Election and Foreknowledge (1 Peter 1:1-2)

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Introduction to Election and Foreknowledge in 1 Peter

Terms and conditions apply. See website for details. This week on The Wrap Report, we have a little bit something special for you. We're gonna continue with the study that I was doing in First Peter. In this episode, we're gonna deal with two issues that come under great discussion and disagreement and controversy.

That is the topic of election and foreknowledge, both of which are discussed in First Peter 1, 1 -2. So we're gonna spend an hour digging into First Peter and looking at the issue of the doctrine of election and God's foreknowledge.

And really, what you're gonna see is we're gonna spend a lot of time on the attributes of God. Coming your way right now on The Wrap Report.

Prayer and the Burden of Suffering in First Peter

Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

All right, well, why don't we start with a word of prayer? Crazy thing to do before studying the Bible. So let's pray. Heavenly Father, we're grateful for the fact that we can come together to study your word, to look at this book of First Peter, a book that I think is so helpful for us in our day and age right now in this country.

Oh, just crazy times that we're in. And this is a book that could help us to deal with the issue of suffering, to deal with the issue of just having our minds fixed upon you and the perspective that Peter provides for us.

The understanding that we need to go through suffering that he provides is wonderful. It's just so rich in its teachings, lifts you up on high. And we ask, Lord, that we would just gleam a little of what you have from your word and that you and the personal Holy Spirit would illuminate our minds to an understanding and application of your word at this time.

In Christ's name, amen. Well, all right. Well, I got really, really far last week. If you wanna grab that chair, then you can pull that over there if you want. So it's heavy, sorry. So one of the things that, you know, Yim's always concerned with me is that I don't go fast enough.

So that's up to you guys. If you feel I'm going too slow, you let me know. But I just, especially with this book, it's fun to just dig in and get everything out of it if we can. So, but my way of trying to compensate that I may move slow is to just do lots of review and give big overviews.

So maybe that feels like, Yim likes to move forward on things. So I didn't get very far. We only got to, we didn't even finish verse one last week. So don't laugh. There's been times where some people, not me, but other people have only gotten to one word.

I mean, I, you know, one of the jokes I always have is there's one of the Puritans that, because when the Puritans started preaching, what they would do is like several of them got together and they all decided that they would, move that out so I can see my bride there.

Camera's in the way. Sorry, that's the one I want to look at the most. But the Puritans, they had got, a bunch of Puritans got together and all decided they would just preach different books of the Bible and like just dig in as much as they can so that they figured when they were done, all their writings, that's like everything you need on the Bible.

And one such preacher was in the book of Job for 38 years. You think about that, like, okay, can we move on to another? So I won't be in first Peter for 38 years. There's that comfort. Probably won't even be alive in 38 years.

So, but we look at first Peter, we mentioned last week. This is, this really is a book. It's, you know, dealing with issues of suffering. And it's, you know, it is interesting that I, a friend of mine sent me after last week, Mike sent me some stuff.

He attends out at Grace Community Church. So I guess Grace Community Church started a, you know, I guess their Sunday evenings when they have different people preaching and they're all going to be preaching through first Peter.

And so they kind of said the same reason that we kind of came to with, let's start with first Peter. Cause looking at America, we're probably going to be suffering, you know? And so, so I'll read the first three verses with the hopes that we'll get there to like first three, but Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who reside as aliens scattered throughout Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God, the father, by sanctifying, by the sanctifying work of the spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood.

May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure. I started to, as some of you guys know, with the email I sent out, I started to start working to memorize the book of first Peter. And so, but I'm doing it out of the ESV.

I wish my Bible app that I use for that. If any of you want to join, I know you joined. It's called Versus, is the app. It helps you, it's just, you play different games to do memorization. And I'm building a collection for first Peter.

And so you could just work through, just remember to review. Cause if you don't review, we talked about that, right? If you don't review what you memorize, you know, it's, yeah, it's gone. You at least will, you know, we were talking about this the other night, that like when you memorize books of the Bible, it actually does help you.

