03.03 | Chosen

Romans 9:1-29

‘So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.’

Romans 9:16

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In the days before GPS, when we’d drive to unfamiliar places with maps balanced on the lap of the passenger, you’d often hit a moment of confusion as to the route you were supposed to be taking. The very worst place for this to happen was while you were on a roundabout.

This was never good news. Uncertain of which exit to take, you’d find yourself in a kind of roundabout vortex of doom, endlessly circling until one of you made a decision—informed or desperate—about which exit you wanted. For as long as this went on, everyone on in the car would feel increasingly sick, throwing their opinions into the nauseous melée with increasing urgency, until you finally picked an exit and escaped. 

Paul is coming back around to themes we’ve already touched on today. It’s back to this question of Jews and Gentiles.

It’s easy, as a 21st Century follower of Jesus, to think that these themes are at best peripheral to our lives. To park them up as a First Century issue, and thus file them under the category of ‘essentially irrelevant to me.’ 

But it’s there. And if it’s in the Bible, God wants it to be there. He wants it to be there not just so we can learn what the Early Church was thinking about, but so that our thinking, in 21st Century Birmingham and Boston and Barbados, can be impacted and affected. He’s circling back to this theme again because these ideas are also timelessly important for the people of God.

Why?

Because the backstory of the Gospel—also known as the Old Testament—is deeply relevant. It sets the tone and the themes for the present one. The backstory gives us the trajectory of humanity up to the point of Jesus, so that we can more accurately plot our destination from this moment forwards.

And the theme of the Old Testament that Paul picks up today feels difficult:

God chooses. 

God chose Abraham. God chose Isaac. God chose Jacob. 

And therefore, right now, God chose you.

Paul preempts our response. Not gratitude, wonder, and joy at our inclusion, but:

That doesn’t sound very fair.

Now there are things we could say to soften this. We could talk about the emphasis on free will in the Garden of Eden, or God’s desire for the salvation of everyone,¹ or how Pharaoh (as the used example here) was in a downward spiral of both God hardening his heart, and hardening his own heart.² This could give us a quick exit off this dizzying roundabout.

But hold here a moment longer. Because Paul’s point interrupts us in a way that we need.

Because, if we’re honest, most of us prefer to think that we chose God. In an individualistic and consumeristic world, we like to think that we find a God (or philosophy) that we like the sound of, and pick that one. Religion becomes a bolt-on to our life contract, and God becomes at best a supporting actor to our role as the hero or heroine of our lives. We’ve marinaded in individualistic consumerism and deeply absorbed its flavours.

But the backstory interrupts all this. Because it reminds us that God doesn’t come and join our story, but rather that we have joined His. This is so radically different from the way we think—from our tendency to try and find a God who will serve us, fulfil our plans, and live like our spirituality sidekick while we get on with the life we choose for ourselves. The idea that Paul puts to us asks us to lay down everything, and receive all things as His grace and His favour and His choice and His kindness and His love. 

The backstory is essential. It is history. And history is His Story. 

And it is the great story that you have been chosen for, and invited into.

Park your offence and objections; the message of how deeply He honours free will is for another day. But for this day, get a little more humble, and therefore a little more free, and joyfully accept the gift that that Father of all glory and goodness picked you out, and wants you in His Story.

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Reflect:

In any human relationship of love, choice works both ways. How does being chosen enable you to more greatly love?

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Pray:

Father,

That you would cast your eyes over this world, 

And choose me,

Is beyond all wonder.

And yet,

The wonder of this truth

Can land on a hardened heart.

I lose it, and I overlook it, 

And I distract myself with other ideas.

But today, my Father,

I ask that you send your Spirit upon me,

To take the truth and wonder of this more deeply into the hardest places of my soul,

To bask and bathe me in this truth.

And Father, 

As you choose me, 

With such love,

Increase the strength of my choice of you,

That our journey may be increasingly together,

For in you is my wholeness

And in you is my endless purpose

Into all eternity.

In Jesus’ Name,

Amen

Old Testament: 

For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:

Numbers 8:1-10:10 | Psalm 31:1-8 

1. Have a look, for example, at 1 Timothy 2:4 or Ezekiel 18:23

2. Compare, as examples, Exodus 7:3, 7:13, and 8:15, of how the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart seems a collaboration between God and Pharoah’s own condition and choices.