Who Prepares Vessels of Wrath?

What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory. (Romans 9:22-23)

I find some more helpful insights in researching the original words for these verses. They enforce what can be seen even in some of the English translations when viewed with correct paradigms.

Look at these words with the backdrop of a God who is intensely passionate in His love, almost impatient to be reunited with all of His children and yet restrains Himself to protect us from that very intensity because of the danger it poses for us until we are in harmony enough with Him to live in His fiery presence.

It starts out by saying that He is willing for His wrath to be demonstrated or revealed. In chapter 1 almost the very same thing has been talked about. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. (Romans 1:18-20)

This wrath referred to must not be confused with human-type wrath that is mingled with evil feelings and desires to harm others. God's wrath when properly translated and understood is His intense passion. And while we generally only experience intense passion when we get hatefully angry or are full of lust, God's passion is perfectly pure and untainted with any evil whatsoever. But God's presence itself is a consuming fire and is very dangerous for anyone who is not in perfect synchronization with His heart of selfless love and service for others. It is not an arbitrary rule but is simply a description of reality.

Even in the laws of physics there are many examples of the need for harmony to avoid destruction. Certain sounds can destroy a crystal glass because the glass cannot be flexible enough to resonate in sympathy with the intensity of the note. This is just a tiny example of what is referred to in Romans 1 as a revelation of God's invisible attributes through what He has made.

But while it is true that God has been protecting us from Himself and His overwhelming intensity of passion, the text in Romans 9:22 quoted at the beginning reveals that God will not always protect us from that passion. Those who choose to suppress the truth about God literally prepare themselves for destruction by choosing to make themselves vessels of wrath by clinging to lies about God instead of embracing the truth He wants to reveal to their hearts. So this verse says that God is willing that the results of those choices bear out the natural consequences of the dissonance, pain and ultimate destruction that is inevitable.

But there is more. While people are choosing to suppress the truth about God and are making themselves vessels of wrath, even during that time God is still sustaining them and protecting them from the full effects of their wrong choices in hopes that they will yet turn to Him and accept His love and grace for them before it is forever too late, before their hearts are beyond repair. The word translated “endure” is usually translated elsewhere in the New Testament as when someone carries something or someone who cannot move on their own power. It is used to describe situations when people were carried to Jesus to be healed or when objects were carried around with someone.

What this tells me is that even while I am making sinful choices that increase my disabilities to live and move, God continues to carry me, sustain me and hold me up while offering me chance after chance to respond to His love and receive the truth about Him into my heart in hopes that I will turn to Him.

What I see this verse saying is that He endures – holds up, sustains – with much patience those who are preparing themselves, by their choices to suppress the truth about God, as vessels of wrath for destruction.

And why is He doing that? Think about it. The very next verse says that He does this so that the riches of His glory can be made known upon the vessels of mercy. But wait – who are these vessels of mercy? Are they people that God arbitrarily picked ahead of time to receive His favor while rejecting all the others? NO! They themselves are former “vessels of wrath” who have responded to God's invitation to return to Him and be healed by Him. They have seen His mercy and have acted on the revelation of the kindness of God by repenting and coming to Him for healing and grace. For we are all vessels of wrath at one time or another, totally unfit to survive in the presence of the Almighty. And until we embrace His mercy and allow His transforming power to ravish our hearts with His love and allow Him to make us fit to come closer to Him, we will all be in mortal danger from the passion of God.

It is now becoming more clear to me in this chapter who is choosing what. While God is not arbitrarily determining who will be safe and joyful in His presence and who will suffer torment and fear, He also is not going to forever hide behind the protective shield He has put around Himself to protect sinners from the lethal effects of His fiery passionate love and the truth about Himself. Love desires intimacy. But intimacy at that intensity can only be survived and enjoyed when everyone involved is in perfect synchronization and sympathy with the principles of reality that God has set up in the whole universe. It is each one of us that makes the determination by our choices whether we will remain vessels of wrath – dangerously out of sync with God's passion – or we will accept the gift of salvation through the gospel as revealed in Jesus our Saviour and Redeemer.

