IS THE SOVEREIGN GOD JUST OR UNJUST? – I

Romans 9:14-24
July 16, 1995
Bob Bonner

Recently I read about a football coach who faced a mini-rebellion on his team. A team meeting was called at which the players voiced their complaints against their coach to his face. One of his players accused the coach of being unfair because he didn’t treat everybody exactly the same. He criticized the coach for yelling at some of his players more than others. Another accusation was that this coach had given some of the veteran players more freedoms than he had offered to younger players. It was felt that this coach did not pass out rewards and commendations equally to all.

The coach listened to all of this and finally, at the end of this discussion said, “Everything you have said is true. But what you are describing is not in justice. What you are describing is football. The day that the coach has to respond to the whims of every player on the team and answer everyone’s concern about how they are treated is the day this team will cease to be competitive.” A coach has the right to make his own judgments, and those under the coach’s command have to respond as players, not as equals.

The same thing is true when it comes to how parents relate to children, and employers work with employees. Furthermore, it is true between God and mankind. A discussion between God and us is not a discussion between equals. Debate entered into with God is always going to be different from conversations or debates we have with each other. There is no higher authority to whom we can appeal when we question God about His behavior or don’t like the way He operates. There is no authority above the sovereign God of the universe to whom we can demand a hearing. What God says ultimately goes. For us to think that we can make demands upon God, would be to assume that we are His equals, and that is foolishness. God is sovereign and we are not His equal.

Now, we might not like that. In this country, we aren’t use to someone over us having that kind of authority. If we don’t like our boss’s actions we have the freedom to quit our jobs and find another one. We don’t have to stay in that situation. If we don’t like a politician’s actions or decisions, we can vote him or her out of office. We don’t like not having the right to talk to any authority figure as if that person were our equal.

It is for this very reason that we find it so hard to grasp what the book of Romans 9 has to say about God’s sovereign decisions that affect the human race. When we study the content of the verses in this chapter we don’t particularly like to read what it has to say, because God doesn’t always act or respond the way we think God should respond. We like to think that God is predictable and we find ourselves rather comfortable with God if we can put Him into our little theological boxes that enable us to quantify and understand the Almighty God, who has had no beginning and will never have an end. But when God allows something to happen or does something that we don’t understand or like or think that should fit our idea of God we get bent out of shape. We, the limited minded creation begin to judge God, the infinitely wise omniscient Creator.

I’m reminded of C.S. Lewis’ work, The Chronicles of Narnia, in which Aslan, a lion, characterizes God or Jesus Christ. And when one of the children didn’t like the surprising way in which Aslan responded to a situation, one of the other characters informed the child, “Aslan is not a tame lion.” The point being, that just as you cannot make any demands upon an untamed lion, one cannot make any demands upon God. God is the King over His jungle.

Just because we have the privilege of free access into God’s presence thanks to what Jesus Christ has done for us, that does not mean that God is our equal or our “good buddy.” He is the Holy, Almighty, in charge, answers to no one, sovereign ruler over everything.

Last time, we saw that this Almighty Sovereign God was also the very same loving God who saves people, not on the basis of their own human merit or good works not on the basis of their religious heritage, but based solely upon His choice to save certain people because He made a promise to do so through Abraham, the father of the Jews.

This sovereign choice of God to save some people, but not to save all people leads us to a question in Romans 9:14. Here, Paul asks the question, “What shall we say then? [meaning of God’s choice to save some people but not all people] There is no injustice with God, is there?” The underlying question or reading between the lines may be the question in the reader’s mind, “Is it fair for God to save some people and not all people? Isn’t God being a little unfair or unjust?” To which Paul answers, “May it never be!” In other words, our Sovereign God is just as we will see in the rest of chapter 9.

If you remember from the first three chapters, Paul has already proven logically, that not one human being that has ever lived deserves to be saved or to spend eternity having a relationship with God. Every one of us has turned our backs on God, lived as though He had no significant part to play in our lives or have deliberately rebelled against Him. The only rights we deserve is the right to be condemned and forever left by ourselves apart from God. God would be totally just if He never chose to save one of us.

But through this chapter, Paul defends the justice and fairness of God, and His right to save anyone He chooses. And the fact that God does decide to choose any of us, according to verses 15-16, reveals something else about the character of our God.

