CHAPTER EIGHT

ROMANS 9

I always marvel that men can read the book of Romans and still be Arminian in their theology. To me Calvinist soteriology just springs out at me from every page. It seems to me that Calvinism is simply the soteriology taught by Paul. And nowhere does Paul teach it so clearly and emphatically as in the book of Romans. And nowhere in the book of Romans does Paul deal with it so directly as in the ninth chapter. Let us examine this chapter carefully.  The pertinent section we will concentrate on reads as follows…

¹⁰And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; ¹¹(For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) ¹²It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. ¹³As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

¹⁴What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. ¹⁵For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. ¹⁶So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. ¹⁷For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. ¹⁸Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. ¹⁹Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? ²⁰Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? ²¹Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?  .  Romans 8:10-21   

Paul is in this chapter defending God from the charge that his purposes have failed, that his word has been of no effect. This charge is prompted by the fact that Israel, the covenant people of God, the elect nation, has rejected the Messiah and has fallen away in spiritual blindness and apostasy. How can this be in light of all the promises and covenants? Paul goes on to explain this in Romans 10 and 11. There he sums his arguments up, stating that not all Israel is lost, but “Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.” (Romans 11:5) and that “…Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded.” (Romans 11:7). For Paul, the issue is not that much of Israel is lost, but that God’s purposes still stand. This he argues from the fact that the elect portion of the nation is still being saved. God’s purposes are still being fulfilled. God’s decrees of election are still being brought to pass.

In Romans 9 Paul argues that this is nothing new. He demonstrates that this has been the pattern all through the history of the covenant people. God has always saved an elect remnant and the rest were lost. He starts off with the case of Isaac and Ishmael. He states, “Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called.” (Romans 9:6-7). Isaac was chosen, he was the seed of promise, the elect, and Ishmael was rejected.

Then Paul goes on to give an even more dramatic case. Paul is going to defend the sovereignty of God’s grace and mercy. His readers might think that Isaac was chosen because he was better. He was the son of the legitimate wife, Sarah. Ishmael was the son of an Egyptian slave woman. He therefore now gives another example of twins, of two brothers, Jacob and Esau, who as far as descent from Abraham could not possibly be more alike. And again he sets forth that they are not all Israel who are of Israel. Again the descendants of Abraham are separated by the electing decrees of God. God sovereignly declares that the elder shall serve the younger, that the younger will inherit the covenant promises of the Abrahamic Covenant. God makes his choice emphatic saying, “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” God’s electing decrees continue to separate the true Israel of God out from among physical Israel. And it is according to God’s sovereign choice that this is worked out.

To ensure that his readers understand this Paul interjects the parenthetical thought, “For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth.” Paul makes it explicitly clear that it is nothing in either Jacob or Esau that prompted this choice. No act of theirs, or God’s foresight of any act of theirs, had anything to do with God’s choice. God’s choice of Jacob in time was to fulfill his eternal purposes as set forth in his decree of election. Language could not make this plainer. Then Paul, to re-emphasize that it is God’s will, independent of man’s will and man’s actions, states that this choice was not dependent on man’s works, but totally the free choice of God who does the calling.

In this entire passage Paul is arguing against the Arminian view. He denies the Arminian view, that God’s purposes can fail, being stymied by man’s free will, as Israel rejects the Messiah and the bulk of the nation apostatizes. Rather he maintains that God’s purposes, according to his electing decrees, are being fulfilled, and this is how it has always been. A stronger argument for Calvinist soteriology would be hard to imagine.

However, Paul is not done. He anticipates some objections to his teachings. And the objections that he anticipates are exactly the ones that Arminians raise when they are confronted by Calvinist soteriology. As R. C. Sproul states it, he is comforted that whenever he teaches the Biblical gospel and he is confronted with objections, they are the same objections that the Apostle Paul had to face.

And what are these objections? Paul states the first one as “Is there unrighteousness with God?” As Arminians would phrase it, “Isn’t God being unfair?” or “Isn’t God being unjust?” And what is it in God’s way of redeeming his people that seems unfair to men? It is that it is all up to God. It is that man has no say in the matter. It is that salvation is based on the sovereign choice of God. It seems so arbitrary and unfair to men. God has just declared through Paul that any good or evil that Jacob and Esau might later do had nothing to do with God’s choice. God has just declared that it was all according to his eternal purposes and his electing decrees. God has just said it was because he chose to love Jacob and to hate Esau. And this man, attempting to judge God by his own perceptions of fairness, will not accept. But what is Paul’s response to this objection of men. He exclaims, “God forbid” that we should have such thoughts of God’s rectitude, and accuse God of such things.

It is interesting to note how Paul defends God from this charge. If Paul really believed and taught the Arminian scheme of salvation, here would be the perfect point in time, the appropriate place, to explicitly say so. All he would have to do is state that this choice was based on God foreseeing the later faith and repentance of Jacob, and the lack of these in Esau. This would answer the entire objection to men’s satisfaction and defuse the entire issue. Instead Paul stands by his previous language and rebukes man for having such thoughts about God. He then goes on to defend God and his way of salvation in even stronger terms.