You get an overview of the whole book. You get the context. You actually start to, because to memorize it, we end up naturally building an outline. And even if you don't keep up with the memorization, like Titus, I didn't keep up with that, but I can tell you basically the theme of Titus.

I could tell you basic structure of it, where things are, because to memorize it, I had to kind of have the big points, right? And so, but why memorize? I'm going to say the reason memorization is going to be important is because I'm not a prophet.

And I just think that we're all going to be in jail in a couple of years. And unlike now, when you go to jail and they give you a Bible, I think when we go to jail, they won't give us a Bible. So the only Bible we're going to have is the one that's up here, right?

And so I'm trying to work at my memorization to just to have it so that I have that if that ends up happening. The book that I'm really going to try to memorize is Hebrews because if there was one book that like, if I only had one book of the Bible, I think I'd want Hebrews.

It's lifts Christ up so high, so. But this might be a good one if we're in jail to remember the suffering and what Peter lays out for us. We're going to dig into some interesting things here. So if I end up giving you the ESV at times, it's because that's what I have memorized and it's worded differently.

But so just to recap as well. So we have here, it says to those who reside as aliens and you're scattered throughout Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia. So the thing we mentioned last week, right?

This is where we end up seeing this idea that Peter uses in two places of aliens. It's in here in verse one and then in two verse 11, where he talks about that this is not our home, right? And he starts off with this.

It is true in this case, they are literal aliens, right? These are, they were from Jerusalem or different areas of Judea and because of persecution had fled. And we talked about that, that that does happen, right?

I mentioned it last week, but it just to remind us it, you know, there's many people when persecution comes, there's a lot of people think like as Christians we're to, you know, just, we shouldn't flee, we shouldn't scatter, but we don't see that in the New Testament, we don't see anywhere in the New Testament where the writers of the scriptures condemn these people for scattering.

In fact, that scattering spread the gospel. So, you know, it's turned out for a good thing, but we get at the end of this where we stopped and we stopped last week on the word who are chosen because I figured if we started with that, we were not gonna end on time.

And I said, I wanna try to end on time and respect your time. So the first one that we have is this word for chosen. And this is, this word is the idea of where we get election from, elektos, sounds like election.

That is that doctrine that seems to be the bad doctrine that we're not supposed to talk about, right? That people like get all upset over. So when we look at the doctrine of election, he starts off with that.

So, I mean, think about this. He's gonna talk about suffering, right? Why start off with a discussion on election? What do you think?

Maybe because elections are God's sovereignty. So like when we suffer, it's God's sovereignty. It's something he's chosen to happen to us.

That's right, because election has, actually election is tied directly to God's, to our belief and suffering. If you look at Philippians 129, this is the verse, this is the passage when I was preaching through Philippians.

I used to, I don't know if any of you guys know who Fred Zasval is. He's a pastor not too far from here, actually, a seminary professor and a author. But he was trying to convert me or convince me, whichever you want to use, to Calvinism when I was still fighting it.

And it was interesting with it because one issue I had, we get into long discussions on Ephesians 2, 8, 9. Is salvation the gift or is our faith the gift? And when you look at the Greek structure, either one could be true.

I was preaching through Philippians and came to Philippians 129. And I remember having to call Fred up and say, Fred, you're right and I'm wrong. Now, so I told him, don't use Ephesians 2, 8, 9. Use Philippians 129, because there's no way around this.

It says, for to you, it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his. So the suffering is tied directly to this idea that we're granted belief. And by the way, the word granted here, it's interesting, it means to pardon.

You've been pardoned, not just to believe, but pardoned to suffer. We don't like to think of that, right? Especially American Christianity. This is why I think so many American Christians right now are having this crisis of faith.

The thought in American Christianity is like everything should be comfortable. This comfortable Christianity where if I'm doing right, God is gonna bless me. And that's just not biblical. We don't see that in the scriptures.

