The Potter And The Clay

Romans – A Treatise
Chapter Two
THE POTTER AND THE CLAY

Scripture Reading: verses 14-24

WHAT SHALL WE SAY THEN? IS THERE UNRIGHTEOUSNESS WITH GOD? GOD FORBID. FOR HE SAITH TO MOSES, I WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOM I WILL HAVE MERCY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOM I WILL HAVE COMPASSION. SO THEN IT IS NOT OF HIM THAT WILLETH, NOR OF HIM THAT RUNNETH, BUT OF GOD THAT SHOWETH MERCY. FOR THE SCRIPTURE SAITH UNTO PHARAOH, EVEN FOR THIS SAME PURPOSE HAVE I RAISED THEE UP, THAT I MIGHT SHOW MY POWER IN THEE, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE DECLARED THROUGHOUT ALL THE EARTH. THEREFORE HATH HE MERCY ON WHOM HE WILL HAVE MERCY, AND WHOM HE WILL HE HARDENETH. THOU WILT SAY THEN UNTO ME, WHY DOTH HE YET FIND FAULT? FOR WHO HATH RESISTED HIS WILL? NAY BUT, O MAN, WHO ART THOU THAT REPLIEST AGAINST GOD? SHALL THE THING FORMED SAY TO HIM THAT FORMED IT, WHY HAST THOU MADE ME THUS? HATH NOT THE POTTER POWER OVER THE CLAY, OF THE SAME LUMP TO MAKE ONE VESSEL UNTO HONOUR, AND ANOTHER UNTO DISHONOUR? WHAT IF GOD, WILLING TO SHOW HIS WRATH, AND TO MAKE HIS POWER KNOWN, ENDURED WITH MUCH LONG-SUFFERING THE VESSELS OF WRATH FITTED TO DESTRUCTION; AND THAT HE MIGHT MAKE KNOWN THE RICHES OF HIS GLORY ON THE VESSELS OF MERCY, WHICH HE HAD AFORE PREPARED UNTO GLORY, EVEN US, WHOM HE HATH CALLED, NOT OF THE JEWS ONLY, BUT ALSO OF THE GENTILES?

In a legal way, Paul is setting in juxtaposition the immutable purpose of God and the traditional or fleshly claims of the Jew. According to flesh, it is natural for the human heart to pride itself on traditional or inherited distinctions. This is not confined to those under discussion in this chapter. The carnal minded Christian wants to trace his religious lineage back to some outstanding personality whom he claims for himself or organization. This is the unfortunate cause of sectarianism that exists in religion at this hour. Some trace their religious tradition back to Simon Peter. Others, not quite so ambitious, are content to claim distinct lineage with Martin Luther, John Wesley, John Knox, or some other man, as if faith was something inherited on the line of flesh.

In a general way, that is presented in this chapter. Here it is taken up in connection with the Jew nationally, but let us make it of wide application so each of us may get the spiritual benefit of this brilliant legal argument.

Since Paul himself was a Jew, he could speak with both authority and intimate personal knowledge of the traditional Jewish outlook. Little wonder that with constant reference to the Hebrew Bible Scriptures he took up the various personalities in the historic pageantry of Israel’s economy, beginning with Abraham, then touching on Jacob and Esau, then Moses, then Pharaoh, a little later Hosea, then Esaias. In keeping with his part as a brilliant attorney, he gathers evidence both for and against the court’s right to issue a decree of blessing on the forgiven sinner. Throughout this chapter, we must re-member that condemnation is not the objective. It is rather the court’s right to show mercy.

The first question asked: “Is there unrighteousness with God?”¹ When God chose Jacob and rejected Esau,² shall He be accused of unrighteous dealings? Paul says, “God forbid,” and he unequivocally asserts the right of the Almighty to show mercy to whom He will show mercy. This is a lesson each one of us has to learn. It is really a continuation of the subject presented at the end of the 28th verse of chapter 8, “called according to His purpose.” The Almighty had set forth on a vast scheme of universal blessing wherein the Lord Jesus Christ, His Beloved Son, is the center of everything. He is regarded as the first born among many brethren and the great wheels of God’s dealings with men must turn during the cycles of time and no one shall stand in their way. Everything must be subjugated to the will of the Almighty to bring about a universe of bliss to the eternal glory of His Name, where every intelligent being shall worship His Beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. That is God’s purpose; the wheels of His dealings may move slowly but they grind exceeding small. Woe to anyone getting in the way of the divine purpose.

