10 Minutes on the Saving Foreknowledge of God

6 · Introduces 1 Peter 1:20 as further evidence, applying the argument to Christ Himself

In this sense, his foreknowledge consistently includes the idea of love and relationship and divine purpose, not just, you know, an awareness of the facts. This becomes even more apparent when we look at 1 Peter 1:20. This verse speaks of Christ being foreknown before the foundation of the world. And you wouldn't be thinking there that. That the Father somehow knew Jesus. That's not the point. The point isn't even to look down and see what Jesus would do. The point is that Jesus was chosen. That's what this word foreknown means. It has a choosing sense to it. Christ being foreknown in this verse in 1st Peter 1:20 speaks to the Father's eternal purpose and loving ordination of the Son. It's the choosing of the Son, the anointing of the Son. That's what our word Christ means.

7 · Applies the established exegetical principle to believers, explicitly connecting foreknowledge with divine love and ordination

The same principle applies to believers. To be foreknown is to be foreloved and foreordained for grace. It's not about being foreseen as somehow deserving or meriting that grace. That's the Arminian perspective. That's the wrong perspective. That view misunderstands the nature of divine foreknowledge, and it unintentionally makes God's love contingent on human action.

8 · Articulates the theological stakes of the interpretive error: it reverses the biblical order of salvation, making God reactive instead of initiating, and substituting human merit for divine mercy

Right. Because if what foreknowing really means is that God's looking down and seeing what we do and then responding to that, then he is actually responding to us and not us to Him. And that's why I was thinking about this. Because the verse that Dove talked about on Sunday was Jesus saying, I have chosen you, you've not chosen me. So that's what the word means, this false sense of God looking at what we would do. It shifts the cause of salvation from God's mercy to man's merit. Really, it shifts the cause of salvation from God's mercy to man's merit. It makes God the reactor rather than the initiator. And it really reverses the order presented in Romans 9:16, where it says so then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy.

9 · Synthesizes the positive doctrine established throughout the sermon into a three-part antithesis structure (reactive vs

True biblical foreknowledge, as presented here, affirms that God's love is not reactive, but initiating, not earned, but free, not based on conditions within us, but flowing from his own glorious purpose and will. This aligns very well with what First John 4:19 says, we love him because he first loved us.

10 · Expands the theological significance of divine initiative by framing salvation as God's method of destroying enemies—not through annihilation but through conversion from enemy to child

And you know, a really big important idea that I just think we don't talk about enough is that God has this plan to save the world, and that plan involves destroying his enemies. But the way that he has chosen through his mercy, to destroy many of his enemies is to convert them from enemies into children. And that transition from enemy to child talked about in Romans 5, that's all about God doing something for us when we had no interest in him doing it.

11 · Provides a rapid survey of additional foreknowledge texts (Romans 8:29, Romans 11:2, 1 Peter 1:1-2) as cumulative evidence for the relational-covenantal reading

That's why this Arminian view that God is just looking at what we would choose is so problematic. It kind of ruins the gospel. Romans 8:29, as we've already discussed, those whom he foreknew, the idea is that he's loving them in a covenantal sense, just like we saw in Amos 3. 2. It's relational, not observational. Romans 11, 2, it says, God has not rejected the people whom he foreknew. Again, it's not God responding to us, it's God initiating. First Peter 1:1:2 talks about the elect, the chosen in Christ according to the foreknowledge of the Father. This is an emphasis on people being chosen by God, not being foreseen, not their faith being foreseen, or their future obedience foreseen, and so on and so forth.

12 · Signals sermon closure by referencing the stated time goal and reiterating the single corrective aim

So that's the idea. And like I said, I think this was going to be a really short podcast. I was putting it at 10 minutes. It looks like it's only about nine. The whole idea is to just correct this error that sometimes floats around there, that when you encounter these words and they're all over the Bible, they're all over the New Testament foreknowledge, predestined election, and so forth. That is not God looking down through the tunnel of time and saying, oh, Chris is going to believe in me one day, therefore I know Him.

13 · Delivers the corrective alternative in first-person terms, making the gospel logic of divine initiative personal and concrete

No, he's saying Chris doesn't believe in me. He would never believe in me unless I woke him up with the Holy Spirit and brought him into life out of darkness and out of death. And that's what the word foreknowledge actually means.

14 · Informal closing remarks with self-aware humor about podcast production

So there you go. That's all I got. It's a real short one. I'll play. We have time to play the out. The. The outro, as they say in the. In the professional podcasting circles that I so clearly run in. Sam. The army blues.