Who’s to Blame?

Series on Romans

XIII Election and Grace

B The Argument

Text: 9:14-24

Introduction

Now that the Apostle has shaken up his readers with the bold quotation from Malachi, “Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated,” a further elucidation of his teaching is necessary. The questions raise are serious ones and they are questions that persist down to this day. We want to say, “How can this be?” If God’s decree is all encompassing then what room is left for free will. Are our decisions and actions meaningless? They are not, but, in order to understand we must gain a new perspective on reality. The obscurity that surrounds this apparent contradiction can only be dispelled by a Christian world and life view, or as the Christian philosopher Gordon Clark called it, “A Christian View of Men and Things.” Philosophers and theologians have always engaged in futile attempts to reconcile two aspects of our experience, determinism and free will, and they always end up with unsatisfactory explanations. The reason for this is very simple; they do not understand that the two cannot be reconciled. It is in the nature of the finite world God has sovereignly created out of nothing that we cannot fully comprehend the relation of the actions of the infinite God to our our actions. We are always trying to bring God down to our level and measure Him by our standards. It just will not work, and it never provides satisfactory explanations. So here Paul proceeds by way of sanctified and inspired argument to teach us what we should believe. He starts with the evidence, proceeds to an example, answers the expected expostulation, and concludes with the explanation.

I The Evidence

We read in verses 14 and 15, What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at 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.” The evidence is in God’s Word, and it says that God does as he pleases. We are so wrapped up in conceptions of God that fit with our sense of fairness and justice that we miss what the Bible is saying from Genesis to Revelation. This statement to Moses occurs in one of the high-points of the Old Testament when Moses is asking God to teach him His ways, and he asks God to show him His glory. So Moses is hidden in the cleft of a rock and God passes by showing Moses only His back, because Moses could not have endured looking on God’s face and live. This is where God says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” What this account teaches us is that we absolutely cannot know everything about God. Some things are hidden. His face is hidden from Moses and the truth that Moses can understand is revealed, but no more. The very words of God should bring us up short and enable us to realize that God is the infinite eternal unchangeable God and our understanding is limited. And so we read in Isaiah 55:9 As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

II The Example

Paul now gives us an example of God’s sovereign government in verses 16-18, It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. The account of Pharaoh in Exodus is very instructive. First we are told that Pharaoh’s heart became hardened in the midst of the plagues, but then we are told that Pharaoh hardened his heart, and then in Exodus 9:12, But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said to Moses, and then in 10:1 we read, Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these miraculous signs of mine among them. There is a perfect confluence and concurrence of Pharaoh’s sinful will and God’s holy will in these preceding references. and there is absolutely no explanation, and in fact no hesitation at all in saying both things and not expecting to need an explanation. In truth, there is none. This kind of concurrence may be seen elsewhere, for example in Philippians 2:13 and 14, Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. In this case the wills, human and divine converge in a good purpose, but the mystery still remains as to how this is possible. John MacArthur comments on this point, The question behind this illustration, like Jacob and Esau. he says, “is a question of God’s fairness. If He only chose some to be the heirs of promise, and not others, people will say He is unfair.The natural human response is to assert that God was unjustly arbitrary in choosing one over the other long before they would have opportunity to trust or reject Him or to be obedient or disobedient. That natural response, however, is tantamount to saying that there is injustice with God. So Paul asks rhetorically if we have a right to accuse God of being unjust…That accusation has been raised throughout the history of the church and is still heard today when God’s election and predestination are proclaimed. How can God elect one person and reject another before they are even born? In light of human wisdom and standards, especially in democratic societies, where all people are considered equal before the law, the ideas of election and predestination are repulsive and unacceptable. Those doctrines, it is claimed, could not possibly characterize a God who is truly just and righteous. To the saved but ignorant or immature mind, God simply could not do such a thing, and to the unsaved mind, a god like that would not be worthy of recognition, much less worship.”

III The Expostulation

The expostulation is simply an expression of incredulity suggesting that Paul has eliminated human responsibility in verses 19-21, One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?” But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ ” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? The apostle is not saying that we are mere lumps of clay to be thrown on the trash heap when we are ruined. We are made in God’s image, but when that image is defaced it is useless unless it is restored. Believers are remade in the image of God and Christ. The point of the analogy is that God is much greater and more sovereign than we imagine. The analogy is similar to that used in Isaiah 40:17, 21 and 22, Before him all the nations are as nothing; they are regarded by him as worthless and less than nothing…Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood since the earth was founded? He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. We are not nothing because God made us and we are more valuable in His sight than grasshoppers, but compared to God we are nothing but grasshoppers. He made us for His own purposes and therefore has a perfect right to as He chooses. Who are you, O man, to talk back to God?

IV The Explanation

Now we are not left without any explanation, but in verses 22-24 Paul gives us the only explanation that is consistent with the Bible, What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? Essentially he is telling us that God’s way is the best way because He is God. To accomplish His sovereign purpose of grace he had to show that it was His kindness and mercy alone that saves us. Thus we must all be part of a lost race, a race that is unable to save itself. Grace that does not differentiate in its objects is not grace at all. Charles Hodge calls these “difficult verses” but he sums them up in this way, “Paul now shows that there is nothing unreasonable in God’s exercising this right, nothing which his creatures have the least right to complain about. The punishment of the wicked is not an arbitrary act, having no purpose but to make them miserable, but is designed to show God’s displeasure against sin and to make his true character known. On the other hand, the salvation of the righteous is designed to reveal the riches of his grace. Both in the punishment of the one group and the salvation of the other, most important and benevolent ends must be answered. And since for these ends it was necessary that some should be punished and others pardoned, and since all are equally undeserving, it results from the nature of the case that the decision between the objects of wrath and the objects of mercy must be left to God.” We may call this the grand demonstration, and it is what the Bible is about, not the welfare of men. but the glory of God. It is still true that God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked and Paul describes it as bearing with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction. I am certain that unbelievers will immediately assert that this is what we call today, “collateral damage,” and is therefore unacceptable. We cannot fully understand what God reveals about His sovereign election and predestination. It can only be accepted by faith, acknowledging its truth simply because God has revealed it to be true. As believers, we know that, in ourselves, we deserve only God’s rejection and condemnation. But we also know that, for His own sovereign reasons, God has elected us to be His children and, in His own time and way, brought us to saving faith in Jesus Christ. On the other hand, we also know that our human will had a part in our salvation.