“Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and untraceable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? And who has ever given to God, that he should be repaid?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Sometimes the right response is praise. The right response to what? Well, all sorts of different things. A really good experience. A really hard experience. A particularly incredible gift. An especially profound idea. That last one is what drives Paul to praise here at the end of Romans 11. Expressions of praise in the Scriptures are always worth pausing to reflect on because the author is saying things about God that are true and worth not only knowing, but celebrating. So, what does Paul have to say about God here? Let’s take a look.

As we do this, keep in mind the thing that has driven Paul to this spontaneous exclamation of praise. Paul has spent the last three chapters agonizing over the rejection of God by his own people. This rejection came in the form of their rejection of Jesus, the Son of God, as Messiah, and His message about the coming of God’s kingdom to the world. More succinctly, they rejected the Gospel.

This rejection broke God’s heart, but it didn’t surprise Him in the least. In fact, He had said this rejection was going to happen centuries before it did through the prophets. God always knew that when the time came for the revealing of the plans He had been steadily working toward through His people, Israel, many of them were going to reject them because they would have gotten so stuck on what they understood to be His plans that, that they wouldn’t be able to get unstuck to move forward with Him into the new covenant He was going to make through Jesus.

Israel’s refusal to embrace the Gospel revealed that many of the genetic tribe of Israel were not actually the people of God they thought themselves to be at all. This is because the distinction “Israel” always really referred to someone who followed Him in faith, not merely by law. This is because salvation was always a function of faith, not works.

Well, while Israel’s rejection meant God’s plans weren’t going to play out the way many folks who had previously thought themselves to be on the inside of God’s activity in the world perhaps imagined they would, God was not surprised. Instead, things were unfolding smoothly as He always planned they would. More specifically, Israel’s rejection allowed Him to open the door to salvation to those who had previously been thought to be outside Israel—the Gentiles.

Israel’s rejection and turn toward disobedience meant acceptance and life for the Gentiles who responded in faith to the Gospel. It was importance for both groups, though, to not forget that salvation was entirely a function of faith. If one group had turned from faith and been cut off from God’s branch while another turned to faith and were added to it, if at some point those roles were reversed, faith would still be the thing that saved. It was all faith from start to finish, and those who lived by faith would not be forgotten.

This picture of God’s faithful, gracious patient is what finally led Paul to bust out in praise. He starts with the wisdom and knowledge of God. “Oh, by depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God!”

God’s knowledge is perfect. He knows everything that can be known. There are no secrets before Him. We see Jesus display some of that knowledge in the Gospels when He knows what the people around Him are thinking without their saying it. He created the universe and everything in it and knows how every single part of it works. That sounds like a lot of knowledge, but the more we come to understand about just how detailed the inner workings of just the cell, and the complexities of the digital code that makes life possible, the more stunning an amount of knowledge His is revealed to be.

God’s wisdom is just as perfect. It is not simply that God knows everything that can be known. God knows what to do with all of that knowledge. Even more than that, God knows the right thing to do with it. He knows the absolute best path to get from where He is to where He wants to go. He knows the best path for you to get from where you are to where He knows you need to be. And He does indeed know where you need to be. In every situation, He knows what the best thing to do is. The purpose of creation itself is to bring glory to God, and God always knows what will bring Him the most glory.

Paul goes on to exult not merely in what God knows, but in what God is like. “How unsearchable his judgments and untraceable his ways!” What does it mean that God’s judgments are unsearchable. When a court today releases a major opinion, legal analysts on both sides of the issue scour the decision carefully to understand all the ins and outs of the judge’s reasoning. They are looking for specific language that supports the position they favor if the decision was in the direction they wanted. For those who don’t care for the decision, though, they are searching for loopholes in the argument that can be exploited to allow them to achieve their desired ends regardless of what the ruling seems to have stated.

God’s judgments aren’t searchable like that. His judgments are perfect. They are sound. They are just and righteousness. He always does what is right, every single time. You aren’t going to be able to find some sort of a loophole in His work that will give you the clearance to do what you want in spite of what He has said. You won’t find places where He got something wrong. You won’t find where He has missed a spot. His judgments are unsearchable.

And His ways are untraceable. “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” His ways are higher than our ways. He does things in ways and at times that don’t necessarily make any sense to us, but in His perfect wisdom, He knows that is the right path to take. An alternate translation of the word “untraceable” here is “unfathomable.” That helps clarify things even more. He is great and good and wise and loving beyond our comprehension.

He is also not dependent on us at all. “And who has ever given to God, that he should be repaid?” He is necessary. We are contingent. He does not owe us anything. We owe Him everything. As Paul told the Athenian intelligentsia, “The God who made the world and everything in it—he is Lord of heaven and earth—does not live in shrines made by hands. Neither is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives everyone life and breath and all things. . . .For in him we live and move and have our being, even as some of your own poets of said, ‘For we are also his offspring.'”

The earth is the Lord and all that is in it; the world and all who live there. He made us and calls us by name. We are His. “For from him and through him and to him are all things.” He sustains all things by His word and power. He created it as an act of love, He keeps it running as an act of grace, and it is all for His glory.

This is the God we serve as followers of Jesus. There is not another one like Him. He is worthy of our praise. He is worthy of our worship. He is worthy of our devotion. He is worthy of our very lives. If you haven’t given yours to Him, it is time for you to consider that. You will most certainly be glad that you did.