Paul writes in verses 15-16, “For He [God] says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’” So Paul clues us in to something we must keep in mind as we think of this Sovereign God. He is not some mean ogre, or tyrannical beast, but He is our creator whose justice is governed by His mercy and compassion.

These two terms, “compassion” and “mercy” are synonyms, but they also have some different emphasis’. The Hebrew term for “compassion” to which Paul is referring here, relates to a Hebrew term that refers to a woman’s womb. It speaks of all the feelings a mother has toward her about to be or newborn infant. All of her life the mother is focused on helping her helpless infant. This attribute of God, “compassion”, is an emotional term which shows us how easily God’s heart is moved to come to our aid precisely because we are helpless. [Romans, Morgan, Discovery Papers, #695, p. 1]

“Mercy”, on the other hand, is more of an action term describing the going to the aid of a helpless person.

Something else that sheds some light on verse 15 is that Paul is quoting God speaking to Moses after Moses has begged God to have mercy on the Israelites who have made the golden calf and are worshipping this idol. Moses is afraid that God will destroy all his brethren for doing exactly what God said they should not do or be destroyed if they did. In response to Moses’ request, God declares, “I will have mercy and compassion on those to whom I choose to show mercy and compassion.” Making the point very clear, God cannot be forced to show mercy and compassion upon any sinner. He is not obligated in any way to save one human being who rebels against Him. No human being deserves to be shown mercy. Should God choose to show mercy to any of us helpless human beings, it will be done so because and only because He chooses to do so. Period. End of discussion.

And if that isn’t clear enough in verse 15, Paul supports God’s right to show mercy on whom He wills in verse 16. Paul writes, “So then id does not depend [that is God having mercy and saving any persons’ life does not depend] on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.” 

Now this raises a whole host of questions or objections in minds of many who are not yet satisfied by what Paul has already said. A person may agree that everyone deserves hell and that God does not have to save anyone. Likewise, this person may agree that if any are saved, it will be by God’s mercy only, not by our human goodness or works. But one question we tend to stumble over is, “Shouldn’t God show mercy to everyone?” Is it right for Him to restrict His mercy to one group of people and not show it to all peoples? When this question is asked, there is one important operative word that must be considered, “should”.

“Should” means “ought”, “must” or “necessary” if justice is to be done. But as soon as we use the word, “should” we are no longer dealing with mercy, we are dealing with the demands of justice. “Should” implies “obligation” and obligation has to do with justice. If there is any “should” in the matter the issue is no longer mercy. The issue becomes what are someone’s just desserts. And in the case of the human race which has turned its back on God, justice can do nothing but send every one of us to hell. Folks, we don’t need justice from God. What we need is His mercy and grace that can only be found in Jesus Christ.

And that is just what Paul is pointing out here, when he used this verse from the Old Testament. Here, God demonstrates His sovereign choice to show mercy, not justice to Moses. But in verse 17, Paul points to another case where God did not show mercy. Paul writes, “For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘for this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.’ So then He has mercy on whom He desires and He hardens whom He desires.”

Pharaoh deserved death, but God did not strike him down immediately. Rather, He allowed Pharaoh to continue to live and reign so that God could demonstrate His power in the repeated defeats of Pharaoh. Pharaoh became an object lesson for all history to illustrate God’s supremacy. You may remember when the spies were sent in to the Promised Land to do some reconnaissance on Jericho and how they stayed in Rehab the harlot’s house. She told these spies that their God was feared because of the incredible and precise power and glory He revealed against Pharaoh with the ten plagues.

Although Paul mentions here that our sovereign, just God hardens whom He wills, Paul does not take the time here to show us the other side of the coin concerning this hardening process – that is, Pharaoh’s part in hardening his own heart. God did not independently come along and zap Pharaoh’s heart and suddenly make it hard for Pharaoh to believe. That is not how God hardens a person’s heart. Pharaoh’s heart became hard as the result of his own wrong decisions. God’s only part the hardening process was to allow Pharaoh to go on hardening his own heart through wrong decisions and walking away from God. If God had at any time shown mercy to Pharaoh, reached out and tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Quit running away from Me”, that would be equivalent to God softening Pharaoh’s heart. The account in Exodus reveals this, and so does Paul reveal this process in chapter 1 of Romans.