We don't see where scripture says that we're not gonna suffer in this world. In fact, James tells us not if trials come, but when trials come. There's the expectation. And Peter is gonna lay that same thing out as well.

So in Paul's case, in Philippians, he's gonna basically make the case to say that it was actually granted to us to suffer. We don't think of suffering as something God grants to us. It's not what we actually want, but it is something that actually, it grows us.

Most of us, if we think about it, those times in our life that we had the greatest struggle are often the times in our life that we grew the most, right? And so what we end up seeing is that this belief that we have, it's been granted to us.

And this is the idea of election. The idea that we see, if you look in Ephesians 1, in verse four, this is something that will, that helps us because here in Ephesians 1, you get from three downward is one long run-on sentence that shows the Trinity in our salvation.

How God the Father planned it, and God the Son provided it, and then God the Spirit protected it. But then you have this when speaking of the Father in verse four, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy and blameless before Him in love.

So you have here this same idea, the same word that we have in Peter's writing here in Ephesians. Now, this is a passage that brings up interesting things because a lot of people end up trying to make the argument, well, see, God, before He created time, had elected us.

And that sounds really good. It sounds like what it's saying, but there's a slight problem in that. That makes God a being of time. There was no before time with God, right? It's just all an eternal now for Him.

And the concept of time is something that God can work within, but He's not bound by it. So there really wasn't a before time for God. So the question then becomes, well, why did Paul write that? Why did God say that?

Well, I think a very simple reason. What he's trying to say is before there was time, God knew who the elect were. I can't think of a stronger way to say, for God to say, you had nothing to do with it, right?

I mean, we want to, and this is true today, as much as it is in the first century, people want to earn their own salvation, right? And so we wanna add something to it. And every man-made religion is gonna do that.

And what you end up seeing is there's no clearer way to say you had nothing to do with it than to say, not only before you were born, you were elect, before your parents were born, you were elect. No, before there even was a universe, before God created the time-space continuum, you were elect, you were chosen.

Kind of a mind-boggling thing to think about. But what you end up with it is the thought that if God elected us before we were born, guess what? One thing that's gonna tell us is that we weren't elect because we were really good, which means if we're really bad and we sin, we don't lose that.

I mean, think about the doctrine of that you can lose your salvation, what that says, that God elected you before the foundation of time. He knew before he created time, he knew who would be saved, but then in the same way, he kind of was surprised when you did something to lose your salvation, right?

Like, did he not know what you were gonna do when he elected you before you were ever born? No, of course he knew what you were gonna do, right? So you see, when we understand the doctrine of election, there's some other doctrines that we find are either true or not true, right?

So the doctrine of election does rub people the wrong way though. And I think the reason this rubs people the wrong way is because we don't add anything to our salvation. I know you saw the debate I did on Apologetics Live on Calvinism with that guy, Seth.

And if you watch that, the struggle Seth had was he wants to add something to his salvation. He did something, he worked with God and the two, he believed and God regenerated him. I mean, they worked together.

And I brought him to this passage in Philippians and was like, but it was given to you. Your belief wasn't yours, according to that. It was granted to you. So it's not your belief, right? But this is the thing now, and if you watch that debate, one of the things I said to him is experientially, we chose God and that's the struggle many people have.

We know what we experienced. We experienced that we chose God and therefore we say, well, then that's what happened, I chose God. But theologically, God chose us. Which one's right? Well, both actually.

I think I shared this last week, but I will share it again because this is, when we talk about the issues of election and Calvinism and things like this, so many people struggle with this on both sides.

And I think there's an easy way to explain these things that people can, most people, Seth didn't want to agree to it, but most people. And in Seth's case, I don't think he studied theology very much, so he hasn't thought it through.

So I'll give him the benefit of doubt. But when we think about the scriptures, if I asked you who wrote 1 Peter, who wrote 1 Peter? Peter, you sure? Who wrote 1 Peter? God, right? So we get in this struggle, like who actually wrote it?

