Romans 9:14-23

 

In Romans 9, Paul is discussing God's dealing with the Jews. In the previous passage, he looked to the Old Testament, to the stories of Isaac and Jacob. Here he turns to a third Old Testament example--but this is a very different one, and deals, not with one of the sons of Abraham, but one of their enemies—the Pharaoh of Egypt at the time of the Exodus.

Several times throughout Romans, Paul will ask a question and then immediately answer it. Paul does so again at the beginning of this passage. The question is whether God is being righteous in his treatment of men. Is it just or right for God to choose one man or nation and reject another? Is it just or right for God choose Isaac and leave Ishmael, to use Jacob but not Esau? In the abstract, it sounds wrong; it sounds unfair. So is it?

Paul's answer is a resounding no. No, there is no unrighteousness with God; there is no injustice in his court. And in the next two verses, he explains why.

But to understand his explanation you have to remember that he is mainly arguing with the Jews. The question of unrighteousness with God is not really about Isaac or Jacob—it is about the gospel. The whole context of this question goes back to the beginning of the chapter and Paul's concern for the Jews. God had seemingly left the Jews behind and chosen the Christian church (Jew and Gentile). Paul has just shown that—as the Jews themselves admitted—there had always been a certain choice and selection, even among the sons of Abraham. And here Paul shows—using evidence from the very Jewish scripture—to show that this method is just and in perfect keeping with the Biblical picture of God.

And to do this he quotes from Exodus. You remember how the Children of Israel had broken God's law with the golden calf. Moses was understandably upset and some words were thrown around. Afterwards, Moses intreated with God and obtained a pardon for the people. And then Moses asked to have a revelation of God's glory. And this is God's answer: “And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.” (Exodus 33:19)

The NET Bible suggests that God's words of mercy here refer to the fact that He had chosen to forgive the unfaithfulness of the Israelites. It also points out that this statement is an echo of God's own name which He had revealed to Moses earlier. Do you remember that name? I Am that I Am. And now we have I am merciful to whom I am merciful. Because God is The I Am, it means He is self-existent. God depends on no one else for His existence or His character. And God's mercy is also self-existent; it does not depend on anyone or anything.

That is why Paul draws the conclusion that it is not of him that wills or runs but of God who shows mercy. What exactly does that mean?

Suppose two men came into court because one man had accused the other of trespassing on his land. So far as the court is concerned, all that would matter is whether the accuser was or was not telling the truth; whether the defendant was or was not guilty. A court only deals with justice and the law and so all it would care about would be the men's relationship to justice. Which of them, say, could make the best strawberry scone would be irrelevant to the court.

But suppose those same two men were entered into the cooking competition. The judges there wouldn't be especially interested in the question of a possible crime. That wouldn't really matter to them; they would have no jurisdiction to deal with it. All the judges in the cooking competition would care about would be which of the two could make the best strawberry scone.

And, again, if the same two men also entered a beauty competition, then the crimes and the scones would both be irrelevant and all that would matter was their physical appearance. If they then went to a school and took a test, then everything would be irrelevant except their knowledge of the particular subject matter.

Do you see the point? It would be unfair for a judge in a court to ignore the guilt or innocence of a plaintiff, but it is not unfair for the judge in the cooking contest to ignore it because that isn't the scale he is using. It would be unfair or unjust in God to choose Jacob irrespective of his character if character were what was important here. But it isn't. The whole question is as irrelevant as strawberry scones in a criminal trial. In choosing one man for his plan, God is neither using nor abusing the scales of justice but is using an entirely different scale.

In a previous article, we looked at this word election. What made the difference between Isaac and Ishmael, what made the difference between Jacob and Esau was God's election, that is, God's choice. God chose to use Jacob and Isaac just as He chose to be merciful to the rebellious Israelites even though they had no merit to deserve His use or mercy.

