Romans 9:17-24

CRITICAL NOTES

Romans 9:17.—According to Sir G. Wilkinson, the Pharaoh here meant was Thothmes III., not drowned, but overthrown in the Red Sea. Reigned twenty-five years after that event. So Jewish tradition carried on afterwards a vigorous war with the northern nations. Sculptured records of his successes still preserved in the monuments he erected. Gave encouragement to the arts of peace. Founded numerous buildings in Upper and Lower Egypt and in Ethiopia. Made extensive additions to the temples at Thebes. Improved Coptos, Memphis, and Heliopolis by his taste for architecture. From caprice and love of change made columns with reversed capitals at Karnak. The last king of the nineteenth dynasty, Si Pta Menephtha, ‘the light of the sun,” was not buried in his own tomb, and may have been this Pharaoh. Others say Thothmes II. Two astronomical notes of time on contemporary monuments of his successor, Thothmes III., or Rameses the Great, show the accession of the latter and consequent death of the former to have taken place on the Egyptian day answering to May 4–5, 1515 B.C., or, astronomically verified, the twelfth of the second spring moon, the Hebrew second month (Stones Crying Out).

Romans 9:18.—σκληρύνει, hardens (indurat). Pharaoh’s heart hardened by God in fact by His longsuffering and delay of punishment.

Romans 9:23.—ἐνδείκ. applied to wrath as known before, γνωρ. to grace as yet comparatively unknown.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Romans 9:17

Divine liberty.—There must be in all discussions about the divine nature and the divine proceedings questions which can never be satisfactorily settled, in this world at least. This is not to be considered astonishing, if God be infinitely great and men be infinitely little. We can only fringe the boundless realm of the infinite greatness. All we appear to do in the settlement of our difficulties is to push the difficulty a little further back. We explain but never answer fairly the questions: Whence sin? Why moral evil? How is it that a Pharaoh hardens himself against light and reason, and to his own undoing? Why not have humility enough to confess our ignorance, to acknowledge that there must necessarily be much in the infinitely great, in the eternally vast and complex, which must be beyond our comprehension? We at least do not presume to settle points above reason, though, when all is seen, not contrary to reason. We simply pray that some heavenly light may be shed upon our pathway.

I. Let us then observe that divine liberty is not arbitrary.—Not arbitrary in the sense of being despotic or capricious. The God of love is no reasonless despot; the All-wise cannot be capricious. We talk of our fellows as having their little caprices. But if we think of the unchangeable God as being capable of change in any direction, we can never rightly suppose that He changes without sufficient reason. We are not to speak of God as having mercy on whom He will have mercy, as if the divine will were the mere faculty of moving from one being to another in the way of favour without any wise reason. If God is self-determined solely by His own judgment, it is because that judgment is regulated by infinite wisdom and goodness.

II. Divine liberty then is ruled by the great law of right.—What is right? Is it dependent upon the will of Deity? Is it antecedent to that will? We should say, concomitant. The will of God is coeternal with moral right and fitness. However the law of right arises, one thing is certain, that divine liberty is not opposed to the morally right. God is eternally free, but He is not free to do wrong,—free, because God never wishes to do wrong. Divine freedom is never human licentiousness. God does not will “to show His wrath,” either to display His divine liberty or to give vent to revenge. “What if God, willing to show His wrath,” etc. St. Paul does not affirm that God does show His wrath. God makes His power known in the marvellous way in which He endures so much longsuffering. Let us believe in the eternally right, the morally fit. Let us rise above all difficulties by grasping to our hearts the truth that God can do no wrong.

III. Divine liberty is guided by all-wise though inscrutable purposes.—“Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up.” Even with the help of a St. Paul we cannot read the strange language of the divine purposes. The very alphabet we cannot master; the verbs have intricate moods and tenses which we cannot follow. The Pharaohs of time are dark mysteries. The sound of the rolling waters deadens our ears, so that we cannot catch the lessons of divine movements. God’s purposes are inscrutable because of their far-reaching sweep, because of the infinite wisdom according to which they are planned. Let folly bow with reverent head in the presence of all-wise purposes. One purpose is revealed that God’s name may be declared throughout all the earth. God’s name is written in nature. God’s new name of love is written in revelation. God’s name of power and of wisdom is declared in the rise and fall of nations, in the downfall of tyrannies, in the overthrow of unrighteous thrones, in the destruction of foolish and tyrannical Pharaohs. Let us move, regulate our lives, in harmony with the revealed purpose of infinite wisdom.

