Romans 9:18-22

Hardening - Romans 9:18-22a

Last week we saw in Exodus 3:19 and 4:21 that God told Moses, “But I am sure that the king of Egypt will not let you go, no, not even by a mighty hand” (3:19). And the LORD said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do all those wonders before Pharaoh which I have put in your hand. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go” (4:21). Pharaoh is an example of how God shows mercy. God didn’t let the pestilence kill him. Verse 18 could be a conclusion: God has mercy on whomever He wills (Jacob and Pharaoh) and hardens whomever He wills (Pharaoh). But this is not a hardening against salvation. Individual salvation is not an issue here. But let’s get back to Exodus 3:19 and 4:21. Here God is speaking to Moses before Pharaoh ever had a chance to harden his own heart. What did God tell Moses? He said, “I am sure (he) will not let you go.” What does that mean? “The king of Egypt has a heart like a lump of clay. I know that is what his heart is like. I know this guy’s heart. It’s not the waxy type. It’s like a lump of clay.” Many expositors agree with this interpretation.[1] In other words, when we see the event of Pharaoh, and God says, “I am going to harden Pharaoh’s heart,” we look at it as the occasion. Pharaoh’s heart is hardened. God is going to harden it. What does He mean when He says I’m going to harden that heart? Does He mean, “I’m going to be the cause of Pharaoh’s heart being hardened, like the clay? That’s what I believe He means. We must always consider 1 Timothy 2:4 when we look at this account. God even wanted Pharaoh to be saved. In addition, we must always remember that God does not cause anyone to sin (James 1:13-15). God’s actions are reflected in Psalm 18:25-26, “With the merciful You will show Yourself merciful; With a blameless man You will show Yourself blameless; 26 With the pure You will show Yourself pure; And with the devious You will show Yourself shrewd.

19 You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?”

This question is similar to the previous questions from self righteous Jews who were hassling them in Rome. If we look at this question more closely, we must ask, “Can anyone resist His will? If you mean His counsel, boulh, then the answer is, no one can. But if you mean who can resist His will, qelhma, everyone does. That’s because all are not saved or sanctified, and that is His will. However, no one can keep His counsel from happening. He is going to bring that to pass. That is the word found in this passage. According to 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slow concerning His promise, as some count slowness but is longsuffering toward us, not counseling any to perish but all to have room for repentance” (My translation.). No one has resisted His counsel. He has determined that the plan of salvation would be accomplished, and it was. Paul doesn’t seem to answer the question directly, but I think the illustration in 9:20,21 really does.

20 But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?

Paul was alluding to Isaiah 64:8, “But now, O LORD, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our potter; And all we are the work of Your hand,” in addition to the direct quotation from Isaiah 29:16, “Surely you have things turned around! Shall the potter be esteemed as the clay; For shall the thing made say of him who made it, ‘He did not make me’? Or shall the thing formed say of him who formed it, ‘He has no understanding’?” But I believe he was looking more to the context of Jeremiah 18:1-11, “The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying: 2 Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause you to hear My words. 3 Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something at the wheel. 4 And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter; so he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make. 5 Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying: 6 O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter? says the LORD. Look, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel! 7 The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it, 8 if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will repent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it. 9 And the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, 10 if it does evil in My sight so that it does not obey My voice, then I will repent concerning the good with which I said I would benefit it. 11 Now therefore, speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, Thus says the LORD: Behold, I am fashioning a disaster and devising a plan against you. Return now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.” When the potter (God) tried to make the clay (Israel) into a vessel of honor, it marred in his hand. Would that be the potter’s (God’s) fault or the clay’s (Israel’s). Was the clay (Israel) resisting? When it was made into another vessel, one which didn’t have the honor that the first vessel would have had, was that the potter’s (God’s) fault? Absolutely not! Further, repentance comes into the picture on the nation’s part and God’s. This is illustrated in 2 Timothy 2:20,21, “But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor. 21 Therefore if anyone cleanses himself from the latter, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful for the Master, prepared for every good work.”

22 What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,

When God desired “to make known what is possible with Him” (Weymouth), we find that He endures with the vessels of wrath which fitted themselves to destruction. The participle, fitted, kathrtismena, can be either a middle or a passive. I have translated it as a middle because the middle concept in the material of Acts 13:46,48, “Then Paul and Barnabas grew bold and said, It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first; but since you reject it, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles. 48 Now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as had ~~been appointed~~ disposed themselves, hsan tetagmenoi, to eternal life believed.

