But we must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth. For this purpose he called you through our proclamation of the good news, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.
So, what is predestination? Have you ever tried to explain it to someone? Would it surprise you to know that whatever you explained was probably wrong? I had an experience several years ago of trying to explain predestination that was very strange and kind of funny. My wife, Diane, called me from work and told me that over the past few days she and her co-workers had been discussing predestination. All of them agreed that they didn’t believe in predestination. Diane’s told them that she didn’t think that what they were calling predestination was really predestination (she remembered me talking about predestination in the past, and what they were saying didn’t match with what she had heard me say). When she called me, she asked if I would be willing to be put on speakerphone to talk with them about predestination. I said yes, and so we had a conversation about predestination.
I started by asking them what they thought predestination was. One was a Roman Catholic, another was a Southern Baptist, and both were convinced that their denominations didn’t believe in predestination. After listening to their answers, I told them that what they were calling predestination really wasn’t predestination at all. I tried to explain to them what predestination was (a description I’ll give you a little later). After listening to me, both said that they still didn’t believe in predestination. I then responded that they actually did, but that they probably weren’t getting what I said. They listened again, and said that they didn’t believe in it. Now, I’m a bit stubborn on this because I knew that they actually were believing in predestination, despite the fact that they said they weren’t. Everything they were telling me concerning what they believed indicated that they actually did believe in predestination. But they kept insisting that they didn’t. Do you know how frustrating that is?
Next step: I did a quiz with them to test whether they believed in predestination. I’ll give you the same quiz:
- Do you believe that God created everything? If you said “yes,” then you are well on your way to believing in predestination.
- Do you believe that God is in heaven? If you said “yes,” then you are well on your way to believing in predestination.
- Do you believe that God is in charge of who gets into heaven or not, and that ultimately God gets to decide? If you said “yes,” then you do believe in predestination.
- Do you believe that God loves us and wants us in heaven? If you said “yes,” then you do believe in predestination.
As an interesting side note to this, there was a national study done in 1997 on people’s beliefs in heaven. Of all the people surveyed, 67% said that they believed in heaven. That’s good. Over 2/3rds of the population believes in heaven. What was even more interesting was that 87% believed that they were going to heaven when they died. Fascinating. 20% of all the people who don’t believe in heaven still believe they are going anyway. Here’s the funniest part: only 18% believed that their friends were going to heaven.
Anyway, back to the story. So after the quiz, I told Diane’s co-workers that they believed in predestination. They both insisted that they didn’t. I asked the Southern Baptist, “Wait, don’t you believe that scripture in inerrent?” “Yes,” she replied. “Then you believe in predestination because predestination comes from scripture. Paul wrote about it in Romans and in Thessalonians.” She said, “Well, I don’t believe it is in scripture.” I then read a passage from Romans that in which Paul wrote about predestination and even used the word. She still said that she didn’t believe in it. With the Roman Catholic, I told her that basically Catholic theology agrees with predestination. She insisted that despite this, and despite the fact she agrees with Catholic theology, she didn’t believe in predestination. This was a very frustrating thirty minutes of my life.
I don’t think these two were stupid or anything. They just had the same problem a lot of people have with the idea of predestination. It’s not that people don’t believe in it. The main problem is that most people think that predestination means something that it doesn’t. It’s like a lot of religious concept: just because people don’t understand an idea doesn’t mean they don’t have strong opinions about that idea. I hear this at times from people who say that they can’t become Presbyterian because they don’t believe in predestination. They think that they don’t believe in it, but they do. They just don’t know it.
So what is predestination? The idea of predestination all starts with the story of Creation in Genesis. God creates Adam and Eve. What does God want with them? God wants a relationship with them. God wants to live in communion with them. God wants them to share in God’s love. God has chosen them to live with God. Despite God’s intention and invitation, Adam and Eve can’t handle it. They go against God by seeking the knowledge of good and evil, a knowledge that only God is prepared to understand. They break the relationship with God, which is why they have to leave the garden. But God doesn’t abandon them. God has chosen them. The word “chose” can be synonymous with “predestined.” They both have to do with God choosing humans for salvation.
Next comes Abraham. God chose Abraham, as well as all of Abraham’s offspring, so that they could be the “chosen” people. God wanted them to live in communion with God, despite their sin, so God chose them.
The story of Jesus is a story of predestination. Complete this sentence: Jesus died for our sins so that we can be ______. If you inserted the word “saved,” you are correct. The whole idea of Jesus dying on the cross is that despite human sin, God has chosen us for salvation. Jesus died, and was resurrected, so that we can all live in communion with God both in this life and the next. This brings up something interesting. Have you ever had someone come up to you and ask if you were saved, and if so, when? Or have you ever had anyone say to you that they were saved in a particular place and time. When they ask this or say this, they actually are wrong. When they say they were saved at a particular time and place, they really aren’t saying when they were saved. What they are telling you is when they came to realize that they were saved. There’s a big difference between the two. Do you know when they really were saved? It was the same time you and I were: 2000 years ago when Jesus died on the cross. If Jesus died to save us, then all of us were saved at the same time.
If we believe that Jesus died for our sins, and if we believe that Jesus dying on the cross has saved us, then the moment we are saved isn’t the moment when we have a born again experience. The moment we were saved was when Jesus died on the cross. In fact, there is a part of the Apostle’s Creed that says that Jesus not only saved the people living then and in the future, but also in the past. Do you remember the part of the Apostle’s Creed where it says that Jesus “descended into Hell”? That phrase is part of a tradition not found in scripture that says that on the day between Jesus’ death and resurrection, he went into Hell and offered salvation to all people who had ever lived. In other words, Jesus chose them, too. Jesus died to save all people—past, present and future.
