We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

How do you respond to John 21:18–19?

Jesus says to Peter, “‘[W]hen you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’ (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’”

For providential reasons (undoubtedly connected with the encouragement of martyrs in the early church) God determined that Peter would suffer the same sort of death Christ suffered. Now that Peter had been humbled and had learned how to love and serve as Jesus loved and served (see How do you respond to Matt. 26:36) Jesus was going to teach him to die as Jesus died.

This prophecy suggests that by this time the Lord was going to providentially ensure that Peter would not die in any other fashion. This would obviously be a small feat for the Lord of the universe. But it does not suggest that everything else about Peter’s future was settled, still less that everything about the future of the world is settled. We only need to resort to the “crystal ball” understanding of omniscience when we lose our confidence in the Father’s providential wisdom in history and his ability to creatively achieve his objectives while allowing creatures to be free.

Category:
Tags: ,
Topics:
Verse:

Related Reading

Is speaking in tongues the initial evidence of receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit?

Pentecostals have traditionally taught that speaking in tongues is evidence that a person is filled with the Holy Spirit. Those who defend this position do so primarily on the basis of a pattern they discern in Acts. They note that when the disciples were first baptized in the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, “all…

Topics:

Isn’t God “changing his mind” an anthropomorphism?

Question: Traditionalists argue that passages that refer to God “changing his mind” are anthropomorphic, depicting God in human terms. Open Theists take these passages literally, however. But if you’re going to take these passages literally, it seems you should, for consistency’s sake, also interpret passages about God “coming down” from heaven literally (e.g. Gen. 11:5;…

What is the significance of Matthew 25:41?

The Lord teaches that on the judgment day he will say to the wicked, “Depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels…” Hell was expressly prepared for “the devil and his angels”; humans were never meant to go there. But if God eternally knew that certain persons would end…

Topics:

How does an Open Theist explain all the prophecies fulfilled in the life of Jesus?

Question: Throughout the Gospels it says that Jesus “fulfilled that which was written.” Some of these prophecies are very specific and involve free decisions of people. For example, a guard freely chose to give Jesus vinegar instead of water (Jn 19:28), yet John says this was prophesied in the Old Testament, hundred of years before…

What do you think of the left wing Christians who are calling on Christians to stand up for “biblical justice”?

Yes, we’ve been hearing a lot of this recently, especially from more “progressive” (left-tending) Christians calling on people to vote “God’s politics” and stand up for “biblical justice.” On the one hand, I along with everyone else applaud such rhetoric, for what Bible-believing Christian in their right mind would take a stand against “biblical justice”?…

How Much of the Future is Settled? How Much is Open? (podcast)

Greg considers the mathematical nature of determinacy.  Episode 566 http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0566.mp3