Romans 9:18

‘So then he has mercy on whom he will, and whom he will be hardens.'

Paul assumes that his readers will connect Pharaoh's being raised up to glorify God with his hardening of heart, a condition expressed a number of times in Exodus (e.g. Exodus 7:3; Exodus 9:12; Exodus 14:4; Exodus 14:17). He thus concludes by saying ‘He (God) has mercy on whom He will and whom He will He hardens', particularly having Pharaoh's behaviour in mind, although later applying the term ‘harden' to Israel in Romans 11:7; Romans 11:25 demonstrating that God treats them like He treated Pharaoh. God is thus depicted as sovereign in all His dealings with men, and as One Who cannot be called to account for how He behaves towards men, although one reason why this is so is that none of them are deserving. Thus all men are seen as undeserving, and as therefore having no rights apart from that of judgment.

Here we cannot avoid the fact that Paul unquestionably puts the onus on God both for showing mercy and for hardening men's hearts, and that eternal salvation and eternal destruction are in mind is made evident by his later illustration in Romans 9:22. He thus does not shy away from indicating God's responsibility for the fate of all men both positively and negatively. And as his aim in the passage is to demonstrate that God acts unilaterally we cannot avoid recognising that God is primarily sovereign over all, even over men's decisions. Indeed this is confirmed in the following verses where Paul clearly acknowledges that he cannot explain it, and then asserts the facts even more emphatically. On the other hand we must certainly recognise that God's actions do work in parallel with man's behaviour. God's mercy works in parallel with the exercising of faith by the objects of His mercy, and His mercy withheld works in parallel with the objects of His wrath sinning and refusing to believe (Romans 9:30 to Romans 10:17). But the hardening of men by God necessarily follows the fact that they themselves are sinful, and is not the cause of it, for they are sinful from the womb (Psalms 58:3).