There are certain phrases every parent begins to expect from their kids. Phrases like "why?" or, "But Greg’s parents let him do it." One of those phrases is, "That’s not fair!" We said it as kids, and when we become parents our kids bombard us with that phrase. And of course the standard response we learned from our parents that we pass on to our kids is, "Life’s not fair."
When you’re a kid, you expect things to be fair. But as we get older, we tend to grow more cynical. But even in our cynicism we hold out hope that at least there’s one person who is fair: God. Even if a criminal slips through justice in this life, we hope they don’t slip past God’s justice. Even when we’re wronged and betrayed by people we care about, even when those we care about turn on us, even when we’re tricked out of our hard earned money, at least we can trust that that person will have to stand before God. Even if life isn’t fair, at least we can trust God to be fair.
But what if he isn’t? What if God plays favorites, or if God’s definition of fairness is different than our definition of fairness? When a person begins to doubt God’s fairness, that suspicion erodes very core of his or her confidence in God. How can you trust someone who isn’t trustworthy? How can you put your confidence in someone who might let you down?
We’ve been in a series through the New Testament book of Romans called "Good News for Our Times." In this series we’ve been looking at God’s message to our world through His Son Jesus Christ. In the first four chapters of Romans we looked at the good news about God’s integrity, in chapters 5 to 8 we looked at the good news about God’s love, and then last week we started chapters 9 to 11 by looking at the good news about God’s faithfulness.
I mentioned last week that Romans chapter 9 is one of the most difficult and controversial chapters in the New Testament. Differences over how to understand Romans 9 have parted friendships, split churches, and divided Christians into different doctrinal groups. In fact, I probably made some people in our church mad last week when I started going through this chapter, and I’ll probably make even more people mad this week. I introduced chapter 9 last week by posing a dilemma. The dilemma is this: If Jesus Christ fulfills God’s promises to the Jewish people of Israel, then why do the majority of Jewish people reject Jesus as their Messiah? We saw that even though the nation of Israel has mostly rejected Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promises to them that God isn’t done with Israel yet. But because Israel has rejected Jesus, God has created the Christian Church to fulfill God’s purposes in this stage of his plan. We saw last week that this is nothing new, because God has always used individuals and nations in special ways to fulfill his strategy. Just as in the Old Testament God chose Isaac over Ishmael, just as he chose Jacob over Esau, so now has chosen his Church over Israel for the unfolding of God’s plan. But Paul warned us last week that this shouldn’t cause us to think that God’s promises to Israel have failed or that the Church has replaced Israel. It simply means that for the time being God is using the Christian Church for the outworking of his strategy.
Now a person could look at God’s strategy and conclude that it isn’t fair. God’s choice of Abraham out of all the nations, his choice of Isaac over Ishmael, his choice of Jacob over Esau, his choice of Israel over the other ancient nations, and now his choice of the Church over Israel could be construed as God playing favorites. Is God fair in the way he’s working out his plan?
So today we’re going to see three reasons we can trust God to be fair in the outworking of his plan.
1. God’s Motive (Romans 9:14-18)
Let’s look at vv. 14-18 together. When Paul uses this phrase, "What shall we say then?" he’s anticipating a false conclusion from what he’s said so far. Back in chapter 3 he said, "What shall we say then? Is God unjust to judge people?" (3:5); in chapter 6 he said, "What shall we say then? Shall we continue to sin that grace might abound?" (6:1); and in chapter 7 he said, "What shall we say then? Is the law sin?" (7:7). In each case he rejected the conclusion as a false conclusion.
So does God play favorites with people? Paul rejects this conclusion as wrong, and he quotes a verse from the Old Testament book of Exodus to prove that God isn’t unjust.
At first it’s unclear exactly how this quotation from Exodus 33:19 demonstrates God’s fairness. The incident Paul quotes from in Exodus 33 is when Moses asks to see God’s glory. Let me quote the entire verse, since here Paul only quotes half of the verse:
"The LORD said, ’I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion’" (NIV).
