Yesterday I wrote that Calvinists always seem to read any teaching in Scripture about God’s “sovereignty” as “utter determinism”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
“Sovereignty”, though, is not their only misunderstanding. I believe they also miss what Paul means by predestination.<\/p>\n\n\n
Sometimes I hear Calvinists say, “You can’t avoid talk of predestination – it’s right there in the Bible.”<\/p>\n\n\n
And it is.<\/p>\n\n\n
So it is very important to understand what Paul means when he speaks of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
It’s a word Paul uses only 5 times.<\/p>\n\n\n
In Romans 8:29 & 30<\/p>\n\n\n
Ephesians 1:5 & 11<\/p>\n\n\n
And 1 Corinthians 2:7<\/p>\n\n\n
People get tripped up over their assumptions regarding “predestination”, but if you look closely, Paul is simply saying that Jesus’ life and death and resurrection – and the inclusion of the Gentiles in God’s salvation plan – was always God’s plan, even before the world was created. This is what was predestined.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I believe that 1 Timothy 1:9b-10 is an example of Paul repeating this basic teaching – without using the term “predestination”:<\/p>\n\n\n
“This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus<\/b> before the beginning of time<\/i> but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”<\/p>\n\n\n
God had a plan in place from the beginning. A very expensive plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
It was the work of Christ that was predetermined. Not who would go to heaven and who would perish.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday I wrote that Calvinists always seem to read any teaching in Scripture about God’s “sovereignty” as “utter determinism”.\u00a0 “Sovereignty”, though, is not their only misunderstanding. I believe they also miss what Paul means by predestination. Sometimes I hear Calvinists say, “You can’t avoid talk of predestination – it’s right there in the Bible.” And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5891,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5890\/revisions\/5891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}