Romans 9 - Why Calvinists are Wrong

Romans 9 is not about the eternal destiny of everyone at the end of time.

Here is why Romans 9 does not support Calvinism, in summary:

Romans 9-11 is not about the eternal destiny of everyone at the end of time. It is about exactly what Paul says it is about in Romans 11:25 - a partial and temporary hardening that has come upon some Israelites in Paul’s present time so that more Gentiles can be grafted in to the covenant community.

Those Israelites who are temporarily hardened are not necessarily excluded from eternal salvation, as Paul explicitly states over and over. Paul says “my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation.” (10:1) If they were marked for eternal damnation, why would Paul pray for them in this way?

Paul again says “they did not stumble so as to fall, did they? May it never be!” (11:11) They temporarily rebelled (stumbled), but not so they would be damned forever (falling). Instead, their temporary rebellion was so that “by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles.”

Paul again says, “If their transgression is riches for the world and their failure is riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fulfillment be!” This is remarkable, because Paul is actually assuming their failure (their temporary rebellion) will turn into fulfillment (forgiveness and being brought back into the covenant community). He is not assuming that they will be damned eternally. He says again even more explicitly “If their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?” Paul assumes that those Jews temporarily in rebellion will be accepted and raised from the dead. The assumption is the exact opposite of eternal reprobation, and is in fact that they will be saved through resurrection with Christ.

Paul again says “if they do not continue in their unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again.” (11:23) If they are marked for eternal damnation, then why is Paul talking about them not continuing in unbelief and being grafted back into the covenant community?

Nevertheless, we can understand why Paul’s arguments are controversial to the opponents he is addressing in the letter to the Romans (Jews and Jewish Christians). Paul has to defend that even though the Jews participated in crucifying their own Messiah, and some Jews are currently in rebellion against the Messiah’s covenant community, God has never broken His faithfulness to the Jews.

Overall Context of Romans

What is the letter to the Romans about? What is Paul’s goal in writing the letter in the first place? In his letter to the Romans, Paul seeks to unify a church that is divided. Why are they divided? One the main sources of division is a set of objections that some Jews (and even Jewish Christians) have to Paul’s gospel. So, much of the letter to the Romans is structured around Paul responding to the objections of these opponents. Here is a basic structure of the arguments and objections:

Paul and his opponents agree: God has promised to bless all nations through Israel.

Paul’s gospel: God has fulfilled his promises to bless all nations through Israel in Jesus. As he says in Acts 13:32: “We preach to you the gospel of the promise made to the fathers, that God has fulfilled this promise to our children in that He raised up Jesus from the dead.” Therefore, Jew and Gentile both receive God’s promises and become part of God’s covenant community through faith in Jesus. Gentiles do not need to become Jews to become Christians. And in fact, those Gentiles who become Christians are becoming part of God’s true covenant community (here comes the controversial part) before those Jews who have yet to accept Jesus as Messiah. Those Jews who have not put faith in Jesus are not part of God’s true covenant community, even if they are ethnically Jewish and seek to uphold Jewish laws based on the Torah. That is where the trash hits the fan. That is where his opponents go “stop right there, Paul. Your claims mean that God has been unfaithful to the Jews.”

Paul’s Opponents: "Paul, your “gospel” means that God has been unfaithful to His promises to and through Israel (Paul responds to this in Romans 3 and 9), and will lead to licentiousness (Paul responds to this in Romans 6). You should be ashamed of the ‘gospel’ you are preaching.”

Paul: I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.” (Romans 1:16)

Romans 9-11

So when we get to Romans 9-11, Paul is defending that God has been faithful to His promises to Israel, even thought some Gentiles are part of the covenant community before some Jews, and some Jews are currently outside of God’s covenant community.

Paul just concluded Romans 8 with the glorious statement that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” But then he has to deal with the obvious objection from his opponents, “Paul, you are saying that some Jews are currently separated from Christ our Lord. Your whole argument implies a failure on God’s part to be faithful to his promises to the Jews.”

In Romans 9:1-5, Paul expresses his grief that some of his Jewish brethren are currently separated from (anathema to) the covenant community. He could even wish himself to be one of those currently anathematized if it meant others being brought in. Indeed, Paul was at one point one of those who were anathema, when he was persecuting the church, and that led to the further spread of the gospel among the Gentiles (see Acts 7 and 8). “Anathema” in this section does not mean irreversibly condemned to eternal damnation. It means presently outside the covenant community. Those presently outside the covenant community can become a part of it in the future (as Paul makes explicit in chapters 10 and 11).

In Romans 9:6-13, Paul clarifies the boundaries of the covenant community, and what qualifies someone as in or out. “God’s word (his promise to Israel) has not failed, because they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel” because “it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants.” When he uses “Jacob I loved, and Esau I hated” as an example, he is not saying that Esau is eternally damned. He is saying that Jacob was chosen as the covenant head, the one through whom the promise to bless all nations would be carried, and not Esau. We have indications from the Genesis narrative and from Jesus himself that, in fact, in the end Esau received God’s forgiveness (see this post).

In Romans 9:14-18, Paul explains God’s justice in hardening or showing mercy to individuals or nations to perform various roles in history. The mercy or hardening is not an assignment for eternal destiny, but for a role in history. Jacob, Esau, and Pharaoh are all part of the discussion in terms of their historical role in ushering the blessings of the promise to all nations through Israel. Look at verse 17: “The Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.” Pharaoh underwent punishment in the midst of history so that God’s name would be proclaimed to the whole earth. Paul is not talking about Pharaoh being eternally damned.