The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner? Whosoever shall fall upon that stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder. (Luke 20:17, 18)

In Romans 9 we have presented the side of both blessing and condemnation. If Moses was the leader of those whom God chose to bless abundantly with His mercy, Pharaoh, on the other hand, was the leader of those who chose to rebel against the Almighty. God did not chose Pharaoh so that he might be eternally damned, but rather in the affairs of men there was a puppet or representative of the tyrannous and cruel people of Egypt with whom the Lord’s servant Moses could negotiate. That God hardened Pharaoh’s heart is part of the divine record in the Hebrew Bible, but it is also part of the record that prior to that Pharaoh hardened his own heart.³ Here is a great warning to every sinner. There are three stages to the personal attitude of Pharaoh toward the Lord. First, Pharaoh hardened his own heart; then God hardened Pharaoh’s heart; finally Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. To begin with, the choice remains with us, but if we choose our own way and walk in rebellion against God, then He may remove His restraining power, allowing our hearts to be hardened. This is the story of Pharaoh and thus he becomes a mere puppet in the hand of the Almighty to display God’s mighty power to deliver His people, in spite of everything man and demon might do against them. However, the initial choice was evidently with Pharaoh himself.

The apostle goes on, “Who hath resisted his will?” It is utterly useless for us to seek to thwart the will of God. If we have the wisdom to submit ourselves to His will, we shall find that it leads in the way of blessing. “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted” is a decree made by God Himself, so the next evidence presented by Paul is that we are but clay in the hands of the potter.⁴ However, we are not inanimate clay. God has given us an intelligence to either bend to His will or be broken by it, and so verse 22 is most striking. There we have three attributes of the Almighty, the Potter. The three attributes are wrath, power, and long-suffering. Notice it says "much long suffering."⁵ As sinner, if we disobey God and refuse His long-suffering mercy we have no prospect, either nationally or individually – only the condemnation of His almighty power and the execution of His wrath.

