Many Christians confuse the theological concept of predestination with the philosophical concept of determinism, making salvation not contingent on human choice—and if this were true, salvation would be involuntary and sinners would not be able to choose salvation. Because of the teaching of Original Sin, all Christians began as sinners and that would mean that there are no Christians. No amount of taking Jesus as your Lord and Savior
or praying the prayer at the end of the Four Spiritual Laws booklet would make anyone a Christian.
To avoid this absurdity, we must distinguish between determinism and predestination. Determinism precludes free will, but predestination does not. Jesus tells us to choose and obey, two things we cannot do without free will. We can hardly think that Jesus commanded us to do things that He has made impossible.
Predestined
does not mean inevitable
or predetermined.
Predestined
means that the destination has been set in advance, it is not a guarantee that you will arrive there. You can set Chicago as your destination in advance, but you might change your mind or get diverted on the way. A person on the way to heaven might get distracted by the allure of sin and not make it there.
It is not God’s will for anyone to perish (2 Peter 3:9) and Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, not just for a part of it (1 John 2:2). This means that God has predestined the entire human race for salvation, but has not constrained them all to go there. The only solution to this apparent contradiction of people being lost even though it is not God’s will, is the evangelical message that all people are predestined to go to heaven, but in order to arrive at their destination, they must become Christians by freely choosing Jesus.
Another way of saying it is that Jesus has pressed a ticket into each person’s hand that says admit one to heaven,
and it is our job to convince them not to throw it away.