrippa in Acts 26, he states that the Jews “have known (προγινώσκοντές) for a long time, if they are willing to testify, that according to the strictest party of our religion I have lived as a Pharisee” (v. 5).
Here the word seems to carry the sense of having prior knowledge. A similar usage can be detected in 2 Peter 3:17. In context, Peter is warning believers about some false teachers who take Paul’s complex theological arguments and twist them to fit their own agendas. And so Peter tells them, “You, therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand (προγινώσκοντες), take care that you are not carried away…” Again, foreknowledge refers to just that… knowledge of something before something. In light of this fact, a few commentators have argued that God knew beforehand that these Roman believers were going to be the ones who freely placed their faith in Christ and thus He predestined them to be conformed to the image of Christ.4 To put it another way, God’s predestining has to do with his purpose to conform to the image of Christ those who freely chose to trust in Christ. It has nothing to do, they would argue, with God’s choosing who will and will not be saved. But two points are worth exploring. First, in what other contexts does this word occur? And second, what or who exactly was it that God foreknew?
Other Contexts in Which “Foreknow” is Used
In 1 Peter 1:20, Peter says about Christ that, “He was foreknown (προεγνωσμένου) before the foundation of the world.” What does that mean? Well it’s certainly not that God the Father looked down the corridors of time and, with a gasp, foresaw that He would one day send His Son to die for the world. Instead, God’s foreknowledge of His redemptive plan through Christ means that He purposed it from before the creation of the world. And this word is used in an identical way in Acts 2:23:
this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge (προγνώσει) of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.
Notice how divine foreknowledge and God’s “definite plan” are intimately linked. When we write this verse without the word “foreknowledge", it becomes even clearer:
this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan… of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.
In other words, God’s choosing beforehand and knowing beforehand are virtually synonymous. Which leads us to the second question: what or who was it that God foreknew?
The Nature of God’s Foreknowing
In the Old Testament, when God “knows” someone, it indicates an intimate relationship. Here are a few examples to show what I mean.
First, consider the Lord’s calling of Jeremiah:
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” —Jer. 1:5
Here the Lord’s knowledge of Jeremiah isn’t just the ability to see into the future. It refers to the Lord’s “enter[ing] into a relationship with [Jeremiah] before” he even existed.5 In Robert Alter’s book, The Art of Biblical Poetry, he emphasizes throughout the work that subsequent lines in a poetic section often serve to intensify the first one.6 And we can see this dynamic at work here.
Before I formed you… I knew you.
[That is to say], before you were born… I consecrated you [and]
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.
Notice how God’s knowing and God’s actions are one and the same.
We see a similar usage in Amos 3:2. Here the Lord tells Israel “You only have I known of all the families of the earth…” What does it mean that the Lord knew only Israel? Well it surely can’t mean that He was ignorant of the other nations’ existence. After all, He just listed a whole bunch of nations in Amos 2! Instead, it refers to an intimate relationship that Israel enjoyed with God due to His calling them to be His people.
So, again, in the Old Testament, when God knows someone, it indicates a close relationship that God has with that person, nation, etc.
And that seems to be the most natural reading of God foreknowing the Roman believers in Romans 8:29. God already knew them before they ever came to be! And He knew that He would make them His own through the work of Christ. Imagine what joy must have coursed through the Roman believers’ souls to know that God had set His affections on them before the dawn of time! And for us who have trusted in Christ, this same truth holds. Moo summarizes nicely when he writes, “Paul does not say that God knew anything about us, but that he knew us, and this is reminiscent of the OT sense of know.”7 From a pastoral perspective, Paul wanted these suffering believers to know that they were not overlooked by God. Quite the contrary. From before the foundation of the world, God knew them and had already determined to save them and conform them to the image of Christ!
And that’s the meaning of predestined, by the way. Just as God predestined the redemptive work of Christ on the cross, so also He predestined those whom he knew beforehand to become like Christ.8 That is, to become a part of a new humanity, with Christ as our head instead of Adam (cf. Rom. 5:12-21). And the assurance of this grand purpose for God’s people continues in verse 30 like links in a glorious chain.
Romans 8:30
One of the first things that jumps out in this verse is its chainlike structure mentioned above, along with the repetition of the word, “those.” Let’s begin by taking a look at the links in the chain:
Foreknew > Predestined > Called > Justified > Glorified
The first four make perfectly good sense with past tense verbs. God foreknew us, predestined us to salvation, and then called us to respond to it in faith. And once we did, we were justified on the basis of Christ’s work on the cross 2,000 years ago (cf. Rom. 8:1). But the last one still awaits us in the future. So why does Paul render it as a past action? In his book, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, Dan Wallace labels this verb as a “Proleptic Aorist."9 Sounds fancy, huh? But here’s what that means: “The aorist indicative can be used to describe an event that is not yet past as though it were already completed… The glorification of those who have been declared righteous is as good as done from Paul’s perspective.”10
And the assurance of this promise is grounded in the repetition of the word, “those.” If we removed all other occurrences of this word after the first one, the passage would still make perfectly good sense. That’s why Wallace labels them as “Pleonastic (Redundant)” pronouns; the sentence still makes sense after they’re removed, which means they must have a rhetorical function.11 And what an exegetical payload that rhetorical function carries here! Wallace writes:
“The idea is that the very ones whom God predestined, called, and justified are also glorified. The compounding of pronouns thus has a dramatic effect: No one is lost between the eternal decree and the eternal state.”12
What Does All of This Mean?
God knew His own before the ages ever began. That’s what it means when Paul says God foreknew us. And not due to any foreseen merit in us (see Romans 1-3), He predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son. How so? He called us and justified us. And one day He will glorify us.
Or, as Paul says in Ephesians 1:5-6, “In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved.” And it’s to that passage that we’ll turn next.
That’s all the time I have for now. Thank you so much for yours!
Blessings,
Drew
Music for Your Monday
Only There by The Worship Initiative
Thomas R. Schreiner, Paul, Apostle of God’s Glory in Christ: A Pauline Theology, (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020), 30. Cf. Rom. 1:1, 6-7; 9:11; 1 Cor. 1:2,9, 24, 26-30; Gal. 1:6; 1 Thess. 2:12; 5:23-24; 2 Thess. 2:13-14.
Ibid., 301.
J. Cottrell, “Conditional Election,” Grace Unlimited (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany, 1975), 57-62.
Douglas Moo, “The Letter to the Romans,” New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2018), 532.
Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 2011).
Moo, Letter to the Romans, 532-533. Emphasis original.
Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament with Scripture, Subject, and Greek Word Index (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 563.
Ibid., 563-564. For other examples of a past tense verb rendering a future action, see Mk. 11:24; Jn. 13:31; Rev. 10:17.
Ibid., 330.
Ibid.
Another good read, Drew! I’m really enjoying this series!