Well, Peter physically wrote it, didn't he? But then we know from scripture that God worked through him so that every word that's written is God's word. It says God intended it. It's a doctrine when we look at the doctrine of inspiration, this is a doctrine known as superintending.

God super intended the words in such a way that every word, the authors wrote was exactly as God intended it. He works through the human authors to write in such a way that even though they write with their own style, Peter writes different than John, who writes different than Moses, who writes different than Paul.

And they can even write personal things. Paul can say to Titus, hey, bring my books, bring my cloak, it's gonna be cold this winter. Personal things. And yet that's exactly as God intended it to be written.

The arguments that we end up seeing in scripture is that it's down even to words that are singular or plural. Paul makes an argument about Abraham, whether it's seed or seeds in Galatians, right? So down to the specific letters, it's exactly as God intended it to be.

Who gets 100 of the credit? God does. Even though Peter physically wrote this, he doesn't get the credit for it because it's God's word. Did Peter choose the words that he wanted to write? Yes. Did God choose the words that Peter was to write?

Yes. And you go, well, how do they work together? We don't fully understand, but we end up knowing when it comes to scripture, very few people disagree with the fact that God works through the human authors in such a way that they chose to write and yet God wrote through them.

That makes sense? Okay. We see this in another area, our sanctification. We're saved, do we do good works? See, there's hesitation after the last one because like, oh, is this a trick question? Do we do good works?

Yeah. But what does scripture say? That it's God who does those works through us, right? Can we take credit for doing good works? No. Who gets 100 of the credit? God does. So it's again, this doctrine of superintending is in play.

God is working through us in our sanctification that when we do good works, God gets 100 of the credit. He worked through us that even though we chose to do good works, God was the one working through us.

Well, if we see this doctrine in inspiration, in sanctification, is it hard to now apply it to regeneration? And so that's how I approach the doctrine of election when it comes to these matters. I approach it with an understanding of this doctrine of superintending, that God can work through us in such a way that we think we're making decisions.

We think we're choosing God. We're believing in God. And yet that belief is something God grants to us. He is working in us so that even that decision that we're making is what God intended to happen.

Now, when you have a position like that, what it means is that I get called a heretic because I'm not a Calvinist, and I get called a heretic because I am a Calvinist. The only thing everyone agrees on is I'm a heretic.

Right? So, okay. But you know, and this is why I usually don't use the term Calvinism with people because I don't know what they mean by it. It was kind of funny if any of you saw the debate with Seth, because he was arguing that, well, I'm a Calvinist.

I said, I don't use that term. And it's funny because people in the chat were going, yeah, he never calls himself a Calvinist. Why? Because I don't know what someone else means by it. And most people have a wrong definition of it.

I actually had a friend of mine who wrote a book. He calls Calvinism a heretic. But when I went through all the five points of Calvinism without using the labels, just using definitions, he's a five point Calvinist.

He doesn't know it because he's got a wrong definition. Right? And so sometimes the terminology we use can be problematic. So what we end up seeing here is that Peter's gonna start before he gets into the suffering, before he gets into what God did saving us, the first point he was gonna make is that we were chosen.

We were elect. And as we saw from Ephesians, we were elect long ago. God knew who he was gonna choose. So let me get to some things that maybe you've heard as arguments. Maybe you're even thinking it when it comes to election.

And then we'll see if there's any other questions. But some people have an issue with election because they think that it means if God elected you before the foundation of time, before we were born, it means that he is going to force us against our will to believe.

That's a thing that many people think. And that's why they have such a problem with the idea of Calvinism, because they think that what it is is that God forces you to believe something. In fact, I know you saw the debate.

That was the thing Seth kept coming back to. He kept saying, but you believe that God forces us to believe. And I'm like, I've never said that. He ended up giving me a time marker where he said that I did.

