Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

We must not jump to conclusions about God

^14-15 Now do we conclude that God is monstrously unfair? Never! God said long ago to Moses: ‘I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion’.

^16-17 It is obviously not a question of human will or human effort, but of divine mercy. The scripture says to Pharaoh: ‘Even for this same purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name shall be declared in all the earth’.

¹⁸ It seems plain, then, that God chooses on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will harden in their sin.

^19-20 Of course I can almost hear your retort: “If this is so, and God’s will is irresistible, why does God blame men for what they do?” But the question really is this: “Who are you, a man, to make any such reply to God?” When a craftsman makes anything he doesn’t expect it to turn round and say, ‘Why did you make me like this?’

^21-26 The potter, for instance, is always assumed to have complete control over the clay, making with one part of the lump a lovely vase, and with another a pipe for sewage. Can we not assume that God has the same control over human clay? May it not be that God, though he must sooner or later expose his wrath against sin and show his controlling hand, has yet most patiently endured the presence in his world of things that cry out to be destroyed? Can we not see, in this, his purpose in demonstrating the boundless resources of his glory upon those whom he considers fit to receive his mercy, and whom he long ago planned to raise to glorious life? And by these chosen people I mean you and me, whom he has called out from both Jews and Gentiles. He says in Hosea: ‘I will call them my people, who were not my people, and her beloved, who was not beloved’. ‘And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people, there they will be called sons of the living God’.

^27-28 And Isaiah, speaking about Israel, proclaims: ‘though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved. For he will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness, because the Lord will make a short work upon the earth’.

²⁹ And previously, Isaiah said: ‘Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we would have become like Sodom and we would have been made like Gomorrah’.