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Romans 11:33-36

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

Our text stands on its own as a powerful statement about the identity of God. We have this morning confessed the Athanasian Creed of the Christian Church, as we do on this Festival of the Holy Trinity each year. Our confessing of this creed reminds us of how Scripture reveals the true God. It’s even more explicit in this than the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds that we usually use (and that’s saying something!). In this creed theologians have carefully expressed that God is beyond our comprehension (we don’t have experience with anyone else who’s like this). He is three persons, but one God (Tri-une). None of the persons is greater or lesser than the others. Each is revealed to have different characteristics and emphases though. St. Paul concludes our text directing his readers to this God. To him be glory forever, he says.

But what Paul has said here is a concluding statement in a larger discussion.

Within that discussion he asks and answers a question he thinks might have occurred to his readers. The question: Has God rejected his people (Romans 11:1)?

He thinks it might occur to them to ask it because he has been discussing the fact that God’s people have been so unfaithful, like their ancestors in Elijah’s time (that prophet had complained to God, that His idolatrous people had killed all the rest of the prophets, and now were seeking his life also—1 Kings 19:10). And Paul is saying that the Israelites of his day are no better. They aren’t worshipping idols like their forbears; but they’ve made idols of themselves in a way—rejecting Jesus as Savior, and, as Paul says, seeking to establish their own [righteousness] (Romans 10:3). Their righteousness, they think, is in being circumcised, and in doing the works of the Law.

Proclaiming God’s glory in our text, Paul makes the statement:

Who has given a gift to [God] that he might be repaid? In other words: Who could be so righteous in himself that God owes him something?

Paul’s fellow Jews were thinking that being related to Abraham and doing good works were like gifts they were giving to God. And their presumption was that they’d obligated God to repay them for those gifts with eternal life in His kingdom. They had established their own righteousness, they thought (they were wrong).

This is the way God was seeing their “righteousness” (Paul says their wickedness is like what led God to say about the people of Isaiah’s time):

“All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people (Romans 10:21).”

God is the one who determines what makes a person righteous before Him, not people. He makes us righteous by giving us Christ’s righteousness to cover our guilt. He forgives us because of what Christ has done; it isn’t anything in us.

This desire of people to establish their own righteousness apart from Christ didn’t end with the Jews of Paul’s time. It’s our nature to do this. You have the same tendency. You have to be reminded each week, that when you stand before God in the judgment, nothing about your life is going to impress Him; only that Christ’s righteousness has been placed upon you (by Him) to cover your guilt. Your church attendance doesn’t make up for your sins. Neither do your acts of charity, or your good reputation in the community. The way Paul’s fellow Jews were seeing themselves (as all around good people) was kind of making them think they had all they needed. What’d they need a Savior for, when they were such apparently godly people? In fact: didn’t God owe them something for all this goodness?

When Paul makes the point he makes in our text, about no one being able to give a gift to God for which He must repay him, he’s reminding you of your real situation before God. He said it this way in one of his letters: You were dead in your trespasses and sins, and the uncircumcision of your flesh (Colossians 2:13). He meant there was nothing his readers could do to get close to God’s kingdom as they were by nature. They were entirely lost so far as it depended on them. God has to do every bit of it.

That’s your situation too, and mine, according to our nature. Whenever you’ve thought for a moment that you were different from other people, that you belonged in God’s kingdom because of something you could bring forward (and that you were not entirely at God’s mercy, and in severest need of His undeserved love), you were kidding yourself, and you were treading the path that leads to hell. And if you tend even now, to think, Why am I wasting my time here? God and I are good. He sees what I have to offer. Then hear God’s words through the prophet Ezekiel in our Old Testament lesson: Repent and turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin. Hear Jesus tell Nicodemus in our Gospel lesson: unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. He meant by that, that what we are isn’t fit for God’s kingdom. He must change us, put Christ’s righteousness upon us, erase from the record what our own deeds have produced.

Paul has something else to say in this text. He has asked, Who has given [God] a gift that he might be repaid? He has echoed the sentiments of the Psalmist, who writes: Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you (143:2).

Also, now, he declares: How unsearchable are [God’s] judgments and how inscrutable his ways! On this day in which we reflect on the magnitude of God’s glory, we consider with Paul God’s incomprehensible grace.

The answer to Paul’s question of whether God has rejected His people is a resounding NO! In fact, Paul goes on to explain, God had an extraordinary plan to be merciful not only to His own covenant people, but also to others who had previously been outside of that covenant—the Gentiles. Astonishingly, it had been God’s plan—during a low ebb in the history of His own people (Abraham’s descendants), when they were uninterested in Him and His saving—to make Himself known to others. Every person in the world is in the same boat, after all, needing kindness from God, needing forbearance (patience while the Spirit works through the message about Him to bring people to faith). This God who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4) determined to go after those who hadn’t been seeking Him. And Paul even mentions that a by-product of this new outreach might just be that God’s covenant people would take a second look. They would be envious that what had been theirs was now going to someone else, and would grab ahold of it again. How unsearchable are [God’s] judgments and how inscrutable his ways! If someone were going to write a fiction of how God might operate, they wouldn’t write that!

The most important thing we see in this God Whose essence we have explored so extensively this morning is His grace toward sinners. This one Who devises intricate plans to save people from their sins is also the one Who is devoted to saving you from yours. You didn’t have any gift for God obligating Him to repay you, so He made His own Son that, offering Him as what makes you righteous to stand before Him in the judgment. That Son’s true righteousness stands in the place of whatever attempts you might have made to establish a false righteousness. He’s the One to Whom the Father would never have to say, Repent and turn from all your transgressions; so He can take yours upon Himself and make the payment. And He did, make the payment. Your sins are forgiven for His sake.

There’s that part at the end of the Athanasian Creed that sometimes confuses people—the part that says: And they that have done good will enter life everlasting; and they that have done evil into everlasting fire. By His grace, God is able and willing to see you before Him apart from your sins. He will see you as having put on the garment of Christ’s righteousness instead. And when He sees you that way He only sees the perfect life that Jesus lived for you. He only sees someone who has done good. You are represented by Christ before Him through faith. And that being the case, you enter into life everlasting, as the creed says. Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways….to Him be glory forever. Amen.

OTHER LESSONS FOR THIS WEEK:

Ezekiel 18:30-33

Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, declares the LORD God. Repent and turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the LORD God; so turn, and live.

St. John 3:1-15

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he can- not enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”