God is Sovereign

If you are righteous and just, He will surely watch over you, And make your innocent home happy (Job 8:6).

On the subject of grace, Jews have always expressed themselves in the conditional tense, compared to Christians, who all too often use the future tense or the compound past tense: "Yes, the Lord will do it; He has already done it; God has already given; Etc." So many of these statements are very often in the mouths of Christians. Why do Jews prefer to speak in the conditional tense?

Christians are not at all wrong to speak so confidently. After all, if you read the Bible, you'll find a wealth of promises and prophecies. It's God's Word, and it always comes true. But there's one detail that Christians seem to ignore. Every promise has a condition for fulfillment. God said to Cain: Genesis 4:7: "Surely, if you act well, you will lift up your face ". In Psalms 1:1 says: "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked".

On the one hand, there are God's promised graces, and on the other, the conditions for their fulfillment.

The right attitude is to express oneself in the conditional tense. This does not reflect a lack of faith, but highlights God's sovereignty in the fulfillment of His promises. James teaches here: "You should say, on the contrary: If God wills, we will live, and we will do this or that." (James 4:15)

P. Clémentine