Matthew 10:29-30 “Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father's will. (30) But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.”
When our Lord Jesus was on the earth He also gave us some insight into God’s infinite knowledge of everything. In the above quoted passage of scripture our Lord tried to help us understand just how intimate God’s knowledge is of each one of His creations. For He tells us that God knows every hair on our heads, and that God has given to each hair its own unique number. Again to put that into some sort of perspective for us to understand, each person has on average six hundred thousand hairs on their heads and it is estimated that since Adam there have been approximately one hundred billion people that have come and gone from the earth. What that tells us is that the number of hairs on the heads of every man that has ever lived is unfathomable for mankind to comprehend, but not for God. Our Lord went on to tell us that God knows about every sparrow that dies. But not only that, for Jesus also told us that it is God who decides just when every sparrow will die. In other words God decides when each one of His creations will come into the earth and also when each one will die. And so in this passage of scripture our Lord not only gives us insight into God’s infinite knowledge of all things, but He also gives us a glimpse of the fact that God’s will is done in all of His creation.
2 Timothy 2:19 “Nevertheless the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal: "The Lord knows those who are His," and, "Let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity.”
We have seen in a previous section that God’s perfect will is that all men should be saved. We have also seen that most men choose not to walk in God’s perfect will for their lives by rejecting salvation through Jesus Christ, and thus they walk in God’s permissible will. In the above quoted passage of scripture the Holy Spirit reveals to us the fact that God knows beforehand which of His creations will accept the gift of salvation and which will reject it. For when the scripture states that the Lord knows those who are His, in context it is referring to those who will accept God’s perfect will for their lives and will thus be born-again. And so the reason that God knows who will and who will not be saved, is simply because God knows everything.
Matthew 7:23 “And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!”
Just as our Lord knows those who are His, so He also knows which are not His. In the passage of scripture quoted above our Lord Jesus tells us that on the day of judgement, that He will tell those who have rejected God’s perfect will for their lives that He never knew them. Never means never. Clearly our Lord knows beforehand which belong to Him and which do not. When the Lord Jesus says in this passage that He never knew those who practice lawlessness, He is not saying that He had no knowledge of their existence but rather that He did not acknowledge them as those who belonged to Him.
Michael E.B. Maher
Comments