I have compassion!

[AI translation] There are some passages in Scripture that pose a serious problem not only for the untrained Bible reader, but also for the most in-depth theologians. This is one of them. No wonder one of you, when asked what you would like to hear a sermon on, wrote this: To me, this verse is so incomprehensible and powerful: "I have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I have compassion on whom I have compassion." Well, I've read many explanations of this Word, but I confess that none of them has fully reassured me. I can't promise to solve this problem in a satisfactory way now. If anywhere, it is here that we really need to keep in mind what is written in the book of Isaiah, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts" (Isa 55:8-9). But at least let us not misunderstand!In the first place, when God says "I have compassion on those I have compassion on", there is one thing that cannot and must not be taken from this: the arbitrariness that resonates in our ears in a way that says: "I do what I want, what is it to you? This statement is not the arrogant revelation of a capricious tyrant, the arbitrariness of power, the random distribution of tyrannical grace, but on the contrary: it is an almost repeated statement, a doubled testimony to the fact that God's grace is grace! Almost like this: To whom I have shown mercy, to whom I have shown mercy, it is granted! I have mercy on whom I have mercy, so let not the one whom God has mercy on be afraid or feel himself to be an outcast, for his mercy is true mercy! Full rehabilitation, a relationship that is not disturbed by the recollection of painful memories, by reproaches. A state of grace like that of a prodigal son returned home, adopted as a son again. A state of sonship that keeps the pardoned in a total liberated commitment.
Then it is good to consider what grace is. Well, it is the attitude, the motive, the act of God, which he owes to no one. That which He does not do out of compulsion, in return, but out of His own free good pleasure. That which He exercises purely out of love for one who has not deserved it at all, has not served Him in any way, and might even expect the opposite! For instance, of all the persons here mentioned, God did not owe it to Abraham to choose him of all men to be the ancestor of the faithful of all time, and yet that he chose him for this purpose was purely out of grace. It did not behove Jacob to prefer him to his brother Esau for a particular purpose. Nor to Moses to have him carry out the deliverance of the people of Israel from the slavery of Pharaoh - that he did so was purely out of grace. Just as He did not owe it to this wretched world to send Jesus and give Him up to a redemptive death for it. That He did so, it was solely by His mercy and grace. Nor did He owe it to you or me that He would make us heirs of heavenly glory through faith in Jesus, and that He would do so is only by His grace.
So let us understand the grace to be that act, that motive, that conduct of God, by which he owes nothing to any one. It is precisely for this reason that God cannot be held accountable, down to the most minute details of everyday life. I cannot argue with Him about why, for example, He chooses one woman to be the mother of six children and leaves another, however much she longs for a child, barren. Why does he choose one woman to play Albert Schweitzer and leave the other a grey butler? Why does he keep one in good health until his late old age and leave the other to die young of a painful cancer? It could go on indefinitely. For it is essentially the same question as why the fate of Jacob is different from that of Esau, and why the role of Moses is different from that of Pharaoh. These are indeed mysteries, God's workshop secrets, which he does not explain, to which Paul only alludes by the analogy that it is the potter's right to fashion from the clay at his disposal a vessel of such and such a shape, for such and such a purpose: a vase for flowers, a milk jug, or a waste-paper bin, because he needs such and such a vessel. After all, God is the Creator! He knows what you need. Here it must be clearly understood that when God makes a flower vase, a milk jug, or a waste receptacle out of a man's brain, it is not for his salvation, but for his role on earth.
So that He has mercy on whom He wills, and He hardens whom He wills, does not mean that He has created some people in advance so that they will be saved in any case, and others so that they will be damned in any case. This would be contrary to the spirit of Scripture. It is a question of who He wants to use for His purposes in the course of history. The people of Israel were also chosen to fulfil the historical - let us say salvation-historical - role that God intended them to play in preparing and carrying out His redemptive plan for the world. This election of Israel was not, therefore, an election for eternal salvation, but for service. It was to worship the one true God in a pagan world and to be a propagator of faith in the one true God among the Gentiles. He was chosen to receive and to impart divine revelation. That is why he entrusted him with the sacred writings, the writings of the prophets, to preserve them. He also chose him to be the incarnate Christ, the Saviour of the world. So the people of Israel were chosen, not for themselves, but for all mankind. This election is a mission, a calling! God wants this people to be at His service. The selection of Israel for this special role is not at the expense of the other nations, but for their benefit.
