Romanos 9:19

19. Thou… me The Jew and the apostle are now face to face.

Why… find fault? The Jew’s question, divested of its petulant words, is this: Since in our downfall, typified thus by Pharaoh’s overthrow, God, as you say, has it all his own way, why does he hold us Jews responsible?

Calvinists often tell us (as Barnes on the passage) that this is the very objection that Arminians make against Calvinism. Very true, we reply, and it is to a false Calvinistic view of the matter that the Jew objects. He understands that Paul is a predestinarian in his putting of the case, and against that putting his query is perfectly just. And Paul will reply, not by denying the validity of the objection to the fatalistic view, but by denying that the fatalistic view is the one he puts. So, after reproving the petulance of the phrase and spirit of the Jew, he proceeds to show that he himself maintains a doctrine of true equitable free-agency.

Really, the Jew assumes that by Paul’s view his own rejection was willed by God, and his sins as condition to his rejection. Had the apostle, indeed, said, “God has decreed your downfall, and foreordained your sins as the means to it,” the Jew’s question would have been just. But Paul, quite the reverse, maintained the non-necessity of any fall at all. He defends God’s right to establish a system of broad unlineal free-agency and of salvation conditioned upon faith in Christ, in which, as Israel himself is potentially included, there is no necessity for Israel to fall. Apostacy is Israel’s own free, undecreed, unforeordained, unwilled act; and Paul is writing this epistle to prevent that act.

Who… resisted… will? The Jew’s premises are, God willed my sin and downfall; my sin and downfall fulfil his will; the question then is, How I am to blame? If the premises are true, his question is irresistible.