Paul clearly states it is not of him who wills or of him who runs but of God who shows mercy. Dr. Sproul uses this verse to explain four concepts of mercy, justice, non-justice, and injustice. God's sovereignty in all the application of mercy and justice is considered.

Today, I will read from chapter 9 beginning with verse 14 and reading through verse 21, though without any intention whatsoever of covering that much in the lesson this evening. So, we will be looking at Romans 9:14–21. I will ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the Word of God:

What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not! For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.” So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth.” Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.

You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?” 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?” Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?

If God in His grace and by the power of His Holy Spirit has given you ears to hear, then hear the Word of God. Please be seated.

Again, O Father, as we stand before this profound mystery, it reveals to us something of the depths and the riches of Your mercy and grace. We look to You for help. Send help to us, O Lord, because we are fragile and, at times, we stagger before the weightiness of these things. Open our eyes and our hearts tonight to the truth of Your Word. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

How to Understand Philosophers

I was thinking earlier this evening about the first year of my professional teaching career, which was forty-one years ago, and my first assignment as a college professor was to teach the history of philosophy. Many students know that the study of the discipline of philosophy can be exceedingly difficult because the ideas that are analyzed tend to be extremely abstract and heavy. Students who are otherwise excellent students, straight-A students in the sciences, for example, stumble when they come into the arena of philosophy because it takes a certain kind of mind to track with philosophical inquiry.

I would try to give my students some helpful hints on how to wade their way through the writings of Hume, Descartes, Kant, or philosophers of that nature. I would say: “First of all, when you’re reading these men, see if you can discover what problem they’re trying to solve or what question they’re trying to answer. If you can isolate the problem and clarify in your own mind the question that they are addressing, that goes a long way to help you understand the process by which they wrestle with these questions and how they come to the various conclusions that they do.”

The second principle I found important early on as a teacher was that most of the content in the history of philosophy I was teaching to my students was content with which I disagreed, and in many cases, I profoundly disagreed. Yet I felt that integrity in the scope of pedagogy demanded that I try to be as scrupulous as I knew how in setting forth the ideas that were espoused by these philosophers. If I dared to give a critique of these philosophers, I had to make sure that I was not setting up straw men to knock over with ease but rather to be, as I said, scrupulously accurate and honest in presenting their position. As a subset to that principle, it was my desire to state my opponent’s position with as much force as I knew how.

That carried on to the next point that we dealt with, which was how to argue over various ideas and for different positions when controversy arises. I said that the first thing you need to do is step into the shoes of your opponent. Try to think the way your opponent thinks. Track with your opponent’s process. If possible, in the context of debate, state your opponent’s position even more cogently he or she can themselves, so that, if nothing else, you communicate to them that you do indeed understand their position and their argument, and you feel the weight of whatever argument they give. That gives you the opportunity to address the issues head on.

Paul’s Unthinkable Question

I give you that background not to go into a personal biography but to help you understand the master teacher, the Apostle Paul, whose writings we are reading right now. He is the greatest theologian who ever walked the face of the earth. This was the man who had the equivalent of two Ph.D.s by the time he was twenty-one years old, and it has been argued that he was the most learned man in Palestine. It has also been said of the Apostle Paul that, had he not become a Christian, he would probably be known to the ages through the power of his titanic intellect in whatever field he endeavored. When we are dealing with a genius of the scope of the Apostle Paul and we sometimes struggle with what he says, just like I recommended to my students who tried to understand the difficult philosophers, we should ask the question, What problem is he trying to solve? What question is he trying to answer?

We noticed last week when we came to the rigorously difficult portion of chapter 9 where Paul talked about Jacob and Esau that, though they had the same mother, before either one of them had been born or done any good or evil, that the purposes of God according to His election might stand, God decreed that the elder would serve the younger. We ended up last week with the very troublesome declaration the Apostle gave when he said that the Scripture indicates, “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.” That is where we left it last week as we wrestled with the difficulties inherent in that particular announcement.