But the heart of God continues to burn with intense desire that every one of us become vessels of mercy by believing in His mercy, compassion and the truth about His character. For He wants nothing other than to lavish us with the riches of His glory.

Wow! I never thought I would find all of this when I first started reading this chapter. But then again, I knew that where I find the most troubling ideas on the surface in the Bible that there is usually some of the most exciting discoveries waiting beneath the surface for those who are willing to dig. I am in awe at all these revelations that He has shared with me in my pursuit of knowing Him better in this chapter. And I look forward to much more as I continue my way through the book of Romans.

Please feel free to share your thoughts and impressions with me, even if you don't agree or even if you have no idea who I am or you just happen to come across this web page at random. I enjoy connecting with others in my study of the Word and I pray that God will use my simple bits of sharing of what I am learning to enlighten others and motivate them to dig a little deeper themselves. Feel free to share with me on my journey.

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Who Makes Vessels of Wrath?

I am finding still more interesting clues about God's attitude toward the wicked and the righteous in Romans chapter 9. I find that when I read it and it still disturbs me that the very tension of being disturbed about what I am reading is the incentive to ask questions. And asking questions creates the very environment more conducive to learning and changing my thinking at a deeper level. Feeling disturbed actually engages the emotional side of the brain which is very important to changing deep-seated assumptions and beliefs at a more important level. It creates a more effective opportunity to make changes in my thinking that are more fundamental and longer-lasting if I take advantage of that opportunity by pursuing light and truth to resolve these tensions.

What comes to my attention this morning is verse 18 and verses 22 and 23. These verses seem to be saying very much the same thing in many ways and is part of the tension that underlies centuries of arguments and debates. I believe truth is consistent and I don't buy the idea that problems or issues that have been debated by theologians over the ages cannot be solved by simple lay persons. This is not a statement made in a spirit of arrogance. The Bible teaches that the Spirit of God knows exactly the mind of God and is available to anyone who is humble and willing to be taught the things of God if they will take the time and energy to search and pray for answers and insight. I do not believe in always looking to theologians for the final word on answers about God. That is the world's way of thinking – that only the “experts” have enough credibility to be believed and counted on to come up with definitive solutions to difficult problems. That kind of thinking has produced the fractures and divisions and confusion that we see in religion of all kinds today. Depending on so-called experts or human-appointed “authorities” is not the way to arrive at unifying truth.

The only way that God's people will ever come into unity, both of heart and of thinking, is by listening to and being led by the one Spirit who has been sent to teach us all things and empower every individual to take their proper place in the mysterious body of Christ. We cannot formulate the body of Christ by our own machinations or denominations. The body of Christ will only be connected together when each person who has submitted to be led by the Spirit of God listens to and obeys that Spirit. And the Bible, the word of God, has been given to test the spirits so that we do not need to be deceived by an imitation of the true Spirit. For all imitations of the true Spirit are lying spirits calculated to create division and drive a wedge between our hearts and the passionate heart of God.

So, I got a little off on a tangent there. But sometimes I need to remind myself of what is important and the environment in which I need to stay to unravel some of the difficult things I am looking at.

I decided to again go back and check the original language to look for clues in these verses and I did find some. Even in the current translation there are some good clues if I read it with the right preconceptions about God in place. For instance, I notice that in verse 18 that the common denominator of God's relating to the two classes of people is His desire.

So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. (Romans 9:18)

Some questions come to mind at this point that have to do with assumptions that need to be exposed and challenged. Is God's mercy toward those in the first group in reaction to their predetermined classification or is God's mercy an expression of who He is and what He is consistently like irregardless of who we are or the choices we make? Likewise, is the hardening effect of God on the second class His real desire for them because of their predetermined lot in life or is it simply a description of the effect that is seen in their life – like fire hardening a piece of clay?

