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.
And if God, minded to shew his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering vessels of wrath fitted for destruction;
Paul has silenced the objector with the potter's right over the clay. Now he turns from what God may do to what He has actually done — and everything turns on who did the "fitting."
Verse 22 is the second of three steps in Paul's reply to the objector. One writer sets out all three:
In the entire answer there are three propositions. First, the apostle maintains, in all its strength, the right of the sovereign God — the authority He has to do just as He will with His creatures. Does the potter not have power over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honour and another for dishonour? Next, he comes to the facts. He shows us that God, even when He meant to show His wrath and make His power known, endured with much long-suffering vessels of wrath fitted for destruction — vessels which He did not fit, but had long endured. Thirdly, there is the revelation that He had prepared vessels of mercy beforehand for glory.
God's stated aim is to show His wrath and make His power known. The way He goes about it answers anyone who thinks Him hasty or harsh. (Where the ESV says "much patience" and "prepared for destruction," the older wording used below is "much longsuffering" and "fitted for destruction.")
God's purpose was to display His wrath in this evil world and to make known His power where men easily and willingly forget Him. But the way He chose was admirable and worthy of His nature. There was nothing arbitrary about it, but "much long-suffering."… Could man then fairly charge God with having no compassion for him, or with being quick to mark his sins? It is impossible for a holy God to share in evil or be indifferent to it! But He does not quickly blot these rebellious creatures out of this life, though they make the world a field of constant war against what they know of God. Instead, the whole history of the world since nations began is the fullest proof that God endures.
One writer shows where that power appears, and names a nation God waited on:
He made His power known, not by fitting the vessels of wrath for destruction, but by enduring them with much longsuffering.… God endured the Amorites of old with much longsuffering until their sins came to the "full" and they had fitted themselves for destruction. Then the judgment fell (Gen. 15:16).
The verse calls them vessels of wrath fitted for destruction. It never says who fitted them. Set beside the next verse, that silence is deliberate.
The vessels of wrath are said to be "fitted for destruction." But it is neither said nor implied here, or anywhere else, that God fitted them for it. They were fitted by their sins, and most of all by their unbelief and rebelliousness against God. But when we hear of the faithful, the wording is completely different: "vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory." The evil is man's, never God's. The good is His and not our own.
The Greek word behind "fitted" points the same way:
The word katartizo (Rom. 9:22) means to correct, repair, mend; then in its participial form, fitted, prepared. The word does not suppose a decree of God, but a work of man.
The same care shows up elsewhere, so it is no accident. One writer sets Romans 9 beside the judgment scene of Matthew 25, and rules out reprobation — the idea that God appoints some people to ruin:
Look at Matthew 25:34. Here the King says to those on His right hand, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." Now contrast the words to those on His left hand: "Depart from me, you cursed." He does not say "of my Father." Then comes "into the eternal fire prepared" — not for you, but — "for the devil and his angels." Romans 9 speaks the same way… The grand truth of election is fully established. The repulsive error of reprobation is carefully avoided.
Paul is not satisfying curiosity about the lost. He is breaking the claim that blessing belongs to anyone by birth:
Once you allow that all blessing rests on the sovereignty of God, the Gentile must come into the blessing as well as the Jew.
- Endured, not engineered. God shows His power here not by fitting anyone for ruin, but by holding back. The verse names His way: "much patience."
- Endured how long. God bore with the Amorites until their sin was full (Genesis 15:16). The waiting has a limit, and then judgment falls.
- Endured, self-fitted. Vessels of wrath are "fitted" by their own sins; vessels of mercy God "prepared beforehand." The evil is man's; the good is His.
- Endured, never doomed. In Matthew 25 the fire is prepared for the devil and his angels — not for those on the King's left. Scripture holds election firmly and never turns it into a decree of ruin.
- Endured, so the door is open. If blessing rests wholly on God's mercy, no one holds it by birth. The Gentile comes in with the Jew.