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 Matthew 16:21?
“From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
The ministry and death of Jesus are the centerpieces of God’s plan in world history. Therefore, very little surrounding Jesus’ life and death was left to chance. It had been determined from ages past that the Lord himself would have to become a man and die. This is something God was going to do, and thus it was foreknown from whatever time he decided it. In this verse Jesus reveals the divine plan to his disciples. But we have no reason to conclude from this that the whole of the future was settled in Jesus’ mind (see Mark 13:32). Indeed, Jesus’ prayer in the Garden suggests that he held an outside hope that even his death could be averted at the last minute (Matt. 26:39). Nor should we conclude that the specific elders, chief priests and scribes who were going to be instrumental in putting Jesus to death were predestined or foreknown from ages past to do so. The verse simply indicates that by the time Jesus was teaching his disciples about his future it was certain that some of these people would act in this fashion.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Open Theism, Q&A
Topics: Open Theism, Responding to Objections
Verse: Matthew 16
Related Reading
Is the Bible against body piercing and tattoos?
Some Christians argue against body piercing and tattoos on the basis of a couple of Old Testament verses that prohibit them (Lev. 19:28). Several years back an aggravated lady tried to get me to preach against these things in my church (she’d observed that a number of people in the congregation had body piercings and…
How do you respond to John 6:64, 70–71?
Jesus told his disciples, “‘But among you there are some who do not believe.’ For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him” (vs. 64). Jesus continued, “‘Did I not choose you, the twelve? Yet one of you is a devil.’…
Terror in the Night
I’ll never forget the night it first happened to me. I was thirteen, sharing a bedroom with my older brother. I woke up in the middle of the night and felt as if something was pinning me to the bed, choking me, and electrocuting me, all at the same time. The wind was blowing through…
What do you think of the “Penal Substitution” view of the atonement?
If asked what Jesus came to do and how he did it, most contemporary western Christians would automatically say something like, “Jesus took the punishment from God that I deserved.” This is what’s usually called “Penal Substitution” view of the atonement, for it emphasizes that Jesus was punished by God in our place. His sacrifice…
Is God All-Powerful?
I want to answer yes and no. God is all-powerful in the sense that God originally possessed all power. Before Creation, God was the only being who existed, and thus had all the power there was. He could do anything, and nothing opposed Him. But with the creation of free creatures, I maintain, God necessarily…
How do you respond to 2 Thessalonians 2:11–12?
Of those who disobey the truth Paul says, “…God sends them powerful delusions, leading them to believe what is false so that all who have not believed the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness will be condemned.” This passage is sometimes cited as evidence that the delusions that unbelievers embrace are as much a part…