Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“What then are we to say? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy.”
NL Daily Devotion for Saturday, May 20, 2023
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
I’m not convinced by this argument. It makes God sound like a capricious egomaniac. It takes the idea that we are justified by faith and strips it of its inherent trust-generating undertones, replacing it with a fear that even though we can’t earn grace, that doesn’t mean God is going to give it to us. It takes away all our power to redeem ourselves (which is valid) without the assurance that everyone will be redeemed (which is invalid).
I think it’s okay to look at the story of Isaac and Ishmael and of Jacob and Esau and say that injustice was done to the latter in both stories. Was it God who visited this injustice, as the stories insinuate? For me that’s a hard “no.” It was the flawed humanness of Sarah and of Rebekah and their husbands, that led to one child being favored over another at great cost. In fact, God stepped in in both cases and showed great compassion and mercy to Hagar and Ishmael and the Esau.
Paul is just lamenting that so many of his beloved fellow Jews don’t agree that Jesus was the messiah, and the only way he can make sense of it is to say that God is just choosing to keep their hearts hardened, as he did to Pharaoh. And this is a dangerous line of reasoning. It allows us to discard the opinions of anyone who doesn’t agree with our world view and claim it’s God’s will. The fact remains that not everyone is going to believe in the message of the gospel and God loves them as much as anyone else and, in my belief, they have been redeemed in Christ anyway because God shows mercy and compassion on everyone no matter what.
Do I believe that God chooses to give one person faith and not another?