In the context, the phrase Paul quotes here is connected to God’s name. This event from the Jewish Bible’s book of Exodus is the closest we come in the Jewish Bible to the innermost nature of God (Dunn 2:562).
Notice what this text doesn’t say. God doesn’t say, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will show cruelty on whom I will show cruelty." He doesn’t say, "I’m fair with some people, and unfair with others." The emphasis here is on God’s mercy and compassion, that these character qualities lie at the very heart of God’s nature.
The emphasis seems to be that no one can establish a claim to God’s mercy (Cranfield 2:483). God’s mercy is something God freely gives according to his nature, not according to our worthiness or unworthiness.
This means that the working out of God’s strategy in human history doesn’t depend on human effort. The phrase "desire or effort" in v. 16 describes the totality of our human capacity (Dunn 2:552). God’s strategy in human history isn’t dependant on human effort. Lying behind this statement is the assumption that the success of God’s strategy to offer a reconciled relationship to the human race through His Son Jesus Christ is not dependant on whether Israel believes in Jesus as Messiah or rejects Jesus as Messiah. Israel’s lack of desire and lack of effort doesn’t stop the purpose of God.
Then Paul gives us an example from Exodus to illustrate his point. The example is the Egyptian Pharaoh who refused to release the people of Israel until God had done several miracles. The point here is that even though the Egyptian Pharaoh defied God and hated the people of Israel, God had actually raised Pharaoh up for to fulfill God’s purpose. Even in his hatred and rebellion, Pharaoh serves as a witness to God’s greatness and glory. When human beings react against God, they think they’re acting on their own, and they think they can short circuit his plans, but actually God is using their very resistance to accomplish his purposes. God used Pharaoh’s resistance to display his power and make his character known.
Now v. 18 alludes to the fact that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened toward God and the Israelites. Who hardened Pharaoh’s heart? Well some verses in Exodus claim Pharaoh hardened his own heart against God, and because of his own stubbornness the Egyptian king himself was morally accountable for his own rebellion (Exodus 7:14; 8:11, 15, 28). But several other verses in Exodus claim that God was the one who made Pharaoh’s heart hard (Exodus 4:21; 7:3; 9:12; 10:20, 27; 14:8). The Bible never tries to reconcile how both of these claims can be true, but it does affirm that both are indeed true. The two statements are like to sides of a roof that’s obscured by a cloud; we can see that both are true, but we can’t see how they come together and can be reconciled. If we emphasize one side of the roof over the other, the roof collapses. Both are simultaneously true.
Just as the Egyptian Pharaoh hardened his heart against God within God’s plan, the nation of Israel has currently hardened its heart to Jesus Christ within God’s plan. In fact chapter 11 will use this same term to describe Israel’s current unbelief (11:25). So the hardening isn’t permanent or beyond redemption. Paul’s point here seems to be that even God’s enemies serve God’s purposes in the world.
Here we find the first reason why we can trust in God’s fairness. We can trust in God’s fairness because GOD IS MOTIVATED BY MERCY.
Often even when we can’t understand someone’s action, we can accept the action if we trust the person’s motive. When my third son was two years old he had to be admitted to San Antonio Hospital because he had severe croup. I’ll never forget when they put an IV line into my two year old son’s arm. He screamed so loud and fought so hard that he had to be physically restrained. He didn’t understand why I would allow people to do such a painful, horrible thing to him. He looked into my eyes like I was betraying him, yet he also cried out for me to comfort him because he still believed that I loved him. He didn’t understand the action, but he trusted my motive.
I think we’re a lot like that in our relationship with God. When God allows things to happen that seem painful and don’t make sense, we cry out because we don’t understand. But we can trust that he’s motivated by mercy and compassion, not cruelty and vindictiveness. As we struggle with God’s fairness in how he works out his plan, it helps us trust God when we remind ourselves that he’s motivated by mercy.
