ON BEING FOREKNOWN BY GOD
Before you were in the womb I knew thee.
NIV: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
They say it’s not what you know but who you know. But actually, it’s not what you know or who you know, but Who knows you that really matters. You see, you and I know the Lord Jesus Christ, at least we like to think we do but, more importantly, does He know us?
Granted, it’s mind blowing to think that Almighty God knew you and I long before He shaped and formed us in the womb. In other words that He knew us before our conception. But that is what scripture says. And there is huge blessing for us in knowing that. For one thing, we won’t be “cast away” as billions will. For another if He foreknows us, we will live with our Saviour God in glory in the eons yet to come. To explain, the Apostle Paul writes:
God hath not cast away his people which He foreknew… even so then at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace (Romans 11:2).
That was said of faithful Israelites, but I believe it is also true of those who are truly saved today. The hard reality for all human beings is that if in our short lifetime we persistently reject God’s offer of being saved by the gospel which is, a) that Christ died for our sins and, b) that by grace we are saved and headed for glory, then we become “throw away” people, ones God discards for his future purposes.
Don’t the prophets, Jesus Himself and the apostles repeatedly warn that most people unless they are converted will perish, be destroyed and be lost? What those warnings mean is that those who die without faith in Jesus, who is God our Redeemer, will end their lives in the grave. That is, they will not be resurrected.
But those God has “foreknown” will rise from the dead. For them God has special and wonderful purposes. Observe that in scripture those God foreknew He also set apart for a particular appointment or ministry, as in the case of the prophet Jeremiah in the verses above.
Of course, today God is not appointing prophets, since we live in the current “dispensation of grace and the mystery” (Ephesians 3:1-4). In this time of grace all those faithful in Christ receive the fulness of Christ without ministerial distinction. Indeed, all believers are now appointed ministers, “holding forth the word of life” (Philippians 2:16).
But focusing again on the word foreknew, we must ask, just how did He foreknow us? The answer is that He foreknew us according to his own plan and purpose and accordingly, has predestinated us for that role. Ephesians 1:11 declares of us…
In Whom (Christ) also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.
But we are not just a pawn in God’s plan and purposes. His foreknowing us goes much deeper than that. When Adam knew Eve (Genesis 4:1) she conceived and brought forth Cain. But when God foreknew us, before we were born, before the world was founded, in penetrating deeply into who and what we are to become, it was, and is, so that He might bring forth “Christ in us the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).
But you might ask, if God knows all about us anyway since He is omniscient, what’s so special about his foreknowing us? The answer is that despite the Lord Jesus Christ dying on the cross to pay the price for all of humanity’s sins, unless God chose to specially save some people none would have been saved.
That was certainly the case before the Flood when only one man out of millions, Noah, believed and sought to obey God. Since that time, it’s got worse. The Apostle John states that now the “whole world lies in wickedness” and the Apostle Paul insists that “there is none that seeketh after God, no not one. There is none that doeth good, no not one” (Romans 3:10-12).
But for the foreknown there is better news. We who were once “alienated by wicked works in our mind” (Colossians 1:21), He has now reconciled “in the body of his (that is Christ’s) flesh through death, to present us holy and unblameable and unreprovable in his sight” (Colossians 1:21-22).
Our completed salvation stems from the truth that “before the world began” (Ephesians 1:4) He foreknew us and “hath chosen us in Him (Christ) that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love” (Ephesians 1:4).
That marks us out as different from many who purport to be Christian. Because while most church leaders focus on the need to know, to find and to accept God, serious scripture study shows it’s even more important to learn that God foreknows us, finds us and quickens us (Ephesians 2:1), all with little help from us.
Faithful believers need to know that God foreknew them before the world began and before God “formed them in the womb”. Job asks a pertinent question on this point:
Did not He who made me in the womb make them (i.e. his servants)? Did not the same One form us both within our mothers? (Job 31:15 NIV).
The answer comes from Jeremiah 12:1-3. Here we learn the wicked also are “planted” by God but with a different outcome because in their case, the Lord did not “foreknow” them. Accordingly, Jeremiah tells God of such people, “Thou art near their mouth and far from their reins (their heart). Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter and prepare them for the day of slaughter” (cited in James 5:5). As said above, this means they perish and will not be resurrected.
Yes, God forms all men and women in the womb and has in mind a set purpose for each of them, though few live up to it. The difference is God foreknows those whom He chooses in the biblical sense of a man knowing a woman. In other words, intimately and to the deepest depths of who they are.
The Psalmist David declares, “I will praise thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvellous are thy works and that my soul knoweth right well” (Psalm 139:14). But he could only say this because “Thou hast known me” as he declared in Psalm 139:1 and Psalm 4:3.
It’s highly significant that after Israel had been set aside and the salvation message sent to the Gentiles (Acts 28:27-28) the Apostle Paul wrote the following about foreknowledge.
God hath not cast away his people which He foreknew… even so then at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace (Romans 11: 2).
The prophet Isaiah foresaw the same thing: “Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah” (Isaiah 1:9).
Sadly, while the door to salvation is open to all, for “whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13 and Joel 2:32), it is also true that there is “none righteous”, “none righteous” and “none that seeketh after God” (Romans 3:10-11).
So, God ensures some will be saved by foreknowing them before forming them in the womb and saving them “before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4). This may explain why none of Paul’s epistles are addressed to the unsaved. Rather, they were written to the “faithful in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 1:1).
And, since only those God foreknew are the “elect” (1 Peter 1:2), it should not be surprising that great sufferings of the Apostle Paul in his later years were for the foreknown, that is the chosen elect:
Therefore, I endure all things for the elect’s sake that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory (2 Timothy 2:8-10).
Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you (Gentiles) and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake which is the church (see Colossian 1:24 and Ephesians 1:22-23).
Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel. Wherein I suffer trouble as an evil doer, even unto bonds, but the word of God is not bound. Therefore, I endure all things for the elect’s sake that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.
The good news, he asserts, is that the chosen are not only foreknown but also predestined to be conformed to the very glory of God. Thus:
For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom He did predestinate, them He also called and, and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified (Romans 8:29).
But again, what happens to those who are not foreknown by the Lord? The short answer is that they will not enter the pre-millennial kingdom of heaven when the Son of man comes in his glory to establish it in the “day of Christ”. Read Jesus’s own words on the matter:
Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven, Many will say unto me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then I will profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity (Matthew 7:21-23, cf. 13:41, 25:41, Luke 13:25-27).
Did you get that? One reason the Lord will reject many who claim to have been his followers is that He never knew them although they had done many works in his name. The so-called churches of today also do many works in the name of Jesus from performing miracles that don’t happen when you attend their services to running social welfare programmes. But does the Lord know them, did He foreknow them?
John Dudley Aldworth
Email: johndaldworth42@gmail.com