For the last three Sunday mornings, my youth pastor has been giving a mini-series about predestination. We've been looking at different verses and books and videos, trying to figure out the details. We were instructed to chew on it and to challenge each other on what we believe, which left us all with tons of questions. Here's what I've gathered:
God said we were predestined before the beginning of the world. So how did he choose who to save and who to damn to hell? One of the elders in my church said that because he can see into the future, he saw who would become Christians & he predestined them based on their future actions. But then that contradicts grace, because grace means that we can't do anything to deserve it. So if he looked in the future and said "Oh, Katie is going to choose to love me, so I will predestine her to be saved", then that's not true grace, because I had to do something to gain His favor. So does that mean we're all just chosen randomly, and I became a Christian because God predestined me to become a Christian? So God chooses who to save and who to damn. But that isn't fair.
What is fair?
Sending any people at all to heaven isn't fair. We all deserve to go to hell. This morning we looked back on the story of the twins Esau and Jacob in Romans 9:13. The Bible says "Just as it is written: 'Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.'" Why did Jacob get to be loved and blessed? Why was Esau hated for no reason?! This makes me mad. I think this is unfair. They should both get to be blessed!! In another verse in Romans, Romans 9:11, it says "Yet, before the twins were born of had done anything good or bad- in order that God's purpose in election might stand". They were saved BEFORE they had done anything good or bad. That is grace.
Romans 9:14-16: "What than shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.' It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God's mercy."
God knows if we will ever accept him or not. But does that influence his decision on who to predestine or not? No! Hooray for grace!
Grace, only grace, can roll my cold heart's stone away!