If you remember our study of Romans 1:18-32, the hardening of a person’s heart is a process. Romans 1 showed us that we as a human race are lost before this hardening took place. We have suppressed the truth about God and have not allowed Him to have His rightful place in our lives. As a result of our lostness, we continue to fight against God’s leadership in our lives. In Romans 1, Paul says three times, that because we are lost and fight against God’s leadership in our lives, that “God gave them over” to their foolish rebellion. This “giving over” of a person is synonymous to the hardening of a person’s heart. As we continue to turn our backs and walk away from God, all He does is allow us to keep going. He does not intervene and stop us from doing what is sinfully natural to us. And as we walk away, our hearts get harder and harder toward God. Every time a person says “no” to God, that person is hardening his or her heart, because God, the only one who can soften a person’s heart, is backing away.

In truth, God have Pharaoh every opportunity to repent. God was not unrighteous in His dealings with Pharaoh. He gave Pharaoh many opportunities to repent and believe, but Pharaoh, because he was already lost, resisted God, and as a result Pharaoh hardened himself to God’s divine rule.

Here’s the point: “People’s hearts get hard because they are lost. People are not lost because their hearts get hard.”

What’s really interesting here in Paul’s use of Moses and Pharaoh as an illustration, is that Paul is showing us that God may say the same thing to two different people, and He will get two different results. Someone once said “the sunlight melts the ice, is the same sunlight that hardens the clay.” Take a look at the following comparison and contrast between Pharaoh and Moses:

Moses	Pharaoh
Sinner	Sinner
Murderer	Murderer
Witnessed God’s miracles	Witnessed God’s miracles
Jew	Gentile
Saved	Lost
Used to reveal God’s mercy	Used to reveal God’s power and glory

Which takes us back to another question: Why do some respond favorably toward God, even after they are sinners and some don’t? The answer is, because God has mercifully gone an extra step to show Himself to those people and they in turn, have chosen to follow after God.

But that raises a second objection that is very similar to the one we talked about before, but in fact is quite different. Remember we asked, “Shouldn’t God show mercy to everyone?” Well, let’s toss out the word “should” and simply ask the second objection, “Why doesn’t God show mercy to everyone?” Why didn’t He show the same mercy to Pharaoh that He showed toward the murderer Moses? That’s a good and fair question to ask, because that question is simply asking for the reasons behind which God does something? By asking that question, we aren’t demanding anything from God or passing judgment on God, but simply trying to understand why God does what He does.

In verse 15, the sovereign God gives us a very legitimate answer, although you might not like it. And that answer is, “I, the sovereign God, chose to have mercy on whom I have mercy. Other than that, I, your Sovereign, owe you no further explanation at this time or forever if I choose.”  God definitely has reasons for what He does, but we may never know the answer to His reasoning because He has chosen not to answer us, which is fully His right as our Sovereign God.

All of this leads us to another objection that Paul states for us in the form of a question in verse 19. Paul asks, “You will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?’” In other words, Paul’s point is, “If God sovereignly has mercy on whom He desires and hardens whom He desires, how can we still be blamed for our unbelief, when our future destiny has been pre-determined ahead of time by God? How could Pharaoh be held responsible for his actions since he was used by God to bring glory to God? This seems unfair!”

In that brief statement of verse 19, are hidden all the accusations and bitter charges that human race brings against God. It points the finger at God for ultimately being the one responsible for people not being saved, when the reason for people not being saved is not God’s mercy, but our rebellion against God.

As the late Dr. John Mitchell, the beloved Bible teacher at Multnomah School of the Bible, a humble man who walked with God like few others I know, said, “[This question] is not the cry of a hear that wants truth. This is not the cry of a heart that is yearning for God. This is an arrogant heart, a heart that puts itself in judgment upon God. This is an unbelieving heart, the heart of a man who blames God for his own sin, his own unrighteousness.”

Likewise Paul, in verses 20-21, causes us to stop and examine our own credentials to ask or ever question God in this manner. The first part of verse 20 reads, “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?” “Let’s take a look at this”, Paul says, “and compare and consider the difference between man and God. Are we equipped to challenge God and demand an explanation? Even if God gave us His explanation, would we necessarily understand it?”

