Scripture: Romans 9:14-18
Date: March 20, 2016
Speaker: Sean Higgins
Evangelical culture sells a candy and bubble-gum Christianity. God is sweet, small, and changes His mind sometimes. He really wants to do things but human freedom keeps popping His bubbles. Professing believers—and many preachers—present God as not much more that a vulnerable, grandfather-like figure. If He cares, He can’t control much anyway.
But that’s not what God says about Himself. For us to speak about God as He does is to speak about the non-weak, non-feeble, non-genie-like God. Our God is the heavens and He does whatever He pleases (Psalm 135:6).
What’s on the table in Romans 9:14-18 (and in the next paragraph, 9:19-23) demands our discussion. This is one of the clearest passages in all of Scripture that exposes God’s “god-hood,” His “god-ness.”
To be sure, there are many who would just as soon skip any discussion on Romans 9. In fact, I own a book titled, The Most Neglected Chapter in the Bible: Romans 9. There have been some who in studying this passage were troubled so much by Paul’s apparent disregard for human choice and responsibility that one commentator criticizes the biblical argument here as a “false step.” Another goes further and says that the teaching is “thoroughly immoral.” And others hate it so much that the assume that these “offending verses” must have been written by someone other than Paul.
But there is no “false step” here in Paul’s argument, and these verses are “offending verses” to men who do not want a sovereign God. This passage concerns God’s very right to be God and to do God-things. We are addressing core questions about God like: “What does it mean to be God?” “How does God show Himself to be God?”
In God’s providence I was reading Jonathan Edward’s book, The End for Which God Created the World while also studying to teach Romans 9 in 2003. Edward’s thesis is that: God does everything He does to glorify Himself.
Think about what that means for a moment…everything God does is to glorify Himself. Every part of creation comes from Him, exists through Him, and is ultimately directed back to Him. He brings all things into being for one purpose: for His sake.
We might ask, “Why does God seek to display His greatness?” In following Edward’s thought we may reason:
God is doing everything for His own sake, for His own glory, because He is the most excellent and infinitely worthy being. In fact, it would be wrong for Him not to do this.
Now for our study in Romans 9 consider the following more specific application. We may apply the general principle above to some of God’s specific attributes:
AS WELL AS (to no lesser extent or degree)
THEREFORE:
He intends to display BOTH His grace in salvation AND His wrath in condemnation. This is how it could be His purpose to raise up Pharaoh, His purpose to harden whom He desires, His purpose to prepare vessels of wrath for destruction, and His purpose to reject Israel for a season.
As we consider the context of these verses, remember that the entire point of Romans chapters 9-11 is founded on this idea that God is showing off Himself. The question was raised by Paul in 9:1-5, what about the Israelites? All the promises God made to the Jews in the Old Testament seem to be falling short of fulfillment. If God isn’t going to come through on those promises, how can we trust His promises of salvation (and security) in Romans chapters 3-8?
Chapters 9-11 are included by Paul not as a parenthesis but as crucial to his explanation of God’s faithfulness to save. It is in these chapters that he explains how so many of the Israelites were rejecting their Messiah.
It is true that chapters 9-11 show His delight in His mercy, as well His delight in His faithfulness through the final fulfillment of His promises to the nation (11:11-32). But they seem to primarily indicate that He is no less pleased with His wrath (especially 9:14-23) as it communicates an excellent attribute of His.
God is God. He is at work displaying His “god-ness.” Romans 9:14-18 should help us see how right this is.
The flow of this text is relatively easy for us to follow with parallel conjunctions that mark it off:
What shall we say then? Is there injustice [or, unrighteousness] on God’s part? By no means! (Romans 9:14)
This question states the inevitable human response to the previous paragraph in verses 6-13. If God decides apart from works and before people are born whom He will save and whom He will reject, then how can He be righteous (verse 14) and how can He blame people if they reject Him (verse 19)?
The question springs from the immediate context where God’s choice of Jacob over Esau preceded their birth and was not based on their works. The very possibility of the question is evidence that election means that He chooses some and rejects others regardless of their works.
However, Paul emphatically defends the righteousness of God in verse 14, rejecting any notion that God’s electing actions are blameworthy.
The aim of the question (which is really more of an accusation) is God’s character. Isn’t this really unfair? Isn’t this an injustice on His part? It would be common to hear a person who had this objection say something like, “That is not what my God does.” Or, “If that is the way God is, I want nothing to do with Him.”
Nevertheless, it is valuable to observe, (before even looking at the specific defense Paul gives for God’s righteousness), that Paul does not attempt to show how God’s choice of human beings for salvation fits with their own “choosing” of God in faith. He is not trying to ease our upset stomachs and confirm our ideas that God is really much more like we would like Him to be.