And notice that the last part of each of these descriptions says the same thing – He desires. Is it really safe to leap to the assumption that His desire for one group is the opposite of His desire for the second group. To answer yes to that question is to betray deep, fundamental suspicions in our heart about God that resonate very much with the ideas entrenched in us that come from the father of lies and the archenemy of God. That should not surprise us since we are all infected with these lies due to our condition of being part of the fallen human race. But these false assumptions about God should not be allowed to go unchallenged and unexamined when trying to interpret the word of God.

I believe that Scripture teaches that God's desire is that everyone would be saved in heaven and live with Him in His love eternally. And that even includes Pharaoh himself! I believe it is inconsistent with the rest of Scripture to assume from this passage that God intends for some to be lost and others to be saved. That is to charge God with being arbitrary and overriding people's freedom to make a free choice of their own. This needs to become settled in the mind before one can go any further in understanding what Paul is really trying to convey in these verses.

So if God's desire is for everyone to be redeemed, to come to repentance and to be transformed back into His image, and if He fiercely protects the right of every intelligent being to have a free choice in determining their own destiny, then what is with the mercy and the hardness? I believe that it becomes evident that the mercy or hardness is simply a description of what is experienced by each person based on their own decisions of how they are going to respond to God's desire for them and the picture of God that they cling to.

Some might insist that verse 16 is saying the very opposite of this. But again, it all depends on our pre-assumptions about God as to what we will see in these verses. I also think we need to keep in mind that the translators of the Bible also wove in a certain amount of their own preconceptions about God in the words they chose to express what they believed Paul was trying to say. It is impossible to translate anything from one language to another without introducing at least a little bit of the translator's bias and that becomes one of the factors that needs to be remembered in unraveling some of the confusion that we see here. As I mentioned in a previous post about verse 16, it can be seen to really be saying that God's mercy is not dependent on anything we do or choose but is simply a description of what He is like. I think that this concept can be seen to be consistent throughout this whole passage if it is considered carefully.

Now I would like to mention one more thing I uncovered in looking at verses 22 and 23.

What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory. (Romans 9:22-23)

There is a lot that can be said about these verses. As far as the issue of wrath goes (which is where much of the confusion about this passage comes from in the first place) I would say that I have already covered this several times, particularly in my study of Romans 1 where it first shows up. That understanding of what is really meant by God's wrath is crucial to properly understanding the other places where it shows up throughout the Bible.

But what I did look for in these verses was the meaning behind the words “prepared” used in both verses and for both classes of people. When I went back and looked up the Greek that was used to arrive at these words I noticed something very significant. The original Greek words used for the same English word “prepared” in both of these verses is not the same. While they may be very similar they have notable differences. The original word used in verse 22 simply conveys the idea of “maturing” or completion. It does not necessarily carry the notion of being predetermined ahead of time like the word used for the second verse does. The “ahead of time” idea in verse 23 does come through even in the English as the word “beforehand” and I believe is quite significant.

Since God already knows from eternity what our choices and destiny is going to be, He can make His plans ahead of time to take that into account, yet still without imposing any sort of coercion on us to make those choices. I discussed this a bit in some of my recent posts on this passage. Really this whole passage is made more difficult because of our general inability to be able to comprehend how God can know our destiny ahead of time without unfairly using that information either against us or to our unfair advantage. That is due to the fact that it is extremely difficult to imagine a God who is free of our penchant to take advantages for ourselves in any way possible. We have such strong bias's due to our natural selfishness that it is nearly impossible for us to imagine what a totally unselfish God – or person for that matter – would think like.

But God does not think like we do and He does not use His power or advantages to manipulate circumstances in any way that could ever be considered to be unfair to anyone. That truth will ultimately be fully revealed at the final day of judgment, but until then we need to believe it by faith, trusting in a God who has our best interest in His heart all the time.

