Aye, but thou, O man, who art *thou* that answerest again to God? Shall the thing formed say to him that has formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?
The verse before raises the sharpest objection a person can bring against God. If God hardens whom He wills, how can anyone still be blamed? Paul does not explain. He answers with a question that puts the questioner in his place. Much of what this verse teaches lies in what it does not say.
The verse answers the objection raised just before it.
If God hardens a man, how can the man help himself, and how can God find fault with the man? The Apostle's first answer to this objection is very blunt. He asks, "Who are you to find fault with God?" Suppose you do not understand — is God to give you an account of His matters? We have to remember that we are only men and that God is God, and we do well to give Him His place as God. God is the One who forms. Man is the thing formed. Shall the thing formed complain to the One who forms, "Why have you made me like this?"
The verse opens with a small Greek word whose tone is hard to catch in English. It picks up the objector's own words and throws them back.
It has the sense of "yes, indeed, if you talk of that."… Romans 9:20, "Ah, indeed, you talk of calling God in question; who are you then?"
"Who are you" is a question about position, not intelligence.
If the creature is to be allowed to judge the Creator, there is an end of all government in the vast universe of God. So we hear men daring to pronounce judgment on the ways of God. They undertake to decide what is or is not fit for God to do. One great question always comes first: "Who is to be judge?" Is man to judge God, or is God to judge man? If man judges God, there is no God at all. If God judges man, then man must bow his head in reverent silence and admit his utter ignorance and folly.
The same writer notes that one answer meets every question of this kind.
Men may reason and argue on and on. Why did God permit sin to enter? Why did He not at once destroy Satan and his angels? Why did He allow the serpent to tempt Eve? Why did He not hold her back from eating the forbidden fruit? In short, the hows and whys are endless. But the answer is one.
"What is molded" and "its molder" lead straight into the potter and the clay. Readers often take the picture further than it goes.
Does the potter not have absolute power over the clay? He may make one vessel for honour, or, if he wills, a vessel for dishonour. In this way the Apostle establishes God's absolute right to act as He will, without giving man an account of His matters. The illustration of the potter asserts God's absolute right to do as He pleases in the strongest way. Yet it does not teach that God has made any vessel for dishonour. The illustration only asserts and maintains God's rights.
The objector wants God's sovereignty to swallow up his own guilt. Commentators are firm that Scripture keeps both sides standing.
The purpose of God does stand. In the end every creature serves His will… But should this weaken our moral judgment of the creature's wickedness? Does it deny the fact that Satan and man are responsible for all they do against Him, or that both must be punished for it? So Peter charges the men of Israel with the guilt of crucifying the Messiah… How different is the holy and perfect word of God! Everything is in its place — not one side only, but both.
The question sounds fair to the man who asks it.
Man may think his question is quite reasonable, little realizing the actual deceit in it. But it is completely dishonourable. God closes the discussion with a strong statement of His sovereign right to do as He pleases. If man, like a stubborn child, will not learn by instruction, God tells him at once who is in authority… man's voice is silenced: there are no more objections. God has the final word.
- Question, not lecture. God meets the complaint of verse 19 with a question about who is speaking. The point is the questioner's place, not more information.
- Formed, not equal. The words "what is molded" and "its molder" put man on the creature's side of a line. He cannot cross it to sit as judge.
- Right, not decree. The potter picture asserts God's absolute right to act as He pleases. Commentators note it does not say He made anyone for dishonour.
- Both sides, not one. God's purpose stands, and man is still responsible. Scripture holds both sides and lets neither cancel the other.
- Silence, not stalemate. The endless "whys" meet one answer. The objections stop, and God has the last word.
Or has not the potter authority over the clay, out of the same lump to make one vessel to honour, and another to dishonour?
Paul has just answered the objector who asks why God still finds fault. Now he takes a picture from the workshop — a potter, one lump of clay, two very different vessels — and it raises the sharpest question in the chapter: does God make people for ruin?
One writer states the objection behind the verse, and shows where Paul's answer starts.
Man complains about God's righteousness when it touches him. He dislikes just as much the grace that justifies others freely and absolutely. This is what the question comes down to: is God to judge man, or is man to judge God? The apostle's answer has three parts. First, he maintains in all its strength the right of the sovereign God — the authority He has to do just as He will with His creatures.
One writer weighs how far this bold language goes, and how seldom people think God has rights at all.
The language is holy and bold, yet it never leans to one side or the other... The apostle does not say that God has used the right which He clearly has; but God's title stays whole... How seldom do those who talk about rights seem to think that God has any! They are taken up with themselves, with man: God is in none of their thoughts. Yet if any rights deserve respect, surely His come first — His sovereign will gave us our being and everything we have.
Much confusion comes from reading the verse as a report of what God has already done. One writer points to the form of the words.
Notice, it is not a statement, but a question — "Has the potter no right over the clay?" and so on. Is God not sovereign? It does not say that He has made some for dishonour.
Another writer draws the same line between what the picture proves and what it does not.
While the illustration of the potter asserts in the strongest way God's absolute right to do as He pleases, it does not teach that God has made any vessel to dishonour. The illustration simply asserts and maintains God's prerogatives.
Both vessels come out of the same lump. So the clay itself cannot explain why they differ.
Nothing can surpass the power and grandeur of the words of Romans 9. They lay all human pride low. They show how completely man depends for blessing on God's sovereign mercy. The illustration of the potter makes plain that everything depends on sovereign power. Out of the very same lump that supplies vessels to dishonour, He chooses to produce vessels to honour.
One writer traces the picture back to the prophet Jeremiah, and applies it to individuals.
In Jeremiah 18 we see God's ways with the nations. In Romans 9 we learn something of His ways with individuals. Every individual, like every nation, is a marred vessel in the hand of the Potter. We have all become marred by sin, and by taking our own evil way. Some, like Israel, will not listen to the word of God through His servants, the word of mercy proclaimed in the gospel. God has the power to make these marred vessels into vessels of wrath. Others, like the people of Nineveh, listen to God's message and turn from their evil ways to Him, and God makes them vessels of mercy.
The next verses show God exercising this authority — and the wording is not symmetrical.
Further on in chapter 9 we read of the potter's power over the clay to make vessels to honour and to dishonour. It speaks of God's patience with vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction. But it never says God fitted them for destruction. It says only that He endured them with much patience. Yet in the next verse, where it speaks of vessels of mercy, it says plainly that God prepared them beforehand for glory.
If God did not fit them for destruction, who did? One writer answers.
The vessels of wrath fitted themselves for wrath, by their own sins. But God prepared the vessels of mercy, for in truth no man prepares himself for glory. Grace alone does His work for those He has chosen.
The same image appears again in Paul's second letter to Timothy. There it serves a different purpose.
In Romans 9:21 Paul asked whether the potter has power over the clay. In 2 Timothy 2:20-21 we have the other side of the matter. There Paul sets out not the sovereignty of God, but the responsibility of the Christian.
- Right — the verse upholds God's title to do as He wills with His creatures. Is God to judge man, or man to judge God?
- Question — Paul asks; he does not assert. Scripture never says God made anyone for dishonour. The picture guards God's right and stops there.
- Lump — both vessels come from one mass, so the clay explains nothing. All of it is marred; only sovereign mercy makes a vessel of honour.
- Asymmetry — sin fits the vessels of wrath for destruction; God Himself prepares the vessels of mercy for glory.
- Response — sovereignty here, responsibility in 2 Timothy 2. Those who refuse the word of mercy become vessels of wrath; those who listen become vessels of mercy.