Footnotes:
¹ Paul’s great theme of God’s righteousness was never far from his thoughts; and his letter, in its entirety, has that theme constantly in focus. What he had just said of God’s election of Jacob might have raised some question of God’s rectitude; and, if the doctrine of election is what some affirm it to be, it would indeed indicate God’s lack of righteousness, thus making it necessary to reject all such views of that doctrine. But there was another phase of the rectitude of God that Paul had in mind here, and that is the fact that God has mercy upon some, and not upon others. Upon the uniformly wicked populations of earth, God has decided to show mercy to those who have accepted through obedient faith the mercy which is freely offered to all; but the salvation of those thus receiving God’s grace does no injustice to the wicked who never obey the truth and are therefore lost. Paul explained why in the next verse.
² Exodus 33:19 affirms the sovereign right of Almighty God to save whomsoever he will. No basis of any kind is there stated as an explanation of God’s saving some and rejecting others; but any understanding whatever of God’s dealings with His human children demands the assumption that there is a just and rational foundation for everything that God does. The choosing of Jacob was an act of grace, not influenced by the moral character of Jacob or the immorality of Esau. On the other hand, Esau was discriminated against and made to serve his brother through no fault of his own. William M. Greathouse (Beacon Bible Commentary, p. 204) wrote: “That God chose Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not depend upon anything in them .... The choice depended solely on God’s gracious will.” Such opinions as these clearly go far beyond anything the Word of God says and should be rejected unless they can be proved. Furthermore, there is abundant proof in God’s Word that it was something “in men” that entered into God’s election of them. For example, God elected Abraham, and why? If God is to be understood as either rational or just, there had to be a reason why. Human intelligence demands to know what it is; and the gracious and righteous God deigned to reveal to his human children just what the reason was, thus: “And the Lord said, For I know him (Abraham) that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him” (Gen. 18:19). In this epic passage of God’s Word, God stated His reasons for the choice of Abraham. God categorically stated He knew that Abraham would command his posterity after him, that they would keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment, “that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him,” the latter clause being a dogmatic affirmation that without the qualities God foreknew in Abraham, the fulfillment of the promise would have been impossible. Thus, we believe they greatly err who fancy that it “was nothing in” Abraham that entered into God’s election. That there was indeed something “in” Abraham that formed the basis of God’s just and righteous act should have been assumed, even without the statement of what it was; but such is the perversity of human thought that it is even denied AFTER the statement of it. Going a bit further, this example of why God chose Abraham is clearly applicable to the rejection of Esau. God saw in him a different “manner” of people from Abraham, making the fulfillment of the promise through Esau an utter impossibility; and that is something “in” Esau that resulted in God's rejection of him. The insinuation that God “discriminated” against Esau capriciously is, we believe, ridiculous. And to carry this postulate even further, in every case of election, there has to be an element in the elected that distinguishes him from those not elected; and to deny this is to make election to be a totally immoral and capricious thing, unworthy even of people, much less of God. Nor can such a certainty as this bear the slightest resemblance to any theory of anyone’s ever meriting salvation. Even when the election occurs, at least partially upon the basis of what is “in” the elected distinguishing them from the non-elected, the election is still without the merit of the elected and founded in God’s love and grace, but not upon “grace alone,” the proof of this being that God’s grace has come alike upon the totality of mankind (Titus 3:11), which includes the non-elected. Factors others than grace are therefore involved in election. How could a so-called election based on grace alone discriminate between the elected and the non-elected, if no other factor was involved?
³ The most careful attention should here be directed to what is not said by Paul in this appeal to Exodus 9:16. God did not say to Pharaoh that he had raised him up in order to destroy him, or to drown his army in the Red Sea, but that God had raised him up for the purpose of showing his power in Pharaoh and of having God’s name published throughout the earth. Just HOW God’s purpose would be fulfilled in Pharaoh, at the time God spoke, still remained within the circumference of Pharaoh’s free will to choose, whether by his own submission to God commands or by his rebellion against them, would be realized God’s purpose. If Pharaoh had submitted to God’s will, God’s name would have been magnified all over the world and His power would have been demonstrated in Pharaoh just as gloriously in that manner as it was in the manner of its actual occurrence. Pharaoh had the free choice of obeying or not obeying God; but either way God had purposed to use him as a demonstration of God’s power and a means of publishing the divine name all over the world; but the choice of HOW this would come about remained with Pharaoh until he was HARDENED. What happened to the king of Nineveh, following the preaching of Jonah, should be remembered in the connection here. Both Pharaoh and the ruler of Nineveh heard the Word of God, the one by Moses, the other by Jonah. Nineveh received mercy; Egypt did not. God had a perfect right to spare one and punish the other; but it is a falsehood to allege that God’s doing so was capricious and unrelated to what was in the two monarchs or to their response