And I said, if I did, I misspoke. But like two hours, the whole time I'm saying, I do not believe God forces us to believe. So if I did say it, I misspoke, you know? But there's many who do struggle because, A, as I mentioned earlier, they think that they know what they experienced and they contributed something.

Or they have the idea that if God elected, that it forces the decision. But one of the things, whenever we study theology, okay? And if you take my class on theology, at Striving Fraternity's YouTube channel, we have 80 lessons, all for free.

That's how we make money. A Jewish guy giving away things for free. I mean, clearly an act of God, all right? But whenever you study theology, and if you take my class, you see over and over and over again, I end up saying the most important thing to do in studying theology is to know the attributes of God.

Reason being is if you know the character of God and you know his perfections, then you don't fall into some errors. And we're gonna talk about some of them here. So one of the ones that people have when it comes to this idea with election they struggle with, that God would somehow have to force you.

Well, let's look at two attributes of God. Then we're gonna look at this again when we look at foreknowledge. God's eternality and God's omniscience. Okay, so who can define omniscience? All-knowing, right?

He knows everything. So here's a question. Did God ever learn anything? You don't think about that, right? But learning requires observation. He never learned anything. I like to say God never had a bright idea in his life.

He just knows it all. We can't understand that, right? Everything we know was learned, right? Either someone taught us or it's through observation. What is it like to just know everything? Okay, guys, some of us would like to just know, just understand our wives.

It'd be nice, right? And wives are going, yeah, I don't even wanna go there. Like, no, no, they don't wanna know what's in their mind. Right? So, like, we cannot understand the concept of just knowing everything.

In fact, not only does God know everything that happened, is happening, will happen, he even knows all the results of things that didn't happen. Jesus could say to the people when he was on the earth, if the people in Sodom and Gomorrah saw the works that you saw, they would have repented.

And he could say something like that with a complete knowledge. We can't even comprehend a knowledge like that. God actually knows the results of it. Think about this. Every decision we didn't make and all of the ramifications of that, right?

We struggle to even think about simple things. Now that you think about this, he's also eternal. He's outside of time. As an eternal being, there's no idea of time with him. And so what you end up seeing is what I call with God, everything's the eternal now.

Adam and Eve are in the garden. Jesus is on the cross. Abraham's offering Isaac. We're here having this study. Whatever happens 10 years from now, it's all the same now to him. And that's something like, again, we can't wrap our heads around, but if he's not bound by time, then it's like all now.

And so now you put this in perspective when he's gonna say that he elects us. Well, is this something where he's gonna force it? Well, we already saw that he works through us, but you see him not being bound by time means that he could elect us.

And we think of it as he elected us here, but we believed here. And we think then, well, if he elected us back here, then we have no choice but to believe here. But see, for God, it's different. Those two events are the same time, in a sense.

There is no time. It's just now. And he has a complete knowledge. So when you think about that, that helps us to see some of the problems that people have. Because it's not that he forced us to believe because he elected us in the past.

It's the past to us, but not to God. Does that make sense? Okay, so before we get into foreknowledge, because we're gonna have issues there, I wanna open up to just see, is there any questions with any of that when it comes to election?

So you're saying God didn't force our faith because he's outside of time. But what does time, how does that make a difference? If time was applied, he chose before the foundations of the world, but a time, oh, we believe, versus he's outside of time, you believe.

That shouldn't affect our volition nor his. Yeah, and that's the thing.

So the issue of the fact that God's outside of time, but we're not, doesn't affect our volition, right? And you're right. And this is why what we tend to do, we tend to think of everything from our vantage point because it's the only point we understand, right?

I mean, what does the solar system look like from the moon? Don't know. Does it look different? Maybe not too much. What does the solar system look like from Betelgeuse? Very different. Totally different perspective.

If you don't know, that star, it's a really giant sun. But, and that's why if you ever go to the Creation Museum, go to the planetarium. Jason Lyle did like an amazing job with the planetarium where he tries to show the different perspective that you'd see at these different stars and how everything would look totally different from that vantage point.

