How did God know that Adam and Satan would sin?

SATAN FIRST, EVE SECOND, ADAM THIRD.

Hello all. Newbie here.

According to the Word, omniscience means all-knowing. He saw all the way down the line of time, in heaven and on earth, to what people and spirits would do, if given a choice. He gave us that choice (free will). Satan and the angels that rebelled with him were creatures made by God, meaning they had not always been (like man), and God knew what decisions they and we would make. He is the author of time, so of course he knew that Satan first, Eve second and Adam third, would make a choice other than what they should.

 

"How" implies a means, a method, a way in which He gained this knowledge and by definition would not include eternal omniscience. God knows everything therefore, He just KNOWS.

 

When the people asked Jesus what was the most important commandment, He said to love God with everything in you (my rough translation!) and love your neighbor as yourself. He said all the law and all the prophets hung on this.

If this is true, then the reason we were created was to love.

But love is not love without a choice. Love, at its root, is the decision to care for someone else over and above care for oneself. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son..."

It was His choice to care for us this way. It is our choice to either turn away from this love or finally, through His gracious Holy Spirit, return that love. Although we cannot return the love on our own, with our sin natures, we can choose, or want, to. That does not make us capable, but does put us in a position of being led to Christ and salvation and a new birth -- with a new nature that can love.

However the upshot of the whole thing is that as soon as there was free choice, there were many who would end up choosing themselves (and their thoughts and their ideas of 'good', etc.) over God. Yet without that free choice NONE of us would have ever been able to fulfill the reason for our own existence/creation!

The evil is the result of choosing self over God. I wish God had created more of us with a desire for the truth and a desire to love Him back, but there must be a reason for the way things are tilted the way they are, so I must be content to wait.

Someday I will know even as I am also known.