#DailyDevotion It’s Best To Confess What God Says & Believe It Than To Question How & Why
Romans 11:33-36 33How deep are God’s riches, wisdom, and knowledge; how impossible it is to find out His decisions and trace His ways! 34“Who has found out how the Lord thinks? Or who has become His adviser?” 35Or who has first given Him something for which he must be paid back? 36Everything is from Him, by Him, and for Him. To Him be glory forever. Amen.
What a doxology to God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Paul has gone through eleven chapters of theology in writing to the Romans, laying out the faith he teaches wherever he goes. In these chapters Paul has gone through God’s riches, wisdom and knowledge. He has proclaimed God’s decisions and traced his revealed ways. What the LORD thinks that has been revealed he has made known. Yet for all that, God has not revealed all things to us yet. Like Nicodemus, we barely understand earthly things, how much could we grasp and understand spiritual things. What Paul has revealed to us in this letter certainly has a lot of people trying to be God’s advisor, seeking out how the LORD thinks and tracing his ways. But we will always fall short in doing so. We would do well to believe what God has revealed to us in Christ and confess it.
What is some of the riches, wisdom and knowledge of God that Paul has revealed to us? Jesus Christ of Nazareth is God’s revealed to us through his resurrection from the dead. If we would be righteous, we much live by faith in his promises. There is a God and you are him. God has revealed his glory in nature but men worship the creation instead of the Creator. This idolatry leads to all other sins. Paul has taught us that all men are sinners whether by the Torah in the Old Testament or the Law of our hearts. We are accountable to God and all have been found wanting. There is no one who does good, no not one. Adam, the first man brought sin and death into the world. We were slaves to sin and death. Jesus the second Adam came and overcame both sin and death for us. Trusting this promise makes us righteous before God. We are joined to Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection through baptism into him. Our suffering is sanctified by Jesus’ suffering on the cross and God uses it to form us into Christ image and likeness so we should rejoice in it. We learn salvation through faith in Jesus is a gift of God. We cannot earn or credit anything in ourselves to make a claim upon God for salvation. We also learn that we remain sinners in the flesh even though we have be born from above through the waters of baptism. We will struggle with sin all our lives.
Jesus though has overcome sin and death. He is our victory over them. We walk by faith in the promises, which is walking by the Spirit and not by the law. In walking this life of faith in Christ we fulfill the law. We are taught nothing can separate us from the love God has for us in Christ Jesus. So we have the promise God has chosen us in Christ Jesus from all the people in the world to be his holy people. Then Paul, remember the doxology above, plumbs into the depths of election, Israel, who is a true child of Abraham and the like, which leads us and Paul to say, 33How deep are God’s riches, wisdom, and knowledge; how impossible it is to find out His decisions and trace His ways! 34“Who has found out how the Lord thinks? Or who has become His adviser?” 35Or who has first given Him something for which he must be paid back? 36Everything is from Him, by Him, and for Him. To Him be glory forever. Amen.
Almighty God and Father, to you be glory forever and ever, through Jesus Christ your Son who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.