Quite the contrary. Rather than qualifying the nature of God’s election, he underlines it with brighter colors. God not only has mercy on whomever He wants, He also hardens whomever He wants (verse 18).
God’s freedom to act this way is the freedom of the Creator toward His creatures and does not need to be qualified (verses 20-21). In other words, the standard by which God must be judged is nothing less and nothing more than God Himself. Judged by this standard, Paul contends, God is indeed righteous.
Paul knew the objections. Even the way he begins here shows that. What shall we say then? is typical of the questions Paul uses at several points in Romans to answer protests. If God, on the basis of nothing but His own choice (verse 12), determines who is to be saved and who rejected (verse 13), then how can God be righteous (verse 14)? Not only that, if God is in control of those who receive Him and those who reject Him, how can He still righteously find fault in them (verse 19)?
The key word is unrighteousness (ἀδικία, “injustice” NASB). In Romans 3:5 it is the opposite of “righteousness,” a concern of moral behavior, and it is also used in Romans 1:18 as the opposite of truth. Unrighteousness refers to a disposition and conduct which contradicts truth, particularly the truth about God.
The most right or righteous thing a being could do is to properly recognize God’s infinite worth. So the most unrighteous (ἀδικία) thing is to disregard His infinite worth (see Romans 1:18-23 where unrighteousness is used to describe the refusal to worship and give thanks to the Creator).
God cannot act in a way that is contrary to His own infinite greatness. God would not be “right” if He did not conduct Himself with a view to honoring Himself. God’s righteousness is His commitment to act for the glory of His own name above all.
For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” (Romans 9:15)
The first reason that God’s righteousness is vindicated comes from Scripture (a quotation from Exodus 33:19) to show that God’s decision to love Jacob and hate Esau was no isolated case but reflects God’s very nature.
It is a fair question, though: “How is it an argument to say that God is not unrighteous in election because – for He says to Moses…‘I will have compassion on whom I have compassion ?”
The unstated premise of this argument is that when God acts righteously He must use His freedom in this way. His sovereign giving, or withholding, of grace is the primary way He acts for Himself. Election is how God displays God.
The citation from Exodus represents a principle about the very nature of God, the way He characteristically acts in His sovereign freedom to show mercy and also to withhold it.
Again, how does this constitute an answer to the objection that God is unrighteous? God is righteous because He is committed to proclaiming His name and advertising His glory by showing grace to those He chooses and hardening those He chooses.
In Exodus 34:6 (in the same context as Exodus 33:19) God passes by Moses, showing Moses His glory, and He proclaimed to Moses His name using both words “mercy” and “compassion.” So it is the glory of God and His essential nature to dispense mercy (but also wrath, 34:7) on whomever He pleases apart from any constraint originating outside His own will. This is the essence of what it means to be God. This is part of what makes His name glorious. The righteousness of God is defended, then, by appealing to His freedom and sovereignty as the Creator.
So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. (Romans 9:16)
Verse 16 draws a conclusion about God’s electing righteousness from verse 15 and is a sharpened repetition of the thesis of predestination in 9:11 and following. More specifically, the “not from works by from Him who calls” (9:12) corresponds to the “not of him who wills or of him who runs but of God who has mercy” (verse 16).
Paul’s first conclusion in verse 16 has two parts. First, God’s choice is NOT based on man. And Second, God’s choice is based ONLY on His sovereign determination.
We might see the human will as the origin of an action, the choice to do it, and exertion as the consummation in action of the will. Thus Paul aims to say that no part of the process in the mental-physical life of man determines God’s decision to give grace.
This verse excludes in the clearest possible terms the notion that free will is the determining factor in divine election. This is the point! God must be sovereign and free in His bestowal of mercy on whomever He wills in order to get all the glory Himself. His purpose of election comes out of a full allegiance to His name and esteem for His glory. So Paul proves that God is righteous, because righteousness consists basically in preserving and displaying His own glory.
For the Scripture says 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.” (Romans 9:17)
In verses 15-16 Paul expands the positive side of God’s sovereignty in election that he alluded to in verses 10-13 (“Jacob have I loved”). Now Paul will do the same for the ‘negative’ side (“Esau I have rejected”). Verse 17 is additional proof that the principle explained in verse 16 is not merely true of God’s mercy but also of His severity. Verse 17 argues that the matter of divine hardening “is not of one who wills or of one who runs but of God.”
The words are again from Exodus, from the Lord’s instructions to Moses about what he is to say to Pharaoh on the sixth occasion that Moses and Aaron are told to go before the Egyptian ruler to demand the release of the people of Israel.
The purpose clause, for this very purpose I raised you up , is probably the reason that Paul has cited this particular text since its lack of explicit reference to Pharaoh’s hardening makes it initially less suitable than others as a preparation for Paul’s conclusion in verse 18.
