According to the foreknowledge of God

'According to the foreknowledge of God'

— 1 Peter 1:2

Many try to avoid the biblical doctrine of election and the sovereignty of God’s electing grace by telling us that election was based upon God’s eternal knowledge that some sinners would, of their own free will, repent and believe on Christ. But such doctrine is contrary to the plain statements of Holy Scripture (Dent. 7:7-9; Jer. 31:3; Rom. 9:11-18); and it makes God’s electing grace dependent upon foreseen merit in the sinner, attributing salvation to the works of man rather than the grace of God. If the word ‘foreknowledge’ does not mean ‘foreseen repentance and faith in men, what does it mean?

Divine foreknowledge certainly includes the omniscience of God. God, knowing all things, had a thorough knowledge of all his elect and all that would concern them from eternity. He knew the depths of sin and rebellion, disobedience and ungodliness, guilt and depravity into which we would fall before he called us by his grace. Nevertheless, he set his heart upon us and chose us Jer. 1:5).

The foreknowledge of God is nothing less than divine foreordination. In I Peter 1:20 the very same word is translated ‘foreordained’. Omniscience, the fact that God knows all things, is an attribute of God, essential to his being. But foreknowledge is a voluntary, deliberate act of God, an eternal act of his grace. God knows all things that come to pass before they come to pass, because he sovereignly predestinated and sovereignly controls all things (Isa. 46:9-11; Rom. 11:36).

Primarily, the word ‘foreknowledge’ signifies the everlasting love of God the Father for his own elect. ‘Whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son’ (Rom. 8:29). In this sense God knew some, but not others (Matt. 7:23). Foreknowledge is God’s eternal love and unalterable delight in his elect, as he viewed us in his dear Son.

Election is not a dry, arbitrary choice of some to eternal life. Election is God’s eternal, determinate choice of his people, based upon his loving knowledge and approval of each and all of them in Christ Jesus before the world was.