But note what immediately follows after that citation. The Apostle, as any good teachers do—and particularly as anyone steeped in the rigors of debate is inclined to do—anticipates in advance the reaction of his students or the reaction of his opponents. I want us to look carefully at what Paul anticipates will be that point of tension, that point of argument, that point of debate regarding what he is teaching here about the sovereignty of God in election.

Here is the rhetorical question that Paul raises: “What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God?” Before we look at that question, I want to mention how it comes over to us from the original text. In the Greek, the word translated in the English by “unrighteousness” is the word adikia. In Greek, when a word is prefaced with that simple letter a, that is a negation of the root. We know that agnosticism comes from the word agnosis, meaning “without knowledge” or “non-knowledge.” The root here is the word dikaios, which means “righteous” or “just.” When you put that little prefix of the a in front of it, that negates the root. Paul is using the term that would define injustice or unrighteousness. If we go to the Latin text for the same verse here, he says: “What do we say then? Is there iniquitas? Is there iniquity in God?” You get the idea of the force Paul is raising with this rhetorical question.

The question I ask you tonight is this: Why would Paul raise a question like that? Is there anything more foundational or fundamental in the revelation of the Word of God than the clear manifestation that God is altogether righteous and altogether just, that it is unthinkable and blasphemous to attribute to God any smear of iniquity, any tinge of unrighteousness, or any hint of injustice?

Words like injustice, unrighteousness, and iniquity are words that simply do not belong as predicates of the character of God. Paul raises a rhetorical question that is unthinkable: “Is there unrighteousness with God?” Why does he raise it?

Objections to Election

Paul is anticipating your response, my response, and the response of his Roman readership to what he has just been setting forth beginning in chapter 8 and now into chapter 9 where he talks about the sovereignty of God in election such that God, according to the good pleasure of His will, to establish His own sacred purpose, chooses Jacob and not Esau. God does this not based on anything foreseen in their behavior, not based on anything they did or would do in the future, but He makes this decree simply so that His purposes according to election might stand.

As soon as Paul makes a radical statement like that, he can hear the hisses and the boos coming from the gallery. You can almost hear his audience rise to their feet, spontaneously screaming in anger, “That’s not fair!” It certainly seems like it is not fair that if for no reason found in Jacob and no reason found in Esau, God chooses one over the other. Does that seem fair to you? The fact that it does not seem fair is one of the chief reasons why Christians kick against the goad on this doctrine.

The two principal objections to the doctrine of election in the Christian community—never mind the pagan community—are that, on the one hand, it seems to dispense with any significance to the free will of man, but even more importantly, it seems to cast a shadow on the integrity of God. It seems to make God appear arbitrary, whimsical, and capricious. Even worse, in His arbitrary selection of one person over another from all eternity, there seems to be a shadow side of God’s character that indicates, in the final analysis, that even God is infected by sin, even God is unjust, even God is unrighteous, and even God behaves from time to time in an iniquitous manner.

No Unrighteousness with God

Now, if there is any portion of Romans 9 that convinces me that the Reformed understanding of predestination is the biblical one and is the one that Paul is teaching, it is this very rhetorical question that he raises. Let me explain.

People who do not embrace the Reformation understanding of election or predestination substitute for it, in the main, the prescient view that I have explained on several occasions. This is the Arminian position that says God chooses people based on His foreknowledge of what they are going to do. He knows in advance who will choose Christ and who will not, and on the basis of that foreknown choice that you or I make, God then makes His choice. God’s choice, in this view, is rooted and grounded in His knowledge of your choice. In the final analysis, it is your vote for or against that gets you in or out of the kingdom of God. That is the standard version of the prescient view.

I have been defending the doctrine of election for more than forty years in numerous different contexts with many theological perspectives being present, and I have heard the objection against predestination and election that I hold—that it represents or manifests a notion of unfairness in God—without resorting to exaggeration or hyperbole, at least a thousand times. Every time I teach the doctrine, I cannot get the doctrine out of my mouth before someone objects and says, “That’s not fair.” On the other hand, my Arminian friends and some of my Lutheran friends who follow the prescient view of predestination have had to defend their position against various objections along the way. I trust, however, that the one objection they have never had to address is the objection to their position that the Arminian or the semi-Pelagian view would indicate some kind of unrighteousness in God.

