God’s Greatness (21st Sunday in Ordinary Time)

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After spending the last three chapters discussing the sovereignty of God and His plans to save Israel, St. Paul concludes with a doxology praising His greatness and the inscrutability of His plans. He asks a series of rhetorical questions in vv. 34-35 asking if anyone can understand God’s ways or have God in his debt. These rhetorical questions are a repetition of similar questions posed in Old Testament. For example, the prophet Isaiah asks:

Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord, or what man shows him his counsel? Whom did he consult, and who made him understand? Who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding? (Isaiah 40:13-14)

Similarly, God rhetorically asks the following to Job:

No one is so fierce that he dares to stir him up. Who then is he who can stand before me? Who has first given to me, that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine. (Job 41:10-11)

The implied answer to these questions, is of course, nobody can understand better than God, or successfully dispute His plans. He is infinitely wiser and more benevolent than any human being.

After this, the final verse of the chapter is a declaration that all things come from God and belong to Him, and therefore serve His purposes (v. 36). This teaches the truth that all things are ultimately for His glory. As the Baltimore Catechism puts it, He made everything “to show forth His goodness.”

Because we exist for Him, we must always live in a way that glorifies Him, as Paul teaches elsewhere: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). We should pray and work so that our lives would always reflect the purpose for which we were created.

J. Luis Dizon