The reason that I think this difference is significant between the two verses is that it shows that God really does not predetermine anyone to become a “vessel of wrath”. No one is forced to become a vessel of wrath and become a lost sinner. Even the choice of the potter to make vessels for different uses in verse 21 does not state that some are designed to be vessels of wrath, it only states that some are designed for honorable use and others for common use. And in the Kingdom of Heaven everything is upside down to start with from what we are used to thinking. Jesus declared that those who wish to be the greatest in the Kingdom of God must learn to serve the most unselfishly and be most humble. So just because God may have formed a vessel for common use does not mean that He intended it to become a vessel of wrath. That comes about as a direct result of the choice made by the person themselves and becomes evident in the fruit of their responses to God's appeals to them.

What is seen throughout this passage and in other places is that the only real predestination that goes on in God's mind is His desire for everyone to be saved and to be restored into intimate relationship with Him. He knows that will not happen for everyone and He knows who will make what choices, but that knowledge in know way whatsoever changes His intense desire to capture our hearts anyway. God is love and cannot be anything in conflict with that love. God does not have a good and bad side to His personality. God is totally righteous and in Him there is no darkness at all.

The repeated emphasis that Paul keeps making throughout this passage is a focus on the true desire of God in contrast to the results that occur in the lives of those who resist His good desire for them. We are completely free to choose to accept His mercy and compassion and we are also completely free to resist Him and turn ourselves into vessels of wrath. God's foreknowledge in no way affects our freedom to make this choice, but His desire is always that we will choose His love.

However, if we do choose to cling to the lies about Him and believe that He is unfair, manipulative and coercive, we will end up experiencing the “wrath” that we imagine Him to have against us – not because it is true about Him but because the image that we cling to in our mind about what God is like produces the results of that image in our psyche. One of the important concepts found in a true understanding of His wrath is that He will reluctantly release us to the results of our own decisions. That is what explains the stark difference in reactions between those who love God and believe the truth about Him and those who are afraid of God and cling to their lies about Him as demonstrated at the Second Coming of Jesus. Notice which class cry out for the rocks and the mountains to fall on them and to hide them from His glory when He returns. And particularly notice the absurd description of Him that they exclaim in terror. They are terrified of the “wrath of the lamb”. Whoever in all of history was in grave danger from a wrathful lamb? How much worse can their mental illness become?

I do not want to make the choices or continue to harbor the beliefs inside of me that will cause me to have this kind of absurd paranoia. I want to be cleaned out of these lies and be filled with the beauty of God and experience the loveliness of His character and presence. I choose to trust in His continuing work inside of me to fit me as a vessel of mercy though which to make known the riches of His glory. Even so, do it Lord Jesus.

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Very Interesting Link

I invite you to visit Greg Boyd's blog page, particularly the posts for November 3 and 6. Greg Boyd is the founder and pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, MN. He writes about his thoughts on the ministry and controversial picture of the Good News Tour and the recent exposure of the massive hypocrisy of Christians in response to the advertisements for their recent conference in Portland Ore. I find his posts very exciting and fascinating in light of what many of us are learning about God.

Diabolical Manipulator or Merciful God?

So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy. (Romans 9:16 NRSV)

As we get into the troubling story of Pharaoh and the extended arguments as to who hardened his heart during the plagues of Egypt, it needs to be remembered that it was God's attributes of mercy and compassion that are highlighted in this story, not His supposed forcing of Pharaoh to resist God's wrath. Again this story drives home the point that it is not human actions or events that determine God's plans or influence how He acts toward us but it is the character of God Himself coupled with His foreknowledge that determines His actions and attitudes towards us.

I believe that if we looked at this story about Pharaoh through the eyes of heaven instead of our twisted misconceptions about God that we could see a very different picture with very different conclusions about God. God loved Pharaoh just as much as he loved Moses. That has to be the starting point and the reference point from which to read the rest of the story or everything begins to fall apart very quickly. However it is very clear that Pharaoh was one of those people who were determined to have nothing but a hateful relationship with God. God actually offered Pharaoh repeatedly chance after change to be a vessel of mercy and glorify God's name in the earth by responding in repentance and assisting God's chosen people instead of resisting them.

