It’s a good question.
Most Christians accept that God is, by definition, able to
control all that he creates down to the last detail; it is difficult to read
the Bible and come away with any other picture of him. But the question of how
and to what extent his sovereignty is exercised within the human heart is what
generally divides believers.
Some people believe the exercise of God’s sovereignty extends
to his making the choice of each man and woman’s eternal destiny before they are born:
“If God chose some to salvation … then common sense teaches us that others were unchosen.”
— Milburn Cockrell
Romans 9 is one of the passages that can present a major
problem for Christians struggling to build an accurate mental picture of God’s
sovereignty. I believe it is often very much misunderstood.
What’s At Stake
An incorrect understanding of God’s character, whatever
motivation may lie behind it, is crippling to our love and service for him. We
must see him as he really is, not attempt to straitjacket him into our
theological systems.
Here’s the problem with Milburn Cockrell’s version of God:
He is not loving but arbitrarily cruel. His offer of salvation is inauthentic. The
exercise of faith demanded of us actually changes nothing. Hell is inescapable
for the “unchosen”. If the view is taken to its logical conclusion, the death
of Christ is a mere symbol, a decoration on an already predetermined outcome; it
isn’t the means to anything. If God is the only ultimately effective will in
the universe, then he is the author of the very evil that he so violently
condemns and destroys along with helpless, choiceless, Redeemer-less mankind.
Pick your poison. It’s all bad.
And it’s not taught in Romans 9, notwithstanding the fact
that many, many verses from this chapter are regularly misemployed to arrive at
that conclusion.
It is next to impossible to deal exhaustively with an issue
as significant as God’s sovereignty in even a lengthy series of blog posts, so
I’ll be less ambitious: I’d like to propose an understanding of Romans 9 that
is, I trust, consistent with the teaching of the rest of scripture, but also solves
a few of the problems believers often encounter in interpreting the passage.
The Subject
Paul’s subject, for the entire chapter — and if you don’t
get this, you will get lost very quickly — is God’s dealings with human beings
corporately, NOT his dealings with individuals. The chapter references six
different groups: national Israel (“Israel”, “Jacob”), Edom (“Esau”), Egypt
(“Pharaoh”), Gentiles generally, Sodom and Gomorrah. There are also more
obscure references to groups of people in the terms “vessels of wrath”,
“vessels of mercy” and the Church (“us whom he has called”).
I’d argue that at no
point in Romans 9 is Paul concerned with God’s sovereign dealings in the
hearts and minds of individuals. The subject of individual salvation, I believe,
does not actually even arise until the very last verse of the chapter, and that
only incidentally, since Paul is laying the ground for his argument in chapter
10 that “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes”.
When this is really understood, difficulties of
interpretation that have often arisen concerning individuals “prepared for
destruction” and other concepts with which we might reasonably feel uncomfortable
are resolved without the necessity of explaining away anything in the chapter.
From the Top
Paul starts with his expression of concern for the nation of
Israel, his own people. It is important to realize immediately that his
concern, and in fact, his whole emphasis, is not about individual Jews. Why? Because Paul could not have failed
to observe the makeup of the church that the Lord was building in Judea and
throughout the known world, to which Paul’s own efforts contributed: it was,
especially at first, comprised largely of converted Jews. He observed them over
and over again professing faith, getting baptized, being indwelt by the Holy
Spirit and carrying on in a faith more real and powerful than the religion of
Judaism every year of his service for Christ. Though many rejected the truth
that Jesus was the Messiah, by and large, individual Jews who repented were
doing just fine.
No, Paul is expressing concern for the state of the nation of Israel corporately. This is what he stresses
in the first few verses of the chapter:
“They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever.”
It is “to Israelites”, “to them”, always plural, that all
these precious privileges belong. It is “from their race” that the
Christ came. Paul speaks nationally, always nationally.
All the Blessings That Attend
Individually, Jewish believers are now “in Christ”, with all the blessings that attend that status,
and the promises believing Jews in the Church Age have to look forward to are characteristically
heavenly rather than earthly. But national Israel was destined to be cut off from the
blessing of God, to go from being publicly perceived as God’s people to being a
“thing of horror”, a “byword among the nations” and a “laughingstock”. Paul
knew it and was horrified at the prospect.
And there are greater things at stake than Israel becoming a
laughingstock. If Israel is to be cut off by God forever, God’s word has failed. God’s
reputation is staked on the nation of Israel. If he does not finish his work
with them, how can we trust anything he says? How, for instance, can we be confident that he will finish his
work in the lives of believers and bring us to glory?
In any case, it is evident that it was a national repentance and a national restoration for which Paul longed.
After expressing his concern, Paul goes on in verses 6-13 to
tell us that all is not lost. God’s word has not failed after all. There is a
subset of Jews who are children of God, despite the looming loss of Israel’s
national status. Again, he is speaking of a group, not of individuals. He
quotes the promise of God to Abraham, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be
named” as evidence that while one group (the children of Abraham’s son Ishmael)
was not to inherit God’s blessing, another group was (the children of Isaac).
And in fact, not all of the children of Isaac were selected
for God’s blessing either.
The Older Will Serve the Younger
Isaac fathered twin boys, Jacob and Esau. God’s purposes in
history dictated that he chose, or “elected”, the descendants of Jacob rather
than the descendants of Esau for his purposes, but it is important to notice that
it is in Jacob’s and Esau’s children as a group, NOT individually, that God’s
sovereignty in choosing Jacob and rejecting Esau is demonstrated.
