Someone on Facebook asked me:
Group admin So, how would you interpret the following...
15 For He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion."
Group admin So, how would you interpret the following...
15 For He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion."
16 So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.
I replied:
Remove
John Edwards Applied to the issue Paul said he was addressing here, it meant that it was not by ethnicity (Jewish) nor by works (of the law) but solely by God's mercy.
Salvation, participation with God's redeemed people was a blessing that ethnicity, and Judaism alone couldn't bring: it derived only from God's mercy.
Mercy which He had always planned ultimately to extend on the basis of faith (irrespective of ethnicity).
Faith in Jesus - since nothing else but God Himself could ever do anything of any saving efficacy (not even Judaism could).
ManageSalvation, participation with God's redeemed people was a blessing that ethnicity, and Judaism alone couldn't bring: it derived only from God's mercy.
Mercy which He had always planned ultimately to extend on the basis of faith (irrespective of ethnicity).
Faith in Jesus - since nothing else but God Himself could ever do anything of any saving efficacy (not even Judaism could).
John Edwards It meant that God, in His sovereign, righteous mercy, saves believers because of Jesus (the way He'd always planned to do) - not because of Jewish ethnicity nor Judaism.
Manage
John Edwards It meant that it was entirely sovereign and righteous and merciful and consistent with God's character and His Word, with His purpose and promise, the Scriptures, for God to have chosen that His redeemed people would be the company of believers in His Son, not an ethnicity.
Manage
John Edwards And God chose to centre His purpose and His redeemed-people around that tag (around Jesus, around faith, not around the tags of Jewishness or Moses' rituals) not because God is arbitrarily limiting who can be saved, but because this is the only way anyone could be saved really (since, as Paul already proved earlier in Romans, both Gentiles and Jews were only sinners - despite Jews having the Law).
God was therefore in this way making the possibility as wide as wide can be - not arbitrarily limiting it.
God was therefore in this way making the possibility as wide as wide can be - not arbitrarily limiting it.
No comments:
Post a Comment