For those of you who have missed the previous post, here is where we are. Our reality has not yet been created. God exist by Himself and nothing else exist except Him. God is love (1 John 4:16). God says, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). Since God does not change and cannot lie then from all eternity past God's intention was to fulfill the ultimate expression of love as defined by Himself. All these thoughts are expanded on in previous post.
In the last post we established that God would not and will not force anyone to do His will and/or respond to Him which led to the fact that God would have to allow anything and anyone He created to have freedom to choose. Choose what? Well, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends", choose to be God's friends. Just who are God's friends? God says, "You are My friends if you do whatever I command you" (John 15:14). What does God command? LOVE! Love Him. Love each other. Love everyone!
Now I need to move on to another point and then we will wrap this post up all nice and neat. Did you know that God knows all the what if's in life? What do I mean? Let's look at some verses.
"Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the powerful acts which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes!" (Matthew 11:21).
What does that say? If something happened. Then what? Then things would have been different.
"And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to the heaven, shall be brought down to hell. For if the mighty works which have been done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day" (Matthew 11:23).
If what? If something had been done, then what? Then things would have been different.
Why do I believe these verses show that God knows what would have happened if things were different? It has everything to do with God not being confined by time. Every thought process God could possibly have will become instant and perfect when placed in eternity. God knows every action and reaction. God knows how each and everything affects each and every other thing. God knows this because He has already saw all possible combinations and sequences of actions and subsequent reactions. I believe God really did know exactly what would happen if things were different in the above verses. I believe God really meant that Tyre and Sidon would have repented and Sodom would have remained. I also know exactly what could be deduced from this. Why did God allow the worst to happen if He knew the best? We are now back to freewill.
In the last post I took some liberty with 1 Corinthians 13. Since God defines love by who He is it seems clear to me that God has our best interest in mind. "Jehovah is good to all; and His tender mercies are over all His works" (Psalm 145:9). God is love and He created everything including you and I out of that love. God says, "I know the purposes which I am purposing for you, says Jehovah; purposes of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope" (Jeremiah 29:11). God knows what's best for us. It's up to us to choose to step into that plan.
So how does God allow us to decide? How does He give us freewill when everything was and is created according to His perfect plan from start to finish? Once again, it has everything to do with God not being in sequential time.
In the game of chess the chess master attempts to think of every move his opponent could possibly make and then think of every counter move he can make. A master can think several moves in advance and develop a strategy that will move him towards the goal of putting his opponents king in checkmate, but, even the chess master can only react to what his opponent does. If the opponent moves in a way unexpected then the chess master must start the entire process over of thinking through all moves and the resulting moves.
God would not be fun to play chess with. Unlike the chess master, God would know every move we could make. Every move we will make. Every move we thought about making. Unlike the chess master God created the game, the rules, the pieces, YOU, the mind you use to play against Him, EVERYTHING! God would have saw the entire game and ever possible out come of the game before the game, you, or anything was created to play it.
Our reality is like that. Since God is not confined by time and does not experience time in a sequential order all of the thought process would be less than nothing when placed in the eternal past God had to plan in before creating anything. Don't get me wrong here. I don't believe God spent zillions of years thinking and rethinking the creation He was about to make. Thinking and rethinking each move of the creation. If He did though it would still have been nothing since the thought process would have a beginning and an end. Anything with a beginning an end is nothing in eternity.
The point I want to make out of all this is God looked into the future of the creation He was about to make and based His creation upon our decisions. God, who is love and wants to be loved, maximizes His creative effort to influence people to decide to be His friends. God stacks all of creation up in a way that points to loving Him but all of creation was built based upon decisions God already saw us make. This is why God says, "all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28). God's purpose was for His creation to love Him and for those who love Him to help others see just how much God love's them. Does this remove freewill? Absolutely not! Just because God saw the decisions we make before we make them does not mean that we did not make those decisions fully on our own using our own ability to make decisions. God shaped creation around decisions He allowed all of creation to make freely.
Out of perfect love and perfect knowledge with a perfect plan God spoke. "And I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, and the living creatures and the elders. And the number of them was myriads and myriads, and thousands of thousands, saying with a great voice, Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing" (Revelations 5:11).
