Is God Unjust?
Scripture Texts: Romans 9:13-24
You can tell by the questions asked and objections raised these words were a stumbling block to the Christians in Rome. And they have been for Christians all the way to today. Frankly we are kind of embarrassed by these words. They don’t seem helpful to us especially when we want to witness to unbelievers. We like to skip over this chapter.
Have you ever asked why this chapter is in the Bible? Is this really necessary? Why do you think God put these hard truths in Scripture? This is in Scripture because God thinks we need it. He wants us to know this about Him.
God knows our tendency to want to make Him in our own image. We want to create our own designer God, and the God we would design would not say things like this. You have heard people say, “Well my God would never be angry or have wrath or be unfair. My God would never say, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. My God would save everyone. That’s my God.”
God is not embarrassed about Himself, and He wants us to know Him as He truly is and to see the glory of His character and nature and ways.
We are in the middle of Romans 9, a chapter in which the Apostle Paul is explaining how in the world God could break His promise to His covenant children, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and turn his back on them and instead give the fulfillment of His promise to the unpromised, uncircumcised, uncovenanted dirty Gentiles. This is scandalous, how could God break His Word? But as it turns out Paul’s answer is even more scandalous. Not all Israel is Israel.