IV. Divine liberty is directed to gracious ends.—The divine Potter has made known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy which He had afore prepared unto glory. The riches of God’s glory are seen in the vessels of mercy. As the human potter takes pride in the vessels that show his skill and that are raised to positions of honour in the earthly palace, so we venture to assert that the divine Potter glories in the vessels of mercy that are raised to positions of honour in the heavenly mansions. The heart of infinite love must be touched with compassion whenever a poor, blind, misguided Pharaoh is engulfed with his hosts by the resilient waters. Whatever may be our perplexities, whatever may be our creeds, let us hear this song rising clearly above every other sound, and sweetly charming away all our doubts and fears—“There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” This truth we may further learn, that God’s power and glory cannot be declared by numerous vessels showing incompleteness, inadequacy, incompetence, on the part of the divine Potter. Imagine a human potter having his workshop well-nigh full of vessels that none would wish to purchase. Such a potter would soon be bankrupt. Are we to imagine the divine Potter, the infinite Architect of the universe, the essential Goodness, the unerring Wisdom, forming vessels that will for ever redound to His discredit? Vessels of mercy in large numbers will brilliantly reflect infinite goodness and wisdom as they adorn, as so many monumental pillars, the boundless temple of God’s gathered worshippers. Let us learn, not to find fault with divine proceedings, not to suppose that we can understand everything, not even in thought to resist the divine will, for that will is on the side of goodness and moves in mercy to man. Above all things let us heartily obey the divine call. He calls from sin to holiness, from ruin to salvation in Christ Jesus, from the spoiling agency of the satanic potter to the repairing and glorifying agency of the divine-human Potter. Oh to be monumental vessels of divine grace and mercy in the vast storehouse of divine curiosities! Vessels of mércy! What exquisite skill they display! What richness of spiritual texture! What beauty of moral tints! How they shine in the unclouded light that radiates about the eternal throne!

Romans 9:21. The sovereign right of God.—Some aspects of the Deity may be less pleasing to contemplate than others. The pride of man rejoices not at first in the thought of the Majesty which overawes his littleness and compels him to submission. Yet as a hard flint forcibly struck emits a bright spark, and as a rough husk often covers a sweet kernel, so these stern views of the Almighty may, if reverently faced and meditated upon, yield salutary, ennobling, and even comforting reflections.

I. The Potter claims absolute right to deal with the clay as He thinks fit.—His arbitrary power does not signify the absence of proper reasons for His selection. As in the calling of Israel to peculiar service and responsibility and honour, so everywhere can an election be discerned. We do not start in the race of life with exactly similar equipment, though we live in tabernacles of clay. If the physical and spiritual powers are the same in essence, like the particles of “the same lump,” yet the faculties of some have been well trained from the beginning, and their natures have developed under favourable conditions. Here is a lesson of resignation. He is happiest who accepts the will of God as revealed in his lot, assured that God’s decision has ample justification. Even the Stoic philosophy could declare that if man knew the plans of the Superintendent of the universe and saw them in their completeness, he would at once acquiesce in the determinations of the Arbiter of his destiny. This is the truth which mingles with the error of Mohammedan fatalism. We have to do all that lies within our power, and leave the result with Him who is wise and merciful. For the potter is our Father in heaven. How much of the vexation and worry of life is due to a conceit of our capacity, and perhaps to a jealousy of the position and attainments of our neighbours! Be content to fill a lowly place; and the time is at hand when “the pots in the Lord’s house shall be like bowls before the altar.”

II. The Potter has no desire for the destruction of His workmanship.—He cares not to waste His clay, nor to employ it in a manner to secure its speedy extinction. It is a pain to God to see His gifts abused, His image degraded, His work marred. He is said in Romans 9:22 to endure “with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath.” A lesson of hopefulness is here. The Most High will not break His vessels in pieces as long as they are fit for any use, for any post, though humble and insignificant. “Potter and clay endure,” however the wheel of life may turn and fashion the material into altered shapes. If the light of God shines in a vacuum, no brightness is observable. An empty heaven were a dreary home for a God of love, a silent temple for Him who glories in the praises of His people and His works.

III. The Potter prefers to construct the choicest vessels.—The noblest ware pays Him best, and He lovingly exerts His skill on specimens of highest art. Deny not to God the delight which every artist feels in the finest productions of his genius. The most polished mirrors best reflect His glory. A lesson of aspiration therefore. “Covet earnestly the best gifts.” God has made His clay instinct with will and energy; He takes pleasure in the improvement of the vessels, that they may be brought into His sanctuary. It will mightily assist our struggles to be sure that the Captain longs “to bring many sons unto glory.”—S. R. Aldridge.