Do you get the point? Why would anyone think for a moment that it was unfair, unjust, unrighteous, or iniquitous for God to choose people on the basis of the decisions they make, either good or bad? What could be fairer than that? What could be more just than the idea that God makes His choice on the basis of His knowledge of what you do or do not do? That the prescient position never has to answer that question, yet it is the very question that Paul anticipates in his teaching of the doctrine here in Romans 9, to me, seals the deal. It makes it clear beyond dispute that the doctrine Paul is teaching is a doctrine that provokes that kind of response from his listener, a natural response like this: “Wait a minute. There must be something wrong with God if He chooses Jacob and not Esau without any consideration of their respective behavior.”

Paul has asked the rhetorical question: “What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God?” He answers his rhetorical question with the strongest of all possible language that is offered to him in Greek. We can translate it different ways. One way that it is translated is, “By no means!” Another way the translators get at it is the phrase, “God forbid!” I think the most accurate translation of the language he uses here is, “May it never be!” That is to say, the one thing that is absolutely indisputable is that there is not any unrighteousness, injustice, or iniquity in God, though indeed, at first glance, it may seem that way.

The Sovereignty of Grace

After answering his rhetorical question with such demonstrative reply, Paul reminds his readers of an earlier revelation by God that came to us in the Pentateuch of the Old Testament: “For He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.’” Let me pause there.

Paul reminds us and his readers of the absolute sovereignty of grace. I have mentioned this before, but let us review. Any time I ask a professing Christian, “Do you believe in the sovereignty of God,” invariably they reply without hesitation, “Yes, of course,” because if God is not sovereign, then He is not God. To be God is to be sovereign.

When we look at the idea of divine sovereignty, we generally look at it in three specific domains. First, we look at it with respect to His government over the universe. When God made the universe, He called it into being from nothing by the sheer power of His command. He exercised His sovereign authority over the stars, the floods, the rivers, over history, over all things. I will ask some Christians, “Do you believe God is sovereign over nature?” They will answer, “Oh yes.”

I will then say: “Do you believe that God as our Creator has the sovereign right to legislate what He believes is the manner of behavior and response that His creatures should render to Him? Do you believe that God sovereignly has the right to impose obligations upon His creatures and to bind our consciences with His law by saying, ‘Thou shalt do this,’ or ‘Thou shalt not do that’? Does He have the authority to reign over us ethically?” Contrary to the moral relativism pervasive in our culture today, if you have the slightest understanding of the Christian faith, you certainly know God has the authority to command you to do what He says is right.

In the first instance, people say, “Yes, I believe in sovereignty over nature.” In the second instance, they say, “Yes, I believe in His sovereignty over law.” But when you get to the third arena, the sovereignty of God’s disposition with His grace, that is when 90 percent of Christians get off the train.

As soon as you ask, “Do you believe that God sovereignly disposes His saving grace according to His good will and good pleasure only, without any view to what you have done or will do?” nine out of ten will say no. They will say: “God is sovereign over nature and sovereign over law. But His grace cannot be sovereign, because if God is righteous and gives His mercy to you, if He is really going to be righteous, then He must give the same mercy to everyone, because if He gives mercy to one and withholds it from another, that’s not fair.”

Paul reminds his readers of God’s executive privilege of clemency. God says: “It is My mercy. It is My grace. I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy.” How can God say that and still be just? Because He is talking about having mercy upon sinners, and no sinner can shake His fist justly. Plenty of them do shake their fists in the face of God and say, “That’s not fair; You’ve given me a bad deal,” and so on. But no sinner has the right to say with impunity, “You owe me grace.”

If grace is owed, it is not grace. The very essence of grace is in its voluntary character. God reserves to Himself the sovereign absolute right to give grace to some and withhold that grace from others.