When he says, “the older will serve the younger”, we need to
ask how this prophecy has been fulfilled. The statement was never true of Esau
and Jacob personally: at no time in their lives did Esau ever serve his
brother. In fact, far from pressing Esau into servitude, Jacob characteristically feared and avoided him. He had a very reasonable concern that his brother might take revenge at some point for the wrongs Jacob had done to him.
So Jacob became powerful and rich, as did Esau, and the twins lived well apart from each other. It was
the children of Esau corporately, the nation of Edom, about whom the prophecy
was made. History shows that it was Edom that served Israel many years after the fathers of both nations were dead and buried.
But it is not just the “who” of election in this passage
that is open to being misunderstood; we ought also to ask the question Elect for what? Paul mentions God’s purpose of election in the same context:
“… though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad — in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls …”
As already mentioned, the prophecy that the older would serve the younger had nothing to do with the twins themselves and their individual relationships with God. The descendants of Jacob are elect to a “strategic role in human history”, as another writer has well put it. Paul says God’s purpose of election is “not because of works”. Some people take that and run with it, insisting it points to individual sovereign election on the basis of grace. But rather, I believe Paul’s point here is that God’s purposes in the sort of election under discussion here have nothing to do with the individual at all. They are corporate and historical in nature,
Those who interpret this or subsequent statements about
election in Romans 9 as having to do with individual salvation are missing the
point of the entire chapter.
Jacob I Loved, but Esau I Hated
Likewise, the statement “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” is
entirely national and corporate in its meaning. It is a direct quotation from Malachi that has nothing whatsoever to do with individuals, though the nations involved
are personified in the names of their forefathers.
How do we know? Here’s how God’s hatred for “Esau” (Edom) was expressed:
“ ‘I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert.’ If Edom says, ‘We are shattered but we will rebuild the ruins’, the Lord of hosts says, ‘They may build, but I will tear down, and they will be called “the wicked country”, and “the people with whom the Lord is angry forever”.’ ”
This had nothing to do with the relationship of God to
individual Edomites or to Esau personally; it is stated more than a thousand years after Esau died. God is angry with the nation of Edom because of its mistreatment of Israel. But where individual Edomites are concerned, the Law had commanded, “You shall not
abhor an Edomite, for he is your brother … Children born to them in the
third generation may enter the assembly of the Lord”.
The repentant sinner has always had a way into fellowship
with God even under the Law regardless of his or her nation of birth. That way
at times may not have been appealing to anyone who failed to exercise genuine
faith, as it involved second-class citizenship in Israel and patient waiting
for generations in order to receive full acceptance in the assembly.
Nonetheless the way has always existed. The “hatred” God
expresses toward Esau has nothing to do with individuals and everything to do
with national status.
Mercy On Whom I Have Mercy
Paul’s subject has never changed during the first thirteen
verses of the chapter. It is appropriate therefore to interpret the following
verses concerning election in the same way. When we read “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy”,
it is no more a statement about individual salvation than anything that
precedes it.
Likewise, when we read this statement:
“For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’ ”
we ought to read “Pharaoh” the same way we read “Jacob” and
“Esau”. Again, God is speaking nationally. Pharaoh is the federal head of Egypt and thus its
embodiment, just as in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, King Claudius refers
to himself as “Denmark”, and to the King of England as “England”. Not only
that, Pharaoh was himself considered to be a god in the Egyptian list of gods,
which is why God says, “Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment”, when he is really striking Pharaoh and his people.
It is true that Pharoah had personally been “raised up”, but
so had all Pharaohs. God’s statement is much more appropriately applied to
Egypt, which had become a great nation. In destroying Egypt’s armies in the Red
Sea, God made a statement that was heard throughout the entire world of its day.
He Hardens Whomever He Wills
The only difficulty with a national as opposed to an individual interpretation in the first eighteen verses arises with this last statement about God: “… he hardens whomever he wills”. But this statement, too, is better understood nationally than individually. Rather than referring back to the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart earlier in Exodus, I’m convinced it refers to this:
“And I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, his chariots, and his horsemen.”
That Egypt experienced a corporate “hardening” is not only demonstrable from scripture, it is more consistent with progression of the argument in Romans 9. God’s judgment on Egypt nationally culminated in the Red Sea. It was there that God’s name was “proclaimed through all the earth”. Again, the purpose of this “hardening” is with respect to God’s strategy for human history and his deliverance of Israel, not with respect to individual salvation at all.
If it is argued that God hardened Pharoah’s heart (presumably leading to his personal damnation, though that is neither the subject of the various references in Exodus, nor of Romans 9), it may equally be pointed out that the scripture tells us that Pharaoh hardened his heart, and that he did so on multiple occasions. If these verses in Exodus affirm the sovereignty of God in man’s salvation, they equally affirm the responsibility of man and his ability to choose.
If it is argued that God hardened Pharoah’s heart (presumably leading to his personal damnation, though that is neither the subject of the various references in Exodus, nor of Romans 9), it may equally be pointed out that the scripture tells us that Pharaoh hardened his heart, and that he did so on multiple occasions. If these verses in Exodus affirm the sovereignty of God in man’s salvation, they equally affirm the responsibility of man and his ability to choose.
In any case, as with the rest of the chapter, it is not the
individual who is in view with respect to the sovereignty of God.
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