The parable of the potter and the clay.—Let us notice:—

I. What it does not teach.—Starting from a perfectly sound and correct view as to God’s absolute sovereignty and His right to dispose of men as He pleases, some have thought that St. Paul brings in his reference to the potter and his clay in order to show that in the exercise of that sovereignty God makes some souls to destruction, and that those so made have no ground of complaint. Now whatever truth there may be in such a notion as this, a close examination will show that it is not “the whole truth”—still less is it “nothing but the truth.” God is sovereign Lord, and He has a right to dispose of us all as He will. But that He exercises these rights in any arbitrary or cruel way, reason and Holy Scripture alike lead us to deny. “God is love.” The foreordaining of any creature to everlasting misery is utterly inconsistent with love.

II. Its origin in the sphere of manual industry.—[For description of the potter’s work, see quotation from Thomson’s The Land and the Book on p. 323.] Sometimes it would happen that on account of defect in clay or other cause vessel would be spoiled in process of formation. Potter would crush it up and reduce it once again to shapeless mass, which he would afterwards fashion into perhaps a quite different form. The clay which appeared unfit to make one kind of vessel he would make into another.

III. Its place in Old Testament prophetic teaching.—St. Paul has in his mind the opening verses of Jeremiah 18 (vide Romans 9:1). Jeremiah’s parable was spoken of the Jewish nation: “O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay in the potter’s hand, so are ye in Mine hand, house of Israel.” God had a right to mould them as He chose. They rebelled. The vessel was marred in His hand. Yet He strove with them again and again. At length, notwithstanding God’s purposes towards them for good, they so rebelled that they were cut off. In following chap. 19 this terrible fact also foreshadowed in figure. Prophet again receives command from God—this time to take an earthen bottle which has been baked and hardened in the fire. He is to go forth into the valley of Hinnom, and there break the bottle in the sight of the ancients and priests, and in doing so to say, “Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter’s vessel, that cannot be made whole again.” God will strive with sinners again and again, but the hardened and impenitent cannot be allowed to resist His will.

IV. Its bearing upon St. Paul’s argument.—In the opening verses of this chapter the apostle gives expression to his grief that Israel should be hardening their hearts against the gospel. God’s word and promise regarding them have not failed, for all who are Jews naturally are not Jews spiritually, and are therefore not heirs of the promise. Of the seed of Abraham only one son, Isaac, was chosen; of Isaac’s two sons one was utterly rejected. Is God unjust, then? asks the apostle. Impossible! he would reply; God has an absolute right to love and to hate whom He will. And he gives instances illustrating the fact that God has proclaimed pity towards some and meted out retribution to others (Romans 9:17). The question next arises, Why doth He yet find fault? If, i.e., wickedness be the result of God’s will, what becomes of man’s responsibility? If a man be bad, can he help it? Who can resist the will of God? This question is stated by the apostle as one which a Jewish objector might and probably would urge. And he treats it as absurd. “Nay 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? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?” Quite true. But St. Paul shrinks back aghast from the horrible supposition that God would predestine any creature to eternal woe. And thus he will not say that God “created vessels of wrath” or “prepared them for destruction”; but he asks: “What if God, willing to show His wrath, and make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had afore prepared unto glory, even us, whom He hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?” The vessels of wrath were fitted, not by God, but by themselves, for destruction. Like Pharaoh, they hardened themselves in sin. Their evil character, like Jeremiah’s earthen bottle, had assumed so permanent a shape that no reforming process was possible. The vessels of mercy, on the other hand, were made such by God’s grace moulding and fashioning them into the form that He willed.

V. Its meaning to ourselves.—Clearly this:

1. That God’s purpose is to prepare unto glory all those whom He has called into His Church (Romans 9:21). The potter has a design in view in connection with every lump of clay which he takes into his hand. And God too has a design, a purpose, in every life. He is shaping us into that form which He deems most fitting. Every life has not the same purpose. One is fitted for one sphere of duty, another for another, just as the potter makes vessels of innumerable shapes. And yet each life is successful if only its own particular purpose be fulfilled. A life is no failure because it is lowly and put only to lowly uses, so long as it attains the end for which God designed it. The potter takes the clay into his hand. We are taken in hand by God when made members of His Church; and His first work in us is the forming of our souls aright. The first question is, not as to what we do, but as to what we are—what shape or form our character has taken. The potter makes vessels of various shapes, sizes, tints. God is making characters of various kinds, dealing with souls, fashioning lives, and thus preparing them “unto glory.” Having taken somewhat of the form which God willed, we may then be put to some further end—used for good—employed in the carrying out of some of God’s purposes of grace, and thus the preparation for glory will be advanced a further stage.

