by Grover Gunn
Romans 8:28-30
8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. 8:29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. 8:30 Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. Have you ever heard of the term ordo salutis? That is Latin for "the order of salvation." The idea behind this term is that there is a certain degree of order, both logical and chronological, in the acts of God which effect our salvation experience. And the classic passage on the ordo salutis is today's Scripture reading, Romans 8:28-30. This passage lists five elements of salvation not in an arbitrary order but in an order that is both logical and chronological. Here is the list:
This list is a golden chain with five links, a golden chain which stretches across history all the way from eternity past to eternity future. The first two links - foreknowledge and predestination - are rooted in God's eternal purpose, which is mentioned in verse 28:
- foreknowledge
- predestination
- calling
- justification and
- glorification
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.Foreknowledge and predestination, rooted in God's eternal purpose for history, anchor the chain in eternity past. The last link, glorification, anchors the chain in eternity future. And the middle two links, calling and justification, touch the lives of God's people in history as crucial parts of their salvation experience.This golden chain, which traverses all of history, which is rooted in God's eternal purpose, which is intertwined with our salvation experience, which leads to a future glory,... This golden chain confirms the assurance we find in verse 28, that God does indeed work all things to the good of His people. All that the people of God experience in this life is tied to this golden chain which ultimately and infallibly leads to future glory.
Now what we want to do this Lord's Day is to look at the first link in this golden chain, and that is foreknowledge.
For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son ...I want to examine foreknowledge beginning with a more general examination of the topic and then moving to a more specific treatment of the concept as it is used in our text.The Fact of Foreknowledge To begin with, there is the fact of foreknowledge. From eternity past, God has known the future in exhaustive detail. If sometime today a gnat were to light upon the nose of a giraffe in the darkest recesses of Africa, God would have known from eternity past that this indeed was going to happen at that very place and at that very time. "Known to God from eternity are all His works" (Acts 15:18). And God "works all things according to the counsel of His will" (Ephesians 1:11). Perhaps the longest treatment on this subject in the Bible is found in the prophet Isaiah's extended diatribe against idolatry. According to Isaiah, God's perfect knowledge of the future sets Him apart from the ignorant idols of the pagans:
21 "Present your case," says the LORD. "Bring forth your strong reasons," says the King of Jacob. 22 "Let them bring forth and show us what will happen; let them show the former things, what they were, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare to us things to come. 23 Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods; yes, do good or do evil, that we may be dismayed and see it together. Isaiah 41:21-23 8 I am the LORD, that is My name; and My glory I will not give to another, nor My praise to graven images. 9 Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them." Isaiah 42:8-9 9 Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, 10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure,' 11 Calling a bird of prey from the east, the man who executes My counsel, from a far country. Indeed I have spoken it; I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it; I will also do it. Isaiah 46:9-11
These verses clearly declare God's ability to declare the end from the beginning. This supernatural ability is a part of God's glory, a unique distinctive of the true God which sets Him apart from false idols.
Over the centuries, few have dared to question this clear Scriptural teaching. The heretical Socinians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries challenged this orthodoxy but did not carry the day. There would be little need to defend the fact of God's foreknowledge were it not for the occasional denial that arises from beyond the fringes of time honored orthodoxy.
The Nature of Foreknowledge We have examined the fact of God's exhaustive and infallible foreknowledge of the future from eternity past. Let's now go on now to examine the nature of God's foreknowledge as found in Romans 8:29. I wish to show that the foreknowledge of Romans 8:29 is proactive, personal and compassionate.Proactive First, God's foreknowledge is proactive. To be proactive means to take the initiative and not merely to sit back and see what will happen next. I am using this term to say that God's foreknowledge is not based merely upon passive observation, upon a non-intrusive gathering of the facts. Some who believe in God's foreknowledge argue that God's foreknowledge is based solely upon God's not being limited by time. Time, a basic dimension of created reality, cannot restrain the eternal Creator. God lives in the eternal now with the past, present and future all equally before Him. That is all true enough, but this does not imply that God cannot also be actively involved in history. Unlike Captain John Luke Picard of Star Trek, God is not subject to some Prime Directive which forbids Him from intervening in history and changing its course.On the Internet, there are chat rooms where people discuss ideas and opinions. Some get actively involved, expressing their opinions and challenging the ideas of others. Others limit themselves to passively observing the debate. The passive observer is sometimes called a lurker or a "fly on the wall." The lurker is there, but he is as unobtrusive as a fly on the wall. Well, God is not a transcendent fly on the wall of history, a mere lurker ever in the background.
Or, to use another metaphor, when I say that God foreknows, I am not saying that God is a divine war correspondent, a supra-temporal journalist gathering all the facts. No, God is not a war correspondent; He is the divine Warrior, an active Combatant engaged in the historical battle against the forces of evil.
It is true that God is not limited by time, but this is not the explanation Scripture gives for how God is able to know the future. God is able to declare the end from the beginning because He is able to say, "My counsel shall stand, and I will do My pleasure" (Isaiah 46:9-10). According to the apostle Paul, God "works all things according to the counsel of His will" (Ephesians 1:11). Paul said all things; not some things or even most things but all things. God has decretively planned all that will happen, and He works in history to bring it about. God knows what will happen because He is in active control of what will happen.
