What if God were only faithful to us to the degree that we are faithful to him? Certainly, all believers understand that God acts more faithfully than we do. What we do not always appreciate, however, is the infinite degree to which God’s faithfulness extends beyond our own. We tend to overestimate our own faithfulness, imagining that God is merely a better version of ourselves. In fact, God acts with faithfulness that we cannot fully understand. The Apostle Paul reminds us that “if we are faithless, [God] remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself” (2 Tim. 2:13). In other words, God would have to become unfaithful to himself before he could become unfaithful to us.

The logic of God’s faithfulness, then, does not follow human concepts of achievement, merit, or justice. Instead, God’s faithfulness emerges from his unmerited, undeserved, unearned grace. God remains faithful to those who least deserve it, for no one deserves God’s faithfulness in the least. So, as Genesis 29:31–30:24 brings us into the intimate, painful struggles of Jacob and his four wives, we see God’s grace exalted from the sinful ruins of personal favoritism, sibling rivalry, sexual misconduct, and pagan-leaning fertility practices. God does not give us this text to cause us to recoil from Jacob’s family in horror. Instead, this text is a mirror that reveals our own sin so that we may better understand how God deals graciously and faithfully with us. Therefore, the lesson of this story is not that we should follow the example set forth by Jacob and his wives. Rather, this text teaches us to entrust ourselves to the grace of the God who was faithful to them, for still to this day God remains faithful to his faithless people.