2. That we may so resist the will of God as to alter our own destiny, though we can never alter God’s purpose. The potter, when his work is marred, presses the day back again into a shapeless lump, and makes a vessel perhaps of quite another kind. And so, when a man has failed to profit by one kind of earthly discipline, God may subject him to another. There are afflictions which crush a man for a time, soften his heart and make it liable to receive new impressions, and thus he may be led on to begin a new life and be actuated by new aims and hopes. The character which would not assume one good form may thus be made to assume another. Still, the renewed process may fail, for some vessels are “fitted” (alas! by themselves) “to destruction.”

Practical lessons:

1. Thankfulness to God for the revelation of His will towards us. He has willed that a place of honour and usefulness in His kingdom shall be ours. That will shall be done unless we harden ourselves against it. 2 Warning. Beware of resisting God’s Spirit. Beware of the danger of the hardening process. Even if the vessel be remade, if afflictions soften, and the soul be renewed, the process is a terrible one. The preparation for glory is not the work of an instant.

3. Self-examination, Are we earnestly and prayerfully acting out the terms of our baptismal covenant? By our neglect to do so His work is marred, the preparation unto glory ceases to go forward.

4. Heartfelt prayer. Let our petitions ever be offered that God’s will may be done in us and our will conformed to His, so that, under the shaping and fashioning influence of His hand, each may at length become “a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the Master’s use, and prepared unto every good work” (2 Timothy 2:21).—G. E. P. Reade.

Romans 9:20. The potter and the day.—Two points insisted on:

1. God’s almightiness. He can do whatever He likes. (We do not say He does, but He can do.)

2. Man’s weakness. God allows him to sin.

Two objections made by some men:

1. How can God make on purpose to destroy? Answer: Nowhere stated that He does so.

(1) Similitude looks other way: no potter begins to make anything on purpose to destroy it.
(2) Statement that God is father looks other way.

(3) Statement that all things are made for God’s good pleasure (Revelation 4:11) looks other way.

2. Why should God blame us if we are so powerless? How it has been answered: Man, though weak, not an automaton or machine: has a will; can reasonably be blamed for sin. How it is answered here: How can we find fault with absolute Maker, who forms all for good purpose—with absolute Father, who brings all children into the world for good? If they disobey, who can blame Him for punishing them for their good and good of others?

Power, anger (righteous), longsuffering, must be shown. These considerations must be set over against each other: God’s power, God’s purpose; man’s weakness, man’s responsibility.—Dr. Springett.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 9:17

