Godzchild said:
But if God knows who is going to choose him in advance...wouldn't it be safe to assume that God chooses us based on his foreknowledge?
That would only be true if men were capable of choosing God without him first choosing them.
There are two ways to show this to be impossible: philosophically and theologically. I'll start with the first.
God is omnipotent and completely sovereign. That means that he is all-powerful and that he is completely and totally in control of all things everywhere: even our own choices. Now, if it were not true that God is in control of everything, including our choices, he would not be sovereign. If he were not able to prevent us from doing something, or able to make us do something, then he would not be omnipotent. So, by virtue of God's omnipotence and sovereignty, we do not have unmitigated free will. Our will is always subject to God's. He alone has truly free will.
Because of this, even if we were to choose God, he would first have to "approve" of that choice. He would have to be willing it would happen. Take note of what this means. God must first choose to allow us to choose him before we can choose him. Now, if God chooses to allow us to choose him, then we
must choose him because he has chosen to allow it. Because God is sovereign and omnipotent, if he chooses to allow us to choose him, then we must choose him because he willed that we choose him. If he were to will us to choose him and we didn't, then that would make God not sovereign. It would also make him not omniscient (because, we would postulate, he could not see that we would not choose him given the opportunity to do so). Basically,
everything that God chooses to do will come to pass. If God chooses to allow us to choose him, we will choose him. Therefore, salvation is based on God's choice, not man's.
The Holy Scriptures also make this same argument, but in much greater detail. The Scriptures tell us precisely why we need God to choose us, why he chose us, what he did for us, how he did it, and what his promise is regarding it. There is an handy acrostic that we use to spell out the five defining doctrines of Calvinist soteriology (the study of salvation):
Total Depravity
Unconditional Election
Limited Atonement
Irresistable Grace
Perseverance of the Saints
TULIP. Predestination is completely summed up in these.
Total depravity teaches that all men everywhere are completely corrupted by sin. There is nothing in him that is good or righteous (Rom 3:10, 12). He is a completely fallen creature and is incapable of loving God (Rom. 8:7). He is a spiritual corpse (Col. 2:13). Because he is spiritually dead, he cannot hear or accept the offer of the Gospel (John 3:20). The things of the Gospel are spiritual, and those who are spiritually dead cannot discern them (1 Cor. 2:14).
Unconditional election says that God has chosen his elect according to his good pleasure and not on any grounds or merit of his elect. God has chosen us because he loves us and desires to show his grace and mercy toward us. There is absolutely nothing we can do to earn this. He bestows it upon us without any requisite--without any condition.
Limited atonement typically makes people squirm, but for no good reason. It asserts that Jesus's death on the cross has accomplished everything that it was intended to do: to redeem the elect. Our Lord did not die to make "salvation possible." His sacrifice was real and effective and he really did save those chosen by his Father through his death. This consequentially means that Jesus's death is
not effective for those who do not believe in him. For them, his sacrifice does not mean anything because they have refused to hear the Gospel.
Irresistable grace is the act of the Holy Spirit in regeneration. If you remember back to total depravity, we saw that all men are corpses and are incapable of hearing the Gospel, much less accepting it. Before we can accept the Gospel, we must be born again--regenerated by the Holy Spirit. In keeping with unconditional election, this divine grace is without merit on the part of the person. Remember, he is just a dead man walking. He is worthless, there is nothing redeeming in him. God regenerates him because he loves him and desires to show him mercy. Because he is a corpse, he is also not capable of fighting back. God's grace is irresistable, both because man is dead in sins and not capable of resisting, and also because God is omnipotent and sovereign. When man's will and God's will collide, man loses.
Perserverance of the saints is God's promise to always hold us in his arms and sustain us through his mercy. God's Holy Spirit is continually at work in us, sanctifying us and enabling us to defeat our human nature through the blood of Christ. God will not allow us to fall away, nor will he condemn us again for our sins. They are covered for all time by Jesus's sacrifice. True faith will not fall into apostasy and will never forsake God because he will never let it.
Soli Deo Gloria
Jon