Sunday, August 12, 2012

Predestination, Freewill and the “God tense”

We live in the midst of time and so we have a clear past, present and future tense. But God is outside time and so has no past present or future. He is present in all time.
To give an example, an ant occupies a small area of space. When a boot comes down to crush him, he finds that changing his space to the adjoining space does not help as the boot is there also! So God is in all spaces and there is no place where He is not there. So also He is in all time.
So how does a person who is outside time communicate to a person who is within time? That is the challenge of scripture.
When God says “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” it also means you are saved and you were saved. Similarly when God says “He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” it is referring to the present condemnation of the judgement of condemnation which will be at the judgement seat in the future.
We also need to realise that the fact that God knows the choices you will make in the future does not take away your responsibility for the choices you make.
So God knowing the choices you are going to make, begins to work in your life from before you are born to prepare you for the good work He has planned for you to do (Eph 2:10) in the present.
If we understand this concept we will find that many of the difficulties of interpreting the Bible lie predestination or freewill, once saved always saved versus you can lose your salvation, etc. disappear. Even the question what happens to you when you die if the judgement is in the future vanishes if we go to a place outside time.

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