The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart.—What effect did all these signs and wonders of God’s sending have upon Pharaoh and his servants? Did they make them better men or worse men? We read that they made them worse men—that they helped to harden their hearts. We read that the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, so that he would not let the children of Israel go. Now how did the Lord do that? He did not wish and mean to make Pharaoh more hard-hearted, more wicked—that is impossible. God, who is all goodness and love, never can wish to make any human being one atom worse than he is. He who so loved the world that He came down on earth to die for sinners and take away the sins of the world would never make any human being a greater sinner than he was before—that is impossible and horrible to think of. Therefore, when we read that the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, we must be certain that that was Pharaoh’s own fault; and so we read it was Pharaoh’s own fault. The Lord did not bring all these plagues on Egypt without giving Pharaoh fair warning. Before each plague He sent Moses to tell Pharaoh that the plague was coming. The Lord told Pharaoh that He was his Master, and the Master and Lord of the whole earth; that the children of Israel belonged to Him, and the Egyptians too; that the river, light and darkness, the weather, the crops, the insects, and the locusts belonged to Him; that all diseases which afflict man and beast were in His power. And the Lord proved that His words were true in a way Pharaoh could not mistake, by changing the river into blood, and sending darkness and hailstones, and plagues of lice and flies, and at last by killing the firstborn of all the Egyptians. The Lord gave Pharaoh every chance. He condescended to argue with him as one man would with another, and proved His word to be true, and proved that He had a right to command Pharaoh. And therefore, I say, if Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, it was his own fault, for the Lord was plainly trying to soften it, and to bring him to reason. And the Bible says distinctly that it was Pharaoh’s fault; for it says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, he and his servants, and therefore they would not let the children of Israel go. Now how could Pharaoh harden his own heart, and yet the Lord harden it at the same time? Just in the same way as too many of us are apt to make the Lord harden our hearts by hardening them ourselves, and to make, as Pharaoh did, the very things which the Lord sends to soften us the causes of our becoming more stubborn, the very things which the Lord sends to bring us to reason the means of our becoming more and more foolish. This is no old story with which we have nothing to do. What happened to Pharaoh’s heart may happen to yours, or mine, or any man’s. Alas! it does happen to many a man’s and woman’s heart every day; and may the Lord have mercy on them before it be too late! And yet how can the Lord have mercy on those who will not let Him have mercy on them? Suppose a man to be going on in some sinful habit. He comes to church, and there he hears the word of God by the Bible or in sermons, telling him that God commands him to give up his sin, that God will certainly punish him if he does not repent and amend. God sends that message to him in love and mercy to soften his heart by the terrors of the law and turn him from his sin. But what does the man feel? He feels angry and provoked: angry with the preacher; ay, angry with the Bible itself, with God’s words. For he hates to hear the words which tell him of his sin; he wishes they were not in the Bible; he longs to stop the preacher’s mouth; and as he cannot do that, he dislikes going to church. He says, I cannot, and, what is more, I will not, give up my sinful ways, and therefore I shall not go to church to be told of them. So he stops away from church, and goes on in his sins. So that man’s heart is hardened just as Pharaoh’s was. Yet the Lord has come and spoken to that sinful man in loving warnings, though all the effect it has had is that the Lord’s message has made him worse than he was before—more stubborn, more godless, more unwilling to hear what is good. But men may fall into a still worse state of mind. They may determine to set the Lord at naught; to hear Him speaking to conscience, and know that He is right and they wrong, and yet quietly put the good thoughts and feelings out of their way, and go on in the course which they know to be the worst. How many, when they come to church, harden their hearts, not caring enough for God’s message to be even angry with it, and take the preacher’s warnings as they would a shower of rain—as something unpleasant, which cannot be helped, and which therefore they must sit out patiently and think about as little as possible! And thus they let the Lord’s message to them harden their hearts.—Charles Kingsley.

The potter at work.—I have been out on the shore again, examining a native manufactory of pottery, and was delighted to find the whole biblical apparatus complete and in full operation. There was the potter sitting at his “frame “and turning the wheel with his foot. He had a heap of the prepared clay near him, and a pan of water by his side. Taking a lump in his hand, he placed it on the top of the wheel (which revolves horizontally) and smoothed it into a low cone, like the upper end of a sugar-loaf; then thrusting his thumb into the top of it, he opened a hole down through the centre, and this he constantly widened by pressing the edges of the revolving cone between his hands. As it enlarged and became thinner he gave it whatever shape he pleased with the utmost ease and expedition. This, I suppose, is the exact point of those biblical comparisons between the human and the divine Potter (Jeremiah 18:6). And the same idea is found in many other passages. When Jeremiah was watching the potter the vessel was marred in his hand, and “so he made it again, another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.” I had to wait a long time for that, but it happened at last. From some defect in the clay, or because he had taken too little, the potter suddenly changed his mind, crushed his growing jar instantly into a shapeless mass of mud, and beginning anew, fashioned it into a totally different vessel.—Thomson, “The Land and the Book,” p. 520

God’s work in shaping our lives.—The wheel of time spins fast, but not carrying us away, changing but not destroying each separate individuality. In providence there are wheels within wheels. We do not understand their meaning. The clay is pressed now below into a solid base, now above into a dainty rim, but it is difficult to see what the final outcome will be till all is finished. So our lives are pressed on one side and on another; something which in our eyes is indispensable is taken away, something which to us seems needless is added. But out of the dizzy whirl, the rush and confusion of life, God is steadily working out His purpose.—W. F. Adeney, “Pulpit Commentary.”