This purpose clause also lets us in on the fact that God’s raising up of Pharaoh is virtually the same has God’s hardening of Pharaoh.
Paul wants to make clear that even God’s ‘negative’ actions, such as the hardening of Pharaoh, serve a positive purpose. This positive purpose is the greatest purpose imaginable: the demonstration of God’s power and the wider proclamation of His name.
The purpose for which Pharaoh was raised up represents the answer to the question regarding God’s righteousness. God’s righteousness, then, consists in the revelation of His saving power and mercy AS WELL AS His sovereign free judgment that results in the proclamation of His name in all the earth.
So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. (Romans 9:18)
Pharaoh’s resistance to God’s purpose is caused, according to Exodus 4-14, by his “hardness” of heart. It is this concept which connects verses 17 and 18, as Paul now states a principle of God’s acting that Pharaoh’s experience serves to illustrate: God hardens whom He wills .
The word hardens (σκληρύνει) was used in secular Greek in medical contexts with reference to the calcification of bones. In the Greek translation of Exodus 4-14 it occurs 14 times where it has the idea “make spiritually insensitive.”
God’s hardening, then, is an action that renders a person insensitive to God and His Word. If it is not reversed (by God Himself) then the hardening culminates in eternal damnation.
Paul insists that God bestows mercy on His own initiative apart from anything that a person is or does (verse 16). The parallelism in this verse requires that the same is true of God’s hardening: as He has mercy on “whom He desires” so He hardens “whom He desires.”
Many people who study this passage deny that this is the case. They point back to Exodus 4-14 where the first reference to God’s hardening of Pharaoh (9:12) comes only after references to Pharaoh’s hardening of his own heart (8:11, 28). This implies that God’s hardening is a response to a person’s prior decision to harden himself or herself.
But there are three reasons why that’s wrong. First, nowhere in Exodus 4-14 is there an indication that Pharaoh’s hardening of his own heart was the basis for God’s hardening. Chronology is not a cause. Besides, the record of events shows more about the chronology. Before Pharaoh is said to harden his own heart, God twice predicts that He would harden Pharaoh’s heart (4:21 and 7:3). There are also five references in the passive voice to Pharaoh’s heart being hardened (7:13, 14, 22; 8:11, 15). The understood subject of these passive verbs is none other than God.
Second, Paul’s “whom He desires” shows that God’s decision to harden is His alone and is not constrained by any consideration having to do with a person’s status or actions.
Third, if Paul wanted his readers to assume that God’s hardening was based on a person’s self-hardening, we would have expected him to make this clear in answering the question in verse 19. What more natural response to the objection that God is unfair in “finding fault” with a person than to make clear that God’s hardening was actually based on some fault?
The “hardening” Paul portrays here is a sovereign act of God that is not caused by anything in those individuals who are hardened. And 9:22-23 and 11:5-8 suggest that the outcome of the hardening is damnation. As contrasted with His mercy – which we always think to lead to eternal salvation, His hardening must lead to eternal damnation to keep the parallel. Not only that, but four verses later the vessels of wrath (compared with vessels of mercy) are prepared for destruction and it is clear that they are excluded from salvation.
This is what answers the question of God’s faithfulness to His promises. The reference to Pharaoh here must be grounded in the Romans context (chapters 9-11 overall), as the hardening of Pharaoh is analogous to the hardening of many Israelites in Paul’s day. Paul uses the principle of God’s free rejection of Pharaoh as an example of why the majority of the Israelites are unsaved. Just as Pharaoh was hardened to effect the salvation of Israel, so Israel is hardened so salvation can be extended to the Gentiles.
What is the most “right” thing any being could do? It is right to recognize the infinite value and worth of God. For God to be righteous He must do everything for the glory (or the properly displayed value) of His own name.
Paul has explained in Romans 9:14-18 that God’s righteousness (that is, His doing what is right) consists in His sovereign choosing of mercy for some and hardening for others, all for the purpose that His “name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.” It is the most right thing for God to display Himself as God.
By quoting two OT texts (9:15, 17) Paul shows that God’s freedom from human “willing and running” is God’s display of God, it is at the very heart of what it means to be the all-glorious God. In fact, God’s righteousness is His commitment to act for the glory of His own name above all (you can see more about this in John Piper’s book, The Justification of God).
If there is any problem in our world today, and for that matter in our churches as well, it is the marginalization and trivialization of God. The reality and supremacy of our personal, supernatural God is NOT the center and the ground and the goal of all of our thoughts and actions.
We need to be relentless in our exalting of God, just as He is. This exalting begins with knowing Him and delighting in Him as we see His display of Himself. May we not be unrighteous in apathy about God’s display of God.