Is There Injustice on God's Part?
So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. Romans 9:16
Romans 9:14–29 – Romans: The Righteousness of God
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost – June 25, 2023 (am)
There are times in Scripture where it really is stunning how much God allows us to see, and to know. Remember the occasion when the king of Syria sent a great army to surround the city of Dothan and capture the prophet Elisha? The prophet’s servant was alarmed the next morning seeing the army with horses and chariots all around the city (2Ki.6:11-15). 2Ki.6:15 … And [he] said, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” 16 He said, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” 17 Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
I also think of the book of Job which poses the question: Is innocent suffering possible (or is suffering always tied to our personal unrighteousness)? The answer is a resounding, Yes! If innocent suffering is not possible, then we’ve removed the very ground on which the cross of Jesus is erected! But as part of that lesson, we’re given an amazing piece of knowledge! The curtain between heaven and earth is pulled back so that we can see what’s behind all of Job’s trials! Now that only happens for the reader—Job didn’t have any deeper knowledge of his own trials than we have of ours. But what we learn in cc.1-2 causes us to root for Job throughout his excruciating exchanges with his frustratingly over-confident friends, urging him to hold on and not to cave in to the foolishness he’s being fed!
But there’s another reason Job comes to mind today. I believe the perspective he gained once God finally spoke (Job.38-41) is similar to the perspective we gain here (Rom.9). I believe Paul’s question to us—20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?—is quite like God’s to Job—38:2 “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? We can feel very free to critique God and His ways in this world, increasingly free to sit in judgment of Him in what He does. So many among us use the presence of evil in this world to question the very existence of God, not to mention His power, and even His love and His justice. But here, in response to today’s text, the temptation is to critique Him because of how He applies His salvation. Leave aside for the moment the absolutely inconceivable miracle that reconciliation to a holy God of unlimited power is even possible for self-willed rebels, not to mention that this reconciliation is fully provided by this holy, powerful God at His own cost, and is given to us as a gift, we self-willed rebels can still find fault with Him if we believe we haven’t been given sufficient voice in the process!
So, God’s answer comes to us through Paul in this passage much as it came directly to Job in his day. Paul doesn’t factor in human freedom or will at all as he addresses these questions about how God is presently dealing with Israel, and therefore how He dispenses His salvation to us all. He just holds God accountable to His own Word on his way to explaining how God is presently dealing with His older covenant people, even as He begins to extend quite similar promises to His new covenant people.
Last week we heard the opening half of this defense; we stopped in the middle (13), but not before we were introduced to Paul’s central idea: God decides whom He calls to salvation in order that [His] purpose in election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls (11). So, in order to protect salvation by grace alone through faith alone, not by works, God grants salvation according to His own will and purpose, to whomever He chooses. And one key entailment of this plan is that not all those who were born into Abraham’s line—not all ethnic Jews—are designated to receive this promised salvation (8ff.).
Today we finish this opening unit of thought (6-29) which defends Paul’s thesis guiding these three chapters: it is not as though the word of God has failed (6), even though it could look to us like He’s not keeping His promises to Israel. Let’s continue using his next three questions.
Is There Injustice on God’s Part? 14-18
Paul answers this one right out of the blocks! And a familiar response it is. 14 … By no means! (3:4, 6, 31; 6:2, 15; 7:7, 13; 9:14; 11:1, 11) But this is one of those times when the explanation is even more helpful to us than the answer itself. And it’s precisely the answer we’d expect on the heels of vv.6-13. But it’s still shocking to us when we read how clearly and directly Paul is willing to say it—how efficiently, pointedly. He uses God’s own words when He met with Moses on the mountain, just before he placed him in a cleft of the rock [as His] glory [passed] by, [covering Moses] with [His] hand (Exo.33:21-22). So, the answer to our question is: 14 … By no means! 15 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
Then, just in case we may’ve missed the full implications, Paul spells them out for us yet more clearly, giving us the summary bottom line on how we become children of God (8). 16 So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. This agrees completely with what he wrote to the church in Ephesus a few years later. As for you, Eph.2:1 … you were dead in the trespasses and sins…. 4 But God… 5 … made [you] alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved. … 8 … through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
As Paul says here (11), this is God’s very purpose of election!
Paul then switches to the arch antagonist during the days of Moses as a prime example of the fact that God is sovereign over hardening and judgement as well, not just over mercy and salvation (17-18). From Exo.9:16, Paul again uses God’s own words to make his point. 17 For [God said] to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” 18 So [God raised up Pharaoh to prove that] he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he also hardens whomever he wills.
The question may be asked: Did God cause Pharaoh’s hardness or did He just confirm it, lock him into it, after he had already shown that he was hard toward God?
My answer is: It doesn’t really matter; either lead to the same outcome. If God designs and directs the course of our lives before we’re even born (11-13) toward the fulfillment of His purpose in making us (which we’d have seen in the very next verse from Eph.2 and as we’ll also see here in just a moment [22-23]), then God was fully aware when making Pharaoh that He was forming someone who’d oppose Him at every turn, even before Pharaoh had ever done that the first time.
So, the question is: Do we trust God with these decisions? Do we trust Him to operate in this world as though He really is God, as though He really does possess that eternal power and divine nature we read about back in 1:20? Or are we like Jonah who was not at all happy about the fact that salvation belongs to the Lord? (Jon.2:9; 4:2)
But this just leads to our next question, as Paul anticipates.