Men harden themselves.—The sins of men are freely committed. They are the effects and indications of evil dispositions of heart; and they are done with the free consent and choice of their wills. No sin could expose to wrath otherwise; nay, otherwise there could be no such thing as sin at all; all sin implying, in the very idea of it, the consent of the will. The very essence of all that is sinful lies in this. If a man were used, either by God or by a fellow-sinner, as a mere physical machine, he could not be a sinner. Now, every man who sins, sins with his will. Make what you like of God’s secret purposes, it is a matter of fact which there is no questioning that they do, in no way and in no degree, interfere with the perfect liberty of the agent. Every sinner is sensible that he acts from choice; that neither, on the one hand, is he constrained to evil, nor, on the other, restrained from good. To say, in regard to the latter—that which is good—that man cannot will it, is to employ terms most inconsiderate and misleading. What hinders him from willing? It is obvious that the word cannot must mean a moral inability. It is neither more nor less than the absence of right dispositions. But the indisposition to that which is good is just, in other words, the want of will to that which is good; and there being no other inability whatever in man than this moral inability—this unwillingness—to say he cannot will resolves itself ultimately into he will not will, inasmuch as he is kept from willing good by nothing but his aversion to good. All that can properly be meant by human freedom is the absence of all constraint and of all restraint. Man is at liberty to do whatever he wills; and if he does not will good, what is it that prevents him but his love of evil? He likes evil, and dislikes good; and therefore, in practice, chooses and does the one, and rejects and refrains from doing the other. These are truths sufficiently plain and simple; and they serve to show the meaning of the expression which follows—“fitted to destruction.”—Dr. Wardlaw.

God’s long-suffering.—It is evident that the idea of “patience and long-suffering” implies the existence of a tendency in a contrary direction, arising from something in the nature or character of the Being by whom it is exercised, and that the difficulty of its exercise bears proportion to the strength of that tendency. Now, the holiness of God is infinitely opposed to all sin. He hates it with a hatred that is properly and absolutely infinite. “He is of purer eyes than to behold evil; neither can He look upon iniquity.” And while His holiness abhors it, His justice calls for its punishment—its punishment to the full extent of its deserts. In proportion, then, to the strength of these principles of the divine character is the difficulty (if it be lawful so to express it) of forbearance with those by whom it is practised—the workers of iniquity. By considering the amount of evil thought and felt, and said and done, in this world of ours every successive moment, I might set the amount of the longsuffering of a holy God before your minds in many and impressive lights. But I must forbear; it would lead me too far away from my one point. Now, by this longsuffering, the great majority of men, alas! are only encouraged in evil—hardened in their unbelief and impenitence and ungodly courses: “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil” (Ecclesiastes 8:11). They thus criminally, because wilfully, and from the love of evil, abuse the divine goodness; and, by the abuse of it, “fit themselves for destruction”: “Despisest thou the riches of His goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God” (Romans 2:4). Others, dealt with in the same “longsuffering,” are at times, after very protracted and obstinate resistance of the means of grace—of the word and providence of God (His word in all its variety of appeals and motives, and His providence in all its variety of dispensations, prosperous and adverse)—subdued to repentance, “turned to God.” Their hearts relent, they believe, and are saved. Toward both of these classes of persons there has been shown, on the part of God, “much longsuffering.” To many a believer—especially to such as have been converted later in life than others—might I make my appeal for the truth of this. Many a heart would melt, and many an eye would glisten with the tear of shame and of humble and grateful joy, in recollecting the past and comparing it with the present, and reflecting how long they held out against a longsuffering God; ay, and to many an unbelieving sinner, now going on in his trespasses, in despite of the patience of a holy, sin-hating, but merciful God, who is still “waiting to be gracious,” might I make a similar appeal—an appeal to which, whatever impression it might make or fail to make upon his heart, his conscience would secretly and faithfully, and perhaps stingingly, respond.—Dr. Wardlaw.

The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart.—Oh, my friends, this is a fearful thought—that man can become worse by God’s loving desire to make him better! But so it is. So it was with Pharaoh of old. All God’s pleading with him by the message of Moses and Aaron, by the mighty plagues which God sent on Egypt, only hardened Pharaoh’s heart. The Lord God spoke to him, and His message only lashed Pharaoh’s proud and wicked will into greater fury and rebellion, as a vicious horse becomes the more unmanageable the more you punish it. Therefore it is said plainly in Scripture that the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart—not, as some fancy, that the Lord’s will was to make Pharaoh hard-hearted and wicked. God forbid! The Lord is the fountain of good only, and not He but we and the devil make evil. But the more the Lord pleaded with Pharaoh and tried to bend his will, the more self-willed he became. The more the Lord showed Pharaoh that the Lord was king, the more he hated the kingdom and will of God, the more he determined to be king himself and to obey no law but his own wicked fancies and pleasures, and asked, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey Him?”—Charles Kingsley.

