Which Came First, Foreknowledge or Predestination?

Common Sense Commentary: "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son ...." Rom.8:29.

"Fore" means "prior to" as in before .  We have forefathers, foremen, forerunners, and forethought but no absolute "foreknowledge" except Biblical Prophecy and Promise. We can anticipate, imagine, hope and even guess at the future but cannot "know" it for certain except for the fact of death.... if the rapture doesn't occur first.  Only God truly knows the future and we can know what His Word, the Bible, has revealed to us about the future, but not one thing beyond that.  When people say, "I knew that was going to happen", they mean, "I feared it, I thought it, it was told me, or, my experience anticipated it.  They did not and could not know it for a certainty.

Foreknowledge describes a divine attribute of God only.  He foreknew everything, past present and future in minute and perfect detail. Some of the things He foreknew, He Himself caused to happen. His foreknowledge preceeded the fact by infinity past. Other things He foreknew, His Spirit influenced, encouraged, inspired, convicted, or impressed people to do and they responded and did it, but others did not respond and do the thing God willed for them. "The Lord is...not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." 2Pet.3:9.  God did not "reject" them until they rejected Him and His will for their lives.  God foreknew both rejections. So if He foreknew it, it was destined to happen, but His foreknowledge of it, preceded the destined fact.  Predestination is a "result" of God's Foreknowledge, not the other way around.  It is the automatic derivative or His foreknowledge. He did not harden Pharaoh's heart until after Pharaoh had hardened his own heart first. "And Pharaoh said, Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go?  I know not the LORD, neither will I let Israel go." Ex.5:2. Only after he hardened his own heart did the LORD harden Pharaoh's heart 15 times beginning two chapters later, in Ex.7.

"And if ye will not be reformed by me ... but will walk contrary unto me; Then will I also walk contrary unto you, and will punish you yet seven times for your sins." Lev.26:23-24

Many other things God foreknew would happen, were not His will except for the fact, He gave all His created beings a limited, free will of their own.  This, obviously, included Lucifer, Adam and Eve, and all of us.  That is why He told Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of knowledge. He did not want or will them to disobey but created them, and us, with a free-will ... to do, basically, as we will, except with certain boundaries and exceptions.  Human freewill does not often do the perfect will of God but He does not force us to do His will.  WE are responsible for our own choices.

God did not "will" for Lucifer to rebel, but He did will for Lucifer, the angels and us, to have a free "will" to obey or not to obey. They, and we, are not machines or puppets, but living beings with a personality and will of our own.  Lucifer's and the third of angels who followed him were personally responsible for their own failure. God recorded Lucifer's fault and sin in Isa.14:12-15, where Lucifer had said, "I will" six times in his infamous declaration that HE would dethrone JEHOVAH GOD and enthrone himself AS GOD over the whole universe. Lucifer willed it but God's will over-ruled Lucifer's will and cast him out of Heaven ... all of which God already foreknew, but it was Lucifer's own fault and selfwill. In v.12, God asked Lucifer how it was that he had fallen from heaven and then told him it was because he was responsible for his own calamity by plotting against God of  his own free will.  It was not God's will but Lucifer's. If you presume that Lucifer and his angels were "predestined" to rebel and be cast out of heaven, you must base that "Pre-destination" upon God's "Pre-knowledge" which is foreknowledge. Anything God "Foreknows" will happen, will happen even if it is contrary to what He would have us to do of our own free-will.  Because He gave us a born-in, free will, that falls under His "Permissive Will" not His "Perfect Will".

God does not will or make the rapist, thief, abuser, betrayer or murderer to do their vile acts and sins; but He is God Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and Omniscient ... all knowing.  We, as FREE WILL agents, must CHOOSE to accept Christ or to reject or neglect Him of our own will.  So, if, as 2Pet.3:9 says, that "God is NOT WILLING that any should perish but" IS WILLING "that all should come to repentance", whose fault is it if we are not acceptable to enter heaven but will "perish" ... God's?? ... simply because He Foreknew our choice before we made the choice??? When the religionists asked Jesus, "Are you the Messiah? Tell us. And he said unto them, If I tell you, ye will not believe: And if I ask you, ye will not answer me, nor let me go."  Lk.22:67-68.  Here we see an example of Christ's foreknowledge of man's will.
A hyper-Calvinist would say, "But Jesus was determining their will and and they could not be saved." Not so! They could have if they would have. "Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life." Jn.5:40.

What glory would God get out of it if we did only what He programed us to do with no choice, decision or responsibility in the matter, like pegs on a game board? God can't get bored but that would bore Him if it were the case, which it is not.  Would you, truly, want your children or even a pet, to do only what you willed them to do like little robots with no will or personality or accountability of their own?  If so, I now know who bought those "pet rocks" thirty years ago.

Prophecy and Predestination are nothing more than the "foreknowledge" of God.  Prophecy, is expressed to and through His Biblical prophets. An Example: God gave Moses instructions on setting up the best system of government, its laws, priests and judges to lead them, keep the peace and enforce and execute that law.  At that time, in 1451 BC, God also foretold, by His foreknowledge, that the time would come when the people would, in their self-will, demand a king instead of judges, God's Perfect Will, Judges. That they would do because of two corrupt judges. "When ye are come into the land which the LORD thy God shalt give thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein,and will say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me." Deut.17:14.  That "foreknowledge" of God came to pass 339 years after He  foretold it.  In 1112 BC, Judge Samuel's two sons were corrupt, lusting after money, taking bribes and "perverting judgement".  The people rose up and demanded "change".  "Then all the elders of Israel ... came to Samuel ... And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations. But the thing displeased Samuel ... And Samuel prayed unto the LORD.  And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: (Permissive will) for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them."  1Sam.8:3-7.  God gave them a government of Laws and Judges and Freedom but because of a couple of bad leaders they demanded a King.  That same God gave America a system of Laws and Judges in a Constitution but because of a couple of bad leaders, they demanded "change" and a King ... and they got one. God didn't do that to them or to us but He foreknew they would reject Him of their own free-will.

Pass it on. RB