God’s appointment for the believer; John 15:16.

Title: God’s appointment for the believer; John 15:16.

 

John 15:16 "You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He may give to you.

 

 “appointed” - aorist active indicative of ti,qhmi(teeth-ay-mee)[tithemi] = to lay down, to put, to place, to set, to lay out. God has laid out for you a plan or an appointed way, your introduction to predestination.

 

The aorist tense refers to God’s decree in EP based on foreseen faith of any person in the CA in the Lord Jesus Christ to appoint them to a place in the body of Christ with a specific, tailor fit plan just for them.

 

As we share in Christ’s election we also share His predestination. Christ was the first to have such a plan and to test it under maximum pressure and so we call His plan the prototype.

 

Christ graciously received the prototype plan of God, which He then asked the Father to share with the Church under the title of predestination, or predetermined plan of God.

 

If prayer is ineffective then this is just stated by our Lord for posterity and simply repetition of what the Father would have done anyway. If prayer is effective and God’s decree can be influenced by legitimate prayer then this prayer has the impact of establishing the Church.

 

John 17:15 "I do not ask Thee to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one.

 

“One” is not in the original language. The request is to keep them from evil, which refers to false doctrines, legalism, antinomianism, lasciviousness, or anything in the thinking of cosmic 1 or cosmic 2. Guarding them and us from evil is the work of God amounting to predestination, the word, the Spirit, the plan that opens our eyes to the falseness of all evil that is propagated by the enemies of God.

 

Does this imply that Christ could have asked for those who believed by this time to be taken out of the world in a sort of minor Rapture, ending the Hypostatic union with a resurrection of the current believers with no intercalation age of the Church? One must wonder at the impact of this prayer, which is truly the Lord ’s Prayer.

 

The request to “keep them from evil” results in the work of the Father in predestination for each Church-age believer.

 

John 17:16 "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

 

John 17:17 "Sanctify them in the truth; Thy word is truth.

 

John 17:18 "As Thou didst send Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.

 

This has no precedent in the OT. There is no where prophesized that 12 men would be commissioned to evangelize the world and write the completed canon of Scripture. The Lord makes an executive decision to send them as He was sent. Praying to the Father that it should be sanctioned and knowing that His request would be honored based on His own work and sacrifice.

 

John 17:19 "And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.

 

John 17:20 "I do not ask in behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word [that’s you!!];

 

John 17:21 that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us; that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me.

 

John 17:22 "And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given to them; that they may be one, just as We are one;

 

John 17:23 I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and didst love them, even as Thou didst love Me.

 

John 17:24 "Father, I desire that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am, in order that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me; for Thou didst love Me before the foundation of the world.

 

John 17:25 "O righteous Father, although the world has not known Thee, yet I have known Thee; and these have known that Thou didst send Me;

 

John 17:26 and I have made Thy name known to them, and will make it known; that the love wherewith Thou didst love Me may be in them, and I in them. "

 

There was never a doubt in the mind of God since He has omniscience, however; there were variables that God allowed and one of them, a very great one of them, was the request of your husband to usher in the CA as the maximum display of God’s magnificent grace.

 

Election is the foundation of the universal Church while appointed believers are the structure.

 

Election is a tease without predestination - God’s plan or way for your life. Election is God’s sovereign will while predestination is God’s sovereign provision to realize that will.

 

Election is the blueprint while predestination is the materials, tools, labor, and skill sets needed to complete the house. And the house being built in God’s plan is the ECS.

 

Remember that the disciples here with Christ, soon to be promoted to apostles, have no great affection for Christ in the true sense at this time. They love Him, but just like Peter’s empty promise to lay down his life for Christ, all of them will scatter when His hour comes. They do not have the love commanded. They do not have the faith to follow the commands. They do not have His joy made full in them. However, all of that will follow as they each grow in grace and knowledge.

 

Yet, they each have been chosen and appointed.

 

Election and predestination are the sovereign decision of God to all believers at salvation and as such they do not depend on success in the spiritual life.

 

However, a pursuit of the truth of your election and predestination through doctrine and the FHS will lead the believer to realize his election by executing his predestination.

 

The world system produces substitutes or counterfeits intended to produce a feeling that personal desires can be met by achieving certain goals.

 

In an article entitled, “Personal Goal Setting,” from mindtools.com there is instruction.

 

“Many people feel as if they're adrift in the world. They work hard, but they don't seem to get anywhere worthwhile. A key reason that they feel this way is that they haven't spent enough time thinking about what they want from life, and haven't set themselves formal goals. After all, would you set out on a major journey with no real idea of your destination? Probably not!”

“Click this video to find out how to set powerful goals. Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn your vision of this future into reality.”

 

It goes on to say that you should create your own “big picture” say, where do you want to be in ten years and then break that down into smaller targets that you must reach to realize your lifetime goals.