The potter and clay.—But some may say, Is not that a gloomy and terrible notion of God that He cannot change His purpose? Is not that as much as to say that there is a dark necessity hanging over each of us; that a man must be just what God chooses, and do just what He has ordained to do, and go to everlasting happiness or misery exactly as God has foreordained from all eternity; so that there is no use trying to do right or not to do wrong? If I am to be saved, say such people, I shall be saved whether I try or not; and if I am to be damned, I shall be damned whether I try or not. I am in God’s hands, like clay in the hands of the potter, and what I am like is therefore God’s business and not mine. No! The very texts in the Bible which tell us that God cannot change or repent, tell us what it is that He cannot change in—in showing lovingkindness and tender mercy, longsuffering and repenting of the evil. Whatsoever else He cannot repent of, He cannot repent of repenting of the evil. It is true we are in His hand as clay in the hand of the potter. But it is a sad misreading of Scripture to make that mean that we are to sit with our hands folded, careless about our own way and conduct—still less that we are to give ourselves up to despair because we have sinned against God: for what is the very verse which follows after that? Listen: “O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as clay is in the hands of the potter, so are ye in My hand, O house of Israel. At what instant I shall speak concerning a kingdom, to pull down and destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil which I thought to do to them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; if it do evil in My sight, that it obey not My voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.” So that the lesson which we are to draw from the parable of the potter’s clay is just the exact opposite which some men draw. Not that God’s decrees are absolute, but that they are conditional, and depend on our good or evil conduct. Not that His election and His reprobation are unalterable, but that they alter at that instant at which man alters. Not that His grace and will are irresistible, as the foolish man against whom St. Paul argues fancies, but that we can resist God’s will, and that our destruction comes only by resisting His will: in short, that God’s will is no brute, material necessity and fate, but the will of a living, loving Father.—Charles Kingsley.

God’s sovereignty not to be arraigned by men.—There are some persons so partial to what we may call the high doctrines of the gospel that they can scarcely endure to hear anything else: they are like persons whose taste is vitiated by strong drink or highly seasoned food; they have no appetite for anything which does not savour of their favourite opinions. This is a great evil in the Church, not only as injuring the souls in whom it exists, but as tending exceedingly to strengthen the prejudices of others against the doctrines which are so abused. Those who are thus disposed towards “the deep things of God” fancy themselves edified merely because their corrupt taste is gratified; but their edification is not real and scriptural, for if it were it would incline them to receive with meekness and humility every word of God, whereas they treat with contempt everything which seems to savour of plain, practical religion. We regret exceedingly that such persons exist; but we must not on their account run into an opposite extreme, and keep these doctrines altogether out of sight: we must not shun to declare unto men the whole counsel of God. Whatever is revealed in the sacred records must be brought forth in its season; nor are we at liberty to “withhold from men anything that may be profitable unto them.” We therefore address ourselves to every subject in its place, though on such subjects as that which is before us we would do it with fear and trembling, conscious how unable we are to do justice to it, and fearful lest by any means we should make it an occasion of offence to those who are not prepared for the investigation of it. The sovereignty of God is to the proud heart of man an unpalatable subject; but in the passage before us we are called to vindicate it against the objections of those who are disposed, like the Jew in our text, to contend against it. To place the matter in its true light, we shall consider:—

I. The point at issue between the objector and St. Paul.—St. Paul had intimated that the Jews were to be rejected from, and that the Gentiles were to be admitted into, the Church—an offensive subject to the Jews. They are represented as declaring that if God exercise sovereignty in this way, the blame of man’s condemnation must be transferred to God Himself, since it was impossible for a man to resist His will. To this objection we must now reply—

II. The apostle’s determination of it.—St. Paul, hearing such a blasphemous objection as this, “Why doth God yet find fault? for who hath resisted His will?” replies to it in a way of just reprehension. “O man, who art thou that repliest against God?” Consider thyself as a creature; consider thyself as a sinner. In a way of sound argument two things St. Paul proceeds to substantiate against his objector—one, that God had a right to dispose of everything according to His sovereign will and pleasure, and the other was that in the way He had hitherto disposed of them and had determined still to dispose of them He was fully justified. We may conclude with suggesting—

III. The proper improvement of the subject, which offers important hints to objectors. Strange that even Christians should determine what will and what will not consist with the divine attributes! But be assured as the heavens are high above the earth, so are His thoughts and ways higher than yours. There are many who speak of the deep things of God as if they were as plain and intelligible as the simplest truth that can be mentioned. It becomes you doubtless to investigate, and as far as possible to understand, every truth of God; but in things so infinitely above the reach of human intellect it becomes you to be humble, modest, diffident. To all persons without exception, you have other things to do than to be wasting your time about unprofitable disputes—you are now under the hands of the Potter. The question that most concerns you is, For what are you preparing? In order to ascertain this you need not look into the book of God’s decrees, but simply examine the state of your own hearts. Are you diligently seeking after God? Are you living by faith on the Lord Jesus Christ, washing daily in the fountain of His blood, and renewed daily by the operations of His Spirit? This will mark you vessels of honour; and the want of this is sufficient to stamp you vessels unto dishonour.—Simeon.

