Bible Commentaries

The Doctrine of Election

Romans 11:5

The argument of the three chapters of the Epistle to the Romans 11:33

It is a familiar thought of the Old Testament that it is not possible to give anything to God, because everything is already His. While the contemplation of human wealth is apt to provoke envy, covetousness, and the evils into which the love of money leads, it is possible that the contemplation of the Divine wealth may enlarge our minds and liberate us from all the cramping and paralysing effects of greed. Nothing has a more salutary and sobering effect than to bring forcibly before the mind this universal ownership of God; to pass through the possessions of the world and to mark on each thing in succession the owner's name. Though the world and its contents is but a grain of His wealth, it is certain that everything here, without exception, belongs to Him.

I. Now as this depth of God begins to be revealed to us, does it not invest with a certain absurdity our strident proprietary claims? The greater part of men seem to be entirely occupied in obtaining what can by no possibility belong to them; clutching at goods which prove to be inalienably another"s; and involving themselves in the terrible responsibility of using what is not theirs. What's Mine's Mine, is the title of a noble book of George Macdonald"s. The gist of the book is to show that the apparent truism is indeed a fallacy. The truth is exactly the opposite; what's mine is not mine, it is God's.

II. Let us state this truth now emerging into sight a little more carefully. For any man to own anything without reference to God, the real Owner, involves a spiritual offence, which may easily develop into a spiritual disease; and the disease may soon be mortal. The effect of the love of money is seen in degradation, bondage, misery, crime, spiritual death.

III. But there is also a mystery of love in this depth of the Divine wealth. Christ always laid stress on the thought that we should not be of anxious mind about material things. The heavenly Father will clothe and feed His children. What a lamentable illusion is that which custom, the unbelief of the world, and personal sin, have thrown around our eyes! A great part even of Christian people are constantly worried about ways and means, and have no faith in the depth of the wealth of God. How utterly misplaced is your anxiety, how essentially Godless is your worry! Look into the depth of the wealth of God, and have faith in Him.

—R. F. Horton, The Trinity, p57.

Romans 11:33

When all is said and done the rapt saint is found the only logician. Not exhortation, not argument, becomes our life, but paeans of joy and praise.

—Emerson.

"I found it," says Adam Bede in George Eliot's romance, "better for my soul to be humble before the mysteries of God's dealings, and not be making a clatter about what I could never understand." One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world.

—Hazlitt.

Nowhere so much as in the writings of St. Paul, and in that great Apostle's greatest work, the Epistle to the Romans 11:33

We see His working and we sorrow: the end of His counsel and working both hidden, and underneath the ground, and therefore we cannot believe. Even amongst men, we see hewn stones, timber, and a hundred scattered parcels and pieces of our house, all under-tools, hammers, and axes, and saws; yet the house, the beauty and the use of so many lodgings and ease-rooms, we neither see nor understand for the present; these are but in the mind and heart of the builder as yet We see red earth, unbroken clods, furrows, and stones; but we see not the summer, lilies, roses, the beauty of a garden.

—Samuel Rutherford.

Romans 11:33

When Richard Baxter was dying, someone reminded him of the good which his works had produced. He replied, "I was but a pen in God's hands, and what praise is due to a pen? "When extremity of pain constrained him to pray for release, he would check himself with the words, "It is not fit for me to prescribe—when Thou wilt, what Thou wilt, and how Thou wilt!" "Oh, how unsearchable are His ways, and His paths past finding out! the reaches of His Providence we cannot fathom! Do not think the worse of religion for what you see me suffer." When asked how he did, he replied—Almost well.

—Dr. Stoughton, History of Religion in England, vol. v. p135.

References.—XI:33.—J. Budgen, Parochial Sermons, vol. ii. p142. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vii. p320.

Romans 11:36

The motto of Whittier's poem The Overheart.

References.—XI:36.—Archbishop Maclagan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlv. p72. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x. No672.