| CON MAN IN GOD'S FAMILY? |
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| choices, sometimes with no apparent reason at all. Often he went against the time-honored practice of letting the firstborn son be number one, as he did in choosing number-two sons Abel, Jacob, and Ephraim. In fact, an inspired prophecy marked Jacob as God's choice before he was even born - before he had done a single thing to merit the choice. So God's choice did not necessarily depend on how a person behaved. God chose the one he wanted - it was as simple as that. Is this fair? That's what the apostle Paul asked in Romans 9. He concluded that we have no right to find fault with God's choices, knowing as little as we do compared to his infinite understanding. And while we may never understand God's choices, we should note that all the "rejected" brothers of Genesis - Cain, Canaan, Ishmael, Reuben, Esau, and Manasseh - were treated more than fairly. Their offspring multiplied into nations under God's protection. No One Excluded For his chosen people, God had a much greater honor. Good or bad, they would be made a channel of blessing for the whole world. He told Abraham, right from the beginning, "All peoples on earth will be blessed through you" (12:3). By selecting a few, God planned to extend his blessings to all. And that is how it worked out: Abraham's small, fault-ridden family grew into a sizeable, fault-ridden nation that brought forth, in the fullness of time, a faultless Jesus. No wonder Paul wrote that we have no business questioning the wisdom of God. We may not see why he chose people like Jacob. But unquestionably, those choices worked for good - and the whole world became eligible to join the "chosen people." As Paul wrote, "You are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ . . . . There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in |
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