And yet at the same time, there is another side to this. Paul next turns to the story of Pharaoh and quotes the words which God told Moses to speak to Pharaoh in the middle of the plagues. “And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in thee my power; and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth.” (Exodus 9:16)

So this is the issue we come to, and the reason why this passage is so extremely controversial. Verses 17-21, taken by themselves without any context, seem to say that God deliberately hardened the heart of Pharaoh, that God deliberately chose that Pharaoh to be evil and hard-headed, in order to set up the events of the Exodus. And if that is true, it is plausible to suppose that Pharaoh is not the only person that God chose to be evil and/or hard-headed.

That brings us to a doctrine that is popularly known as Calvinism after French theologian John Calvin who helped systematize the doctrines of the reformation. The central tenet of Calvinism is the belief that God chooses or 'elects' certain people to be saved or to be lost; you might put it that all people are spiritually preprogrammed to accept God or reject him.

So, according to Calvinism, God predetermined Pharaoh to be evil and corrupt because out of Pharaoh's corruption, God would bring something great—which was the events of the Exodus. And this would be equally true of every man; every man who ends as a sinner does so because God chose him to be a sinner and every man who ends as a saint does so because God chose him to be a saint.

Romans 9 is one of the primary passages for Calvinism. The picture of verses 20-22 with God as a potter forming different vessels as He sees fit is the Calvinistic picture of God. There are also a number of scriptures that can be called to support this idea, scriptures that speak of God as a sovereign ruler making absolute decisions, of choosing and calling certain people.

However, there are also several problems with this viewpoint. The first has to do with the context of Romans 9. As I said before, God chose Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau—but neither of those, so far as we can tell from the context in either the New or the Old Testament, has anything to do with salvation. We have no Biblical evidence to speak of the final spiritual state of either Ishmael or Esau. God chose Jacob over Esau not to be saved but to be the bearer of the covenant.

Secondly, to suppose that God chooses certain people to be lost irrespective of their own will creates a problem since there are scriptures that describe God as deserving the salvation of all mankind and as having provided the means of salvation for all mankind. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” (John 3:16-17) “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) “Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?” (Ezekiel 18:23) “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:2)

Because of these objections, we have a second doctrine which is known as Arminianism, named after Dutch theologian James Arminius. I'll be honest that I'm not very well familiar with the actual teachings of Arminius or classical Arminianism, but for our purposes here it simply means the belief that God does not arbitrarily choose who will be saved and who will be lost.

As Wesleyan Methodists, we are part of the Arminian tradition. Our official stance is that the possibility of salvation is universal and that God does not unconditionally elect certain people to be saved and others to be lost. In that case, though, what do we say about Pharaoh?

This has been a point of controversy in the church since long before Calvin or Arminius. After two thousand years of debate, I'm not sure we can settle all the issues within the course of a single article, but I do want to point to a few things and lay out at least a few ideas.

To begin with, we should consider how Pharaoh's actions are described in the Old Testament.  “And Pharaoh hardened his heart at this time also, neither would he let the people go.” (Exodus 8:32) “And the LORD said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might shew these my signs before him.” (Exodus 10:1)

Pharaoh hardened his heart and God hardened Pharaoh's heart. And both phrases are used throughout the story. And this sort of language is not used merely of sin. Consider Philippians 2:12-13: “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” The Christian works out his salvation because God is working in him. 

From these verses, we can draw out the following conclusion: divine action and human action do not exclude or displace each other. With human actions, generally speaking, the actions of one man begin exactly at the point where the actions of another end. To say that I did such-and-such is to say that you did not do it. But this does not cover how our actions and God's actions relate. To say I did something does not mean that God did not do it; to say that God did it does not mean that I did not do it. 

It will not even do to refer to it as cooperation between us and God because cooperation—at least in common speech—means two people working together; it means one person does part and the other person does part. But the Biblical picture seems to be that in both good and evil, we do everything and God does everything.

This is a very difficult concept to understand because there is nothing in human experience that exactly parallels it. But we can get close to it if we think of an analogy. Take the game Monopoly. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that I am the man who created this game. I made the board and all the spaces and all the cards. But, unlike Monopoly as it actually exists, in my version there are no dice; instead, the players can choose exactly how many spaces to move, making it more about strategy than luck.