Men object that God’s choice of who is saved is sovereign and to them arbitrary. They object that man has no say in it, and that man can do nothing to contribute to his own salvation. They think this is unfair. However, Paul does not shrink from the challenge of these objections, the same ones that Calvinists are met with today. Rather he defends God’s right to, in his sovereignty, arbitrarily choose those to whom he will grant salvation. In verse 15 he quotes God’s statement to Moses, where God claims the right to choose whom he will grant mercy to, and whom he will show compassion to. Paul opposes human notions of fairness with God’s claim of his rights. Who should we believe? For Christians who understand this issue there should be no doubt. We have to submit to God. His ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts than our thoughts. God is the standard of what is right and wrong, not sinful man. Whatever God does is by definition right. We cannot hold God to some human standard of right and wrong. Rather he holds us to a divine standard of right and wrong. It is presumptuous to challenge God and seek to call him to account to conform to our notions of what is fair and right. That is why the Apostle exclaims, “God forbid,” and defends God’s right to do as he pleases with his sinful creatures, to show mercy or to withhold mercy. He is the Lord.

It is important to note here, to put things in perspective, that almost all Calvinists believe that God does all this choosing out of a mass of fallen men. That is they believe in an infralapsarian election and not in a supralapsarian election.[1] God is doing no injustice to those whom he passes over and chooses to leave in their sins. It is as if a rich man goes into a cancer ward and sees ten terminal patients. They all need an extremely expensive treatment to be delivered from the cancer, a treatment they have no possibility of providing for themselves. And the rich man chooses to pay for the treatment of five of the patients. He has enough money to easily pay for all ten, but he chooses to show his generosity to these five, and to these five only. Has he done anything wrong? Has he wronged those for whom he chose not to pay? Did they have some claim on him that made it obligatory that he pay for their treatment? No, of course not. Such thinking is only in the imaginations of sinful men, who seek to hold God to some human standard of what they think is fair.

[1] It is important though, to note that the Scriptures are indeterminate on this issue, and that the election of the elect angels was a supralapsarian election. 

Christ deals with this very issue in the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. These laborers were dealt with by various degrees of generosity. Some received no generosity, laboring for all of their pay. Some received a little generosity, laboring for most of their pay. Some received great generosity, laboring for very little of their pay. And those who received no generosity complained. They complained that it was unfair and unequal. And what is Christ’s response, “Friend, I do thee no wrong…Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with my own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?” (Matthew 20:13,15) Christ’s position is that those who object to the sovereignty of God’s mercy and question his right to have mercy on whom he will, that their eye is evil. And he states that God, who chooses to show mercy on some and save them, is good. We need to choose between human notions of what is fair and equal, and between Christ’s teachings and God’s claim that he has a right to extend mercy to whom he will according to his sovereign good pleasure.

Now let us return to Paul’s argument. He has taught that God, solely according to the good pleasure of his will, chose Isaac and rejected Ishmael, that he chose Jacob and rejected Esau. Paul now goes on to give a third example, another contrast, Moses and Pharaoh. Although Moses is not mentioned the contrast is striking. Moses was raised in Pharaoh’s household as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter and could have succeeded to the throne of Egypt. But God called him to be his prophet and to lead his people out of captivity and to the land of promise. Moses was definitely chosen by God. Pharaoh, just as certainly, was not.

And Paul’s argument now centers of Pharaoh. Paul states that not only was Pharaoh rejected of God, denied God’s mercy, and passed over and left in his sins. Paul states that God had a definite purpose in that. And that purpose was that God might have an opportunity to display his great power, so that God’s name might be declared throughout all the earth. This is certainly not the God of the Arminians who is striving to save all men and being resisted by their free wills. This is the God of the Calvinists who is doing all things according to counsel of his will and according to his good pleasure. The Psalmist says, “Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee,” (Psalm 76:10) and this is a perfect example of that. As God leaves Pharaoh in his impenitent and unregenerate state, and commands him to submit to his will and let his people go the results are predictable. Pharaoh, in his pride and arrogance, raised to think himself as a god, as being divine, scorns to obey God, mockingly stating, “Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the LORD, neither will I let Israel go.” (Exodus 5:2) And God in response rains down one plague after another on Egypt, culminating in the destruction of Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea and the deliverance of the children of Israel from Egyptian slavery. And why was all this accomplished? In God’s own words, “that I might show my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.”  God’s sovereignty over his creatures, and his right to use even a sinful and impenitent Pharaoh to fulfill his own purposes, is clearly established by the Apostle Paul. 

