No one likes to have someone over them holding them accountable for their life. If we’re honest with ourselves, the idea of a sovereign Creator God scares us. We’d much rather be our own gods, enjoying authority over our own bodies and souls and actions, and making God in our own image. Such is the popular mindset of our age. But if God really did create us and if he really is King as we claim to believe, this mindset is entirely untenable!
The Israelites, or at least any of them that were cognizant of how sinful their nation was being, were so painfully dreading the deep, inevitable shame that accountability to God would bring, so they tried to avoid it altogether. They ignored and denied and even changed their beliefs, all to avoid that shame—which then of course just perpetuated the sin. In many ways we are just like the Israelites. But Jeremiah reminds them that they are clay vessels that did not fashion themselves; they are the masterpieces (and property, by the way) of an omnipotent potter, so to speak. This is a good reminder for us as well: we are not our own. And Israel was not their own. They, and we, belong to God.
There are three things that this potter metaphor from Jeremiah teaches us. First of all, we are in no position to blame God for wrong. Jeremiah watches the potter create beautiful works of art, but if one becomes defective, he may either try to rework it or just throw it away. But the potter is fully in the right to do either. Clearly, he owes nothing to his own clay. Instead, the clay is responsible for conforming to its creator’s will—and so are we. When we don’t, God is just to punish. He owes us no good thing. Keep in mind, grace is not the default!
Second of all, we must remember that our potter is a good potter, and so we can trust him. Praise the Lord that he is gracious anyway! We are wholly his, and this is good news because he is perfect in creativity, love, and planning for goodness. We can joyfully conform to his will because his will is good, all the time.
And third of all, we look ahead, because we know that our God will redeem. Jeremiah watches the potter turn a defective lump of clay into something greater than it was before, because this potter is good at his craft. This is our story as well! We were made in God’s image, things went terribly wrong, and now God is in the process of mysteriously, miraculously gathering up our wreckage and turning it into something more beautiful than before. We are not our own, we belong to the God who fashioned us; but more than that should sober us, it should excite us for what sort of beautiful vessels he will make out of those that are willing to obey his will.
