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before us to declare that God, Who is not under the limitations of time and space as we
are, and needs no external evidence to attain to this knowledge, knows all things, past,
present and future: knows them perfectly and completely, and can, therefore, act with
complete certainty where, to us, all would appear in a contingent light" (Just and the
Justifier, pp. 234, 235).
Some imagine foreknowledge to be equivalent to predestination, in which case Paul
has written "Whom he did predestinate, he also did predestinate", which makes nonsense.
Proorizo means literally to mark off beforehand for some specific purpose. Surely the
Creator has a right to do this. If a man invents something, has he not the right to use this
for the purpose he had in mind? What we have here in Romans is not a hard determinist
philosophy, but the loving plan of One Who purposes to bless human beings beyond their
dreams or comprehension.
These foreknown ones are to be "conformed to the likeness of His Son" (verse 29).
He Himself is the image of God Who as Spirit is invisible (Col. 1: 15), and these are
conformed to that image, so in one sense they are replicas of God. But one very
important fact is stressed here. The Lord Jesus is first among them all, for this is the
meaning of the Greek word rendered "firstborn". It is fatal to base doctrine on the
English word. Col. 1: 15, 16 insists that Christ is the firstborn of all creation, not
because He was the first creature born but because "by Him were all things created, that
are in heaven, and that are in earth" (Col. 1: 16). In other words as Creator He is and must
be first with the object stated in verse 18, "that in all things He might have the first
place" (pre-eminence). Professor F. F. Bruce and Dr. W. J. Martin state:
"The word firstborn had long since ceased to be used exclusively in its literal sense,
just as prime (from Latin primus--first) with us. The Prime Minister is not the first
minister we have had; he is the most pre-eminent. A man in the `prime' of his life has
long since left the first part of his life behind. Similarly, firstborn came to denote not
priority in time but pre-eminence in rank" (The Deity of Christ).
In the chain of God's purpose, predestination is followed by "calling" and to this
calling those concerned respond by faith in Christ and this leads to justification or
acquittal as Romans makes perfectly clear. Eternal life and future glory are impossible
apart from the righteousness conferred by justification for God plans a universe where
sin, death and all its consequences are entirely absent and therefore no sinner as such can
have a part in it.
The final link in the chain of God's plan is glorification, "those He justified He also
glorified" (verse 30) and here is the wonderful climax. So great is Paul's confidence in
the Lord that he can describe a future event in a past tense as though it had already
happened, and thus the great purpose comes to completion. Dr. 100: K. Barrett's comments
here are worth repeating:
"Predestination is the most comfortable of all Christian doctrines, if men will accept it
in its Biblical form, and not attempt to pry into it with questions which it does not set out
to answer. It is not a `quantitive limitation of God's action, but its qualitative definition',
the final statement of the truth that justification, and in the end, salvation also, are by
grace alone and through faith alone" (The Epistle to the Romans, pp. 170, 171).