This reminds me of the case of Job. Here was a man who loved God. He was not an atheist or skeptic, but one who sought to faithfully serve God. Yet, if you remember, Job was rather bewildered as to why God allowed all of Job’s children to be killed, along with all of his live stock by the same hail storm. Job was also afflicted with a series of terrible boils and physical problems; and his previously loving wife turned into a shrew. And to top it all off, in the midst of his suffering, Job had three friends hounding Job that the reason God was doing this was because there was sin in Job’s life. Job was alone, feeling rejected by friends and being told that he was rejected by God, and was receiving no comfort in the midst of his personal troubles.

This faithful devotee of Yahweh all of a sudden had his life turned upside down, and he finally came to the point of frustration where he demanded of God to give him an explanation as to why this had all happened to him. It seemed so unfair. So from chapters 38-41, God appears to Job and says, “All right, Job, you want a chance to argue. Here I am. But before you begin, I have some questions to ask you, to see if you are even qualified intellectually to investigate me.”

And then throughout those chapters, God starts asking questions of Job to determine whether Job is even qualified to question God. Questions like:

Where were you when the morning start sang together, and I flung the heavens into space? Were you there?

Do you understand how the rain works and how lightening appears?

Look at the stars Job. Can you order their courses?

Can you determine the seasons and weather fronts that are necessary to produce food?

God goes on like this for four chapters, and after each question Job has to say, “No, I can’t do those things, nor do I even have a clue as to how those things are done.” Eventually, Job comes to understand one thing and one thing only, and that is that just like us he is in no position to argue with the sovereign God. When it comes to trying to understand all that is behind the workings of God’s creation and why He does what He does, Job admits, “God, I am not in your league. I put my hand over my mouth. I have nothing to say to you, because there is no way I can understand your mysterious workings. I repent, and step back and allow you to make your sovereign choices, resting in the fact that you are not only just, but that you are merciful and compassionate as well.”

That’s just the point behind Paul’s question in the first half of verse 20. But then, Paul goes on to the rest of verses 20-21, to illustrate for us, that even among ourselves, we exercise the same form of sovereignty. And don’t we have a right to make choices over certain things without having to explain ourselves? Paul writes, “The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, and another for common use?”

When you were in first grade and the teacher gave you a lump of clay to make something with, did that clay have the right to ask you why you made a flower vase of it instead of an ashtray? No, it was up to us to choose to make what we wanted out of that clay and to use it for whatever purpose we choose. We exercised a sovereign choice over the clay and nobody questioned it. Similarly, we can’t question the sovereign God of the universe as to why he made us the way he did, and chose to make some of us more famous on this earth than others.

But some might say, “Well, clay doesn’t have a mind to think with. It isn’t alive. It doesn’t have a will to make choices for itself. We do. We have feelings.” Fine. What about the way you treat your animals or pets? Some of you raise pigs and cattle for slaughter. Do you have the right to do that? Should I swear out a warrant for your arrest because you didn’t ask your animal’s permission to kill them for food? Do we ever challenge that? No, we have that kind of authority. Well, so does God except in this case, His authority is over us, His creation.

Therefore we cannot deny the same authority to the One Being who has that right above all others, that being our Creator, can we? That’s Paul’s point. We are in no position to argue with God, as to how He will work with His creation. Just as we have purposes behind our workings, so does God. And that’s the final point that Paul makes in verses 22-24. Our sovereign, just, merciful God has righteous purposes behind His choices.

Paul writes, “What if God, although willing [or determinedly intent] to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And {He did so} in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, {even} us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.”

Ultimately, God does all things that He does to make known to His entire creation, His glory. We must never think that He enjoys watching wicked tyrants like Pharaoh. He endured it, so that through even Pharaoh’s rebellion, God’s power and justice, His wrath would be demonstrated. Furthermore, at the same time, God’s glory and His riches and mercy were revealed as He delivered the Israelites through the Red Sea and miraculously provided for their food and shelter from His divine storehouse.

A couple of points of clarification that have mislead some individuals. Some have mistakenly believed that God is the one who has prepared certain vessels just so that they would be destroyed or that God made Pharaoh a vessel of wrath from the start. That is not the case. The verb form used here in the original language does not suggest that God created some like Pharaoh to be a vessel of wrath, but rather Pharaoh himself fitted himself to become an object of God’s wrath because of Pharaoh’s decisions. Preparation for destruction and judgment is the product of the human race, not God.

