The World and the Word

                                          God's Plan

One of the greatest controversies that has divided the Christian Churches into various denominations happens to be the question of free will versus predestination. According to Ephesians 1:4-5, Acts 15:18, and John 10:27-28, Christ knew who all of His sheep saved by grace would be before He created the world. Foreknowledge has to be the same as predestination. For these reasons, some denominations have adopted the doctrine that God has chosen some humans to be saved by grace, and He has condemned all others to be lost from His salvation forever. According to this doctrine, free will does not exist.

Yet, in Genesis 2:16-17, God definitely gave free will to humans when He created them so that they could choose to eat or not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If God had predestined Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then God, not Satan, would be responsible for the sin and evil within the human race, and that cannot be. God is absolutely Holy. I Peter 1:16; Isaiah 57:15. Satan would also not be responsible because he too would have been predestined to tempt Eve. According to John 5:24 and John 6:40, Jesus taught that all humans who hear His gospel must believe of their own free will in order to be saved by grace. In Hebrews 4:3, the word "if" clearly indicates that a human must freely choose to become saved by grace even though that same verse states that God has finished all of His works "from the foundation of the world."

But this seeming contradiction actually denotes a paradox that can be explained. If Adam and Eve had chosen not to eat of the forbidden fruit, then God had a complete plan for the entire human race that would have been far different from its present history. God waited for Adam and Eve to choose. When they did choose to eat the forbidden fruit, then God had another complete plan for how to save the entire human race, some by His grace and all others with a lesser form of salvation. Acts 15:18; Romans 11:36. God remains Omniscient because He knew every detail of both plans.