A Grace-Shaped Life: Romans 9-16Sample

A Place to Belong

Those who were not my people, I will call “my people.” (Romans 9:5)

In today’s passage, Paul deals with a challenging question about God’s mercy: why are some saved and others not? It’s a question that Paul argues is essentially unanswerable in human terms. It’s like a piece of clay asking the potter, “Why have you made me like this?” (Rom. 9:20). The lump of clay doesn’t understand the potter’s purpose. Likewise, God’s ways are beyond ours: “The LORD is the everlasting God... his understanding is unsearchable” (Isa. 40:28).

Instead, Paul focuses our gaze on God’s promise spoken through the prophet Hosea: “Those who were not my people, I will call ‘my people.’” (Rom. 9:25). The mystery of God’s mercy means that we who have no claim to belong to God’s family are now included because of God’s sovereign plan. I sometimes take this for granted. And then God shows me this truth through people I meet.

Three years ago in Niger, I met a woman who was a new believer in Jesus. Her relatives turned their backs on her, leaving her and her child. She sought out the preacher whose voice she had heard on the radio since she had no one to call her own. A family accepted her into their house when the church heard of her story. She graduated from Bible school two years later and married a Christian man. She now shares Jesus’ hope with other women in similar situations. She wants them to know the second half of verse 25, “her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’”

As you pray, thank God for including you in his family.