True peace comes from realizing God's grace is stronger than you are.
Romans 9:16-21 (NIV)
15 God says to Moses,
“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
16 It [our salvation] does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. 17 For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” 18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
19 One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” 20 But who are you, o man, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ ” 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?
Canons of Dordt
Point 1 - God's Unconditional Election
6 - God’s Eternal Decision
The fact that
some receive from God the gift of faith within time,
and that others do not,
stems from his eternal decree.
For “all his works are known to God from eternity” (Acts 15:18; Eph. 1:11).
In accordance with this decree
God graciously
softens the hearts, however hard, of the elect
and inclines them to believe,
but by a just judgment
God leaves
in their wickedness and hardness of heart
those who have not been chosen.
And in this especially is disclosed to us God’s act
—unfathomable, and as merciful as it is just—
of distinguishing between people equally lost.
This is the well-known decree of election and reprobation revealed in God’s Word.
The wicked, impure, and unstable
distort this decree
to their own ruin,
but it provides holy and godly souls with comfort beyond words.
Summary
We have a deeply embedded sense of fairness and justice here in North America. We understand that those who take risks and work hard deserve to be rewarded, while those who cheat and steal ought to get what they have coming to them. These are good principles necessary for building a solid society, so because they've contributed to success in one sphere of life, we often assume that they carry over into all of the others, such as our eternal salvation. God must be obligated to save those who truly deserve to be saved, we conclude.
But in one of the most shocking passages in the Bible, God turns this assumption upside down. Paul begins shattering our notion by quoting the LORD's words to Moses, stating that He will have mercy on those whom He chooses. This means, Paul goes on to conclude, that salvation does not depend upon a person's individual efforts. In other words, none of us can point to our own holy accomplishments and say that we deserve salvation.
God, according to His wisdom and good pleasure, has mercy on who he wants to have mercy, and he hardens those whom he wants to harden. It's not that the elect somehow deserved grace more so than those who God has passed over and left in their sin.
Paul, as he so often does, anticipates the very question his readers will have upon reading these heavy words. If it's all up to God as far as who repents and who rejects, then how can God blame those who reject Him? How can it be their fault if they're just doing what God in a sense programmed them to do?
Dig Deeper
Paul doesn't directly answer the hypothetical questions that both he and we raise. Instead he hits us with the hard reality that we don't deserve to ask the question in the first place. Remember, Paul tells you, you are God's creation, so therefore God has every right to do with you as He pleases. If God's desire is to preserve you unto eternal salvation, then so be it. If He instead wills you to the eternal punishment (which we all actually deserve!), then so be it.
Paul's words seem harsh, cold and unfeeling. Read in isolation, they seem to portray a preprogrammed robotic world - a fatalism in which an uncaring God creates some people just to smite them and arbitrarily saves a few, whether they deserve it or not.
But of course these words are not written in isolation. They come directly from God Himself, through Paul, right alongside words that tell us of His unfailing love, mercy, goodness and holiness. These words come in a book, that more clearly than any other book in the Bible, describe how it is that Christ atoned for sin and granted perfect righteousness to those His Father had given to Him; the same book that goes on to tell us how the Spirit's regeneration enables us to obey God's command to freely accept and live in accordance with the grace He gives.
These words are not at all written to dent or dull your perception of who and what God is or how He operates. They're written to humble you. The more you humble yourself and understand that your salvation is completely dependent upon God's mercy and not your effort, the more comfort you will experience knowing that God's grace is stronger than you are.
ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, who has mercy upon whom He will have mercy, and has compassion upon those whom He will have compassion;
ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray that through the humility these words bring, you will come to realize more and more that God's grace is stronger than you are;
ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:
Read the New Testament in a year! Today: Acts 10
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