This outburst of praise to God by Paul is the attitude that we all ought to have. God's plans go way beyond anything we can imagine. They are infinitely wiser than anything we can come up with, and beyond our understanding. Yet when they are revealed they will prove to be full of justice, mercy, love and grace.
Here in Romans Paul is applying this immediately to Israel, warning us against putting God in a box and thinking that we have it all worked out with regard to Israel, but we can apply the lesson more widely. The error of thinking that Israel is now out of the picture can be based on a short term view, based on what Israel has just done (ie reject Christ). God looks further back than we do, and further forward than we do. If we are honest this isn't hard to do! We very easily become blinded to the truth by the way that things seem to be right now. In any situation we face we do well to remind ourselves that God has an eternal perspective on things. He knows that the final outcome will be. We need to learn to share something of the perspective.
But someone could equally well come to the conclusion that Israel has been rejected by looking at Israel's track record. As Paul points out (and Jesus as well for that matter), she had repeatedly rejected God and His ways. The rejection of Christ was the culmination of this, therefore she no longer has a special place in God's plans. Such a view ignores all the promises made by God, and, perhaps most importanty, the extent of God's mercy. We can be insituations where failure, either for ourselves or for someone we love, seems to be the only possible outcome, inded the only justifiable outcome. The glory of the gospel is that where sin abounded, graces abounded all the more (Romans 5:20).
When we look at situations two of the things we need to do are:
Here in Romans Paul is applying this immediately to Israel, warning us against putting God in a box and thinking that we have it all worked out with regard to Israel, but we can apply the lesson more widely. The error of thinking that Israel is now out of the picture can be based on a short term view, based on what Israel has just done (ie reject Christ). God looks further back than we do, and further forward than we do. If we are honest this isn't hard to do! We very easily become blinded to the truth by the way that things seem to be right now. In any situation we face we do well to remind ourselves that God has an eternal perspective on things. He knows that the final outcome will be. We need to learn to share something of the perspective.
But someone could equally well come to the conclusion that Israel has been rejected by looking at Israel's track record. As Paul points out (and Jesus as well for that matter), she had repeatedly rejected God and His ways. The rejection of Christ was the culmination of this, therefore she no longer has a special place in God's plans. Such a view ignores all the promises made by God, and, perhaps most importanty, the extent of God's mercy. We can be insituations where failure, either for ourselves or for someone we love, seems to be the only possible outcome, inded the only justifiable outcome. The glory of the gospel is that where sin abounded, graces abounded all the more (Romans 5:20).
When we look at situations two of the things we need to do are:
- Have an eternal perspective on things
- Be aware of the depths of God's love and grace.
No comments:
Post a Comment