2. God’s Role (Romans 9:19-21).
Paul gives us another reason to trust God’s fairness in vv. 19-21. Here Paul anticipates another false conclusion. Some people might read about God using people like Pharaoh and unbelieving Israel to further God’s purposes and wonder why God holds Pharaoh and Israel accountable for their disobedience. If Pharaoh and Israel are just playing the role God has for them in the outworking of God’s strategy in human history, why should God judge them for resisting his will? If God has ordained people to specific roles in his plan, doesn’t this imply that they fulfill that role unwillingly, that God is a puppet master pulling the strings? Isn’t God’s will irresistible if this is true?
But again Paul rejects this conclusion. Paul claims that we are indeed responsible for our response to God, even though God is able to use both our obedience and our disobedience to fulfill his purposes.
When Paul’s asks the rhetorical question, "Who are you O man to talk back to God," he’s not discouraging us from wrestling with this issue, but he’s reminding us of the difference between being a creature and being God. Reading this reminds me of my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, where a crotchety old-timer told me, "The first think you need to learn about this program is that there is a God and you’re not him." That’s essentially what Paul is reminding us here.
He quotes a verse from the Old Testament book of Isaiah about what is formed by a craftsman questioning its maker. The imagery here is of God as a master potter who’s shaping and molding a piece of pottery on a wheel, using his skill to smooth edges and form the pot into exactly what the potter wants it to be. This is the exact same imagery that’s used in Genesis 2 when it speaks of God as shaping the first man out of the dust of the ground and then breathing into him the breath of life (Fitzmyer 565). Just as the potter has the freedom to shape and mold his artistic craftsmanship into various kinds of pots, God has the same rights over the human race. The human race is like the one lump of clay, and God as the potter has the right to craft people and nations out of that one lump of clay and appoint these people and nations to various roles in the outworking of his strategy for the world.
Pottery for noble purposes is a pot that’s highly decorated and placed in a king’s palace. Examples of pottery for noble purposes from earlier in Romans 9 would be God’s choice of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God’s election of Israel as his special people in the Old Testament is an example of making a pot for noble purposes. And today God has crafted the Church to fulfill his noble purposes in the world today. It’s not because Christians are better, but because that’s what the potter wanted to make out of the lump of clay.
Pottery for common use is pottery used for common, menial tasks. The pot used for paint thinner to clean a paintbrush, the pot used as a chamber pot, the pot used wash the dinner dishes in. Notice Paul is not talking about a potter making pots for the purpose of then destroying them (Cranfield 2:492). Some people think this is talking about God creating individual people for the express purpose of condemning these people into hell for eternity. But the emphasis here is on God selecting people and nations for the outworking of his plan in history, not of God selecting some individual people for heaven and some individual people for hell. Examples from earlier in the chapter of pots for common use would be Isaac’s brother Ishmael, Jacob’s brother Esau, and now unbelieving Israel (Dunn 2:558). For now, the Christian Church is a vessel of honor in the outworking of God’s strategy and the nation of Israel is hardened toward the good news and is thus a vessel for common use.
So here in this metaphor of God being the potter and us being the clay we find a second reason we can trust God. We can trust God to be fair because HE IS OUR MAKER.
God is our creator, the one who has shaped and molded every human being into his image. In two weeks we’re going to have a special ministry visit our church called The Potter’s Field. This ministry will show us how God as the master potter shapes and molds us on his wheel, smoothing out our imperfections and transforming us into a vessel for honor.
We can trust God because he’s our maker.
3. God’s Power (Romans 9:22-23)
Let’s look now at how Paul draws some conclusions from this ceramic imagery in vv. 22-23. These two verses ask two "what if" questions that Paul leaves unanswered. The implied answer seems to be that if God wants to do things this way, then he has the right to do so.
The first question has to do with God making his wrath and power known using objects of wrath. Now in order to understand this we need to remember some things from earlier chapters in Romans. Back in chapter 1 of Romans we learned that God is revealing two realities to the human race at the same time. From heaven, God is revealing his wrath against sin (1:18). But from the good news of Jesus Christ, God is revealing his saving power, because as Paul said in 1:17, the good news of Jesus Christ is the power of God for the salvation of every person who trusts in Jesus Christ. God is revealing his wrath against sin and his power to save people from sin, and we find the same thing echoed here in v. 22.
