I am ever appreciative of Romans 9, for in this passage Paul lays out a clear argument about God's sovereignty. He talks about God choosing Jacob over Esau before either of them were born and had a chance to do any "work". God Himself had declared that "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."
Paul continues his argument using Pharoah as an example. God had told Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." God did some hardening on Pharoah's heart to accomplish His purposes. Paul's conclusion is quite clear: So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy."
At this point in the argument I love Paul because he asks the question that all of us are thinking. "If this is the case, why does God still find fault? For who can resist his will?" In other words why is man still accountable if God is sovereign in election?
Now at this point the reader is looking for how Paul might unwrap the mystery of God's sovereignty and man's accountability, but he doesn't do that. He doesn't deny either, but merely says, "God is the potter. He can do whatever He wills. The clay has no right to question." Case closed!
Now some of us won't like that answer. We want everything to fit neatly together. We want to have God all figured out. This is the way Job's friends operated in their religion. They had this suffering thing all figured out. At the end of Eliphaz's speech he declares, "Behold, this we have searched out; it is true. Hear and know it for your good." Sounds like a case closed again, but we will find out later in the book that Job's friends didn't get it right. They thought they had God all figured out, but they didn't realize "God is not tameable".
Aldous Huxley, English writer of the early 20th century complained about Christians. He said, "I object to Christians. They know too much about God." I think in this he was saying that Christians seem to claim that they have God all figured out. They have removed all the mystery of God and have organized all thoughts about Him in a neat and tidy manner. Now I don't object to studying all that God's Word has to say about God and trying to bring it all together in some sort of coherent system, but at the end of the day, I hope we haven't erased all the mystery. God is to grand, too unsearachle for us finite ones, to have Him all figured out.
This is a practical truth when life's challenges come our way. I am sure Joseph didn't know what was going on when he was thrown in a pit, sold as a slave, falsely accused, and thrown in jail. (We only know what God's intentions were at the end of the story, but image the years of wondering Joseph went through.) The fact is there are imponderables in our life. Situations come into our life or the lives of those we love and we don't have answers. (Why does God take the life of a baby? Why does God allow half a tribe in Columbia to be wiped out by disease just before they were going to have the gospel in their own language?) We can't place all of life in our neat little packages. At times like these we must merely trust. We must take our place as clay in the potter's hand, and allow the potter to remain in mystery. Let's be grateful for what the Lord has revealed to us about Himself and let's order our lives by what we know of God, but let's never think we have searched out the unsearchable One.
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