Now, on the board is a Jail square in which players are stuck after landing on the Go-To-Jail space. If the players are smart, they will never choose to land on that space. If they choose their moves carefully, an entire game could pass without anyone going to jail. If somebody does land on it is because, either by accident or design, they chose to land on it. They were sent to jail entirely because of their own decision. And yet, it would be equally true that I sent them to jail because I designed the game; I placed that square on the board; I created the rules that make the game. Everything within the game happens solely because I, as the game creator, set it up to happen, even though it also happens because of the choices of the players. If they land on a property and get a chance to buy it, I gave them that chance. If they get a community chest card, I gave them that card. Every decision the player makes is their free decision and yet it is also mine because I created the game, the context and the consequences of those decisions, and it all exists only because of me. 

Colossians 1:16-17 states: “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” Everything in this world exists because of God; every decision we make and the very fact that we can make decisions, is solely because of God and therefore every action we make is truly God's action even though it is also our free choice.

And this fact, rather than excusing or trivializing our decisions, actually makes them more important. Many people say—whether or not in so many words—that their life is theirs to live and it is no business of anybody, even God's, how they live it. But our life is not solely ours but God's. God sets the rules for the world not simply because He has the most power but because the world is His.

So let's clarify where we are. We have established this fact: that our actions and God's do not exclude or displace each other; that is why the Bible says that God hardened Pharaoh's heart and that the Pharaoh hardened his own heart. But while all that is true, that doesn't fully explain this passage.

When trying to put together a lesson on this passage, the main thing I struggled with was understanding the flow of Paul's argument--understanding how these words about Pharaoh connect to the stories of Isaac and Jacob or to Paul's initial point about the Jews. But there is a connection between all these ideas, and we find it in verse 17: “For this same purpose...” The big idea here is that God has a plan. That was why God chose Isaac and not Ishmael; why God chose Jacob and not Esau—not because there was anything wrong with either Ishmael or Esau; not because God had arbitrarily decided to hate them—God chose Jacob and Isaac because He had a plan, a purpose, and they fit into His plan. We can see the plan more clearly from this perspective than anybody in Genesis could have seen it, but even at this point, we don't fully see the reasons behind God's choice, but we do know that there was a reason behind it.

Look at verse 21: “Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?” A potter makes various pots out of his clay; some are made for great things, some for menial things; some are made to be beautiful; some are made only to be functional. But the common link is that they are made for a purpose. A potter has a reason to make things the way he makes them, whether his reasons are commercial, practical, or aesthetic. They might not be reasons he could explain to anybody else; certainly, he wouldn't be able to explain them to the clay. But he has his reasons; he has a purpose.

So the big picture here is that God has a plan and God uses people to accomplish his plan. God didn't choose Jacob because he was good and Esau was bad. God didn't arbitrarily and unconditionally choose Jacob to be good and Esau to be bad. Instead, the reality is God chose Jacob to be used in his plan in a way that Esau was not chosen. God's decisions are arbitrary in the sense that He makes them with no reference to any other authority, but they are not arbitrary in the sense of being uncaused or pointless. God never does anything just for the anyhow of it; God never does something just because He can. Ron Hamilton put it: “God never moves without purpose or plan.”

Obviously, we see how God used the line of Abraham to lay the foundation for His plan; the gospel story and the entire New Testament grow out of the fact that God chose and separated out the Jewish nation. That is the easy part.

The hard part of the passage is Pharaoh. What was the purpose for which God used Pharaoh? Verse 17 answers that: “That I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.” We see how this purpose was fulfilled throughout the events of the Exodus. Pharaoh and his refusal to let the Israelites go became the occasion for one of the most spectacular displays of God's power in all of history. It became the foundation of God's further dealing with the Israelites.

But it didn't just have an impact on Israel. Years after the events of the Exodus, we have the war between Israel and the Philistines at the close of the period of the Judges. When the Philistines learned that the Israelites were bringing the Ark of the Covenant into battle, they cried out: "These are the Gods that smote the Egyptians with all the plagues in the wilderness." (1Samuel 4:8)” The Philistines don't seem to have very exact details about God, but they still remembered hearing of what God did in Egypt. And even today, we still look back to these events as a revelation of the power of God. 

