Does God Choose You Because He Knew You Would Choose Him?
What Is Fair of God?
Is it fair for God to predestine a multitude to Heaven while also predestining a multitude to Hell? If God does do this then what is the basis of His choice? How can a loving God choose some and not choose others?
In the past and the present, it has been offered to inquirers of these questions that God predestines people to eternal life or eternal death based on their response to His offer of the gospel. There are numerous problems with this answer. While there are numerous ways to answer this question, there is one crucial question that is often neglected: Who is God?
Who Is The God Who Predestines?
God is Wisdom (Prov. 2:6; 1 Cor. 1:30). He does not gain wisdom or receive wisdom. He is Wisdom itself. Franciscus Junius (1545-1602) says that God’s wisdom is “uncreated…essential, absolute, infinite, in all aspects simultaneously present.” God does not look to anyone or anything to give Him His existence or attributes nor to aid Him in His plan of salvation (Ex. 3:14; Ps. 90:2). He is who He is—unchangeable and eternal (Jas. 1:17). This is why God says in Malachi 3:6, “I, the Lord, do not change”. Isaiah 40:28 also says, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.”
God does not increase in wisdom. He does not grow in learning. He does not have to wait for something to happen in order to gain insight. Therefore, God does not choose to save us because He looked into the future to see who would choose Him. That would deny God’s omniscience (i.e. that He is all-knowing). One way to deny God’s omniscience would be to say that God had to look into the future to learn who would choose Him and then, based on that knowledge, He made His decision of who to choose for salvation. He says “yes” to those He knew would say “yes” to Him. This means that God would depend on us for Him to save us.
If God increased in knowledge or wisdom, it means that before this increase that God was previously not as great as He is now. If God decreased in knowledge or wisdom then it means that God was previously greater than He is now. In both cases, God would not be God.
Therefore, to hold to the view that God predestines because He looked into the future to learn who would choose Him is actually not a biblical nor logical understanding of God. Rather, you are talking about a god made in the image of man.
Who Is The Omniscient God?
On the other hand, God is boundless in knowledge and eternal in infinite wisdom. Junius says that God’s wisdom is “absolute and most perfect, lacking nothing, wasting nothing, containing no variation, but devoid of all defect in itself, [and devoid of] all development or growth, and change.” His wisdom is “infinite, for it extends to all things both generally and particularly…For this [wisdom] is not present in God by parts nor successively, nor does it vary in itself, but exists in proportion to God Himself.” Because God is infinite, eternal, and unchanging, His wisdom is infinite (never increasing nor decreasing), eternal (not bound by time nor happening within time), and unchanging (He possesses all knowledge and wisdom of all things in one simultaneous “moment”).
Even before talking about how we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone (Rom. 8:31-9:23) we come to an answer to the questions above merely by looking at the attributes of God.
To summarize: God freely chooses a multitude to eternal life by grace alone in Christ alone even before time began (Eph. 1:3-10) while also freely choosing to leave another multitude in their sin for His judgment (Rom. 9:11-16). He does not choose us because He had to learn who would choose Him. God’s decision is not based on us but rather His own eternal and immutable decree. And this eternal decree is consistent with His own eternal, infinite, immutable, and omniscient Being.