Verses three and four cast the relationship between the God
who spoke all things into being with His people in the form of a parent,
teaching a child to walk and bending to feed them. These are beautiful and tender images of
God's love for His people and these are the same ideas we should hold of our
relationship with Him. His words of
discipline and conviction of sin should then break our hearts. It is this love that tempers judgment. When He remembers His love for His people His
anger abates. It breaks God's heart to
have to do drastic things in order to get His people to turn to Him. It is love alone that motivates this anger,
the jealous love of God whose desire it is to see the covenant people restored
to Him. There are two things of which
God is fiercely protective, His glory and His people. His people are to reveal Him to the world and
when they chase after other gods and become like the nations, there are
consequences.
The whole idea of enemies is repugnant isn't it? John 3.16 tells us that God loves the
world. If He loves the world enough to
die for it we should get some idea of what our attitude should be towards the
world. What would it look like if we
chose not to have enemies? We can choose
that. Others can consider us their
enemies but what if we didn't reciprocate and instead simply loved them in
accordance with the commandment to love our neighbor. Jesus didn't just teach this, He lived it all
the way to the end in praying for those who crucified Him. We have an enemy, one who desires to destroy
us not only in this life but in the one to come. We are called and commanded to love those who
hate and persecute us with the same love we have for those who love us in
return. If we keep to that command, will
the world be better?
The flash point in Paul's story was, "Go, for I will
send you far away to the Gentiles."
For this, "he should not be allowed to live." The tribune was completely befuddled by all
these things and decided that the only thing to do was to flog Paul to find out
why the Jews were shouting against him. Paul
waits until they are ready to begin before playing the Roman citizen card. Remember yesterday's reading where there was
a complete misunderstanding about Paul's identity? Who is this man? He is a Jewish teacher who is hated by the
Jews because of something to do with Gentiles but at the same time he is a
Roman citizen and they had already done what was not lawful to a citizen and
were about to compound their mistake by flogging him when he had not been
charged with a crime, much less convicted.
The sovereignty of God had secured Paul's release. He was, against all odds, born a Roman
citizen.
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