So we have established two facts about Pharaoh and the hardening of his heart. First, the hardening of Pharaoh's heart was Pharaoh's decision even though it can also be said to be the action of God. Second, this hardening served an ultimate purpose by setting up the events of the Exodus.

But that still leaves us with verse 18: “Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.” Given this verse, it seems that there is some sense in which God chose or elected Pharaoh to be hardened—it seems that this was the choice or will of God in a sense greater than merely the fact that God allowed it or put into place the spiritual rules under which it happened.

And this is what I want to suggest—that yes, it was God's choice for Pharaoh to be hardened, but not in the sense of Calvinism. It is not that God never gave Pharaoh a chance or chose unconditionally to make him a bad man; it is rather that God chose Pharaoh, in the light of his own moral decisions, to play a certain part.

First, by putting him in a certain position. Assumably, this particular man was not the only member of the royal family of Egypt. If he had not become Pharaoh, someone else would have. And if some other man had ended up on the throne of Egypt, these events might have played out very differently. But instead, we get the stubborn, hard-headed one who, because of his own moral choices and determination, was never going to let the Israelites go without a fight, thus setting up the events of the Exodus. God could have simply killed Pharaoh before the Exodus and let the Israelites escape in the confusion of the changing of leadership. God could have just miraculously moved the Israelites out of Egypt without even asking for Pharaoh's permission. There were many different ways in which God could have set up this situation, but He chose to set up this particular scenario. Because Pharaoh freely chose to have a certain attitude to God, he was always going to have a hard heart. But God arranged things so that he was in a position where his hardened heart became the catalyst for God's glory to be revealed.

Here we are getting into more debatable territory, but I think there is a second sense in which God did deliberately harden the heart of Pharaoh. During the middle of the plagues, some of Pharaoh's own servants said to him: This is a verse from the middle of the plagues: “And Pharaoh's servants said unto him, How long shall this man be a snare unto us? let the men go, that they may serve the LORD their God: knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?” (Exodus 10:7) Notice what is happening. Pharaoh's own people are advising him to let the Israelites go because of the plagues that were coming upon Egypt. They saw that Egypt was already in ruins and they also saw that things were only going to get worse if the Israelites were not allowed to leave.

That is their reasoning—it is purely pragmatic; it is purely on the grounds of what was happening in Egypt. There is nothing here to suggest that they recognized the cruelty and injustice involved in holding the Israelites as slaves. Still less is there any indication that they had become spiritually awakened or had come to have a personal relationship with God. Notice that they refer to the Lord as 'their God' that is, the God of the Israelites, not as their own God. 

In other words, these advisors of Pharaoh were, so far as we can tell, just as far away from God, from spiritual discernment, and from general virtue as Pharaoh himself. But they could see, on purely practical grounds, that Pharaoh's course was wrong, something that Pharaoh himself either didn't see or wouldn't bring himself to admit.

2 Kings 6:18 tells of how Elisha dealt with the Syrian army that came to try to capture him. “And when they came down to him, Elisha prayed unto the LORD, and said, Smite this people, I pray thee, with blindness. And he smote them with blindness according to the word of Elisha.” God struck the Syrians with physical blindness so that they could not find Elisha and allowed Elisha to lead them into a trap. And my suggestion is that God struck Pharaoh with spiritual or mental blindness so that he could not see the plain, practical truth in front of his eyes. This is not a cruel or arbitrary decision on God's part because it is coincident with Pharaoh's own decision. But God, if I may so express it, took opportunity from Pharaoh's moral decision to lead him into the trap which was the events of the Exodus.

Suppose I want to avoid hearing someone talk—perhaps because they offering criticisms or advice that I don't want to hear—and so I deliberately muffle my ears so that I can't hear them. If I chose to muffle the sound of criticism and complaint, then I also intrinsically muffle the sound of complement and opportunity. If you chose to shut out a person's voice, you cannot complain if you don't hear what they say. If you plug up your ears, you may miss out on things that you really wanted or needed to hear, and you have no grounds to object, given the fact that you made the choice to plug up your ears.