Why Does God Still Find Fault? 19-21
Not only is this a fair follow-up question to what we just heard. It’s confirmation that we’re hearing Paul accurately! If we’ve understood him, this is the next question we should be asking. 19 … Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will? But here, now, is when we get an answer like Job’s (Job.38:2). And that’s because this question crosses a line.
It’s no longer seeking to understand how God dispenses His salvation. Now it’s calling into judgment how He dispenses it! All the information needed in this line of questions has been given (and it’s an amazing amount of information!). Now Paul’s imagined questioner is implicitly indicting God for how He works, and so for Who He is.
The question of whether God is just has already been answered (14). But the answer just doesn’t sound right to some people. So, they want to question further in order to determine whether God’s standard of justice really measures up to their own! So, the answer here backs them off a bit (just like God finally did with Job), to remind them of Who it is they’re questioning, and of the shaky ground they’re stepping onto as they’re doing it: 20 … who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Good questions.
And these are easy to answer. But next come the follow-up ones that help us see the truly stunning implications of Paul’s teaching here. There’s one more in this section, then we start the steep climbing. 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? To cut to the chase: Doesn’t God have the right to make vessels like Ishmael and Esau whose judgment will not be averted along with the chosen children of God? Our first thought might be: Yes, I suppose He does. But how is that just?
That leads us straight into our next question—the what if.
What If (to paraphrase vv.22-24) God’s Power and Purpose in Salvation Are Far Grander than We Realize? 22-29
22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory? Here is where this passage makes a rather significant contribution to that great philosophical/theological question of why God created the world. Given the direction the world has gone since Adam & Eve first sinned in the Garden, why wouldn’t God have just destroyed this world and created a new one where His creatures don’t sin and rebel against Him?
Paul is suggesting an answer here to that question as well, even as he addresses God’s purpose in election. What he’s suggesting is that God’s character is more fully experienced, understood, and appreciated by His creatures if they see both His wrath and His mercy, both His judgement and His salvation, in tandem with one another—how He both delays and then applies judgment of sin in complement to how He both designs and implements salvation. There’s something about the humility and mercy and grace of His salvation that isn’t understood without seeing the fierce wrath of His judgment, just as there’s something about His judgment that we’d never be able grasp without knowing He’s provided such an amazingly gracious way of escape.
So: 22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, delaying their judgment almost beyond our ability to understand (2Pe.3:9), and surely to the point where we call out with the souls under the altar: how long, O… Lord…, before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth? (Rev.6:9-10) We already think it’s long overdue! But 2Pe.3:9 [our] Lord is… patient…, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. Even so, His patience will run its course. Then He will pour out His righteous judgment, displaying his power and vindicating His undiluted holiness, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has rescued, prepared beforehand for glory—24 [namely] us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?
Three important observations: first, God’s judgment and His salvation work together to display His power and His glory. Either one without the other is an incomplete picture of Who He is. If we lack either one, we will not have a full grasp of His glory. That’s the grander purpose we can miss—salvation and judgment combine to magnify His glory!
Second, God has always intended for salvation to go to Gentiles as well, not only to Jews. He’s made that clear from the very beginning, in His promise to Abraham—Gen.12:3 … in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. And that’s what these quotes from Hosea are affirming. 25 … Those who were not my people I will call “my people,” and her who was not beloved I will call “beloved.” 26 …And in the very place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” they will be called “sons of the living God.”
Third, more to the point here, it was never the case that every single Israelite born in the line of Abraham, or even in the line of Isaac (cf. 10-13) or Jacob, would be saved. That’s what these quotes from and Isaiah are affirming. 27 … “Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved, 28 for the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay.” 29 And…, “If the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah.” In other words, if God hadn’t saved some among us, none would’ve been saved at all! We’d be as desolate as Sodom and Gomorrah!
Conclusion
So, what is our takeaway from all this? Three More Things to Note
First, most central, therefore, most important, God’s promises to Israel have not failed. Even though He chose them to be the ones through Whom He would make the promise of salvation, and deliver the law proving the need for salvation, and even provide the Messiah to accomplish salvation, it was never His purpose to save every single Israelite (27), and it was always His purpose to save some from every tribe and language and people and nation (Rev.5:9; 7:9).
Second, salvation is fully from the Lord. It is a gift given by His grace completely apart from anything we do or don’t do. His purpose in election is to keep our salvation from being any sort of reward for any sort of good works (11). But also, without His sovereign granting of salvation to those He’s chosen, no one at all would’ve believed, not one (29).
Third, God’s wrath poured out in judgment magnifies His power and glory as He saves. We can see how that could be true. But I can’t explain to you exactly how it works, not to your satisfaction or even to mine. But that is what we learn about God here.
So, we just have to finish with a few questions. Do you trust God to be just in the way He dispenses His salvation? Given that He’s provided it at all, do you trust that He’ll handle it well, do it right, dispense it appropriately? Do you trust that He’s telling you the truth in these verses about how it works, and why it works that way, as best we can understand? And do you trust Him when He puts a stop to your questions, as He does here in v.20?
Today’s passage presents challenging teaching. We’ve granted that from the start. But praise God that He’s purposed to tell us about it. And praise God again for the book of Job. The time when this chapter is hardest is when we have lost loved one whom we long for God to save. And we’re just not sure we can trust Him with their lives. Job is our example here. Do you remember the final words of his answer to God’s questions? Job 42:5 I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; 6 therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” He fully trusted God in the end even though he had lost ten children in his season of trial!
Is our God worthy of your trust?
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Resources
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NEXT SUNDAY: Christ Is the End of the Law, Romans 9:30–10:4