Acts 13:45-48 describes how the vessels were prepared for destruction or glory. Luke is describing the dramatic events at Antioch which center around the rejection of the gospel by the Jews (45) and the acceptance of it by the Gentiles (46-48), The point of the passage is to castigate the Jews for rejecting Christ and praise Gentiles for accepting Him. For Luke to slip a predestinarian commentary in on this scene would work against the mood he is trying to create. “Oh, that’s why the Jews rejected the gospel and the Gentiles accepted it. They were predestined to do so. It really wasn’t their fault.” That’s the kind of conclusion we could make from this kind of interpretation. But Luke is trying to fault the Jews. This would work against his purpose for writing about this event.

We read in Acts 13:48, “And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.” The phrase, “had been appointed,” is the Greek periphrastic pluperfect, hsan tetagmenoi. This can be either middle or passive in meaning since perfect participles only have one form to express the passive and the middle (reflexive) meaning. I think it has a middle meaning here. When we see the word used in the aorist, which has different forms for the middle and passive, its normal use seems to be in the middle. Acts 28:23 looks as though it would be active when you read the New King James translation, but when we look at the Greek, it's a middle. Also, in 1 Corinthians 16:15, the word is active in the Greek, but the meaning of the thought is definitely middle.

If we took the meaning of the clause in 1 Corinthians 16:15 and used it in Acts 13:48, we would have, “As many as had devoted themselves unto eternal life, believed.” This verb, tassw, can have a number of meanings. Bauer’s second American edition and Moulton and Milligan give the following meanings: to classify, place or station something in a fixed spot, appoint to or establish in an office, to put someone in charge, assign, be classed among those possessing, devote, order, fix, determine, allot, pay, tell, arrange, or agree. I think dispose fits just fine in the ideas related by all these words.

What word fits in the context of Acts thirteen without forcing anything? We find from verse 46 that the Jews judged themselves unworthy of eternal life. This is a reflexive middle idea. The statement we're dealing with is the corresponding statement about the believers. They had devoted themselves, disposed themselves, arranged themselves, or classified themselves unto eternal life. Certainly, ordained, of the King James Version, is too strong. There is no reason to consider this a passive with the context of the previous middle (reflexive) concept of verse 46. Therefore, this portion should be translated, “As many as had disposed themselves to eternal life, believed.”

[1]Rotherham translates this, “I will let his heart wax bold, and he will not suffer the people to go.” Further, he writes, “That Hebrew grammars distinctly avow occasion or permission to be sometimes the sense of verbs which ordinarily signify cause can be verified by a reference to the Hebrew Grammar of Gesenius, . . . After stating that the verbal form . . . called piel denotes intensity and repetition, this grammar adds: ‘It often takes the modifications expressed by permit, . . . . Of this, a good example is found in the verb shalach, ‘to send.’ Notice its modification with reference to the raven and the dove in Gen. VIII. 7,8. Noah sent them ‘forth’; that is he simply ‘let them go.’ So with regard to hayah, ‘to live’; in piel, ‘to cause to live.’ Moses said that the midwives (literally) ‘caused the male children to live’ (Ex. 1.17) -- plainly, ‘permitted them,’ ‘refrained from putting them to death.’” There are other examples of this usage. Cf. The Emphasized Bible, p. 919. The reference most similar to our text is Psalm 81:11,12. “But My people would not heed My voice, and Israel would have none of Me. 12 So I gave them over to their own stubborn heart, to walk in their own counsels.” Here, we see that the result of letting them have their own stubborn heart was to walk in their own counsels. Rotherham quotes Kalisch: “As the external, often accidental, occasion of an event is mostly more obvious, even to the reflecting mind, than its primary cause or its true (often hidden) originator, it has become a linguistic peculiarity in most ancient, especially the Semitic, languages, to use indiscriminately (the occasion) rather than (the cause) so that the phrase, ‘I shall harden the heart of Pharaoh’ means: ‘I know that I shall be the cause of Pharaoh’s obstinacy; my commands and wonders will be an occasion, an inducement to an increasing obduration of his heart.” Also cf. Forster and Marston, God’s Strategy in Human History, pp. 160-175.