The Potter and His right over the clay

I am convinced that most of the problems in the church that stem from interpretative issues can be boiled down to one fact. Mankind more often than not, including believers, fails to recognize and submit to the relationship between God and man. This relationship is summed up best in Paul's letter to the church in Rome:

But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me like this?" Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory-- even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? As indeed he says in Hosea, "Those who were not my people I will call 'my people,' and her who was not beloved I will call 'beloved.'" "And in the very place where it was said to them, 'You are not my people,' there they will be called 'sons of the living God.'" And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: "Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved, for the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay." (Rom 9:20-28)

That really lays it out for us. and I love that passage because it puts me in my place so to speak.

There are few passages in Scripture that are clearer or harder hitting. Paul lays out the relationship between God and man, between Creator and creature, clearly and unambiguously. The context clearly is dealing with salvation. Paul answers the question of how can God find fault in a sinner when God created us. You made me this way so how can you condemn me! The answer is clear. God is the Creator and Sovereign and it is His prerogative to make man however He sees fit and to deal with man as befits His majesty and holiness. The reality that God sent His Son to die in order to redeem a remnant of mankind is not limiting His holiness and justice, it is a magnificent and totally undeserved expression of His mercy and love. God chooses to save some and passes over others, leaving them in their sins, and does so in perfect accord with His nature because He has the ultimate say in how to deal with those He created. This truth extends beyond salvation and into how those whom God has mercifully redeemed are to conduct their lives.

Here is what I am talking about. What God has decreed is non-negotiable. It doesn’t really matter what I think about a topic. It doesn’t matter where the cultural winds are blowing. It doesn’t matter what my spouse thinks or what the elders in the local gathering of the church think or what the seminary professors think. What matters is what God has said and in places where we find what God has said to be inconvenient the burden of submission falls on us, not on Him.

One of the foundations, perhaps THE foundation, of Christian discipleship is submission to this concept. God is sovereign creatively (He created and ordained the universe). God is sovereign over salvation. God is sovereign over the nature He created (nothing happens outside of His control, even things we perceive as bad). God is sovereign in act and in declaration. His Word has the imprimatur of His revealed will and as such is deserving of the utmost respect and unswerving obedience. In a nutshell, God’s Word is authoritative whether or not anyone believes it. What God says is true because God is truth so by nature whatsoever He decrees is by definition true.

Paul uses an interesting metaphor for this relationship, perhaps one that is hard to understand today in a world of prefabricated, cheap and disposal plastic vessels but a metaphor that made total sense to a first century audience. A lump of clay is useless for anything. It has no value, no intrinsic worth. The only way that a lump of clay gains any value is if a potter forms that clay into something someone can use. That may mean being formed into a beautiful piece of pottery that would be displayed in a museum or it might mean being formed into a utilitarian plate that people can eat off of. On the flip side the clay can be made into something like an ashtray or a chamber pot. The clay doesn’t get a vote, it is entirely at the pleasure of the potter. He can make one lump of clay into a vessel for honorable use or to use a modern analogy he can make that lump of clay into a clay pigeon, destined and designed to be shattered.

We see the difficulty of submitting to God when Scripture runs up against our personal convictions. We feel morally obligated to defend innocents by means of violence as we see fit. We cling to our notion of private property. We meet sparingly with the church and subcontract ministry out to a few paid professionals while maintaining that we are not forsaking the assembly of God’s people. We explain away explicit commands by chalking them up to a unique cultural setting that no longer applies in our modern, enlightened era. We dictate the terms under which God is permitted to extend salvation without violating our precious "free will". All because we don’t have a proper view of who God is. We may pay lip service to how awesome God is and sing songs about it but we treat Him as if He was more peer than sovereign. We seem to be earthen vessels that demand the potter recognize our rights and our opinions as if they are somehow valid.

Perhaps we misunderstand the idea of God as Father and ourselves as adopted children. Perhaps we see the parent-child relationship more like modern Western culture and less like the relationship that the original Biblical audience would have understood. We see our parents as something we strive to outgrow. We turn 18 and become “independent” of our parents, striking out on our own to make a name for ourselves. I don’t think of myself as the son of Robert, I am a man in my own right. While I am not an expert on ancient culture by any means, I do understand that the relationship between fathers and sons (and husbands and wives) in ancient times was vastly different from how it is today. Family was far more important and honoring your father and mother didn’t mean a card on their birthday. The leveling of the parent-child relationship in Western civilization makes fathers into peers as we grow into adulthood and that is perhaps why when we speak of God as Father we see Him as far less than He is or conversely we see ourselves as far more than we are. We diminish God and elevate ourselves and that has been the problem with mankind since way back to a certain dispute over fruit from one particular tree.

God is God and we are not. That seems so simple and yet so hard to live with. It may be hard but it is so vital because the more we submit to God as the Creator, as the sovereign Potter and likewise recognize ourselves as merely clay in His hands, the closer we will walk with Him.