November 8 Daily Devotional

Bible Verse

"For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son , in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers" (Rom. 8:29).

Devotional

This word, "predestined," admits of only one natural meaning. In its lowest sense, predestination is understood to mean the exclusive agency of God in producing every event. But it includes more than this: it takes in God's predetermined appointment and fore-arrangement of a thing beforehand, according to his divine and supreme will.

This is how the Greek is rendered: "to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place" (Acts 4:28). Again, "he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will" (Eph. 1:5). This affirms of God, that the same prearrangement and predetermination which men in general incline to ascribe to him in the government of matter, extends equally, and with even stronger force, to the concerns of his moral administration.

It would seem impossible to form any correct idea of God disassociated from the idea of predestination. And yet how marvelously difficult is it to win minds to a full, unwavering acquiescence in a truth which, in a different application, they receive with unquestioning readiness!

And what is there in the application of this law of the Divine government to the world of matter which is not equally reasonable in its application to the world of mind? If it is necessary and proper in the material, why should it not be equally, or more so, in the spiritual empire? If God is admitted the full exercise of a sovereignty in the one, then why should he be excluded from an unlimited sovereignty in the other? Surely it is even more worthy of him that he should prearrange, predetermine, and supremely rule in the concerns of a world over which his more dignified and glorious empire extends, than that in the inferior world of matter he should fix a constellation in the heavens, guide the gyrations of a bird in the air, direct the falling of an autumnal leaf in the pathless desert, or convey the seed, borne upon the wind, to the spot in which it should grow. Surely if no fortuitous ordering is admitted in the one case, then on infinitely stronger grounds it should be excluded from the other.

Divine foreknowledge and providence could take their stand upon no other basis than this. Disconnected from the will and purpose of God, there could be nothing certain as to the future; and consequently there could be nothing certainly foreknown. And if Providence were not to regulate and control people, things, and events—every dispensation in fact—by the same preconstructed plan, then it would follow that God would be exposed to trillions of unforeseen contingencies, or else that he acts in ignorance, or contrary to his will. What is predestination, then, but God's determining will?

Now all this applies with augmented beauty and force to the idea of a predestinated church. How clearly God has revealed this doctrine! "Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world... In love he predestined us" (Eph. 1:4–5). "Whose names were ... written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain" (Rev. 13:8). "Elect ... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father" (1 Pet. 1:1–2). "Who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began" (2 Tim. 1:9). What an accumulation of evidence in proof of a single doctrine of Scripture! Who but the most prejudiced can resist, or the most skeptical deny, its overwhelming force?

Oh, to receive it as the Word of God! To admit it, not because reason can understand it, or man can explain it—for all truth flowing from an infinite source must necessarily transcend a finite mind—but because God's holy Word declares it.

'Tis not that I did choose thee,
for, Lord, that could not be;
this heart would still refuse thee,
hadst thou not chosen me.
Thou from the sin that stained me
hast cleansed and set me free;
of old thou hast ordained me,
that I should live to thee.

(Josiah Conder, 1836)

Be sure to read the Preface by Octavius Winslow and A Note from the Editor by Larry E. Wilson.

Larry Wilson is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In addition to having served as the General Secretary of the Committee on Christian Education of the OPC (2000–2004) and having written a number of articles and booklets (such as God's Words for Worship and Why Does the OPC Baptize Infants) for New Horizons and elsewhere, he has pastored OPC churches in Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio. We are grateful to him for his editing of Morning Thoughts, the OPC Daily Devotional for 2011.