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Getting your head into the heavens

All day I have been thinking about Romans 8:29-30. I will be preaching on the passage this coming Sunday. I am engaged in an inner-dialogue/debate about how many sermons I will preach on these two verses. Like any Reformed expositor, everything that is in me wants to preach on every link in the ‘golden chain.’ But there is a problem. I’m not so sure I understand foreknowledge, and the commentaries have not been especially helpful so far.

My basic policy is that if I’m not comfortable saying I understand the basic meaning of a passage or term, then I simply won’t preach on it. But that doesn’t change the fact that it drives me bonkers not to understand the term or passage. And so, I remind myself of a quote I know by heart from G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy:

The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

I still want to understand precisely what foreknowledge is. But I also want to remember that God does not call me to be all-knowing. He would rather me be in awe of him.

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