God’s free choice
If God’s good and gracious purpose is served even when he punishes evildoers like Pharaoh, in reality aren’t all people playing into God’s hand? Instead of evildoers being blamed for resisting God’s will, shouldn’t they really be credited with advancing his cause? Paul anticipates this kind of question.
One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?”
It’s an impertinent question. It deserves—and gets—a sharp rebuke from the apostle. Curtly he says, in effect, “Mind your mouth, mister!”
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?’” 21 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?
Paul replies, “A creature has no right to talk like that to its Creator! As little as the clay can make decisions for the potter, or a board argue with the carpenter, so is it likewise inappropriate for a human to question God’s action.” Paul’s approach is in harmony with God’s declaration spoken through the psalmist: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). All that God does is good and right because he is God. Period!
But to this brusque rebuke Paul adds a more reasoned response, one calculated to give the questioner some food for thought. He poses two rhetorical questions with answers so obvious that he doesn’t have to give them.
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? 23 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—24 even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?
To catch Paul’s line of thought in these two questions, we need to be clear on three important points. Let’s first treat those points separately and then try to reassemble this section in an expanded translation or paraphrase.
First, note the repeated introduction to the two questions. Both are introduced with “What if . . . ?” These questions are the curt kind of rebuttal we can express with the defensive retort “So what if . . . ?” For example, an employee comes in late for work one morning. When his boss speaks to him about it later in the day, he defends himself by saying, “So what if I was a little late? I got all the work done, didn’t I?” His point is, Did I really do something seriously wrong if . . . ? That same defensive tone is the point of Paul’s question. “Is God doing something wrong if . . . ?”
Second, take a look at what action on God’s part the critic is being asked to evaluate. Follow the main clause of the sentence and you hear Paul ask, “Did God do something wrong when in great patience he bore with the objects of his wrath?” Of course, the answer is, Absolutely not! The next verse has a parallel line of logic: “Did God do something wrong if he acted in such a way as to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy?” Again there can be but one answer: Certainly not!
Third, we need to understand who the “objects” of God’s attention are. Both are described in the NIV translation as “prepared.” Using the modifier prepared in both instances is a most unfortunate choice, because it leaves the impression that both groups are dealt with in the same manner. Both seem to have had something done to or for them. That is not the case. The NIV translators are using the same English word, prepared, to translate two different Greek verbs—katartidzo and pro-hetoimadzo, respectively.
Furthermore, the second verb has the prefix pro, meaning “to do in advance,” which the former verb does not have.
Thus, with the second group, the “objects of his [God’s] mercy,” we are clearly told that God prepared them in advance for glory. This is God’s choice of the elect, his eternal election to salvation as described in Ephesians 1:3-6.
The former group, the ones with whom God is angry, were not prepared by him from eternity for condemnation. Their case is parallel to Pharaoh’s. Though it was God’s earnest intent (antecedent will) to save them, they refused. Like Pharaoh, they hardened their hearts and thereby left a just and holy God no alternative but to show his anger and exercise his consequent will to punish evildoers. By their own doing they became “objects of his wrath” and are thus “prepared for destruction.”*
But even though they are deserving of punishment, and even though it is God’s consequent will to show his wrath against them, yet he “bore with great patience the[se] objects of his wrath.” Hence Paul asks, Was God’s action inappropriate? Is it wrong for him to show patience?
Let’s now try to incorporate these thoughts into an expanded translation or paraphrase. In a general way, the words in italics reflect the editorial expansions
.
Verse 22: Is God blameworthy if with great patience he puts up with objects that are under his wrath, that is, people who by their unbelief and rejection of him are fit for destruction, even though it is his consequent will to show righteous wrath against such people and to make his power known?
Verse 23: And is it wrong if he acts in such a way as to make known the greatness of his glory to the objects of his mercy, people whom he by an act of his own will (James 1:18) has previously— in fact, from eternity (Ephesians 1:4)—prepared for glory?
Verse 24: When I speak of “objects of his mercy,” I’m referring to us, the ones who are righteous by faith in Christ (9:30,31), the true Israel, whom he has called not only from among the Jews but also from among the Gentiles.
A major concern on Paul’s part throughout chapters 9 to 11 is the lost condition of his kinfolk, the members of the Jewish nation. Their wholesale rejection of Christ and Christianity deeply disturbs him. Hence he feels compelled to point out that just because they are descendants of Abraham by birth and by blood, and thus physical members of the nation God chose to bear the Savior, does not mean that all of them are automatically on the road to heaven. If they reject the Messiah, the Savior born of their own race, they will die in their sins and be lost eternally, despite their heritage and their genes.
That is the point Paul was making earlier in this chapter when he said, “Not all who are descended from Israel are Israel” (verse 6). Not every Jew is a true Israelite in the sense of being a child of God. (For a similar thought, see 2:28,29). True Israelites are those who accept the Savior and in this way follow in the steps of their spiritual father Abraham.
It follows then that if salvation is by faith and not by birth, then the true Israel is to be found also among believing Gentiles. They too are among the elect whom God has prepared in advance for glory. Paul indicates that clearly when he specifically states, “ . . . even us, whom he [God] also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles.”