The hardening of Pharaoh was not a description of his choice to resist God but was a result of that choice. We too often confuse the two things. In God's government of absolute freedom of choice for every being, Pharaoh made the choices to stay in his pride and rebellion against all odds, resisting the kindness of God that could have led him to repentance instead of surrendering to overwhelming evidence of God's mercy and compassion. In fact, this story should really be a strong warning to us of the dangers of our own hearts becoming hardened when we refuse to believe in God's mercy and compassion and instead try to paint a picture of Him as a mix of both good and evil. If you may remember, that was part of the original lie that the serpent told to Eve from the tree."For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:5)

So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?" On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? 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? (Romans 9:18-21)

If a fire hardens a distorted lump of clay is it fair to tell the fire that it should not have that effect on clay?

Likewise, is it fair to demand that the One who knows everything should not see problems inside the people who are suffering from their resistance to His love for them?

Is it fair to think that God should not use His foreknowledge of a person's decisions in His planning for the lives of those people and those around them? We would say that a person was negligent and derelict if they ignore their knowledge of important facts in making life and death decisions, and yet we think God should not do the same?

Just because God decides to allow a person's resistant choices to wreak havoc on their life or their nation does not make God to blame for those choices that they make. If He decides to arrange circumstances so that those very choices of resistance end up in highlighting His own mercy, does that give us grounds for accusing Him of inducing the behavior of the impenitent?

If we honestly believe that God is the cause behind someone's bad choices, or forces a person to resist His goodness; if we believe that God preordains some, irregardless of their own will, to be used as instruments and containers through which to demonstrate His hostility, spite and meanness, then it would follow that maybe we should wake up one day and pray, “God, make me an instrument of your wrath today. Harden my heart against your love and cause me to be resistant and stubborn today to glorify your name.”

As absurd as that sounds, would it not be in harmony with the “will of God”? To be consistent in our beliefs we would have to say that if it is God's predetermined intention to use certain people through which to demonstrate His negative, dark side, and that somehow this returns glory back to God's reputation, then it would also seem right to pray for this part of His will to be done as well. And since it would be wrong for us to judge that someone else should be the object of His “wrath”, then maybe when we feel hopeless and all so full of evil inside we should offer up ourselves as objects of His fury so that we can do Him a favor by demonstrating the alleged dark side of His character through our messed up lives.

We do not need God's help to live out a life of sin and rebellion. Of course, all of this nonsense is absolutely absurd and even worse than it sounds and I hope nobody is seriously considering doing it. But it is the kind of thinking that follows from settling for a simplistic surface understanding of this passage according to the way it is often believed to read. I believe it is useful sometimes to follow an idea to its logical next step to see what direction it may be leading us so we can see if we are working with reasonable assumptions or if our beliefs need some serious re-thinking and divine modification. But sometimes this kind of reasoning is useful to enhance the brightness of the real truth about God by contrast when we begin to see it in its true beauty and perfect consistency.

What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! For He says to Moses, "I WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOM I HAVE MERCY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOM I HAVE COMPASSION." So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. (Romans 9:14-16)

We may secretly think that the injustice of God is in forcing certain people to be the fall guy for Him. According to what we might conclude from this passage we may think that God simply overwhelms the resistance of anyone whom He has arbitrarily chosen to be the “bad guy”, to be a vessel of His wrath.

But in fact, God turns it around and shows us that the real injustice we are accusing Him of is being too merciful and compassionate. For ever since sin entered the universe this has been one of the lies of Satan that he plays off against his other lies about God to keep us in confusion. Either we believe that God is harsh and judgmental and arbitrary or we might believe He is too lenient and soft on those that in our opinion deserve to be punished severely. Of course, it is usually ourselves that we think are being treated too harshly and others that are treated too softly.

But look at what these verses are really saying. What is the “it” that is referred to in verse 16? What is not dependent on human will or exertion? The “it” refers to the active mercy and compassion of God toward sinful human beings. What this text is actually saying is that God's mercy and compassion is not dependent on anything we do or choices we make but on the purpose and desires of God toward those He has created. God's mercy is not predicated on human will or exertion but on God who has mercy. I see God here insisting that He will be merciful and compassionate whether we like it or not, because that is a part of who He is.

