“Predesti… What?”

Communion Meditation

Ephesians 1:3-14

When I was in high school I had the following conversation with a smart-aleck adult:

Said he, “You’re a Presbyterian, right?”

Said I, “Yes. Why?”

Said he, “Y’all believe in predestination.

Said I with more than a little trepidation, “Yes.”

Said he in his most smart-aleck voice, thinking himself to be quite the wit, “That means that if I go stand in the middle of the interstate and a big truck hits me going 65 mph, if it’s not my time to go I’ll survive, right?”

Said I in my own smart-aleck tone, “Mister, if you’re stupid enough to do that, then it’s your time to go.”

His response: silence.

I share that conversation as a way of coming at one of Christianity’s most controversial, misunderstood, and misinterpreted doctrines: predestination. And I’ll start by quoting verses 4 & 5 of today’s text, using The Message: “Long before [God] laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!)”

I used The Message’s paraphrase as I would a commentary: to expand and amplify Paul’s words in a way faithful to the Scripture without using a lot of technical theological jargon. And in keeping with David C. George’s commentary on the text, specifically the following sentences: “[Paul] did not say that he had no freedom to choose or that there was anyone else left out of God’s plan. Such conclusions are the result of misinterpreting what Paul said.”

What Paul was essentially saying is that our salvation is neither an accident nor a last minute whim on the part of God. God had us in mind long ago: long before we or even creation existed. Somewhere in eternity God decided to love us, and in Jesus Christ adopt us into his family. This decision was his and his alone. We had nothing to do with it. It was an act of grace: a freely given gift.

Predestination is not fatalism. We are not locked into some eternal fate from which we cannot escape. We are not robots or puppets whose every decision is programmed or manipulated by God. The flip side of this is that we are responsible for our own actions. If we choose to stand in front of a truck rushing toward us at 65 mph, and that truck hits us, we are going to die. We dare not call such a death an act of God. God didn’t create us to be stupid, and to paraphrase the words of Jesus as he responded to one of the Devil’s three temptations in the wilderness, we are not to put the Lord our God to the test.

Predestination is not to be understood in terms of God, somewhere way back there in eternity, randomly or cruelly picking some of us to be saved and some of us to be damned. Within the most narrow interpretation of the idea of a “limited atonement” such an understanding of predestination may be technically correct. Within the entire scope of Scripture it is not – even if a group of hard- shell Dutch Calvinists declared it to be so way back in 1619.

Predestination, once described by Louis Weeks as our “Presbyterian idiosyncrasy,” is more about inclusion than exclusion, more about addition than subtraction. Its emphasis has never been on some preset number of preselected saints. The doctrine of predestination is a word of assurance to those of us who are in Christ, reminding us that our calling has never been an accident of fate or some cold, calculated form of arbitrariness on the part of a cold, calculating, arbitrary God. It is an act of grace, mercy, and love; something we don’t have to earn or even deserve. In the words of Jack Rogers, “[It] is a doctrine designed to provide comfort and induce humility…”

Nothing induces humility better than the second and third verses of “Rock of Ages:”

Not the labors of my hands

Can fulfill Thy laws demands;

Could my zeal no respite know,

Could my tears forever flow,

All for sin could not atone;

Thou must save and Thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring,

Simply to Thy cross I cling;

Naked, come to Thee for dress,

Helpless, look to Thee for grace;

Foul, I to the fountain fly,

Wash me, Savior, or I die.

Outside of God’s sovereign and providential grace we are doomed. We may accept that grace, but only because God chooses to offer it to us. He’s in charge of our salvation; we are not. We can love him only because he first loved us. We cannot choose him apart from his willingness to choose us. Our salvation - our redemption - is dependent on nothing we can or can’t, will or won’t, do. God – not we - is our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.

And somewhere in that great unknown we call eternity our sovereign Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer made a decision to create, redeem, and sustain us. “… he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, through the good pleasure of his will…”

Through the good pleasure of his will God did whatever that thing is that we call predestination. More than that I cannot – I dare not – say. Amen.