(See ELECTION.) Acts 2:23; Acts 4:28, "whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel determined before to be done" (proorisen). God has "predestinated" believers "unto the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace." "He hath chosen us in Christ" out of the rest of the world, "predestinated" us to all things that secure the inheritance for us (Ephesians 1:4-5; Ephesians 1:11). "Predestination" refers to God's decree, embodied in God's "election" of us out of the mass; His grand end. in it being "the praise of the glory of His grace" (Ephesians 1:6; Ephesians 1:12; Ephesians 1:14). It is by virtue of our union to Christ, "foreordained before the foundation of the world" (1 Peter 1:20), that we are "predestinated" (2 Timothy 1:9).
        Believers are viewed by God before the world's foundation as "IN CHRIST" with whom the Father makes the covenant (Revelation 13:8; Revelation 17:8; Ephesians 3:11), "according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." In 2 Thessalonians 2:13 the Greek for "chosen" (heilato) means rather "taken for Himself"; He adopted them in His eternal purpose; "in (Greek) sanctification of (i.e. by) the Spirit" (by consecration to perfect holiness in Christ once for all, next by imparting it to them ever more and more). There was no doubt or contingency with God from the first. All was foreordained. God's glory and the believer's salvation are secured unchangeably. All pride on man's part is excluded; all is of God's unmerited grace. Yet the will of man is, in the sense of preserving our reponsibility, free. God alone knows how the two harmonize, His predestination and our freedom; it is enough for us they are both distinctly revealed.
        At the same time fatalism is excluded, for God who predestinated believers to salvation as the end predestinated them to be conformed to the image of His Son as the means. We must make as sure of the means as of the end. Not to have the Spirit of Christ is to be none of His. Yet God's predestination is not founded on the believer's character, but the believer's character results from God's predestination (2 Thessalonians 2:13; Romans 8:9; Romans 8:28-30). God the Father gives us salvation by gratuitous election; the Son earns it by His blood-shedding; the Holy Spirit applies the Son's merits to the soul by the gospel word (Calvin): Galatians 1:4; Galatians 1:15; 1 Peter 1:2; the element IN (Greek) which we are elected is "sanctification of (consecration once for all by) the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ" (the end aimed at by God as regards us).