The objects of wrath here are simply all people who haven’t yet experienced God’s saving power through Jesus Christ. According to the first three chapters of Romans, every single human being is an object of God’s wrath until that person trusts in Christ. In other words, the phrase "objects of wrath" doesn’t mean this person must remain an object of wrath (Cranfield 2:495; Dunn 2:559).
The phrase "prepared for destruction" doesn’t mean that God created some people for the predetermined purpose of sending them to hell. As we saw from the pottery word picture, the potter doesn’t make a clay pot for the purpose of destroying it. The word Paul uses here for "prepared" means "to make something completely adequate or sufficient for something" (Louw and Nida 75.5), and the voice of the verb here is the middle voice, which has the idea of "preparing itself" for destruction. So an object of God’s wrath is an object of God’s patience, and during that time of patience the person in question can either repent and experience God’s saving power, or that person will continue making him or herself more and more ready for judgment. So even though people who rebel against their creator are resisting God’s love and storing up wrath for themselves, God patiently bears with them, leading them toward repentance. Not all repent, but thank God we can go from being objects of wrath to objects of mercy.
The second question in v. 23 deals with the people who through faith in Jesus Christ have become objects of God’s mercy. God has prepared these people in advance for glory, that is to be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. By doing things this way, God is displaying his awesome splendor as the creator to the entire universe.
The main point of these two questions seems to be this. We can trust God’s fairness because GOD CAN USE ANY AND EVERY CIRCUMSTANCE TO FURTHER HIS PLAN.
God can even use Israel’s unbelief to further his purpose. We find woven throughout this chapter the tension between God’s control over his creation and our freedom as creatures made by God to respond in responsible ways. This is why Christians who like to emphasize God’s absolute power and control over people and events love this passage of scripture, and Christians who like to emphasize human responsibility and freedom struggle with this chapter. But the reality is that as complex as Paul’s thought is here, Paul affirms both God’s control and human responsiveness. Paul doesn’t try to reconcile these two realities for us--we wish he would’ve--but instead he simply accepts them both as true.
The key issue in this chapter is how the nation of Israel has rejected Jesus Christ, so God has called the Christian Church for the next stage of the outworking of God’s plan. God’s plan isn’t frustrated by Israel’s unbelief, because he’s able to use Jewish rejection of Jesus to further his plan. Yet at the same time, the people of Israel were responsible and were held accountable by God for their rejection of Jesus. If God can use people who set themselves up in opposition to God to accomplish God’s purposes, certainly we can trust him to work in our lives and in our church to accomplish his purposes.
Conclusion
That AA old-timer was a pretty good theologian when you think about it: "There is a God, and we’re not him." We can trust God to be fair in the way he works out his plan because God is motivated by mercy, God is our maker, and God can use any and every circumstance to accomplish his plan. That doesn’t mean we can understand how God’s doing this, or we can always see how God’s plan makes sense.
I think the issue of Israel’s unbelief is a case study in Romans 8:28. Romans 8:28 claims that God is able to work all things together for the good of those who love God and who are called according to God’s plan. Even something as big as God’s chosen people’s rejecting God’s own Son. God is even able to use that for the good of those who love God and who are called according to his purpose. And God’s not finished with the nation of Israel, as we’ll learn in chapter 11 of Romans. But if God can use something as huge as his own chosen people’s rejection of his son for the good, can we trust him to use our circumstances for our good? Can we trust him to use our pain and heartache? Can we trust him to use our ongoing failures and struggles, the very things we beg God to take away? Can we trust the potter who fashioned us to finish what he has begun I our lives?
Sources
Cranfield, C. E. B. 1979. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (T. & T. Clark).
Louw, J. P. and E. Nida. 1989. Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains. New York: United Bible Societies.
Schreiner, Thomas. 1998. Romans. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Baker Books).
Dunn, James D. G. 1988. Romans 9-16 (Word Biblical Commentary Vol. 38 B; Word Books).
Fitzmyer, Joseph. 1993. Romans (Anchor Bible Commentary Vol. 33; Doubleday Books)