Justice and Non-Justice

I have mentioned before a distinction that we need to master with respect to the concept of justice. I used a moment ago the Greek prefix of a for adikia, for injustice. How many of you have had a course in logic? That’s roughly 10 percent of our congregation.

In logic, we make distinctions between categories. Take the category of theism, for example. Theism incorporates within that broad circle of thought any type of religion that affirms the existence of any kind of god or gods. Theism is a broad concept, and any affirmation of a theos or a theoi, a god or several gods, makes it inside that circle. The term atheism, which means “non-theism,” incorporates everything outside of that circle. If you believe in any kind of god, you are in the circle of theism. If you do not believe in any kind of god or gods, you are outside the circle of theism and you are in the realm of atheism.

Now let us come to the concept of justice. We have a circle of righteousness or justice, and everything that is just or righteous fits in that circle. But where it gets a little confusing is if we consider the concept of non-justice. Non-justice would point to and include everything outside of our circle of justice. We have justice inside the circle, non-justice outside the circle. Notice that I was careful not to say “injustice.” Non-justice incorporates everything outside the circle of justice.

Now, the next question: Is injustice inside the circle of justice or outside the circle? Outside. Injustice would be outside of the category of justice. It would be in the realm of non-justice. Let me ask you this: Is injustice a good thing or a bad thing? Is injustice a good thing? Never. Injustice is a bad thing. It is evil to commit injustice. Now, is mercy a bad thing? No. Is mercy inside the circle of justice? No, mercy is non-justice. There are two things outside the circle of justice: one is injustice, which is evil, and the other is mercy, which is not evil.

Is there any injustice in God? No. Is there unrighteousness in God? No. Iniquity in God? No. Is there non-justice in God? Yes, there is, thank God! There is mercy, and there is grace. But keep in mind that grace is never inside the circle of justice. That is why I used to say to my students over the years: “Whenever you pray, do not ever ask God for justice. You might get it.”

Grace and Justice

Paul has been laboring through the whole epistle—back to the very beginning when he showed that all of us are in the category of injustice, that all of us are sinful, that none of us is just in and of ourselves, and that we have no hope of ever standing before the judgment of a holy and righteous God as long as we are unjust—the wonderful grace of the gospel is that God has provided for us a justice that is not our own. It is a justice that is the righteousness of Christ imputed to us. That justice is the only way we can stand before God. That is how he has been explaining the gospel all along.

Paul is saying that we are only able to be adopted into the family of God and receive the gift of the transfer of Christ’s righteousness to our account because of God’s grace from beginning to end. As he says in Ephesians 2:8, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.”

God, in His sovereign disposition of grace, interrupts your life while you are alienated from Him, while you do not want Him in your thinking. While you are dead in sin and trespasses, the Holy Spirit comes and quickens you from spiritual death to spiritual life. He changes the disposition of your heart. Where formerly Christ was repugnant to you, now He is the sweetest thing in all the world to you, and you rush to Him, you choose Him, you embrace Him, and you trust Him, because God, in His grace, gave you the pearl of great price.

If God does that for you, is He obligated to give that to everyone? In our own justice system, if the president of the United States exercises executive clemency and pardons someone in prison, is he then, to be fair and just, obligated to pardon everyone else? No.

We must understand that what Jacob got in all of this was grace, and what Esau got was not injustice. That God withheld His mercy from Esau—a mercy upon which Esau had no claim—was not an act of injustice on God’s part. Jacob gets mercy; Esau gets justice. The elect get grace; the non-elect get justice. Nobody gets injustice. That is a point that we have to hold onto with all our might, and that is what Paul is laboring in this text.

God’s Call of Mercy

“I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy.” God is not required to have mercy on everyone. God called Abraham out of paganism, out of Ur of the Chaldeans, and made a covenant promise to him, not because Abraham had done any good thing, as Paul labored earlier, but that the purposes of God according to His grace might stand. God called Abraham. He did not do that for Hammurabi or Nebuchadnezzar.

