What does God know, foreknow, and what can I choose?

An online forum was fielding questions about Open Theism that dipped into subjects like God’s omniscience, foreknowledge, and our free will and I joined the discussion, not to argue or debate, but to clarify what I think and to remember the Gospel. Here is what I contributed. What do you think?

First, God’s omniscience and foreknowledge. As much as we can, let’s go back as far as Scripture takes us: “In the beginning.” We understand that God is eternal, without beginning or end, and at some point, “in the beginning, God created.” God chose to create. Creation is both God’s decision and His doing and at this point He is omniscient, He knows everything about everything there is.

In the moment when God chose to create, He also determined how the creation would work. Paul cites two overarching laws of creation: The law of the Spirit of life in Christ and the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2). When the creation works as God intended, there is life and blessing. We see this in the first days of creation. God speaks and there is light, there is land, there is life in different forms, no questions asked. God speaks and His will is done; none of these has a will of their own to do anything but come forth. Everything is good—very good.

But God also gave to some in His creation the stewardship of choice. We see this in His command to Adam.

Genesis 2:16-17 “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.”

To summarize, creation is by God’s choice and He determined the laws by which it would work: blessing and life, or sin and death. He therefore knew everything about this creation from its beginning to its future course, and nothing can operate outside His knowledge. I think what Jesus told the disciples the night of His betrayal are words He could have spoken in the beginning, “The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit. If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown aside” (John 15:5-6).

God knows His creation, how He made it, and how it will behave. It can work no other way because creation is constrained by God’s laws. God has predetermined both the course of things and their consequences.

This brings us to our will and the question, how free is it? I think we can reach a balanced understanding under these premises:

• God has granted us to make meaningful choices. By meaningful I mean that God created us to reason, to weigh options and to reach conclusions, and our decisions have consequences that we either live, or die, by. Joshua understood this when he exhorted Israel, “Choose this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15).
• God determines what our choices are. Joshua was essentially saying to Israel, here are your options: Serve God or serve the gods of the people around you. You can’t have it any other way, or both ways. You must choose one or the other. Jesus would say later, “No one can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24).
  
  Another time, God told Israel, “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life…” (Deuteronomy 30:19). We are free — we are required — to choose, but we do not decide either the choices or their consequences. These are God’s sovereign decree.
  
• God determines the consequences. I go back to the two great laws that Paul cites. Death is the wages of sin. I don’t like this, but I cannot change it. God determined this is how His creation works. Also true is that life is by the law of the Spirit. Jesus said it is the Spirit who gives life (John 6:63) and Jesus said, “I am the life.” Life comes only by the Father who resurrects the dead, the Son who is the resurrection and the Spirit who gives life. This is narrow, but it is how God says creation — and the new creation — work. I can kick against these goads all I want, but it’s only to my own harm.
• God does not determine the choice I make, but He declares His desire for me. Look again at Deuteronomy 30:19. God tells Israel their options — life and death, blessing and curse — and then He tells them what He wants: Choose life, that you may live.

When we gather these threads, I see this picture emerge. I have choices to make and I am free to make them, but my freedom is limited to the choices that God has ordained. I have no freedom to choose the consequences or to alter the ones God has ordained. God has sovereignly decreed the laws that govern life and death and the paths that lead to both; therefore, He has predetermined our destiny. I cannot carve another path or choose another destination — these are foreordained. But I can choose God’s way or mine, and reap the consequences.

What is the Gospel in all this? We are dead in sin (Ephesians 2:1), yet God has set life before us. He has spread a table in the presence of His enemies upon which He has set Christ: The Bread of Life and living water. And He beckons, “Come, choose life. Come, eat and drink so that you hunger and thirst no more.” He declares the desire of His heart.

How can we choose, if we are dead in sin? Left to ourselves, we can’t. But God has not left us to ourselves. He sent Christ so that the perishing should not perish but have life.

It is all God’s grace. God created the choices, granted the stewardship to choose, and even granted repentance after we made the wrong choice. “By grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,” says the Apostle Paul. For this reason, he urges, “receive not the grace of God in vain.”

This leaves us with a question that God asked His ancient people, “Why will you die?” (Ezekiel 18:31, 33:11).