And if you chose not to muffle God's voice—if you chose to turn against God and harden your heart—then you cannot complain about no longer hearing God's voice. If you shut out God's spiritual wisdom, you can't be certain that you retain even basic human wisdom or common sense.

That is what I take to be happening in the case of Pharaoh. He hardened his heart to God's voice and so, as a result of and simultaneous with that decision, God hardened his heart so that he could not see, or at least would not admit, the plain, practical, common sense course of action which he should have taken—the very thing his assumably equally unspiritual advisors could clearly see.

And that is where we come back to the statement of verse 18 that God shows mercy on whom He will show mercy and hardens those He chooses to harden. Pharaoh experienced God's judgment in a more extreme way than nearly anyone else in history. And that judgment was just because Pharaoh was a sinner. But was he really the worst sinner living in the world in that day? There are many people who live a life of sin and are able to live a decent, comfortable, respectable life without seeming to experience any undue judgment, natural or supernatural. There are others who are equally or even less sinful who seem to plunge straight into hell on earth. And while one side of this reality is human free will, the other side is God's choice, God's election.

And this is equally true of those who follow God. Abraham was blessed by God in a way that was completely unique, but was Abraham truly the most righteous or the most faith-filled man of his day? Was he better than Abel who was given nothing but death as a result of his faith?  We read in Acts 12 of how God miraculously delivered Peter out of prison so that he could go on to continue ministry for many years--and in the same place, we read of how James was allowed to remain in prison and be martyred.

All of which is to say that God has mercy on whom He will have mercy and pours judgment on whom He will pour judgment. God's workings are always righteous and they are always infused with mercy—but how and why God works in particular ways with particular people is something we cannot answer; we cannot understand and I think in most cases we would not understand even if God told us.

That brings us back to the illustration of the potter and the clay. Suppose that a lump of clay were conscious; that it could think and be aware of its surroundings. All it would know of the world would be the damp river bank from which it had been dug and the dim interior of the potter's shop. It would have virtually no way of understanding the function for which it was being formed. If it had never seen food, how could it know what it meant to become a pot for food or drink? If it could not read, how could it understand what it would mean to become a storage container for important documents? In short, how could a newly dug piece of clay ever hope to understand the massive, complex web of human life for which pottery was, in the ancient world, an integral part?

No more can we expect to fully understand God's master plan and why He chooses to use people in the way he does. Certainly, often to us, it seems that is unfair; that God is hard on those who are faithful to him and yet passes by in judgment those who most deserve it. That was the lament of Job under the weight of undeserved tragedy. That was the sorrow of Asaph who saw the seeming triumph of the wicked. And that is the complaint of verse 19: why does God act in anger against those who have not opposed him? I think perhaps this is the complaint of those among the Jews who had remained faithful to God and yet now felt that the were abandoned by God as part of his dealing with the Jews. And to all this the answer is that God has a plan and a purpose even though we cannot see what it is. All we know is that God is just and God is merciful—those are the two ideas that Paul ends on in verses 22 and 23; God's justice and his mercy.

A writer named Moule said something this effect; that to Paul, God's working was like a veil, a veil which human understanding could not penetrate; but he knew behind the veil was righteousness and mercy.

This is a very complex and controversial passage, but the main thing I want you to take away from it; the primary, big idea here is that God always works for a purpose. God's decisions are not random or arbitrary, even though they often go against what we would think or expect. I don't know how much to read into this but it is interesting to note that when Paul speaks of the power of the potter over the clay, the word he uses is not physical power—it is not simply that the potter is bigger and stronger than the clay, though he obviously is just as God is obviously stronger than man. The potter has authority over the clay, like the authority of a master or a king. And God's power is not a matter of mere might; God's authority is that of a king or a craftsman and He uses his power not merely because He can, but because He is working out a plan.

We cannot argue or judge God, but we can trust Him because we know He is working out a purpose and His purpose is what is truly important.