Thoughts From Romans 11 - Part 2

 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

    How unsearchable his judgments,
    and his paths beyond tracing out!
34 “Who has known the mind of the Lord?
    Or who has been his counselor?”
35 “Who has ever given to God,
    that God should repay them?”
36 For from him and through him and for him are all things.
    To him be the glory forever! Amen.  Rom. 11:33-36

      Peter states in his 2nd epistle that Paul's writings can be hard to understand and ignorant people distort them. I'm pretty sure that he must be referring to Romans 9-11. As we have looked at these, you can see so many controversial areas in the body of Christ that we divide over. Here are some of them:

       Predestination vs. Foreknowledge

       Double Predestination 

       Individual election vs. corporate election

       Eternal security (can your branch be removed from the vine?)

       Replacement theology (The Church has replaced the Jews)

       Dispensational theology (are we in the Church age?)

       Eschatology (End times views)

       Altar calls and "Saying the Prayer"

You might be able to come up with others, but these three chapters stand out in the book of Romans as ones that make you want to skip from Chapter 8 to 12. Funny thing is that some "theologians" love to camp out on these verses to prove that their understanding of the Bible is correct.

         I love the way Paul closes out this passage. He seems to be saying, "I know I have just blown your mind with some hard teachings. Even if you don't understand it all, that's OK. What you do need to understand is that we serve a God who is far greater than us. His mind and plans are way above our comprehending and that's great because if we are worshipping a God that is on our level, is He really God? Have we made Him up?"

         That's kind of what I think Paul is saying. It's probably wrong to put words in his mouth but my point is that when we study these controversial areas we should study and know what we believe and be convinced up until the point that we aren't willing to change our minds if presented with an overwhelmingly convincing argument. If we get to that point, we have become smug and actually a bit foolish. Paul said in Corinthians that at this point we know in part, it's like we have blurry vision, but someday we will fully know. When we come up to these difficult passages let it turn our eyes to that day when we will see clearly.