Common Sense Commentary: Foreknowledge means simply to Know Before. "Omniscience".
If God does not do bad and sinful things or cause people to do bad and sinful things, then is their everlasting destiny due to God's will and choice or their own will and choices? And if God is omniscient, knowing all things past, present and future, did He also foreknow what those people's will and bad choices would be? The fact that God foreknows everything does not mean He wants wickedness and rejection of Himself to happen. It means that when He created man in His own "image and likeness", that He gave us smaller likenesses of many of His own supreme traits. We know that God has a divine will, so He gave each of us a human will. It was His "sovereign will", that we have a free, personal will. That is why God does not usually void our bad decisions and choices by over-riding them with His own holy will, but He lets our will and bad choices play out to their own pre-designated consequences or successes. Though not His own perfect will, He permits our faulty choices by the fact He gave us a free will to choose to do good or bad. That is also why we are responsible and accountable to our Creator for our own self-will and individual choices. Since God foreknows all of that, before it happens, it will happen; Not because God made it happen, but because He gave us a will to make the choice and be accountable for it.
"For he (Jesus) knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy." Mk.15:10. He knew their hearts, motives and decisions before they did. And they did what He foreknew they would do.
"But he (Jesus) knew their thoughts ...." Luke 6:8. He did not make or dictate their thoughts.
"But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men...." Jn.2:24. He already knew who would accept Him and who would not.
"And needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man." He did not need anyone to inform Him as to what others were thinking or would do. He already knew.
"For he (Jesus) knew who should betray him ...." Jn.13:11. He knew Judas' decision before the world began, and Judas did exactly what Jesus knew he would choose to do... Betray Him.
"For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son ...." Rom.8:29. Predestination is based upon God's foreknowledge of each person's willful choices and decisions.
"Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ ...." 1Pet.1:2. Since God foreknew who would believe, that was pre-destined to be so and they were therefore pre-elected "according to the foreknowledge of God ...." of their future decision to accept Christ as their Savior.
"So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God." Rom.14:12. And if we are accountable for our choices and decisions, it stands to reason that we also willfully made those choices and decisions. God did not make them for us. It was His sovereign will to give us a free will. RB
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