What is Predestination and Why it is Biblical Truth

My 2 teen boys are taking an English course at their school called Biblical Worldview. They go to a school called Providence and I just found out that they are the only ones in their class that believe in the Doctrine of Predestination.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestine, according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory."--Ephesians 1:3-14

...the doctrine of election simply means that God, uninfluenced and before creation, predetermined certain people to be saved.--John MacArthur

When the Bible speaks of predestination, it speaks of God's sovereign involvement in certain things before they happen. He chooses in advance certain things to take place. For example, he predestined creation. Before God created the world, he decided to do it.

Usually when people think of predestination, they think about whether or not somebody was hit by an automobile on a given day because God had decided ahead of time that that should happen on that day.

Theologically, the principal issue of predestination in the Bible has to do with God selecting people for salvation beforehand. The Bible clearly does teach that somehow God chooses people for salvation before they're even born. Virtually every Christian church believes that, because this concept is so clearly taught in Scripture.

Paul refers to Jacob and Esau. Before they were even born, before they had done any good or evil, God decreed in advance that the elder would serve the younger: "Jacob have I loved; Esau have I hated." The point there is that God had chosen certain benefits for one of those two before they were even born.

The real debate is, On what basis does God predestine? We know that he predestines, but why does he predestine, and what is the basis for his choices? Many Christians believe that God knows in advance what people are going to do, what choices they're going to make, and what activities they're going to be involved in. As he looks through the corridor of time and knows what choices you will make, for example, he knows that you will hear the gospel. He knows whether you will say yes or no. If he knows that you are going to say yes, then he chooses you for salvation on the basis of his prior knowledge. I don't hold that position. I think that God does this sovereignly, not arbitrarily, not whimsically. The only basis I see for predestination in the Bible is the good pleasure of his own will. The only other reason is to honor his only begotten Son. The reason for his selection is not in me and not in you and not in some foreseen good or evil, but in his own sovereignty. - R. C. Sproul

If you don't start with the total depravity of mankind, and understand that we are dead in our sins and trespasses, you'll never get unconditional election as the Bible teaches it. And it's one of the reasons, just as I was thinking through it today, some of the imagery that's used of salvation is, one, that we're born again; and two, that we've been resurrected. And how many dead people caused their own resurrection? And how many babies, before they were conceived, did something to lead to their birth? The answer is absolutely nothing. And I think that's why those analogies or pictures of life are used, because it points to all of humanity; dead in their sins and trespasses, personally culpable before God for their sins, deserving of nothing, and if God had only exercised His justice and His righteousness, only God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit and the angels that didn't fall would be in heaven. God could have done that if He wanted to.

But John's done a great job with the little passages before time in the Titus 1, and pointing out God's desire to redeem a portion of mankind for Himself. So people fall over the total depravity of man, and there are all kinds of varieties....

The second one -- and it's really fresh in my mind 'cause I've been working on the openness of God issue in writing an article for our journal -- is we have a very hard time as human beings believing that we can't think on the same level as God. And it's deifying the human mind and humanizing the divine mind. And if we think we can understand everything that's in the mind of God, which we can't, we will then come to the conclusion that it's unfair, not right, for God to do what He does, because that makes Him a cosmic puppeteer, and all we are is people who go through life and everything we do and say and everything -- we have nothing to be involved in. And so the argument of free will issues -- and I could only find one passage in my New American Standard today -- where anything that has to do with man's choice was translated "free will." And it was in the context of Philemon 14. And all it meant was Paul said I'd like you to do this not out of compulsion, not that I've sort of jammed this down your throat, but I'd rather you do this out of the kindness of your heart. And I would suggest, maybe for discussion among us or for your thinking, that nowhere in the Bible does it suggest that man has a free will and that he acts independent of outside sources, conditions, people, et cetera. Man has a will. But Luther said it was a "will in bondage." And the Bible says that our will is always a slave. It's either a slave to sin, or a slave to righteousness.

So we need to park our pride on our humanity -- the ability to think and see ourselves as sinners, lost forever apart from God's unmerited favor and His grace, unconditionally bestowed by election -- and see ourselves as Isaiah saw the mind of God in Isaiah 55 ... that just clearly says you don't need to know Hebrew to get the point; that God's thoughts are so far above our thoughts that it's the difference between the distance from heaven, which we can't measure on earth... --Dr. Richard Mayhue