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In the ocean of biblical interpretation, Romans 9-11 is very deep water. And Romans 9.14-29, which we begin studying today, has particularly high waves and strong undercurrents. Are you ready to swim hard? Here’s what Paul writes in verses 14-18: 

What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses [in Exodus 33.19], “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh [in Exodus 9.16]: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”  Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.

 Let’s swim this passage one stroke at a time. 

Our first stroke is Paul’s question: “Is God unjust?” This question arises because of what Paul wrote previously in verses 6-13. There, he recited biblical history and noted that God chose Isaac’s descendants over Ishmael’s and Jacob’s descendants over Esau’s to be “the children of the promise.” To our minds, and the minds of Paul’s original readers, God’s choice of one over another raises the issue of whether God treats people justly. Because Paul wants us to believe in God intelligently, he sets out to demonstrate God’s justice to us. 

Our second stroke is God’s grace: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” Given what we have read so far in Romans, it should be very clear that we do not have any right to God’s mercy or compassion because of our “desire or effort.” We are sinners; what we deserve is the punishment of our sins. And that punishment is great. “The wages of sin is death,” Paul writes in Romans 6.23. But he goes on to say, “the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” But if God gives us grace we do not deserve, he obviously cannot be charged with injustice toward us. 

Our third, and hardest stroke, is God’s hardening: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” That God might use someone to display his power and proclaim his name is not inherently unjust. After all, that is why God raised up Jesus. The problem arises when God uses someone to do so in a negative way. God “hardens whom he wants to harden,” is how Paul puts it. The “hardening” of Pharaoh’s heart is mentioned almost forty times in Exodus 4-14. Sometimes God does the hardening; sometimes Pharaoh does. God might be unjust if he hardened an innocent man’s heart, but Pharaoh was not an innocent man. Rather, he was an oppressive tyrant quite capable of hardening his own heart. 

And that brings us to our fourth and final stroke: our response. God is gracious. Are you softening or hardening your heart toward him today?