So it is also grace, grace for the other peoples! This selection for this special role begins with Abraham, the forefather of the Jewish people. It continues in his descendants until Jesus. But not in all of Abraham's descendants, for he too had two sons. The line of election continues only in one, in the line of Isaac. Of Isaac's two sons, God only continues the line of election in Jacob's descendants. This expression, "I loved Jacob, but I hated Esau" (Rom 9:13) does not mean that Jacob is saved and his brother is damned. It is not literal, but a sharp juxtaposition, common in Semitic languages. It is not hate, but that by God's mysterious will, Jacob, not Esau, inherited the messianic promise. Not everyone is given a role in the line of salvation history that God is continuing to unfold in the course of world history towards its conclusion. Those who do get a role are either given it in a positive or negative sense. (This is no more a merit for Moses than it is an excuse for Pharaoh: we know that Pharaoh at the time hardened his heart against the divine command, interpreted by Moses, to release the Jewish people from Egypt. He refused to let them go.) But the point here is precisely that God's plan of salvation, his messianic promise, cannot be thwarted by Pharaoh, by unbelief, by hardening, or by the negative agents of salvation history.
Again, it is a miracle of God's grace that when the unbeliever acts freely, responsibly, self-consciously, he is still an instrument in the hands of the One who said of himself, "I have mercy! I have mercy! God also uses human stupidity and impulse for good, if only we can wait. That is God's humour. Cases like Pharaoh's hardening of the heart were calculated into his plan for the world. Pharaoh goes ahead against his will, what God has planned. After all, without Pharaoh there would be no miraculous deliverance from Egypt and no Passover! Here again we are faced with an incomprehensible mystery. Scripture says, God hardens those whom He wills. So God hardened Pharaoh's heart too? Yes and no. It is still an empirical fact today that not accepting the Word, disobeying God's will, hardens a man's soul, makes him immune to the Word and less receptive to it. It is such a hardened soul or people that God lets go his way. Man is thus hardened by his own sin and turned further and further away from God's grace. The consequence of unwillingness is not seeing, spiritual blindness. But even with this hardening, loss is not God's purpose. The hardening is not done to make it permanent. Hardening, however peculiar it may sound, is also God's way of grace.
The people of Israel also hardened themselves to the divine saving grace revealed in Jesus. They rejected the Messiah, and yet, the hardening of Israel is just one step on the road to salvation. It is part of God's eternal plan. For in this way the gospel reaches beyond the boundaries of a nation and a country, even to the Gentiles. But this hardening is also a grace to Israel. For the father of the prodigal son sent his hard-hearted son away from home, so that he might find his way home from the trough of misery and swine, better than before he left. And at last he became a son to his father, like his brother. When the people of Israel find their way back home to the fatherly house of Jesus after a millennium of abduction and suffering, then they can truly fulfil their God-ordained vocation to be a source of blessing and light to the nations of the world! So, too, the hardening is so that he may have more compassion, so that "I have compassion on whom I have compassion" may become even clearer and more radiant.
Lastly, there is also the matter of the vessels of wrath, on whom God shows His punitive justice. It is not God who forms the vessels of wrath, but man who makes himself into them. It is through the vessels of wrath that God demonstrates the consequences of a person's unrepentant rejection of His grace. Or would it be God's duty only to have mercy, and have no reason or right to be angry and judge? In fact, God once set an example of having His wrath and mercy in the same vessel. Jesus on the cross became both the vessel of wrath and the vessel of mercy for us. There He truly showed His power to punish sin and His mercy to have compassion on the sinner! So also his wrath only draws us under his mercy and makes it urgent for us to submit to him! There is a serious warning in this: beware, do not play with grace! For God is not only a gracious God, but also a wrathful, punishing God! He is a God of wrath.
I will not go on, for here we are dealing with divine mysteries, holy mysteries. From God's thoughts we can learn only what He Himself has told us. The rest remains a mystery, like a high mountain whose peaks are hidden from our sight by a cloud. We cannot form a coherent system of thought about God's thoughts for our own human logic. Is it really a question of whether we can bow before God? Not before a logically conceived concept of God, but before the living God. If so, then we can count ourselves with full confidence among those to whom this statement, this twofold testimony of our Word, applies: "I have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I have compassion on whom I have compassion."
I can only say, and I beg you to say with me, "Even if I do not understand you, 'I trust in you, Lord! I say, You are my God." (Psalm 31:15)
Amen
Date: 8 February 1970.