to God’s Word. It definitely was related to their response. Pharaoh repeatedly to Nineveh, on the other hand, called his whole nation to sackcloth and ashes, leading the way in penitence himself, with all of his royal court. A mere glance at the two monarchs reveals why one was spared, the other not. And note too that even in the case of Nineveh, it was even there a matter of God’s grace; for God owed nothing to either monarch, either to the one who hardened his heart or to the one that repented – hence the propriety of Paul’s remark that God had mercy upon whom He would, and whom He would He hardened. But there was a dark and threatening shadow of doom for Israel in Paul’s introduction of the case of Pharaoh whose repeated triflings with God’s Word had resulted, at last, in God’s judicial hardening of the evil monarch’s heart (after Pharaoh himself had hardened it ten times). This was exactly what God had done to Israel, and the awful knowledge of it was almost breaking Paul’s heart. The thrust of that terrible word “hardened” at the end of Romans 9:18 was pointed squarely at Israel; and Paul would announce it formally in Romans 11:25, but here it was only mentioned. Before the dreadful truth would be thundered in the oracle of the eleventh chapter, Paul would continue to build the logical foundations leading up to it; and it cannot be doubted that herein lies the purpose of bringing Pharaoh into these verses.
⁴ Paul points out that man has no more right to question God than a pot has to criticize the potter, and here is exactly where the problem lies. Man is not a pot, and he does diligently strive to understand the workings of the divine government; and it is precisely because of such human strivings that works like Romans were provided by the Spirit of God. Even in this, God’s mercy is extended to man that his desire to know is honored through the sacred revelations of God’s will. The bearing of this analogy on the Jewish question is still in the forefront of Paul’s thought. The lump represents the whole of humanity. Let not Israel therefore say to God, “Thou hast no right to make of me anything else than a vessel of honor; and thou hast no right to make of that other body, the Gentiles, anything else than a base vessel.” It belongs to God himself to decide, according to His wisdom. The figure of the two kinds of vessels, honorable and dishonorable, made from the same lump is most instructive and was extended by Paul in his letter to Timothy (2 Tim. 2:20, 21). Paul’s instruction from the same figure there reveals that caprice is not the determining factor in selecting which vessels are to be honorable; because Paul granted to those who will “purge themselves of wickedness” the precious promise that they should be made into vessels of honor, suitable for the Master’s use. The hardening of Israel and God’s rejection of that nation from having any further place as a favored portion of humanity is the great announcement Paul was leading up to, as noted by John Locke, on p. 342 of his book, Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul: “By ‘the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction’ (mentioned in Rom. 9:22) he manifestly means the nation of the Jews, who were now grown ripe, and fit for the destruction he was bringing upon them. And by ‘vessels of mercy’ he means the Christian church gathered out of a small collection of convert Jews, and the rest made up of Gentiles, who were together from thenceforward to be the people of God in the room of the Jewish nation, now cast off, as apparent in Romans 9:24.” Thus, Paul’s use of the analogy of honorable and dishonorable vessels from the same lump is a parallel argument and supplemental to the judgment of Pharaoh, both being applicable to the hardening of Israel, already a fact, and the subject throughout this whole section of Romans. Locke (Ibid) applied the example of Pharaoh to Israel, thus: “How darest thou, O man, to call God to account, and question his justice, in casting off his ancient people, the Jews? What if God, willing to punish that sinful people, and do it so as to have his power known and taken notice of, in the doing of it: (for why may not God raise them to that purpose, as well as he did Pharaoh and the Egyptians?) What, I say, if God bore with them a long time, as he did with Pharaoh, that his hand might be the more eminently visible in their destruction; and that also, at the same time, he might with the more glory, make known his goodness and mercy to the Gentiles.”
⁵ God’s almost endless patience with the repeated rebellions and departures of the chosen people is the burden of the Old Testament and the theme of many a prophetic message. In a sense, God was trapped by the promise of the Messiah’s revelation through the seed of Abraham, which holy intention necessitated the preservation of the covenant people (regardless of what they did) until the Messiah should at last appear. The Jews had absolutely no doubt of the validity of the promised Messiah; and their leaders were accustomed to stabilize the people and allay their fears and apprehensions in the presence of any threatened calamity by saying, “The Messiah has not come, so we are safe.” They also extended this confidence to a state of presumption in regard to their sins. God judicially hardened the ten northern tribes and cast four-fifths of the whole Jewish nation into the ash can of history; but not even that quelled the overconfidence and self-righteousness in which Israel continued stubbornly in a course of sin against God. But the Messiah had indeed come at last; and, upon Israel’s rejection and murder of the Anointed One, no further reason existed for their perpetuation. God hardened them, as indeed they were already hardened for generations; and Paul was warning them in this letter that their doom was as certain as that of Pharaoh. In all revealed instances of God’s hardening, as in the case of Pharaoh (and now Israel), total destruction was the immediate and summary result. True, Israel was to be destroyed also, even their capital razed and burned, but there was to be a startling difference. That difference is the great mystery announced in Romans 11:25.