THE INCREDIBLE GRACE , mercy, and love of God has an incomprehensible scope of depth, breadth, and width that is beyond our ability to fully grasp. It is only God who can weave together a perfect tapestry scene of human redemption by gathering together the loose and discarded tag ends of the misery of broken human lives and history; only God who can piece together the stories of broken families and nations and make something beautiful out of them. The final redemption to come, a beautiful scene of restoration, is now only a present hope of a future resolution. But that oh-so-tangible future reality is the source from which we draw strength to carry on from day to day in what otherwise would demolish the very dreams that sustain us.
As we gaze in all directions at a world grown dark and perverse, it is only this hope that sustains us; only in this way can we still find a way to see the world through the Creator’s eyes, and with him to say, “It is good. It is very good!” (Gen. 1:9, 31) And, from that viewpoint, to live above the *line of despair, able to function not only effectively in the practical matters of life, but also to carry ourselves with integrity by the moral standards of a higher plane of existence.
The story of the abject failure of God’s chosen people is very much the story of all of humanity. We love the promises of God, and pray for him to fulfill them in regards to obtaining ‘the good life.’ In our struggles, we always imagine that if we only had something we don’t have now, life would be free of anxiety and struggle, and we would be at peace. But when we attain the thing that we thought would make everything right, we slowly forget the God who made it possible. God kept his promises to Israel. He delivered them from the heavy hand of Pharaoh. “So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with miraculous signs and wonders.” (Deut. 26:8)
But the Israelites quickly forgot God’s providence and power, and failed to take the Promised Land, and so they wandered in the desert for a generation. “In spite of this, you did not trust in the Lord your God. When the Lord heard what you said, he was angry and solemnly swore: ‘Not a man of this evil generation shall see the good land I swore to give your forefathers, except Caleb son of Jephunneh, and Joshua, son of Nun, will enter it.’” (Deut. 1:32-38) At the end of the four-hundred-year period of the Judges, after God had given the Israelites the victories that secured for them the Promised Land, they again forgot his providence and power. “They said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.” (1 Sam. 8:6-7)
Paul has spoken of Israel rejecting Jesus, the Jews’ very own sought-for and longed-for Messiah, and quotes a dire and dangerous O.T. prophecy: “Concerning Israel he says, ‘All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.’” (Rom. 10:21, Isa. 65:2) And the mighty hand of God is withdrawn, and his outstretched arm of protection is folded against his chest, and Israel is, for a time and times, completely destroyed. For those living at that time, the destruction is complete; Rome crushes the Holy City, hunts down every Jew, killing a vast number, and deporting all those who were left—the last great diaspora—to the far ends of the earth. The “natural branch” (Rom. 11:24a), has been broken off, and in its place the Gentiles, “wild by nature” (Rom. 11:24b), says Paul, have been grafted in. Jesus addressed this, stating prophetically, “Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” (Luke 21:24)
Paul speaks across the ages, “I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited.” (Rom. 11:25) Nevertheless, God’s purposes for Israel ‘after the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled’ remain somewhat mysterious. There are at least four major theological views of how this mystery may unfold—or, may already have partially been accomplished. Perhaps it is best to simply say that God is not yet finished with Israel.
Far more important is understanding that God is a covenant-keeping God, and that he does so independent of Israel or the Gentiles keeping their generational commitments in respect to their covenant against God’s purpose over the long arc of time. Though Israel’s covenant is one tied to the Law, and the Gentiles’ is to “Grace alone by faith alone in Christ alone,” yet we both share in the historicity of the bible, and not only us, for the Lord said to Abraham, “I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.” (Gen. 22:17-18)
It is apparent that we humans, in each generation, get bound up in our own time frame, for the events of our respective time is what shapes each of us, and we are captivated by them and captives of them. But God is not restricted in this way, and his viewpoint encompasses all of his creation. He was here when space and time began, for he made them, along with dimensions of physics that we are not sufficiently aware of nor capable of fully understanding. He also has great advantage over us, for he knows the reason(s) why he created the universe; he also knows the purpose(s) for its original construction, he knows the reason(s) for its alteration by original sin, and above all, literally and figuratively, he knows the outcomes of all our struggles.
In the O.T. God promises, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jer. 29:11) And in eternity it is already recorded, “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’” (Rev. 21:5) And he has (and will) accomplished all of this by turning a negative into a positive. “For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all . ” (Rom. 11:32) He has done so in every generation, but especially in the time since Jesus walked the earth, his mercy and grace have touched individual lives in the most powerful of ways—they being “born again.” (cf. John 3:7) “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Cor. 5:17)
Q. Am I willing that anyone—even those who’ve harmed me—is worthy of God’s redemption?
*Francis Shaeffer, “The God Who Is There” – 1968.
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