In contrast to this, in verse 23, it clearly states that God prepares people for glory or to be blessed by Him. The verb form used in this verse is different from verse 22. In verse 23 it renders that the subject doing the preparation here is clearly God. Ultimately, Paul’s point comes down to this. Neither, people like Moses or Pharaoh deserve anything but God’s wrath. That would be justice from God. The fact that our sovereign God should choose, for whatever reason, to be merciful to Moses cannot be used as evidence to charge God with injustice.

What response does knowing this truth that God does choose to save some people raise up in you? I can tell you personally what response it raised up in me the first time I understood it. It was during the summer of 1970. I was preparing a Bible study for High School students on this very passage of Romans. I can still remember the little desk I was working at up in the corner of a Sunday school room. The church wasn’t large enough to afford me an office. I had been wrestling with the concepts of this passage for weeks, when I finally came to understand Paul’s argument fully. When it finally dawned on me, that God had chosen, independent of me, to reveal Himself to me, to show me mercy and to save me, I remember breaking down and weeping at that desk. Who was I that He should save me? Why was I chosen to be shown mercy? I will never know the answer to that. But what I do know, is that it made me very grateful to God and thankful for His saving my life from the pit.

Although the passion of that moment in my life was powerful, I didn’t share it with many people. Furthermore, I had not met any Christians who realized this truth and who showed me how grateful they were to God for choosing to show mercy on them and to save them. All the Christians I had come in contact with let me to believe that it was because they were such moral people, God had chosen them. But reality is our morality, our spiritual heritage or religiousness has nothing no influence on God showing His mercy to us. He shows His mercy to those whom He wishes to show His mercy.

It wasn’t until eight years later that I met someone who wept over the realization of the mercy that God had showed in saving him. His name is Bob McPherson. Bob, at the time, was a brilliant businessman who had worked for Texaco Oil Company as a very young executive. He had a law degree and had recently taken over the vice-presidency of a Biotechnology firm in New Jersey. He is one of those individuals who is so intelligent, that after having dinner with the man, Becky and I tried to figure out what in the world he was talking about concerning what his company did in the field of Biotechnology. His brain functioned on a whole different plane than mine.

I had been having an early morning breakfast and Bible study with Bob and another man for months shortly after Bob came to Christ. We would switch off going from one person’s house for breakfast (which our wives cooked for us) and we studied the scriptures together. Bob, on his own, had been reading Romans. One morning, I came to his house for study, and Bob met me at the door. He looked a wreck, like he had been on an all night binge. His eyes were red, deep circles hung beneath them. I was surprised, so I asked something like, “What’s wrong? You don’t look so good.” He proceeded to tell me that all night long he had been studying Romans 9 and the truth that the only way he ultimately could have been saved was that God first showed Him mercy, by introducing him to Jesus Christ and showing him his need for a savior. And for the past couple of hours he had been on his face in tears of joy and deep gratitude pouring out his heart filled with thanks to God. He understood for the first time that God was never under any obligation whatsoever to save Bob, but simply chose to do so. Bob assured me, that he would never be the same person from that moment on. And he hasn’t. Neither would you be, if you realized what a tremendously merciful God saved you by having Jesus Christ die in your place and offer Him up to you as your Savior, should you choose Him.

Friend, do you understand what our loving, just, merciful sovereign God has done for you, even though He is under no obligation to have done anything for you? How are you living in response to what He has done for you, having saved you? Have you given Him everything or are you fooling around with this world’s priorities? What do you think you should do about it?

If you have never put your trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord, if you want to begin to have a deep intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, and receive God’s mercy toward you, and to begin walking with God in a profoundly intimate way, you can today. 

Our Father, how this passage puts us in our place! How it makes us realize afresh how desperately dependent we are upon your saving grace. We did not save ourselves--- we could not. We did not even initiate the desire to be saved---that comes from you. But we thank you that you have not left us, as you could have, in utter justice, to destroy ourselves and end, at last in separation from all your goodness and grace. But you have called us and redeemed us and brought us to yourself, at infinite cost to yourself through sending us Your beloved Son Jesus to die in our place. Lord, we give ourselves afresh to You this day, that You may use our lives for whatever You please until you come again. May you find us as willing servants of a loving God. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen. 

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