“The Objects Of His Wrath”
“THE OBJECTS OF HIS WRATH”
ROMANS 9:21-24
Paul uses the imagery of the pot from Jeremiah.
Paul takes his imagery of the pot from Jeremiah 18:1-6. It is another example of his habit of driving the argument along one line to one specific conclusion. He is asserting with vigor that the gulf between divine and human intelligence is so vast that it is absurd to argue with him. It is the thought of Psalm 2:2-4.
On the other hand, a human being is not a lifeless pot, and Paul would have been the first to stress the fact that one for whom Christ died was not dead clay. Human beings are born to question and to seek, and God is ready in the course of time to supply answers. Pots are not made in their creator’s image, and it is precisely because humanity has been made in God’s divine image that we do, and may, question God. Job and Jeremiah call aloud for the justification of God’s ways to humanity. Read the psalms, and the psalm Christ quoted (22:1).
The passage cannot mean that God creates human beings capable of suffering in order to make them suffer, and to punish them for what eludes their control. Such a God is not the God of either Old Testament or New Testament. On the other hand, God can reject or choose humanity or nation for this or that piece of work in the ordered scheme of history, and this is the thought uppermost in Paul’s mind as he wrestles with the problem of Israel’s rejection, and their strange hostility to their Messiah.
There is also the defiant answering back of rebellion and disobedience, distinct from the questioning of faithful bewilderment. Nor does this conclude the argument. Paul shows God’s will exercised in such a way that no reproach, however presumptuous, can be urged against it. Moreover, is not the fact that God withholds adverse action, asserted in 9:22f., sufficient indication that, even in this context of argument, Paul looks upon “the objects of his wrath” as responsible beings who need time to repent, and that, in turn, implies the capability of repentance?