Predestination of the vessel not its fabrication.—The all-important point for the interpretation of these verses is to decide when the act of forming the vessels took place. Does this operation represent the predestination or the moral government of God in actual time? A word of Romans 9:23 decides this question without giving ground for the least hesitation. This word is the key of the whole passage, and, strange to say, it is omitted by Luther and by the French translations anterior to that of Lausanne. It is the word “afore”—“which He has prepared afore for His glory.” The predestination of the vessel, then, is not its fabrication; it precedes it. Thus, then, when God is compared to a potter who fashions the clay, the question is about His actual treatment of sinners. They are before Him one identical mass, vile and shapeless. To make the one portion vessels unto dishonour, to make them promote His glory without bettering their condition, is to treat them according to their nature; to make the other portion vessels unto honour is to treat them according to His grace which has been given them in Christ before the foundation of the world. As to the vessels of wrath, God is not the author of their nature, but only of their form; He has fashioned them, but He has not “prepared” them; their form is already a merited punishment; He shows therein His wrath. Could one believe that God was irritated against those who would be such as He had wished them to be? Would He need “a grand long-suffering” to endure His own work in the state which He had Himself determined? Has He raised with one hand what He has overturned with the other? Such a doctrine ends by doing violence to that reason in the name of which it has outraged our moral sentiments. It is clear, then, that the potter’s relation to the vessels of wrath is that of the fashioner of material made ready to his hand. He is not to be blamed if the coarse clay will only make a dishonoured vessel. The preparation of the clay, the contraction of its coarse character, has been anterior to the potter’s disposal of it. All he can do is to determine the destination which suits the nature of the provided clay. In the same way God is not to be held responsible for the coarse characters sinners contract in the process of their development. They have exercised their freedom in reaching the condition when, like clay, they lie before the great Potter’s wheel. All that God can be held responsible for is the form as vessels of dishonour they are to take; and if He show His deserved wrath in disposing of them as dishonoured vessels, He is acting well within His rights. It is in the disposal of incorrigible sinners, in suffering long with them, and in at last dooming them to destruction, that He displays the severe side of His character—that side without which He could not ensure our respect. As for this wrath of God, it has been very happily denominated by some of the Germans “the love-pain [Liebesschmerz] of God.” There is in our chapter only one predestination, that of grace; and not only that, but the words of the apostle are weighed and chosen to prevent all misapprehension: the one are ready or fit for perdition, the other are prepared for glory; the first, it is not God who has made them ready—on the contrary, He endures them “with a grand long-suffering”; the latter, it is God who has prepared them. Still more, He has prepared them afore. Were it not for the care with which the idea of reprobation is here put aside, I should never have supposed that such a dogma had presented itself to the spirit of a sacred writer. Paul makes on purpose an antithetic parallelism, as he had done (Romans 6:23) between wages and gift, and this parallelism finds itself in all the members of the sentence. God shows His anger towards the wicked and the riches of His glory towards the saved; but the latter, the mercy, is altogether gratuitous. If He wish to make the power known (Romans 9:22), it is not His power to create evil, but to punish it; and how to punish evil if not by evil, how to show His anger towards the clay unless by making the vessels unto dishonour.—Monsell.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 9

Romans 9:21. Vessels of honour and dishonour.—A certain minister, having changed his views of some parts of divine truth, was waited upon by an old acquaintance, who wished to reclaim him to his former creed. Finding he could not succeed in his object, he became warm, and told his friend in plain terms that God had given him “up to strong delusion,” and that he was “a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction.” “I think, brother,” replied the one who was charged with the departure from the faith with great calmness—“I think, brother, that you have mistaken the sense of the passage you last referred to. Vessels are denominated according to their contents. A chemist, in conducting a stranger through his laboratory, would say, ‘This is a vessel of turpentine, that of vitriol,’ etc., always giving to the vessel the name of the article it contains. Now when I see a man full of the holy and lovely Spirit of Christ, devoted to His service, and imitating His example, I say that man is a vessel of mercy, whom God hath afore-prepared unto glory; but when I see a man full of everything but the spirit of the Bible—opposed to the moral government of God, seeking his own things rather than those which are Christ’s—and filled with malice, wrath, and all uncharitableness. I am compelled to consider him ‘a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction.’ ”