Over and over throughout Scripture, God shows a pattern of hardening sinners to persecute His people, so that He will display the glory of His salvation by rescuing His people from persecution, resulting in more people becoming part of His covenant community. For example, God hardens Joseph’s brothers to unjustly sell him to the Egyptians, so that by raising up Joseph, God can bring salvation to both Egyptians and Israelites (including Joseph’s brothers). God hardens Pharaoh to unjustly persecute the Israelites, so that God can bring salvation to the Israelites in the sight of all nations. God hardens Jews and Gentiles to unjustly kill Jesus, so that by Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, God can offer salvation to Jews and Gentiles. Finally, God hardens Paul himself to persecute the church (in Acts 7), and it is because of Paul’s persecution that the apostles go out into the rest of the world to preach the gospel (Acts 8). The fact that Paul is a “vessel of wrath” in Acts 7 does not disqualify him from becoming a “vessel of honor” in Acts 9.

It is this narrative pattern that Paul is appealing to in Romans 9-11. The means by which God shows forth the gospel to the ends of the earth is through the dramatic rescue of His persecuted chosen. As the sovereign author of history, this means that God hardens particular people, in accordance with their own sin by their own agency, for limited periods of time in order to persecute His chosen. But this temporary hardening does not mean they are disqualified from eternal salvation. God’s fashioning of some vessels for dishonor (those who persecute the church) and some for honor is not the end, but the means God uses unto the end of executing His redemptive plan for all nations.

Paul’s opponents would have been very familiar with this narrative pattern. What they didn’t expect was a narrative in which they would be the persecutors of God’s people, because they always assumed they were God’s people.

In Romans 9:19-21, Paul brings up the objection of his opponents: “You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” When Paul answers back “On the contrary, who are you, O Man, who answers back to God?” we can understand his incredulity (in other words, Paul is saying “come on guys, give me a break. You are not being serious”). His opponents never would have allowed Pharaoh to use such a defense for his rebellion. They would have agreed that Pharaoh was guilty and justly punished because he hardened his own heart by his own agency (Exodus 8:15, 32, 9:34). They would have known the narrative purpose in Exodus when it points out that “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart” was not to invite questions about divine sovereignty and human agency, but to eliminate any notion of Pharaoh heroically defying God and thwarting his purposes. In pagan literature such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Homeric epics, we see mortals heroically defying the will of the gods, and even if the gods overpower them, there is a nobility in their rebellious upset of the god’s plans. This is not the case with Pharaoh. Pharaoh’s rebellion was part of God’s foreknown and predestined plan for redemptive history. Otherwise, people might think, “wow, even though he failed in the end, Pharaoh withstood ten plagues. What a champ.” No, God planned for there to be ten plagues in order to humiliate all the Egyptian gods, and to magnify the event so that all the world would know His saving power. The fact that God foreknows our sin, and has already predestined for our sins to be incorporated into his redemptive plans for history is not an excuse for our sin, and does not eliminate our real agency/choice and responsibility in sin. God’s sovereignty does not eliminate real human agency and therefore real human responsibility, and so cannot be used as an excuse for sin (see the previous post for more on this). Regarding Israel specifically, they have no entitlement to being God’s chosen people in the first place. The promise came to them because of the grace of God alone. God is perfectly just to temporarily exclude them from his covenant community based on their rebellion.

To further explain his point, Paul then appeals to an analogy to a potter and clay that comes from Jeremiah 18. “The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?” It is clear from the text of Jeremiah 18 that God is not eliminating human agency or the opportunity for repentance from his dealing with us as a potter does with clay. In fact, what is fascinating is that God is the one saying “you have a choice to repent or rebel and change my plans (v8-11)” but it is humans who are fatalistic and saying “it is hopeless. (v12)” So the potter and clay analogy actually backfires pretty viciously on the Calvinist.

Jeremiah 18: “I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something on the wheel. ⁴ But the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel. ⁷ At one moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or to destroy it; ⁸ if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it. ⁹ Or at another moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to build up or to plant it; ¹⁰ if it does evil in My sight by not obeying My voice, then I will think better of the good with which I had promised to bless it. ¹¹ So now then, speak to the men of Judah and against the inhabitants of Jerusalem saying, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Behold, I am fashioning calamity against you and devising a plan against you. Oh turn back, each of you from his evil way, and reform your ways and your deeds.”’ ¹² But they will say, ‘It’s hopeless! For we are going to follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.’

In Romans 9:21-22, Paul says, “What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?” Who are “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction”? They are people, like Pharaoh, who will experience God’s judgments for a period of time in history. They are not people who are marked for eternal damnation. They have hardened their own hearts against God, but God is using their rebellion against him for a period of time in history to expand the reach of the global mission of His promise of salvation. Paul himself was a “vessel of wrath” while persecuting the church, and God “destroyed” him on the road to Damascus. In his case, the judgment became part of his redemption story. There is logic in this verse that is the same as that of Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the tares in Matthew 22. Good seed for wheat is sown, but then the devil plants evil seed to grow tares among the wheat. The angels ask if they should go down and destroy all the tares, but God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath and make his power known, decides to endure the tares with much patience so as not to destroy any wheat that is still growing. God is using the rebellious “tares” or “vessels of wrath” to further his redemptive purposes, and this is exactly how Paul continues in Romans 9:23.

In Romans 9:23-24, Paul says, “And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, ²⁴ even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.” Again, the issue is Jew and Gentile. A partial and temporary hardening has come upon some Israelites so that more Gentiles can be grafted in to the covenant community. This means that some Gentiles are becoming part of God’s people before some Jews, because they have put their faith in Christ first and some Jews have not yet done so. This is exactly what Paul says in verse 30, “Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith; ³¹ but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law. ³² Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as though it were by works.” Does this mean that these Israelites are damned eternally? Of course not. Paul then says, “my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation.” (Romans 10:1)

I know this has been lengthy, but I hope it has been helpful in showing that Romans 9 does not support Calvinism.