09/06/2026
A Letter to the Empire Christians Day 71 - Don't miss this one...
Romans 11:33-36 NASB2020
[33] Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! [34] For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? [35] Or who has first given to Him, that it would be paid back to him? [36] For from Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.
I am not going to hurry past this.
The Bible offers this invitation from God in Isaiah chapter 1. "Come let us reason together..." 1:18a
But then later Isaiah conveys this message from the Almighty: “For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts." 55:9
The Psalms convey the same message and it is this reality about God's wisdom that Paul is bringing out in Romans.
If I am honest the arrogance of humanity is at once both astonishing and infuriating. If God exists and He created and sustains all things, is it reasonable to think we can match His intellect and wisdom?
In the story of Job, when God finally responds to his plea to understand why he is suffering so much, the answer doesn't really answer him. The response of God is not an explanation of why, but rather a series of questions. Questions from God that reveal the gap between Job's understanding and the scope of what has happened and why is too great. In the end it was God basically saying "You are going to have to trust Me on this one."
This morning I picked my phone up off the charging pad so I could write this out. Somehow my phone can rest on a magnet that is plugged into electricity and my phone gets charged up. Don't ask me to explain how that works because I can't. Yet whatever that process is, it is almost infinitely simpler than understanding evil, where it came from and why, and the most thorough and complete way to get rid of it while preserving as many affected and infected people as possible.
Now back to the arrogance of humanity. I have heard more than one person say "If I was God I would..."
In other words "I am wiser than God and could do His job better than He is doing it."
It shouldn't surprise us then that on more than one occasion Jesus' own disciples ridiculed Him and/or questioned His intelligence.
Arrogance. Blind fools we are.
Now back to Isaiah 1:
"Come let us reason together. Though your sins be like scarlet, they shall be white as snow..."
In the broader context of Isaiah 1, God has laid out in unmistakable words, how messed up we are. His call to reason together is not about us being equal intellectually. It is about us stopping to recognize how hopeless our condition is without His supernatural intervention.
Here is what I believe, and I believe it is the sum of all we need to know.
Our condition is terminal and hopeless if left to ourselves. God, who demonstrated through Jesus, that He loves us way beyond our comprehension, is for us. Not for some of us, but for all of us. That whatever evil is and however it got into us, He can get it out of us. That all the injustices that people like Steven Fry see and can't reconcile, are not going to continue forever, but for now are a necessary part of the purging process. Don't ask me how. I don't understand that any better than I understand how my phone charges without being plugged in. I don't need to understand because the life and sacrifice of Jesus tells me that God is for us and not against us.
"In this world you will suffer, but be of good courage for I have overcome the world." - Jesus
One of my absolute favourite lyrics is this line:
Let us sing a song that will cheer us on the way. In a little while we're going home.
Love wins ❤️