When we are going through difficult circumstances, it is natural to ask whether these tough times are just random or if they are part of some kind of wider plan that God has for our lives. Many Christians will turn to the Bible for wisdom on this but, at first glance, a slightly confusing picture can seem to emerge.
Does God have the blueprint for our lives all worked out?
In the Old Testament there are some verses which appear to imply that God has the blueprint for our lives all worked out, right from before we are born. As discussed in my article The power of God’s promises (written for Roots in 2026), one example occurs in Genesis 50:20, when the patriarch Joseph reconciles with his brothers and suggests that the suffering his brothers inflicted upon him has been used by God to achieve a positive outcome. Further to that, Psalm 139:16 states, ‘…all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be’, and in Jeremiah 29:11 God says through the prophet, ‘I know the plans I have for you…’ – a verse that Christians often lean upon in difficult times. However, in the Old Testament we can also see moments when certain people seem to be given the agency to change the plans of God. For example, in Exodus 32, Moses intercedes on behalf of the people and God appears to change his mind as a result, and Abraham achieves something similar in Genesis 18.
Predestination vs omniscience
One of the keys to understanding this apparent contradiction is to remember that saying God knows all things (or is ‘omniscient’) is not quite the same thing as saying that God predestines all things. Most Biblical writers, particularly in the Old Testament, do seem to assume that God is omniscient. This is the overall message of Psalm 139; the psalmist is emphasising that nothing escapes the notice or knowledge of God, whose ability to think and to know far exceeds that of humans. But however incomprehensible to human wisdom, the lofty omniscience of God is not the same thing as predestination. Maintaining this distinction leaves room for God to have a plan (perhaps better described as an ‘intention’) for people’s lives, whilst allowing people to choose to live however they will – sometimes disregarding the intentions of God. God’s omniscience means that God is unsurprised when this happens, and God’s majesty also means that God is unthwarted (in terms of wider, cosmic plans) even when people’s choices subvert his intentions on a day-to-day level.
This certainly seems to be the message of Jeremiah 29:11, a verse which is part of a longer passage calling for God’s people to return to a life of prayer and faithful discernment. This is the life God intended for the people, and it is the way of life that will lead them to peace and prosperity. Reading this verse in the context of Jeremiah 29 as a whole chapter, one can see that this discerning life is presented as a contrast to the disobedient life that God’s people have been living, where they have been reliant on crooked dreamers and diviners – a practice that has served only to lead them into exile. In the overall message of this chapter, it is as if God is saying: Live how I intended for you to live. Stay patient and faithful in prayer through your difficulties because I already know that better times are coming.
In these better times, wise discernment will be second nature to God’s people: ‘…you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.’ (Jeremiah 29:13) Of course, somewhat infamously, God’s people never fully realised God’s intention that they should seek him with all their hearts – they were constantly swayed from this purpose and led astray by the idol worship that was common to the foreign nations that surrounded them. Into this context came the incarnation – Jesus Christ sent as a light to guide those who were walking in darkness.
Who did Christ come to save?
Thus, turning to the New Testament, there are two key passages that appear to reference predestination. One is Romans 8:28-30, and another is Ephesians 1:11. These are both parts of the letters written by the apostle Paul, and neither are about predestination in any general sense, but are about who falls under God’s promise of salvation. Paul is seeking to address a concern that deeply troubled the first generation of Christians: Who did Christ come to save? For over a millennium, the Jewish people had considered themselves as God’s chosen people, the sole inheritors of the covenant God made with Abraham. Some Jews correctly understood Jesus as the fulfilment of that covenant, and recognised the inauguration of a new covenant, and they were numbered among the first Christians accordingly. But many Jews did not accept who Jesus was. Instead, the ranks of the early Church were swelled by Gentile converts, who quickly came to outnumber their Jewish fellows. This raised a question about the status of those Jews who chose not to become followers of Jesus – were they still counted among God’s chosen people? And what about the Gentile converts – were they simply God’s ‘plan B’ – invited into the promise of salvation because so many of the Jews had failed to accept Jesus as the Messiah?
"...God had always intended (or predestined)
the salvation of the Gentiles,..."
Paul addresses this concern in both cases by referring to predestination. Using the Greek term proorizó (from which we get the English word ‘horizon’) he suggests that the inclusion of the Gentiles was not an afterthought of God, but was within the intentions of God (literally within the horizons of God’s thinking) all along. It is noticeable that in Romans 8:28-30, where the word proorizó appears, Paul has suddenly switched to talking about a group of people in the third person (using the pronouns ‘they’ and ‘those’) and using the past tense, whereas he has been using the first person (‘we’ and ‘us’) and the present tense in his letter thus far. It is clear, then, that these verses must refer to a specific and historic group of people, whom he reveals in chapter 9 to be the Patriarchs. In Romans 8, Paul is rallying the new believers to emulate the courage of those Patriarchs who found the strength to endure various trials and sufferings because they trusted that they had been called by God to a hope and a future. In Ephesians the emphasis is slightly different with Paul urging unity between ‘circumcised’ and ‘uncircumcised’ believers (see Ephesians 2:11-22). By suggesting that God had always intended (or predestined) the salvation of the Gentiles, Paul discourages any idea of a hierarchy between Jew and Gentile followers of Christ – all have the same hope, and therefore all are equal before God.
Whilst neither of these passages shy away from the fact that the early Christians faced suffering and difficult times, Paul is clearly not trying to suggest that such suffering is necessary, or desirable, or part of God’s pre-ordained plan. What Paul does say clearly is that, if God did not spare his own Son (Romans 8:32), it is not logical for his followers to think that their lives will be untroubled and easy. However, those who cling on to faith through tough times are never abandoned in their suffering, because nothing can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:37-39).
Conclusion
Overall, the Bible does not explicitly teach predestination in the sense of God pre-ordaining all the ups and downs and ins and outs of our lives. Although some isolated verses can seem to imply that this is the case, it is important to read these texts within their wider context. Based on Ephesians 1 and 2, some Christian groups do believe that salvation is a matter of predestination, i.e. that it was determined before you were born whether or not you would become a Christian, part of God’s ‘elect’, but this is not a universally accepted doctrine, and it does not answer the question of whether or not God pre-ordains all the day-to-day events of individual lives, including those which are painful and difficult to endure. In those situations, we are not required to believe that God planned our suffering, nor that God inflicts it upon us to make us better people. What we can be sure of is that God knows our pain, that God accompanies us through difficult times, and that whatever life throws at us, it is always God’s intention to bring us to glory. As Jeremiah 29:11 promises, we really do always have a hope and a future.