As Paul continues his argument in defense of God’s prerogatives to do as he pleases with his creatures, his statements become stronger and stronger. He certainly doesn’t flinch in the debate as he answers his critics, including modern Arminians. He goes on to state that God can choose to show mercy to some and he can choose to harden the hearts of others, according to his sovereign good will and pleasure, to fulfill his own purposes. Now it is important to understand the nature of this hardening. God is not the author of sin and he certainly does not compel any man to sin. When men sin they sin of their own free will, according to their choices in pursuit of their sinful desires. Then how does God harden sinner’s hearts? The Scriptural account of all this in the Book of Exodus alternatively states that Pharaoh hardened his own heart and that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. How does this happen?

First of all we have to understand the power of God’s word. God states of his word, “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11) God’s word never goes forth in vain. Whether it is accepted or rejected it accomplishes the purposes for which God sent it forth. As Paul states it of the gospel, “For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish: To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life.” (2 Corinthians 2:15-16) When one hears the gospel, when one is confronted by the testimony of God’s word there is always an effect. On the one hand, as one is positively influenced by it, accepts it, and grows in grace and in the knowledge of the truth, one is drawn closer to God. On the other hand, as one rejects it, one is hardening his heart against God’s truth, is growing in his condemnation under God’s wrath, and is becoming riper for judgment. The hearing of God’s word never leaves anybody the same. And, whether it contributes to one’s salvation or to one’s condemnation,  it always accomplishes God’s purposes in sending it.

So God’s sends his word repeatedly to Pharaoh, commanding him to submit to him, to obey his will, and to let his people go. And Pharaoh repeatedly scorns to obey and hardens his heart against God’s decrees, against the Lord’s commands to let his people go. But God doesn’t leave Pharaoh alone. He continues to send Moses to confront him. And by continuing the confrontation, that is how the Lord hardens Pharaoh’s heart. And as his word goes forth from Moses it accomplishes his will, hardening Pharaoh’s heart, and setting the stage for that great display of God’s might, in the ten plagues and in the destruction of Egypt, the superpower of the age, that would enhance God’s glory and make his name great among the nations. That is what Paul is teaching. These are hard truths for sinful, fallen man to absorb. These are humbling truths that reveal to him the helplessness and hopelessness of his condition, without divine grace and mercy.

And Paul, as he continues his argument, anticipates more objections. These are probably objections he has encountered while preaching the gospel at other times and places. And the objection now is, if all this is so, if God is sovereign, if he has mercy on he wills, and whom he wills he hardens, how can he still find fault? How can God hold man accountable if God is sovereign, even sovereign over his spiritual state? Again Paul does not flinch in the face of the same objections that modern Arminians confront Calvinists with. Paul does not give in an inch in the face of these objections. He doesn’t infer that Arminians are correct and that God’s sovereignty absolves man of his responsibility. Pharaoh hardened his own heart. He persistently maintained his rebellion against the true God. God merely set the stage for the hardening to place, and for the hardening to continue. Everything that sinful man does, he does because he chooses to do it. He does it without external coercion, according to the free choices of his sinful will, choosing to fulfill the sinful desires of his sinful heart. God does not make anyone sin.

And Paul again scorns the objection, and questions man’s right to make it and to sit in judgment on his Maker. Who are we to question God? Who is mere sinful man that he should put God in the dock and cross-examine him? And Paul goes on, without apology, to even more emphatically to state the case for God’s total sovereignty over his creatures. He declares that God is the potter and we are the clay. In this he echoes Isaiah who warns, “Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands?” (Isaiah 45:9) and “But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.” (Isaiah 64:8) and Jeremiah who prophesies saying, “Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the LORD. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.” (Jeremiah 18:5-6) Paul declares that even as the potter has power over the clay to make some of it into a beautiful vessel, an ornamental vase for flowers, and of another lump of clay to make a bedpan, so God has power over his sinful and fallen creatures to redeem some of them and make them perfect, and allow others to corrupt themselves into a state of progressive rebellion and degeneracy. Paul’s message, his answer is, that God is the potter, that he is sovereign, and that man has no right to question him, and to challenge the righteousness and justice of his ways.

This chapter is an extremely powerful argument for Calvinist soteriology, for the gospel of God’s sovereignty in the salvation of his creatures. Arminian objections to this gospel of sovereign grace and sovereign mercy are clearly anticipated, stated, and rejected. I have always wondered how fellow Christians could read the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament or the Book of Romans in the New testament and not see God’s sovereignty in salvation. I especially wondered how they could read the ninth chapter of Romans and not become Calvinists. I know many fellow believers who are persuaded of the truth of Arminianism. Many of them have never heard or been taught anything else. I know they really love the Lord, and read his word faithfully and prayerfully. Yet I am amazed that their eyes are not opened to see these things. I believe that this chapter by itself is a conclusive argument in favor of the Calvinist position. Paul’s gospel, his expounding of God’s way of salvation, is emphatically the Calvinist one in this passage. If Paul, writing under inspiration, and defending God’s prerogatives, is a Calvinist so to speak, can we be otherwise?