I find this rather fascinating. Here is Paul defending God for choosing to show compassion and mercy. I don't see God here trying to defend Himself against charges of punishing someone or abusing them but only about things in His true character. Even in the following verses it could be legitimately said that the hardness that takes place is not because God forced it on someone but was a result of resistance to His very presence. It is the same issue that we see in the pervasive misunderstandings about the fire of God and what happens in hell. (For insights on that visit Surprise Ending and Heavenly Sanctuary)

It is also interesting that the analogy of a potter and clay is used in this passage. Adam was made from the clay of the earth, but what happened when God breathed into him (kissed him really)? Did he suddenly become very hard – a porcelain doll? No, he became a living soul with a soft body of flesh and a heart wide open to love and be loved. God's presence and life, the very essence of who He is, was breathed into the clay body of Adam and Adam took on those characteristics so much that he was very similar to God. What is man that You take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him? Yet You have made him a little lower than God, And You crown him with glory and majesty! (Psalms 8:4-5) He was created in the image of God, in His likeness. (By the way, the concept of Adam at that point was both male and female. Eve was, in a way, still inside of him and just needed to be drawn out and given a separate identity. But the Bible says “man” was male and female. See Gen. 1:26,27.

But sin soon entered into this creation made in the image of God and caused an alienation of resistance due to a breakdown of trust between the Creator and His beloved creation. Adam and Eve's choice to believe “The Lie” about God put them out of synchronization with their Source of power and introduced the deadly element of resistance into the relationship. What does a resistor produce when power passes through it? Ask any electronics person and they will tell you – it produces heat. And what happens when heat is applied to clay instead of the life-giving breath of God? You have a hardening of the heart.

So we see then that there are two very different reactions to the same presence of God. When one is in harmony with the way things are created and synchronized with their Creator they are energized and come alive the more they experience His power and presence. But when they choose to believe lies about God and try to live outside of the harmony and principles that they were designed to live within, they experience dysfunction, pain and all sorts of symptoms that eventually lead to death if no intervention is received. Nothing has changed really since Adam and Eve chose to embrace mistrust in their loving Father; we still distrust Him due to the same lies about Him that they embraced and God is still intervening with His grace and mercy to allow us time to be reconciled to Him.

You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?" (Romans 9:19)

There is yet another ironic turning of a question on its head. We may think at first reading that this verse means God is looking for an excuse to punish someone after He Himself caused them to be vessels of His wrath. That seems grossly unfair to us and it rightly should – if it was true! But once again the question can be found to be saying something quite different than at first thought, actually incriminating us instead of God.

If the question is looked at from a different angle it can be seen as a complaint that God is not qualified to be our Judge. “Why does God have the right to see any faults in us? It's not fair for Him to say that we are at fault when we resist His love, mercy and compassion towards us when it actually works out to be for His glory.”

In essence, it can be seen that we are demanding the right to resist God and all the principles of reality and even the very design for which we are created but still not suffer any of the natural consequences. That makes as much sense as filing a lawsuit because gravity causes us to fall to the ground when we step off a cliff and receive serious injuries or death as a result.

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." (Romans 9:17)

Isn't it just as possible that if Pharaoh had surrendered to God's mercy and compassion that he could have demonstrated God's power and name throughout the whole earth through his cooperation with God and Moses? Was it absolutely necessary that Pharaoh be a resistant “vessel of wrath” for God's power to be seen in him? As Paul would say – God forbid! God does not need evil people through which to display some hidden evil part of His own nature. That thinking comes straight from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil inhabited by the enemy of God. God does not have a dark side as most suppose Him to have. God is all light and God is love. Any darkness that we see about Him is due to our misapprehensions about Him and residual lies that still cloud our thinking and darken our own vision. And where we see darkness we need to ask for more light of truth to dispel that darkness, not simply attribute the darkness to the nature of God.

