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Romans 8:29
“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”
Union with Christ is the root of all the benefits of salvation that come to us. But what are those benefits, and in what order do they come to us? The answer to that question can be found in what theologians call the ordo salutis—the order of salvation.
Paul gives us a basic order of salvation in Romans 8:29–30, and we can expand it based on other texts in the New Testament. This is the order that we will be looking at from the first step to the final step: foreknowledge, election (and the converse, reprobation), outer calling, effectual calling/regeneration, conversion (including faith and repentance), justification, adoption, definitive sanctification, progressive sanctification, glorification. Some of these elements are related to each other in a temporal way; for example, one is justified years, even millennia, before one is completely glorified in the resurrection of the dead. This order, however, is not, strictly speaking, an order of temporal sequence but a logical order wherein some things might happen simultaneously but one has a logical priority over the other.
The first two elements of the ordo salutis—foreknowledge and election or predestination unto salvation (Rom. 8:29)—are so closely related as to be nearly indistinguishable. The difference between them is that foreknowledge is the free choice of God to set His love on a particular people, whereas election is the Lord’s decision flowing from that love to redeem a particular sinner. Contrary to popular belief, divine foreknowledge does not consist in God’s knowing in advance that a person will believe the gospel if it is preached to him. Thus, foreknowledge is not the Lord’s knowing something about a person; rather, it is God’s knowing the actual person in a loving manner. Louis Berkhof notes that the Hebrew and Greek words translated as “foreknow” (yada and proginōskō) “do not denote simple intellectual foresight or prescience, the mere taking knowledge of something beforehand, but rather a selective knowledge which regards one with favor and makes one an object of love.”
Certainly, the Lord knows who will believe the gospel when they hear it preached. That knowledge of a future fact is not, however, the basis for God’s choice to save a person. Instead, the Lord knows the fact that a person will believe because He foreknew that person, because He decided to love him unto eternal salvation.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
We will see in our next study that God’s election and ultimately His loving foreknowledge are not grounded in us. Instead, the Lord’s love is free and depends entirely on His good pleasure, not on us. That truth is comforting, because if God does not love us because of who we are or what we have done, then He will never stop loving us on that basis either. He will always love us even as we change.
For further study
- Deuteronomy 10:14–15
- Hosea 14:4
- Ephesians 1:3–7
- 1 Peter 1:1–2
The bible in a year
- Ecclesiastes 1–3
- 2 Corinthians 10