The Root That Supports Us

Remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. (Rom 11:18)

How often do we mentally assent to a truth like this, yet in very practical ways live exactly the opposite? "God holds the future" we might say. Yet we fret and worry and devote inordinate resources to plan our retirements (or college funds). "God's Word will never return void" is a great, churchy Bible-based cliche. Yet we fret and worry and orchestrate our preaching and our services and our witnessing so the we have the best chance of affecting the outcome.

What is it that is in us that needs so desperately to be in control. We do not want to be the branches, do we? None of us want to be the worker bee; we all want to be the queen. What drives this? And why does this invade all aspects of our lives?

The short answer is that we are sons and daughters of our father Adam and mother Eve. Their catastrophic sin and the heritage they passed down to us was that they wanted to be like God. And since God is the only true root, part of the implication of their sin was they wanted to replace God at the root of things. Be in control. Make the decision. Affect the outcome.

And now, we want the same. We want control, power and influence. We want praise, honor and glory. What is hardest of all to see and most painful to realize is that this not just about retirement or planning church services. This seeps down to our essence of our standing before God. I challenge you to take an informal survey of people who profess to be saved. Ask them, why they think they are saved. For the ones who are able to articulate this (don't be surprised if several can't), many (dare I say most) will answer along these lines: I trusted Christ or I put my faith in Jesus or I invited Jesus into my heart.

Now, I realize that a part of our salvation experience is accepting the free gift of grace and surrendering our lives to Christ. And yet to have our minds fixated on our side of the equation is to invert the root and the branches. If Jesus didn't die for our sins there is no sacrifice to accept. If Jesus, through the Spirit isn't seeking us there is nothing to open our hearts toward. Additionally this inverts the pride and humility components of the gospel. There is nothing for us to be proud of in the gospel. Spiritually, we are blind and lame and dead. God is the one who orchestrated everything and rescued, restored and redeemed us. The glory is His. The honor is His. The humility is ours.

This is part of Paul's thrust throughout Rom 11 and moving into 12. We must have full view of God's redemptive purpose and plan if we are going to be an effective part of it. We must see and know that He is the root. We must see and know that He graphs in the branches and cultivates them. We must see and know that His purposes and plans go way beyond what we see or can even conceive. We must see and know that everything He equips us for is fueled by and driven from His mercy.

So in the words of Romans 11: Do not be arrogant; remember the kindness and severity of God.


I now send forth this post with a deep sense of its many defects; but with an earnest prayer that it may do some good. (JC Ryle)

To God Alone be the Glory