The end of chapter 9 begins to make these points even more clear. I will explore that more when I get into those verses.

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God's Purpose

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28)

...for though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, so that God's purpose according to His choice would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls. (Romans 9:11)

I see a direct link between these verses and others in Romans that refer to God's purpose. I think the main thrust of chapter 9 is to re-emphasize the point that God's purpose and plans are originated from Him and not from anything we try to do to impress Him or anything we might do in rebellion against Him.

This is not the same thing as God manipulating our choices. Just because God knows ahead of time what we will choose and takes that into account in His plans does not justify charges of Him forcing us to make those choices. He simply has the advantage of access to all information both past and future from which to form His plans, unlike any other being in the universe. That means that His plans and purposes are never caught by surprise or thwarted by anything anyone does because their choices and actions were already taken into account in the creation of His plans.

So from our perspective life and time are just a continual unfolding of, a revealing of God's incredible ability to coordinate everything together perfectly. The basis underlying all His purposes and plans is the comprehensive love described at the end of chapter 8. All of His purposes are always consistent with love as well as foreknowledge. And none of this is dependent in any way or can be changed in any way by our “works”, our attempts to impress or anger Him, or anything else we may do, not because it does not matter to Him or because He is arbitrary but because His purpose already took everything about us into account ahead of time.

Some may conclude that this robs us of all freedom. But that is because we may have skewed ideas of what freedom really is. Maybe we think freedom is the ability to out-maneuver someone else, to surprise them with our originality, or to be completely independent of them in every respect. But that would be absolutely impossible in relation to God because He is the only source that keeps everything and everyone alive. To attempt to live completely independent of God is to cease to live altogether, and that certainly is not in line with our idea or God's idea of freedom.

God is certainly very protective of freedom, far more than any of us ever thought of being. Our notions of freedom are akin to abject slavery when compared to God's plans and concepts of true freedom. Real freedom is not total independence but is total fulfillment; it is living in perfect harmony with our original design so that we experience the most joy and love and harmony possible with all other created beings and with all the natural principles of the universe. That is the kind of true freedom that God has in store for those who respond to His invitation to get real in His presence. (see my translation from the Greek on Romans 8:28)

So the core issue that Paul is again addressing that he has been visiting repeatedly throughout Romans thus far is the fact that our religious activities or performance are not the foundation for our relationship with God but God's mercy and compassion and everything that God has done in order to save as many as possible. No one will be lost because they did not perform enough religion or could not figure out the right “formula” or didn't acquire enough information to pass the “great test”. No, those are not the criteria by which anyone will be saved in heaven or lost in hell. God has already put in place everything needed for us to be restored into a vital connection with the only Source of life.

Anyone who loses eternal life in the end – and unfortunately there will be many – are going to be those who cling to the lies about God in their hearts in resistance to the truth about Him at whatever level they are at in their understanding of Him. It is in repeatedly resisting the Spirit of God trying to convey the truth about God to our hearts until we have succeeded in hardening our hearts beyond our ability to respond that causes us to end up experiencing the the torture of hell. For it is only those who have responded and surrendered to the amazing love and compassion of our loving Creator to be transformed by that love back into their original design who will be safe to live in the fiery presence of unlimited Love and Passion.

This is the message that keeps coming out over and over again in the book of Romans and that I find as the key to unlocking the surface confusion in chapter 9. It must be in the context of this understanding of the big picture that we need to read the stories about Abraham, Esau and Jacob and Pharaoh mentioned in this chapter. The main thrust that Paul is trying to convey here is that it was not what these people did or did not do that determined God's plans. God does not make up His plans on the fly or in reaction to our choices and actions like we often do. That is because He already has that information ahead of time so His plans and purposes were in place before the foundation of the world.

