What shall we say then? [Is there] unrighteousness with God? Far be the thought.
Paul has just spoken of God choosing one person and not the other, and that raises an obvious protest: is God fair? He puts the objection into words himself, rejects it flatly, and answers it from a moment in Israel's own history.
The objection comes from human nature, not from careful thought. Paul meets it with an event where Israel had every reason to expect death.
To these arguments the flesh may object that to choose one and not the other is unrighteous. Is there, then, unrighteousness with God? Far from it, says the Apostle. To answer this objection he points to one case in Israel's history. There it is plain that God acted in sovereign grace, and yet no one could charge Him with unrighteousness. He recalls the terrible sin of Israel when they made a golden calf and worshipped it. There can be no question about the unrighteousness of that act. They had broken the first command, and the penalty was death. Righteousness could have destroyed them all.
Notice what the question does to the person asking it. It swaps the roles of judge and defendant.
If we start to ask, "Is there unrighteousness with God?" and really mean to call Him into question, we are trying to judge God, instead of letting God judge us. Whenever someone questions the sovereignty of God, the soul is saying, in effect: I am the one to judge God, and God is not to judge me.
The people raising this objection owed their survival to the very principle they attacked.
The truth is that Israel was ruined at the foot of the mountain, the very place where they had promised to obey everything God commanded. And what did God say to Moses? "I will have mercy," and so on. So the sovereignty they disliked when God showed mercy to the Gentiles turns out to be everything to the Jew.
There is an order here that people usually get backwards. Effort does not produce mercy.
Mercy is an attribute of God Himself, part of the character of God which showed itself when sin came into the world. In Romans 9:14 we find it stated clearly and with care. Verse 16 guards it: blessing "is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs." Man says, "I will, I run, and so I get blessing." No; that is not the way. Mercy is the root; after mercy follows the will, then the running, then the doing of His commandments.
The wording of verse 16 here follows an older translation.
Paul does not stop at mercy. The same freedom that spared Israel ran the other way with Pharaoh, the king of Egypt.
But here a warning note is struck. God's sovereignty is like a two-edged weapon. God may show it in mercy. He may also show it in carrying out judgment. With Israel, guilty of the sin of the golden calf, He showed it in mercy. With Pharaoh, He showed it in hardening that king.
God's statement that He loved Jacob and hated Esau troubles many readers. The date it was written down changes how it reads.
But did you ever think it through, or find out where this statement about God's love was written? It is found, as we have already seen, in the last book of the Old Testament — Malachi. God does not record these words until thirteen hundred years after the men named had passed off the scene.
The last word here is not an argument. It is a comparison: God set beside you.
Do you think that God is less just than you? "What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means!" (Rom. 9:14). Is He less compassionate than you? He has revealed Himself in Jesus, and He "is rich to all who call upon Him" (Rom. 10:12). If He is sovereign, it is in compassion and mercy, while judgment is His strange work. We may rejoice and be glad in the first. The second we do not understand, so we leave it to Him who will do right in all things.
- Objection. The charge of unfairness comes from human nature. Press it, and you have taken the judge's seat over God, instead of standing under His judgment.
- Evidence. Paul answers from the golden calf. Strict righteousness would have wiped Israel out. Only His freedom to show mercy kept them alive.
- Irony. The objectors resented this principle when it reached the Gentiles. It was the one thing holding up their own place before God.
- Root. Mercy comes first. Willing, running and obeying follow it; they never produce it.
- Rest. One sovereignty shows mercy and carries out judgment. It belongs to the God revealed in Jesus. So we can leave what we cannot explain with Him.
For he says to Moses, I will shew mercy to whom I will shew mercy, and I will feel compassion for whom I will feel compassion.
Paul has just described God's freedom to choose, and someone objects that this makes God unfair. His answer is not his own argument. It is a sentence God once spoke to Moses, and the moment He spoke it settles the question.
He reaches for the one occasion when Israel had destroyed every claim they had. God answered by falling back on Himself.
To answer this objection, the Apostle points to one case in Israel's history. There God plainly acted in sovereign grace, and no one could charge Him with unrighteousness. He recalls the terrible sin of Israel when they made a golden calf and worshipped it. Of the unrighteousness of this act there can be no question. They had broken the first command, and the penalty was death. Righteousness could have destroyed them all. But what did God do? He fell back on His sovereignty and said, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." God falls back on the very principle the Jew objects to. Without it, all Israel would have been destroyed.
The people complaining owed everything to the very thing they complained about.
History and prophecy alike showed that the blessing of Israel hangs on God's sovereignty... So the very sovereignty they disliked when God showed mercy to the Gentiles proves to be everything to the Jew.
That freedom also lets mercy cross national lines:
Ruth the Moabite is a striking instance in Old Testament times of God's mercy shown outside the limits of Israel, the nation the Lord chose out of all others to be His own people. In this impressive example, the Lord acted on His own right to show favour where, when, and how He pleased.
Look at what the word "mercy" means. Everyone is guilty, so justice cannot explain any kindness God shows.
Once the shared guilt and ruin of every creature has been proved, justice is no longer the question in any display of God's favour towards them... By its very nature, mercy is controlled and directed by the will of the One who shows it. Nothing deserving in the person draws it out. Human misery is itself the natural effect of God's judgment against sin, so it cannot force mercy to act. We must look for its deep and blessed spring in the mystery of the love of God — in God Himself, whose name is Love.