See you next post!
I just learned how to use the spell checker. My popup blocker was killing it. Please forgive any errors in previous post. Off to work with me!
10 comments:
Good thoughts on free-will. I like to think of it this way: God is sovereign enough to give us a free will, and foreknowing enough to know what we will do it.
I don't believe the future has already happened and God uses a crystal ball to look into the future to decide weather or not we deserve to go to heaven or wanted to be his friend.
God knows the future because he will make it happen this way not because it has already happened. He makes some vessils for destruction others he makes as vessils of mercy of which I am one. You are trying to break scripture down into simplistic terms like a computer and a game of chess with all it's if and else statements God is not like this.
He upholds the creation daily and is in us to do and to will according to his good pleasure. The sun will rise tomorrow for He will make it rise. The reason you are reading these words now is because he is causing you to. If this were not the case you would be dead.
Even if He uses your crystal ball method to look into the future he still could not find one person who would come to him by their free will because they are dead in Sin and everything about them is contrary to the things of a righteous and Soverign God that He is.
Therefore there must be another way. This is the way of Irrisistable Grace and the new birth.
Kind Regards
Michael, the debate between free-will and sovereignty has raged for hundreds of years. Unfortunately it will probably continue to do so. While your thoughts might need a little tweaking, I feel that you have a good handle on the concept.
Keep studying the Scriptures. That is where the truth lies. Let the Holy Spirit be your guide and He will lead you into all truth.
Spot on Gordon.
The truth is contained in the scripture and is spiritually discerned by the Spirit. May He lead you into all the truth Michael.
I thank you both for your thoughts.
I don't believe in a crystal ball method either. I'm sorry that is the way I have presented the line of reasoning I'm writing.
Actually I think as I go further along this line of thought that I am pursuing it will become clearer that I'm really pretty far from a crystal ball method.
I hope in my limited ability to elaborate on topics that are far beyond any human to fully grasp that I have built and moved on from one thought to the next in each post. Expanding on the previous thought and building the foundation for the next.
I'm sure when I get to the point where I'm reading to discuss the Trinity that people will disagree but I have hit upon an idea that helps me to understand better and it would be my hope that it would help others too.
I have read somewhere that we should hold onto the things that help us move forward and drop those things are not.
I would hope that as people read through what I write that God would use my limited ability to His Glory and move someone forward in their understanding of Him and thus move closer to Him.
At the very least it encourages thought and I hope sends people running to their bible to either confirm or deny anything I have to say.
One last thought. God's call to salvation is unlimited but His redemption is limited to those who believe.
Fair enough.
I would be very interested to know what you have to say about the trinity. People rarely ever discuss the trinity.
I have hinted out the truths about a tri-une God in my blog however people almost always miss the point. Gordon though came very close one time :)
Why, Puritan, that was almost a compliment! Just kidding. You are going to have to refresh my memory, though, when did we discuss the Trinity?
Gordon,
Puritan was responding to my statements in the post above his.
I will be discussing the Trinity sometime in the near future. First I'll be going through angels, some more on predestination/freewill/
"Irrisistable Grace", satan, heaven before the world/pre-creation.......somewhere in there or after I'm sure I'll get to the Trinity.
Michael,
Good post. I just came to your blog. You are a deep thinker. That is good. Let God's Spirit direct you and follow the Scriptures and you will not go wrong.
Remember no one verse of Scripture can stand alone. Each verse must be understood in light of all of Scripture.
Remember too, that there are some things we were not meant to fully understand, just believe they are.
God doesnt look into the future to find out what will happen, he is outside it. Time s a physical property. Humans and all of creation is restricted by time, we can only mve forward in it and only look backward through it. God however, who was and is and is to come, is not bound by time. He created it. He existed before time, exists now in time and will exists in the future when time no longer does.
As god is outside time he does not look through it but at it.
If you or i were to stand on a street corner and watch a parade go by we would see it in order, or in time. One float after the other. However the news helicoptor which is above the street level can see the whole parade at once. This is a poor analogy but we are on the 'street corner of time' while God is the news crew.
His knowledge of what will happen and basing election upon that knowledge, does not diminish His sovereignty nor does His soverignty diminish our free will.
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