 

Not all of this is completely wrong or in any way anti-doctrinal. Say I’m taking a college course, say it is chemistry. I would be handed a syllabus that mapped out the goals of the semester and it would be wise to make a plan of study, help sessions, chapters in the text I should master by a certain date, etc. in order to achieve an A. The same would be true of an athlete training for the Olympics or even a high school athlete who wants to throw the shot put a certain distance by the time he’s a senior. There is nothing wrong with these things. Say I want to plan a vacation with my family that will cost 00. I’d better start saving and set goals for how much I need to save at certain increments. I could put it in the Lord’s hands, true, but the Lord is not in the business of sending 00 checks for vacations, or getting muscles in shape while you sit on the couch, or downloading the principles of chemistry while you play video games. I’m not saying to put God in a box, but God is usually concerned with other things. As we have seen, God is very concerned about your life realized through His election and that realization is only seen through walking in His predestination.

 

The article I mention and many others like it motivate people to get involved in goal setting on things that are quite out of their grasp since conditions for success are not controllable. To have a ten year plan is ludicrous since you don’t know what will change even tomorrow. Instruction from our Lord about not being concerned for tomorrow, for today has enough trouble of its own, is sometimes taken out of its context, since such instruction is designed to give a RMA and not a lazy attitude of no planning at all. He didn’t say, “Don’t plan,” He said, “Don’t be concerned about it.”

 

Some more about the article:

Step 1: Setting lifetime goals:

The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime (or at least, by a significant and distant age in the future). Setting lifetime goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.

To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some of the following categories (or in other categories of your own, where these are important to you):

 

Career- What level do you want to reach in your career, or what do you want to achieve?

Financial- How much do you want to earn, by what stage? How is this related to your career goals?

Education- Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to have in order to achieve other goals?

Family- Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your extended family?

Artistic- Do you want to achieve any artistic goals?

Attitude- Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? (If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.)

Physical- Are there any athletic goals that you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?

Pleasure- How do you want to enjoy yourself? (You should ensure that some of your life is for you!)

Public Service - Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?

 

Then you are to brainstorm ways to achieve this, write personal mission statements, and then narrow things down to 5 years, 1 year, 6 months, 1 month, etc. smaller goals. State all goals as a positive statement and not a negative.

 

As with all of these programs, great energy may be put into the bucket list, but not so much energy into their fulfillment in the narrow amount of free time any adult in America has, except for the unemployed. What many who have become inspired by the movie, “The Bucket List,” forget is that the character played by Jack Nicholson was independently wealthy with plenty of free time on his hands. The combination of those two things is very, very rare in this world. Why not trust an Omnipotent God who has made a list for you in EP under the label, predestination.

 

John 15:16 "You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He may give to you.

 

 “appointed” - aorist active indicative of ti,qhmi(teeth-ay-mee)[tithemi] = to lay down, to put, to place, to set, to lay out. God has laid out for you a plan or an appointed way, your introduction to predestination.

 

However, technically this word is not for predestination though it is closely related to it.

 

There are five words for predestination in the Greek NT:

 

a) Proori,zw, [proorizo] a verb meaning to predesign, ROM 8:29, 30; EPH 1:5,11.

 

b) Proti,qhmi, [protithemi] a verb meaning to predetermine (proori,zwand proti,qhmiare really synonyms with slight changes of meaning) ROM 3:25; EPH 1:9.

 

c) Pro,qesij, [prosthesis] a noun meaning a predetermined plan, ROM 8:28, ROM 9:11; EPH 1:11; 3:11; 2 Tim 1:9.

 

d) Proginw,skw, [proginosko] a verb meaning to foreordain or preordain when God is the subject, 1 Pet 1:20; ROM 8:29; 11:2.

 

e) Pro,gnwsij, [prognosis] the cognate of proginw,skw, which means foreknowledge or a predetermined purpose, Acts 2:23; 1 Pet 1:2.

 

Turn to:

ROM 8:28

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose [prosthesis - predetermined plan].

 

ROM 8:29

For whom He foreknew [proginosko - foreordained], He also predestined [proorizo - predesigned] to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren;

 

ROM 8:30

and whom He predestined [proorizo - predesigned to become conformed to the image of Christ], these He also called [elected]; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.

 

Dualism is a false ideology that states that every thesis must have an antithesis. While this is true in some cases it is not true in all cases.

 

In the Bible, if the antithesis is not stated, it does not exist. The unbeliever is not predestined to hell; he goes by his own free choice because he rejects Christ as his Savior, John 3:18, 36.

 

No unbeliever is ever predestined or predetermined to judgment; they go by means of their own volition.

 

John 3:18 "He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

 

John 3:36 "He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him."

 

The unbeliever is not predestined to hell. The doctrine of predestination deals with the believer only.

 

The Biblical concept of predestination does not conflict with human volition but emphasizes it. The plan is begun for you by the baptism of the Holy Spirit at the moment of salvation. You were set up to be in union with Christ. You were appointed, which is our word in John15:16. But the path set before you has been designed by God in EP and you can know that path and walk that path, or you can know that path and refuse to walk that path, or you can ignore the knowledge of the path completely.

 

So your volition is not in conflict with predestination, but rather, predestination gives opportunity to your volition.

 

“God is not willing that any should perish.” Unlimited atonement verifies that God’s sovereignty wills salvation for the entire human race.

 

The purpose of this doctrine is to relate the believer permanently to the plan of God through positional truth, EPH 1:5. Only the believer has a destiny. Only the believer is foreordained under the provision of the divine decree of election and predestination.