What history and our present life is simply revealing is the unfolding of those plans throughout each generation. And it can be seen that in the unfolding of His plans is revealed the true nature of the One who formed those plans. But we need to bring the right paradigms to our study of these stories or we will seriously misinterpret the conclusions that these stories convey to us about God. We need the Spirit of God to teach and guide us and give us wisdom to know how to relate to the stories of those who have lived before us. Otherwise another spirit, a lying spirit will put an evil spin on everything we view and muddy the true picture of our loving, kind and consistent Heavenly Father.

One thing that must be clearly nailed down in this passage is the link between God's foreknowledge and His justice. Foreknowledge is not the same thing as control, though it is very often confused for that in our thinking and reasoning. It is very easy for us to buy into Satan's lie that it is impossible for God to be just if He knows ahead of time what our decisions are going to be. That is putting one characteristic of God in exclusive opposition to another characteristic, a favorite trick of the enemy of our souls to keep us in suspicion against God. When we are deceived by this kind of logic it then becomes very difficult to arrive at correct perceptions of God's word. This is the very issue that Paul is addressing in this chapter.

To get back to the stories used in this passage and their implications in our lives, who is it really who makes the decision as to what kind of vessels a person becomes on the molding wheel in God's pottery room? Let me go back and carefully look at the lessons that Paul is trying to make from each of these stories.

First of all he mentions the story of Abraham and his first two sons. The first-born son came about because of Sarah and Abraham's attempt to help out God illegitimately, to assist God in keeping His promises since it looked like God couldn't quite get it done on His own. God allowed them to do that even though the Jews and the rest of the Arab world are still duking it out to this very day as a result. But through the ensuing events God made it crystal clear that His covenant promises to Abraham, in fact His blessings destined for the whole world were going to come through the son who came about through their surrender to God in faith alone without any of their own schemes and plans mixed into the formula. In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring. (Romans 9:8 NIV)

The next illustration that Paul uses is that of Esau and Jacob. Paul uses two quotations attributed to God about these boys and I find it interesting that one of them is stated before they were born and the other is literally centuries after they had died. The second statement is one that we usually struggle with the most to reconcile with the way we are learning that God relates to us. How can it be that the God whose unstoppable love is described just before this in the end of chapter 8 can now say that He hates Esau? That seems like a very big obstacle to our faith and a very efficient excuse for discounting the idea of the unconditional love of God for sinners.

One simplistic possibility that could be applied is that God said this so long after the boys lives were over and the results of their choices were played out in the nations that they fathered that it would be easy for Him to say that He hated Esau and the people of Edom who became some of the worst enemies of the nation of Israel. But I can't buy into that kind of thinking either. Israel itself along with Jacob made a real mess of their relationship with God and did plenty of things that deserved a great deal of hatred if we are going to apply that kind of principle to the situation. No, I don't think that is a valid line of reasoning to use here.

The text itself gives us direction as to the truth that we need to see in this story. And that truth, in fact, is nearly the opposite of the conclusion above. Paul states emphatically that ... though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, ...God's purpose according to His choice would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls. (Romans 9:11)

In other words, the point I see emerging in Paul's explanations of these stories is that God does not make His plans in reaction to our choices or performance. We cannot manipulate God or surprise Him or control Him in any way since He has the foreknowledge of everything ahead of time. But still, He values freedom so much that His use of that foreknowledge is not abusive and manipulative but is simply a revelation of His infinite wisdom, love and grace.

And what about hating Esau? Again I believe that this is something that takes maturity to wrap our minds around and comprehend how it fits into the more clear exhibitions and explanations of God's nature and relations with His created beings. In my mind I see it going along the same line as the other lessons being explained in this passage. It is simply an acknowledgment of the emotional relationship that is seen between a particular person and God. Is it safe to say that God initiated this hatred based on this verse? I do not believe so. I don't believe that God wants to have a relationship of hatred with any of His children. But the fact is that there are many who choose to cling to their own hatred of God despite any and all attempts to remove it on the part of God and so the only way He can describe the relationship with that person is one of hatred, for it is the only one that that person will allow. It does not mean that the hatred originated in the heart of God or was imposed by Him. It is simply an acknowledgment of the end result of their choices about what to believe about Him.

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