This Measure of Faith also becomes useful in dealing with the enemies (be they Christian or Non) of a believer. For when a person understands that they were a God Hating Idolater for whom Christ died and God justified and promised to glorify then a believer can become an advertisement of mercy for anyone.
Category: human
Death is humiliating. It doesn’t seem like that nowadays when we go to music-filled funeral halls in suits to gather around the dearly departed. There the person lays, sometimes wearing perfume for the first time ever, seemingly asleep and no odor escaping their preserved body. The perfectly ironed suit, the cushioned coffin, the gilded gold and the deep cherry wood—all of it looks rather royal, presidential even. But somebody else washed that corpse, carted it around, ensured that it wouldn’t stink then propped it up for people to see: humiliating.
Airing dirty laundry is pretty nasty when your neighbors peek out the back window and see the stains and filth. But, for our own purposes, it helps get rid of the stench and hopefully, puts the stuff to light to expose how bad the stains are. In our Christian home we extol the virtues of Martin Luther and gloss over some of the other stuff he’s done or said chalking it up to age or uninformed. Here’s a quote from Martin Luther’s book "On the Jews and Their Lies" or rather Von den Juden und ihren Lügen which is outright wrong in it’s approach to the Jews and completely antithetical to Paul’s thinking. Forgive me for posting it, but this is for my records. The full book is here.Remember I am QUOTING and I by no means agree with Luther on what’s below.
We’re considering God’s righteousness and seeing how it works with mercy specifically in the case of the Jews. Thus far Paul impressed on us his sorrow that the Jews are not presently believers of the revealed Christ. Paul has been showing us how important a people they truly are and has taken us through history showing how and why God’s Word of Promise was established. We saw how they were kept from Edom’s fate only by God’s mercy.
These next few verses wind up being breeding ground for lots of contention. Some have inappropriately used these verses to show that Jacob was “saved” and Esau “damned to hell”. It seems to me that this ignores Paul’s argument at this stage of his defense of the righteousness of God: that being, God’s Word stands and now, why it stands.
Paul has us look at Rebekah and Isaac’s situation (Gen 25:21-26). Here she is finally pregnant, and God be praised, with fraternal twins! The question about God’s Promise comes up: do they split Abraham’s inheritance? What if one of them is wicked or one of them careless…how will God’s Word stand if these men are faulty?