Here is a post done by Norman Grubbs that just fits this well.
Romans
By Norman P. Grubb
Then Paul goes on in the next chapter and says, “You see this was the trouble. He says, “My prayer to God is for Israel that they might be saved. I bear them witness that they have a certain zeal and enthusiasm for God, but it is not according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness of God they went about to establish their own righteousness.” There is the key. He says, “There is a self in the matter. Here is God’s Grace. Here is God’s mercy offered and if you have built up your own righteousness you do not submit yourself to being a sinner needing justification by faith.” The Gentiles did. That is faith. The Gentiles said, “We are sinners. We submit ourselves to God and we accept with thankfulness, as sinners, justification by faith.” Israel said, “We don’t want that stuff. We have the Law, the covenants. We are the people of God. Abraham is our Father, and we don’t want that thing of yielding ourselves to Christ”—because Christ was a terrible person to follow. You see, self was so built up in the Israelites, they loved their temple. Their temple was more important. (They placed more emphasis and importance on their ceremonies, rites, customs and traditions, all being external, then the unseen of faith.)
That is the danger of modern churches. We love the form of form. Oh!! We are proud of our churches because they are magnificent temples. You see they are full of self. “My temple.” “My God.” It is still self. “Oh, look at that! That is where God dwells.” Jesus was terrible. He said, “Destroy this temple, I’ll build it again! WOOOOO! He walked on the Sabbath and said, “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.” It isn’t that we are made to fit with some laws of keeping the Sabbath. The Sabbath is made for us to do what is necessary and we are in the Sabbath Day of Mercy. “I don’t care about the Sabbath. I don’t care about Laws. Should I eat this or should I not? If there is an opportunity of me showing the mercy of God, I show it even if they ‘slay me’”—which they did in the end.
Now then he says—the fact is that the grace of God has always been operative in response to faith. It has to have that. He has to meet humans on the basis of “they love themselves.” That is the Fall. While you love yourself, you are hardened. So, the hardness is not really in God. God has to say it that way to make it appear God means it. But, the hardness of Pharaoh wasn’t something—“I will make him hard.” Of course, it wasn’t. Pharaoh was a human being; he was one of God’s human beings. All human beings are God’s human beings. They live and move and have their being in God. So what was his basic excuse in his humanity as God’s human being? “I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to give in to Moses. I am going to keep the people.” Step by step he hardened himself—not for the offer of grace; not for the promises; not for the threats. He nearly came through at one time when he saw the miracles of Moses. He wouldn’t come; he hardened himself. Because he was a form of God and because God means us to be what we are and God is sovereign, it works out in us—as God’s hell or heaven. But, it is all God. But, when you get down to the inner circle, it acts according to my response. Now that is the hidden secret. So you see he has to present to the world that this is where you can only take the ALLNESS of God—when you are mature enough to do it.
This is the WONDER OF GOD. God is total. Everything that happens is of God. Now there is our great key in life. Everything that happened God meant it. Now it may have come through Communist hate or something—God meant it—and has produced certain products. God meant it. This is the part of God’s purpose that the hardened should be hardened and those who should receive mercy should receive mercy. So He has got to seek us, to see a God to whom we relate everything. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR US, for when you do that, you take the shocks of life—“God meant it to be.” It can change your attitude. That is why our attitude cannot be judgmental towards a person going wrong. Even a wrong person doing wrong to us. The servants in our home or whatever you like. “Oh I can’t hate them.” God meant that. God meant that to be so. The moment that I do that, I am released. I can say, “Well God meant that.” Then of course, I, knowing grace, can say, “But God has got grace around the corner for that person. God is letting that person, means that person, to be tough or so and so, because that is where he is going to find his hell. He is going to find his hell in his toughness. But God is around the corner with His grace.” And I am a person of prayer—a prayer of faith that God is going to put grace into that person. So this gives a real release on our whole outlook on life—where I can take any circumstance that is rotten—“God meant it.” God meant it to come through a life. Maybe through some person of responsibility of it may just come through the mix-up of this world—mixed up with tragedy, disease, disaster in this world. Well, God meant it. Then you say, “Wait a minute, God meant that to happen to bring the condition, but God is always around the corner with grace. Jesus Christ redeemed the whole world. I merely take by faith that God meant that hardness, as if He was saying in a loud voice, “Get out of it now. Come back to Me, come back to me.”
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