Come to the drama of the New Testament. Jesus faced His enemies all around. There was Caiaphas, the high priest. There were the members of the Sanhedrin. He was condemned by Pontius Pilate, who spoke on behalf of the Roman magisterium. But the most vicious and hateful opponent of Jesus we find in the pages of the New Testament, the man whose sole raison d'être was to destroy the church of Jesus Christ was the man who wrote the words I have just been reading to you.

We read of the story of the Apostle Paul, how he hated Jesus more than Pilate did, more than Caiaphas did, and more than the scribes and Pharisees hated Him. But he was walking down the street one afternoon and said: “Maybe I’d better think this over a little bit more clearly. Maybe I haven’t been right to these Christian people.” Then after he gave it further scrutiny, he changed his mind and decided to exercise his free will to become a disciple of Jesus. That’s not how it happened. Why did Paul became a disciple of Jesus? Because while he was breathing out fire, filled with animosity and hostility, Jesus knocked him off his horse, blinded him with the brilliance of His glory, and called him to be His Apostle. Jesus intervened in the life of Paul in a way He did not do for Pontius Pilate, in a way He did not do for Caiaphas, in a way He did not do for the scribes and Pharisees.

If we read the Bible from Genesis 1 to the end of Revelation, we see that God does not treat everyone the same. If He treated us all the same, we would all have the same place in hell. But so that the glory of His purposes may be made known, He exercises mercy, though not to everyone.

If I were God, I think I would do it differently. If I were God, I would save everyone. But I do not have any righteousness to protect, and I think that everyone in this room can add to their prayers of thanksgiving tonight, “Dear Lord, I thank You that You are God, and not R.C.” You would not want me to be God. But God has His own reasons to show forth His own glory such that He gives grace to some and not to all in exactly the same measure.

God’s Will over Ours

Paul goes on to say here, “So then,” introducing the conclusion of this section of the text. “So then”—that is, therefore—“it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.” Whatever else anyone might know about me, you know I am not infallible. I prove it every day. But I said to you that the Apostle Paul sets forth this doctrine with such clarity in chapters 8 and 9 of Romans that he leaves us without excuse. How can anyone look at this text closely and still be saying: “It really is of him who wills and it really is of him who runs. It’s my free will that is the basis for my salvation.” No, friends, it is God’s free will.

You may have heard it said that God’s sovereignty ends where human free will begins. Maybe you have even said it. But that is blasphemy. If God’s sovereignty were limited by my free will, then I would be the one who is sovereign, and you would have R.C. for God. We do have free will. We do have the ability to choose what we want. That freedom is true freedom. But my free will is always and everywhere limited by God’s sovereignty. Any time my free will bumps up against God’s free will, who wins? It is no contest. It is God’s good pleasure from all eternity to save His elect, not based on what they will, not based upon how they run, how they walk, or how they behave, but so that God may show forth His grace in salvation.

Let me give a rebuke, not because I want to be mean or harsh—I understand how difficult this doctrine can be and how much baggage we carry into the discussion about it—but I am going to plead with you: If you are hanging on to your semi-Pelagian views of election, get rid of them. That theology undermines the sovereignty of God, the sovereignty of His grace, and the sweetness of His mercy. It wants to exalt our decisions above His. That is the very essence of sin, and we have to stop it, bow before Him, and acquiesce not only to the sovereignty of His grace but to the goodness of the sovereignty of His grace.

If we have struggled with it this far, next week, when we talk about God’s hardening Pharaoh’s heart and creating vessels fit for destruction, and we go to the flipside of election to the dark side of reprobation and talk about whether predestination is double, where we really get into the hardness of the decrees, then I will give you some room to squirm and struggle. But so far, we have nothing by which we can protest against the goodness and the sweetness of God’s grace. Let us pray.

O Father, we sing “Amazing Grace” while at the same time we despise that grace and contend against it. Father, help us to recover an awe before the sweetness of Your mercy and Your grace as we confess that we see nothing in ourselves that would make us worthy of Your mercy. Nevertheless, we thank You for that mercy that has rescued us from destruction. We thank You in Jesus’ name. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.