In the first part of our conversation, I stated that I believe we miss the entire point of Paul’s larger argument in this section of Romans because we immediately get hung up on theological projections that weren’t within the original conversation (e.g., God’s sovereignty/election, etc.). Paul’s larger conversation is about God’s willingness to show mercy. He is trying to speak to his Jewish listeners and tell them God has always been in the business of showering mercy and grace on people who don’t belong. The word of God has not failed them; rather, it has born witness to this truth throughout the ages.
This inclusion of the Gentiles into the fullness of God’s story and family is far from unfair; it is the very nature of who God is and always has been!
So we pick up where we left off:
One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ ”
When we read this passage in its previous light, we hear it talking about blame and our election or salvation. But I think the context of this conversation shows us that Paul’s imaginary rebuttal is asking a far deeper question. This Jewish audience is going to respond to God’s sovereign show of mercy to the Gentiles with this (reworded) rebuttal: “Then why does God ask us to follow Him and partner with Him and then hold us accountable to our actions … if He’s just going to throw open the floodgates of acceptance anyway? If God is going to pursue all men and all nations, then He’s ultimately going to have His way and our part in this story means nothing!”
But Paul tells this projected audience to remember their place. He is the Potter, and they are His clay. He knows why He makes vessels. He knows how He intends to use them and how He will accomplish His purposes with each vessel He creates.
Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?
What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction?
Paul reminds the reader that God has the right to use the same lump of clay to make vessels He will use as fine china, but also other vessels to store last night’s leftovers. He’s the Potter and He understands His own intentions.
But Paul says God wanted to “show his wrath and make his power known” and so He created those vessels and then “bore with great patience” those vessels prepared for destruction.
What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory—even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?
What if God did all of this on purpose in order to show us His glory and His mercy? What if God did all of this to show us (Jews and people on the “inside”), the objects of His mercy, whom He prepared in advance for glory — what if He did all of this to show us His incredible plan and the riches of His glory, to shower mercy and acceptance onto those “objects prepared for destruction”?
Scandalous.
Paul then quotes two major prophets who are announcing Israel’s failure to live according to God’s plan. Paul reminds them that they too have experienced what it means to be “objects prepared for destruction.” And they too know what it means to have God bear with great patience and shower His mercy on them. The story of Hosea is not a pretty one and the woes of Isaiah did not bear great tidings.
As he says in Hosea:
“I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people; and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one,”
and,
“In the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’ ”
Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:
“Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved.For the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality.”
It is just as Isaiah said previously:
“Unless the Lord Almighty had left us descendants,we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.”
Paul will then begin to shift gears by pointing out this is the same trajectory the nations have been on with God. Those Gentile believers who worship in Rome have the same faith and have experienced the same acceptance of the same “good news” from God.
What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. As it is written:
“See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.”
Paul closes with an unbelievably brilliant gezerah shevah where he ties two different passages from Isaiah (8:14 and 28:16) using the theme of “stone” to do so. By creating this Isaiah quotation, Paul sets up the condemnation of Isaiah 8 — which says God has placed a stone that the people of Jerusalem will stumble over as a trap and snare — and he combines it with a prophecy that says those who trust in that stone will be saved. By making this “stone” Jesus, Paul is issuing an invitation to his Jewish audience not to be tripped up by this hard teaching of inclusion for the Gentiles, but to trust in Jesus. At the same time, Paul is alluding to the fact that these Gentiles are already trusting in Jesus and finding freedom and salvation. It’s a stunning textual move by Paul.
Indeed this will be a hard truth. For most of my readers, this is good news for them as Gentiles! And yet, for those Gentiles who call themselves believers and have found themselves in the community of faith for some time, there is a real opportunity for us to open our ears and consider whether we have swapped out some of the labels and the details for others things in our day and age.
Is God still the Potter? Does God still get to choose who He wants to shower mercy on? Even today, is the point we ought to be making to people not about a morality code, but about the person of Jesus? Are we really inviting people to put their trust in Him and find a justification by faith alone? Or do we too struggle with the “stone of stumbling” — the scandalous grace of Jesus? Do we too seek to make people pursue a righteousness that comes from behavior, rather than a righteousness that comes from God?
What if God is showering His grace on all of “those people” in our lives, just to remind us of what He’s up to? Forgiveness. Mercy. Acceptance.
A Potter is making His vessels.
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