NOTES for Isa 43:25
Reading the Bible, we realize that God's patience is truly boundless. Yet what is it for? After all, it is not only a matter of His mercy, which is indeed immeasurable. It is a matter of a covenant, an alliance that imposes obligations on both parties, not just one. What if one party disregards the alliance, often openly and defiantly, breaking every obligation it has assumed—obligations it cannot be unaware of, since the corresponding promises were made publicly, and cannot have forgotten, since God's messengers have reminded it of them so often? By our earthly logic, such an alliance should have been broken off long ago, and appropriate sanctions imposed on the party that violated it. Yet God goes on making attempt after attempt to reach those who seem long since to have wanted nothing more.
What for? Why? Probably because there is no other way with fallen human beings. Of course, everything could be started again, including the history of God's people. But where is the guarantee that it would turn out better next time? In their fallen state, people are more or less the same in every age, at least where their spiritual and moral life is concerned.
But perhaps that is not the only reason. After all, God has His own plan, an exceptionally important plan concerning not only humanity and its salvation, but quite possibly something still greater, in relation to which our salvation is only part of the design, though probably a fairly important part. Can the fulfilment of this plan be made dependent on the failures of the human will and the corruption of human nature? If not, the only course left is to carry out what has been planned despite everything that might obstruct it, including the imperfections of God's people.
And God does indeed carry out His plan, despite the failures in His people's history that would seem to have brought it to a definitive end. The price, of course, is high: the Messiah He sends dies on the cross. Yet the Kingdom still enters the world, and with it the hope of salvation.