Paul picked up on this idea, and called it “election,” although in some Bibles the word is also translated as “predestination.” In essence, Paul was saying that God chose us from the before conception to be saved, and that God wants all of us to be saved. Paul wrote about the idea of election to try to remind people that it wasn’t what they do or believe that gets them saved. It is God’s love, sacrifice, and invitation that came through Jesus Christ that saves us.
Fast-forward 1500 years. The idea of predestination became associated with Presbyterians through John Calvin. Calvin picked up on the idea and wrote about it in order to comfort the people of Geneva who had left the Roman Catholic Church to become Protestants. These converts were worried that they might not be saved because the Catholic Church had taught them that they had to earn salvation. Calvin wrote about predestination as a way of saying to them, “Quit worrying about whether or not you can get into heaven. Quit worrying about whether or not God loves you. God is in charge, and God has chosen you, and all your works can’t get you in heaven or get God to love you because God already loves you and has invited you into the kingdom. The fact that you are part of this church says that God has chosen you. So quit worrying about it. God is in charge and you can trust in God.”
So, again, what is predestination? What confuses most people is that they get “predetermination” confused with “predestination.” Predestination is not the same as predetermination. Predetermination is “fate,” or what the Chinese call “joss.” It’s the idea that God, or some sort of divine power, has “predetermined” ahead of time exactly how our lives will be lived. Predetermination is the idea that God is a cosmic puppet-master, controlling all of our decisions, actions, choices, and outcomes. Predetermination is the idea that God, before everything was created, before the Big-Bang, decided what everything would be and how it would be carried out. Predetermination makes us little robots with no free will. This is not what predestination believes. I’ll repeat: THIS IS NOT WHAT PREDESTINATION BELIEVES.
Predestination has to do with our destiny and destination. It has to do with where we will go when we die. It has to do with whether we are invited to live in God’s kingdom in this life. Predestination believes that God is the only one who can choose whether we are saved or not. Nothing we can do can change that outcome. Predestination also believes that God chooses out of love, and that Christ died on the cross so that all of us would be “chosen,” “elected,” and “predestined” for salvation. Predestination has to do with our destination when we die, and our destiny in this life to be among God’s chosen. It has nothing to do with fate. In fact, all the freedom in the world is given us in being predestined, because even though God may have chosen us for salvation, God still gives us the freedom to say no. God gives us the freedom to reject our being chosen. God may choose us, but we have the freedom not to choose God back.
Let me explain this in an easier way to understand. Below you will see map. It is an online map that shows the best route between Calvin Church and Bethany Lutheran Church in Olean, New York, where I gave a talk on Saturday.
The featured line on the map, between the 1 and the 2, shows the best route to Olean. A group of Lutheran pastors called me last spring and asked me if I would be willing to talk with them on how to create a healthier church. In essence, they were “choosing” me to give this talk. And I said yes. So, Olean became my destination on November 10th. In a sense, I was “predestined” (they offered me the opportunity to make them my destination) by these folks to give a talk in Olean. Here’s where my freedom came in. I could choose to take the fastest route, which meant driving up interstate 79, picking up interstate 90 toward Buffalo, and then taking I-86 through New York state to Olean. That would be the best, easiest, safest, and quickest route. In some ways taking this route is very similar to God inviting us to live in communion with God, and our saying, “yes, show me the fastest route to you, and I’ll take it.”
Even though I can take that route, it doesn’t mean I have to. I could also have chosen to take I-79 to I-80 east, and gotten off I-80 in DuBois in order to take route 219 from there up to Olean. It would have added about an hour to my trip. Or I could have decided to take back roads all through northern Pennsylvania, which would have added another hour or two to the trip. And on the way I could stop at the big casino on the Seneca Indian reservation, and basically wasted all my money and time. Or I could have decided to travel from I-79 to I-80 west, heading toward California, picking up a boat to cross the Pacific, traveling by caravan across China and the Middle East, getting on some rich person’s yacht in Beirut to travel along the Mediterranean, debarking and stealing a horse in Spain and traveling through France, where I would take the Chunnel to England, get on a plane for New York City, rent a car, and drive along I-86 to Olean. I have the freedom to decide my route, my activities, and my mode of travel. The only stipulation is that I get to Olean by Saturday morning. And I still have more freedom. I could simply choose to ignore the invitation completely and just say home or go wherever I wanted.
Predestination is like the question of how I get to Olean, or whether I get to Olean. God chooses us for salvation, but we have the freedom to decide how we will respond to this gift of salvation. Will we choose the best route to living in communion with God? Will we choose a route that is partly based on a desire to serve God, and partly to serve ourselves? Will we choose whatever route we want, or choose not to respond to God’s invitation? All predestination says is that God has chosen us for salvation. It does not force us to say yes to God, nor to accept God’s invitation.
Presbyterians believe in predestination because it is a theological idea that emphasizes God’s love and God’s invitation to us, an invitation that was given to everyone when Jesus died on the cross. So here’s the basic message of predestination: Quit worrying about whether you are saved or not. God has chosen you. The evidence of this is that you are here and that you are worshiping God. Only someone who has been chosen by God would respond through worship, prayer, and service. So quit worrying about what will happen to you when you die, and start asking a basic question: Now that I’ve been chosen by God, how will I live my life? Will I choose to live it in God’s way, or will I refuse the gift and live my own way?
Amen.
