Hebrews 10:7 “Then I said, 'Behold, I have come—in the volume of the book it is written of Me—to do Your will, O God.'”
The life of our Lord Jesus is the perfect example of one whose life was predestined by God the Father. In the above quoted passage of scripture our Lord Jesus reveals to us that He read God’s perfect will for His life before He ever came to the earth. Our Lord then submitted His will to the perfect will of the Father and He came to the earth to fulfil the Father’s will. In other words our Lord walked according to the life that God had predestined for Him. The question is then asked, could Jesus choose not to do the Father’s will? The answer is most definitely yes, for you will recall the incident in the garden of Gethsemane when our Lord prayed to the Father, “not My will but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42). Had it been impossible for Jesus to decline to do God’s will then Jesus would never have made that statement, for that would have made Him a fraud. And so because God knows everything, He knew that Jesus would submit to His will even in the most adverse of circumstances, and thus He could predestine the life of Jesus for the salvation of mankind.
John 17:12 “While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.”
I will end this section with one more example of an individual whose life was predestined by God the Father. That individual is Judas Iscariot. Many question whether Judas was forgiven for his betrayal of our Lord, because he was remorseful after he saw that our Lord was condemned. The scripture is very clear however that Judas was predestined for destruction and that he has gone into hell, for in the passage of scripture quoted above our Lord Jesus clearly states that Judas was lost so that the scripture could be fulfilled. In fact our Lord Jesus told us that the only way that Judas could have avoided hell was to not have been born, for once he was born into the earth Judas was predestined for destruction (Matthew 26:24-25). The book of Psalms gives us a vivid account of what the Holy Spirit has written regarding Judas, the betrayer of our Lord Jesus (Psalm 109). Clearly God had predestined Judas Iscariot for destruction. So did God do that because He is unjust? Paul answered that question for us in a passage of scripture quoted earlier, when he said “certainly not”. The reason God predestined Judas for destruction is because God knew Judas before He created him, and thus knew that Judas would never willingly bow his knee to the Lordship of Jesus Christ but would always be rebellious at heart. And so God predestined the life of Judas accordingly.
Michael E.B. Maher
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