How does God’s Sovereignty, Predestination, and Free Will relate to one another?
God predestined us to salvation contingent upon His foreknowledge of whether we would choose to accept or deny Him using our own God-given free will.
If God predestined some people to Heaven, and others to Hell, regardless of their actions, would He not be showing favoritism? Given that God cannot do certain things (e.g., He cannot lie, deny Himself, steal, etc.), would He not be going against His nature by showing favoritism (with reference to Romans 2:11)?
Even though I think https://www.gotquestions.org has tons of valuable information, I disagree with them regarding this statement:
He is not being unfair to those who are not chosen, because they are receiving what they deserve. God’s choosing to be gracious to some is not unfair to the others. No one deserves anything from God; therefore, no one can object if he does not receive anything from God. An illustration would be a man randomly handing out money to five people in a crowd of twenty. Would the fifteen people who did not receive money be upset? Probably so. Do they have a right to be upset? No, they do not. Why? Because the man did not owe anyone money. He simply decided to be gracious to some. (“What Is Predestination?”)
If God is just and fair, this doesn’t make sense at all. It would apply to all of His Creation and it seems people would essentially “luck out” and suffer eternal torment: I’m God, you are not, “turn and you will still burn.” It seems that God would be a psychopathic monster, right?
God chose us before the foundation of the world knowing we would accept the invitation with our God-given free will. If we didn’t have free will to at least the slightest degree (to at least some extent), God would be the author of evil. We would be robots and God would be the robot master.
Every time we do something evil, we could justifiably blame God if we are orchestrated puppets on a string.
If Adam and Eve didn’t have free will when they disobeyed God, God would essentially be responsible for bringing evil into the world.
Therefore, it seems God had the Bible written–to some extent–around what we would do based upon our own free will as He can obviously see perfectly into the future. Similarly, since God knows what we will choose, it couldn’t have happened differently from His perspective but it could have from our perspective; He knows what we will do before we freely do it.
At the same time, God is certainly sovereign and can influence our thoughts, actions, and so forth to accomplish His will.
It’s most likely not this simple and all of these concepts are probably intertwined way beyond human comprehension. I’m thinking God’s Sovereignty, Predestination, and Free Will is like the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in that we cannot totally comprehend it, but maybe I’m wrong; it’s impossible to comprehend, much like counting to infinity.
This stuff is definitely interesting, at least to me. Every move you have made, and will make, relates to what is mentioned above and probably for all of eternity.
Works Cited
“What Is Predestination?” GotQuestions.org, 16 Jan. 2005, https://www.gotquestions.org/predestination.html.