Well, that's the same thing here. From our vantage point, we're bound by time. We kind of think like, okay, God said he elected us before foundation of time, but I know when I believe, right? And this is why people struggle with the fact that can I lose my salvation?

Because I know I believed, okay, my case, just a few years ago, because I was only 16. It's not like in the decades, I'm sure. I'm 25, right? Okay, I'm just checking. Well, you're 25. So we've been married 26 years though.

I gotta work on this. I think we're gonna have to become 30. Yeah, okay. So maybe it's 15 years since saved, right? But the reality is, I got saved 30 some years ago. But people struggle because, well, I sin today, right?

And so a lot of people struggle with that because it's like, well, if I sin today, could I lose my salvation? A lot of people make that, think of that. Take a look at the book of Colossians. And I wanna look in chapter two, and I'm gonna read verse 13, but I wanna focus on 14, okay?

And this is very helpful to think about, but it says, when you were dead in your transgressions and uncircumcised of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven us of all our transgressions.

Now let's look what 14 says. Having canceled out the certificate of debt, consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us, and has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Now think about that.

When was our debt paid? When was our debt canceled? When we ask God to forgive us? No, at the cross. What sin have you ever committed that was before the cross? None. Does this say that he canceled some of them?

No, he said, having canceled out the certificate of debt, they're nailed to the cross, all of it. Every sin we ever have done, will do, are doing, or will do, are all future to the cross. How in the world could Christ have paid it at the cross?

And yet somehow, okay, he paid only some of them at the cross? Well, that's not exactly what it's saying, you know? He's saying it was all, it was all paid at the cross. So how could we lose that salvation if it was already paid?

You see how sometimes when we start to take a step back on some of this stuff and just understand the theology, it helps us. Any other questions with election? And let me ask so I have the excuse to finish my coffee.

See, that's the ploy. No, okay. So we'll move on to the next word that's gonna cause us problems. Okay, verse two. And Yim is just glad that I actually said verse two. Yeah, she was. There was the thought of just spending the whole time on election, but.

All right, so according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. Now foreknowledge, yes, this is a problematic word as well for some people, okay? Maybe it's gonna sound like an English word, prognosis actually is the word here.

But it is the idea of to know beforehand, to recognize or to consider something beforehand. It's a Greek compound word that has the meaning of subsequent in sequence. So it's like there's a sequence of things.

Now the word for and knowledge or compound, knowledge is the idea of where we get Gnosticism from. It's the idea of knowledge, Gnosis. And so what you end up seeing here is that this becomes a problem for some people, especially those who like we're saying are struggling against the idea of the terms of Calvinism.

What some will try to say here is that foreknowledge means that they recognize that foreknowledge means that he knows ahead of time, okay, is the idea. Some have tried to use this to say that this is in a matter of love, that God loved ahead of time.

Now the people that hold to this also will hold to, we spoke about election. One thing I didn't mention about election is that there's two different main views of election, whether election is personal or corporate.

I will take the argument that when we look at election and look at some of the verses we looked at, it's personal. He's mentioning personal people here in Peter, right? They're aliens. We even know what cities they live in, Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.

So what some people try to do is say that the election is just like Israel was elect and now the church is elect. So it's not individual people, but groups of people. So it's like, well, this whole group of people called Israel, they're elect.

Okay, what do you do with a guy like Nebuchadnezzar then? He's not of Israel, but yet it seems he was a believer. What do you do with him? Was he elect? Oh, he's a believer, but not elect. God didn't choose him.

He was just, wait, what? Right? You see the dilemma. Well, the people that hold to that will often hold to this idea that foreknowledge means, and this is the way you'll sometimes hear it explained, that God looked down the tunnels of time, knew who would believe, and then elected them.

Okay, now with what we said about election, when I talked about the attributes of God, do you see any problems with that idea that God would look down the tunnels of time to see who would believe, and then because of their belief, he elects them.

What issues could be there when we think of his attributes? When he wouldn't be all knowing,.