Romans 9:19-29

Romans 9:19-Joel : . The Divine Sovereignty in Judgment.

Romans 9:19 f. The hard saying just enunciated provokes the question, “ Why does He blame,” if the hardening is His doing and “ none may resist His will” ? Paul forgoes the obvious retort, that God’ s “ hardening” is a judgment on hardness of heart ( cf. Romans 2:5 , etc.), that Pharaoh (and Israel now) did resist God ( cf. Acts 7:51, etc.); he assails the spirit of contradiction: “ Nay, surely, O man, who art thou who repliest against God— the thing formed saying to its fashioner, Why didst thou make me so?” (see Isaiah 45:9). Such questions cast on God the responsibility for our miscarriages: whoever is to blame, He is not.— The “ forming” of Romans 9:20 is the shaping, not the creation, of the instrument.

Romans 9:21 . “ The potter has a right over the clay, to make a vessel for honourable or ignoble use, from any part of the lump” he chooses. He has his reasons, but those reasons are for himself. “ What right,” says the Jew, “ has God to cast away sons of Abraham?” The right, answers Paul, of the potter, from which there is no appeal.

Romans 9:22 recalls Romans 9:17: “ Supposing God, resolved to make an example of His punitive wrath, has borne long” with evil-doers, rendering their doom in the end more terrible, who will gainsay Him— in Pharaoh’ s case, or (to read between the lines) in Israel’ s?

Romans 9:23 f. “ And” supposing He did this “ of purpose to make known His glorious wealth of mercy . . . in us,” for example, “ whom He has called from amongst both Jews and Gentiles?” The suggestion is that God’ s punitive judgments have mercy, somewhere, somehow, for their aim ( Romans 11:30 ff.). The “ vessels of anger” were chosen suitably, as well as sovereignly: God’ s displeasure found, not made, them “ fitted for destruction.” The antithetic clause, “ which He prepared beforehand for glory” ( cf. Romans 8:30, Ephesians 2:10), associates God with all that leads to the happier choice, without denying man’ s co-operation ( cf. Php_2:12 f.).— Throughout Paul asserts the challenged right of God to deal judicially with Israel; he is not denying man’ s freedom in order to safeguard God’ s sovereignty, but maintaining God’ s freedom against Jewish presumption.— The sayings drawn from Hosea and Isaiah in Romans 9:25-Joel : reveal the disregard of previous status with which God “ calls” into favour “ the once rejected” and selects “ a remnant” while rejecting the mass. Isaiah 10:22 f. and Isaiah 10:19 remind Israel how summary God’ s ancient judgments had been— yet “ leaving a seed” to revive out of the waste.