The next verse draws the conclusion: it does not depend on human will or exertion. For Israel that was rescue, not cold doctrine.
How blessed then for Israel that it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy! Romans 9:16 states this principle in general terms: the question is not man's desires or efforts, but God's will. Besides, when we come to the facts of the case, we find that man neither wishes nor seeks for mercy. It is too late, then, for man to talk of rights. The truth is that man himself is all wrong, and righteousness rests on God having His rights.
Paul's argument moves on to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. Commentators stress different sides of the pairing. One sees the same freedom working both ways:
God's sovereignty is like a two-edged weapon. He may display it in showing mercy. He may also display it in executing judgment. In Israel's case, when they were guilty of the sin of the golden calf, He displayed it in mercy. In Pharaoh's case He displayed it by hardening that king.
Another writer warns against a mistake people make here:
In truth, God's sovereignty is always on the side of mercy. Some people fix on one side of the truth and deny another that Scripture states just as strongly — that man is responsible to God. They sometimes go so far as to say that God elects the lost to be damned. Never was there a greater mistake.
The freedom in this verse is not cheap. Once God announced it, something had to happen to make it possible.
Only God can really say "I will". The moment God said that, the death of Christ became a necessity. How could God carry out His will which involved the showing of mercy apart from the cross?
- Occasion — God first spoke these words over a nation worshipping a golden calf. Strict justice would have wiped them out. Mercy enters where merit has collapsed.
- Freedom — the will of the One showing mercy directs it. Nothing we deserve draws it out. Its spring is in God Himself.
- Reach — the same freedom that spared Israel also reaches beyond Israel. The objector's complaint attacks his own only hope.
- Cost — "I will" is a word only God can say, and saying it made the cross necessary.
- Response — the self-righteous argue with sovereign mercy. The person broken over sin is glad it is free enough to reach him.
So then [it is] not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shews mercy.
Paul has just quoted God's words to Moses about showing mercy to whom He will. This verse is his conclusion, and it settles where blessing starts: not in what a person wants or does, but in God.
The force of Paul's conclusion depends on when God first spoke those words.
When was it that He said to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion"? It was when, on grounds of bare righteousness, Israel ought to have been cut off. God then drew back, so to speak, into His sovereignty, to spare Israel. Righteousness would have condemned them as they stood around their golden idol. How blessed then for Israel that it does not depend on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy! Romans 9:16 states this principle in general terms. The question is not man's desires or efforts, but God's will. Besides, when we come to the facts of the case, we find that man neither wishes nor seeks for mercy. It is too late, then, for man to talk of rights.
Paul's words may look back at the family history he has just told.
The words may hint at Isaac's well-known wish, which came to nothing, and at Esau's efforts to gain by the hunt, which failed too. They may hint at Jacob as well, who was faulty enough to lose everything by his trickery — except that sovereign mercy secured the promise to him. It is certainly the conclusion of grace against man's empty confidence in his own will and effort.
If mercy waited for people to want it, it would wait forever.
Man will have no mercy on himself. Man goes marching to everlasting woe. We can see thousands around us doing this — old and young… "So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy." This is grace, the free favour of God. He shows mercy to the man who has no mercy for himself. It is not man, the sinner, who chooses God. God chooses the sinner… God has chosen those who never would have chosen Him.
The same point can be put positively: what we could never begin, God begins in us.
God, by His Spirit, does for us or in us what we never would, or could, do for ourselves or by ourselves. The work from first to last is God's.
The verse sits between two examples, and the second one is Pharaoh.
But here comes a warning. God's sovereignty is like a two-edged weapon. He may display it in showing mercy. He may also display it in carrying out judgment. With Israel, guilty of the sin of the golden calf, He displayed it in mercy. With Pharaoh, He displayed it by hardening that king.
If will and effort do not produce blessing, does human choice matter at all? Commentators hold both facts together, even where they cannot see how they fit.
Let us by the grace of God firmly hold both of these great facts. God is sovereign in how He acts in grace. Man, though fallen, is a responsible creature, and God addresses him as one… So let us accept both, even if for now we cannot see far enough to work out how they fit together.
So who receives this mercy, and what should a person do about it?
But to whom is God pleased to show mercy? Certainly not to the self-righteous mockers, who by their very attitude deny their need of mercy. It is to the repentant — those who confess themselves sinners and call on the Name of the Lord in their extremity… God has sovereign title to show mercy, and man must bow to this divine sovereignty. Indeed, can anything do more good for man than being subject to his Creator?
Mercy is not only how the Christian life starts; it stays the footing underneath.
If mercy has declared itself, and He has spared us, we must still never forget that His estimate of what we are stands on record… The rainbow in the cloud declares His faithfulness to His promise. We stand on the ground of MERCY, and if we forget it, He does not… We look at the cloud; God looks at the rainbow. What grace is here!
- Occasion — God spoke those words to Moses while Israel stood beside a golden idol. Justice would have destroyed them. Mercy speaks at the exact point where merit is gone.
- Meaning — Human will and effort recall Isaac's wish and Esau's hunt earlier in the chapter. Both failed. Only mercy secured the promise.
- Reach — No one has mercy on his own soul. So God chooses those who would never have chosen Him, and mercy reaches the repentant who call on Him.
- Warning — The same sovereignty that spared Israel hardened Pharaoh. Mercy shown is never mercy owed.
- Response — Man stays responsible, and God stays sovereign. So the verse calls not for argument but for bowing, and for living on the ground of mercy.