🇬🇧 Glory be to Jesus Christ!
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The continuation of the written by the link:
https://www.facebook.com/Oleksandr.S.Zhabenko/
Paul explains why it is not God who is responsible for the sins of creation, for the unwillingness of creation to be with God, for the resistance to God from creation, but creation itself. He does this in a specific way, so that it may seem that it is God who determines what a person will do in a given situation.
But if we look at the examples that Paul gives, at their internal logic, it becomes clear that there is no idea that God determines everything.
Let's look at the "clay and the potter": the potter has an idea of what he wants to get out of his clay. He moulds it in such a way that he gets the desired result. Similarly, God has a purpose for creation, and this purpose was not influenced by creation itself, because the creation did not exist when God thought about it. But this plan was influenced by God's desire to include the creation in free, blissful eternal life with Him. Hence, the creation has a purpose – it is determined by God, but God does not "force" the free creation to fulfil this purpose. Yes, He facilitates it and does what depends on Him (like the potter), but unlike clay, people and angels have freedom and may not become like God.
Another example is the story of the Hebrews' exodus from Egypt from slavery to Pharaoh. Paul quotes Exodus IX, 16. If we read the whole passage carefully, God rebukes Pharaoh for his unbelief, saying that He had spared him and his people, who had already deserved punishment, until the time of the exodus from Egypt, to show His glory in it. It was not God who made Pharaoh cruel, but God held back His justice against the cruel Pharaoh until the time of the exodus.
Furthermore, when Paul quotes from the Old Testament, we need to remember that the people of the Old Testament hardly distinguished between God's will and God's permission (as I have written about often before, in particular in relation to the book of Isaiah during Lent). Therefore, the fact that God permitted Pharaoh and the Egyptians to rule over the Jews for a certain period of time does not mean that God wanted it. Nor does it justify the Egyptians.
Another way to look at it is that God gave people the ability to perform different and sometimes opposite virtues and perfections, such as procreation, but also the ability to be pure. This generosity of God's gifts creates the preconditions for human freedom, but it also requires that people skilfully manage the powers and abilities of their nature – with God's help, people should decide which abilities of nature are more necessary than others and when. A person may need to be firm in many cases, but also need to be soft in many other cases. Both are necessary, but they are mutually exclusive (at least to a certain extent). God's will and God's permission to exercise different qualities is for our freedom, but it does not absolve people of responsibility for how they exercise their freedom. And the Old Testament texts simply do not distinguish between the two.
More about freedom itself can be found here:
https://oleksandr-zhabenko.github.io/en/DialogueOnWordsChristFear.html
Paul goes on to say that the Israelites began to look to the Law and the works of the Law instead of faith, and there was a shift in their right perception, which is why many of them stumbled about Jesus Christ.
In general, the text (in part) shows the richness of God's design for all nations.
Matthew XI, 6 – 'εμοι' – 'emoi' – (in) 'Me' (i.e. (through) 'Me').
Matthew XI, 8 – 'ημφιεσμενον' – 'emphiesmenon' – 'clothed'.
Matthew XI, 10 – 'εμπροσθεν' – 'emprosthen' – 'before, in front of the face'.
See more here:
https://www.facebook.com/Oleksandr.S.Zhabenko/
Glory be to Thee, our God, glory be to Thee!