God's foreknowledge is like the experience of a gardener who can look out on his freshly planted field in the early spring and foreknow what sort of plants will be growing in each row of his garden even though no plants are visible. He knows that the first row will be tomatoes, the next row corn, the next row squash, and so on. And how does he know? He knows because he is the one who planted the seed in each of these rows. The gardener's foreknowledge is not passive but proactive. In fact, the gardener had this knowledge back in the dead of winter because he then planned his garden. He knew beforehand what plants would grow in which rows first because of his planning and then because of his work to bring those plans into effect. And so it is with God's foreknowledge. It is not mere passive observation but an active foreknowledge rooted in the decretive purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.
Personal God's foreknowledge is always proactive. In Romans 8:29, it is also personal, and this is our second point. We are here dealing with a subset of divine foreknowledge. God foreknows things and God foreknows people. Romans 8:29 deals with the latter, for the passage says not "what God foreknew" but "whom God foreknew." God's knowledge of His people differs in some ways from God's knowledge of things. This personal knowledge involves friendship and intimacy.This is the sort of knowledge we read about in Genesis 18:19, where the Lord said regarding Abraham:
"For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the LORD, to do righteousness and justice, that the LORD may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him."In this verse, to know means to initiate a friendship, a personal relationship. And the purpose of this initiated friendship is to influence Abraham's life for the better.We also read about this personal sort of knowledge in Amos 3:2, where God says concerning Israel, His covenant people, "You only have I known of all the families of the earth." God knew the Egyptians and the Babylonians in the sense of knowing the facts about them, but God knew only Israel with the knowledge of national election and covenant relationship.
Paul uses the word foreknow only one other time in the book of Romans, and there it refers to God's national election of Israel (Romans 11:2). God had a unique relationship with Israel based not on merit but on mercy:
7 "The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; 8 "but because the LORD loves you... Deuteronomy 7:7-8a When Romans 8:29 says that God foreknew certain people from before the foundation of the world, it is saying that God in eternity past chose to be a special Friend to those people. God wasn't merely observing them or things about them. He made the choice to initiate in history a personal and intimate relationship with those people. He looked upon them and said, "Yea, I have loved you with an everlasting love" (cf. Jeremiah 31:3).
Compassionate The foreknowledge of Romans 8:29 is proactive, not passive. It is personal, not impersonal. And, our third point, it is compassionate, not competitive.The foreknowledge of Romans 8:29 is not the transcendent judging of a grand beauty pageant that spans the ages. In a beauty pageant, someone sets the criteria for winning, and all the judges do is to determine who best meets that criteria. In a beauty pageant, there is a sense in which the winner chooses herself through her talent, beauty and intelligence. All the judges are supposed to do is to recognize the fact and then to acknowledge and proclaim it.
God's foreknowledge is not a beauty contest. It is not God saying, "I choose all who on their own repent and believe and persevere" or any other possible criteria. It is not God's making a general statement about an abstract category and then stepping back to passively observe who in history would meet those qualifications. It is not God's allowing people to effectively choose themselves based on their merits and accomplishments. It is not God's stating the qualifications for winning the prize and then looking to see who the winners are.
God's foreknowledge is not a competitive choice but a compassionate choice. It is God's saying, "I choose you, not because you are something, not because you meet my standards, not because you are in any way worthy of the choice. I choose you even though you are nothing. And I am planning to make you something through the work of Jesus applied to you by the Holy Spirit."
In our natural state as fallen children of Adam, there was nothing desirable about us to attract God to us. Emotionally, we hated the light and loved the darkness (John 3:19). Intellectually, we were unable to discern spiritual things (1 Corinthians 2:14). Volitionally, we were taken captive by the devil to do his will (2 Timothy 2:16). Overall, we were spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1). God chose us in Christ not because we were holy and blameless but in order to make us holy and blameless (Ephesians 1:4) God chose us in Christ not because we believed but to enable us to believe (John 6:65; Acts 13:48; Ephesians 2:8).
The divine foreknowledge of Romans 8:29 was God's choice of the Bride of Christ. He found us in our filth, and yet Christ loved us and gave Himself for us that He might sanctify and cleanse us with the washing of water by the word, that He might present us to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that we should be holy and without blemish. When He first set His eye upon us, we were characterized by spots and wrinkles. He planned from the beginning not to stop working upon us until we are holy and blameless. That is the foreknowledge of Romans 8:29.
If you are a true believer in Jesus, then God foreknew you from before the foundation of the world. And your response should be, "Why me?" I am not referring to "Why me?" as an expression of bitterness and complaint, which is how the expression is most commonly used. I am referring to the "Why me?" of happy wonder. I am referring to the "Why me?" of the happy wife who asks, "Why did he ever choose to marry me?" I am referring to the "Why me?" of the happy husband who asks, "Why did she ever accept me?" We don't know why God set His love upon us from eternity past. All we know is that we do not deserve it. And we should in response rejoice and dedicate ourselves to His worship and service.