Gratefully Exalt God’s Mercy – Romans 9:14–18

PRAY

We are in Romans 9, where Paul has begun a longer section dealing with the relationship between Israelites and Gentiles in the people of God (chs 9-11 in your Bibles). Here he starts by interacting with the difficult issue that most of Israel is presently rejecting the Messiah, but he seeks to show that God is faithfully fulfilling his promises as he intended, according to his higher ways. Romans 9:6a “But it is not as though the word of God has failed” forms the thesis for these three chapters.

Paul explained in vv. 6-13 that God has always been fulfilling his saving promise by his grace and mercy, not by race nor by merit, even within Abraham’s descendants. God’s true children are not his because they have earned it by their works or by simply being Israelites. Looking at it from God’s side, the children of promise belong to God by his gracious and merciful choosing. But Paul will also show, in 9:30 through ch. 10, that when we look at it from the human side, in our own experience we must respond in faith.

Both things are true, and Paul holds them in tension without holding back or qualifying either one. God’s true children are those whom God has chosen in his mercy, who respond to God’s promise of salvation in faith. And the center of this for Paul is that God’s means of mercy is Jesus the Messiah, who is the good news of God’s promise come to fulfillment. The word of Christ is the saving promise that people now need to hear and must respond to in faith.

Before we come to that section where Paul again emphasizes faith over works to be righteous, he first has a significant section defending the character and ways of God against the accusation that God’s selection of some and not others makes God unrighteous or unfair. If God chose Isaac and not Ishmael to receive his saving promise, and Jacob but not Esau, Paul anticipates intellectual objections.

Romans 9:14–24 ESV

¹⁴ What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! ¹⁵ For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” ¹⁶ So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. ¹⁷ For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” ¹⁸ So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. ¹⁹ You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” ²⁰ But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” ²¹ Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? ²² What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, ²³ in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— ²⁴ even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

Paul returns to the diatribe style here, of asking and answering anticipated questions. Most likely, these are the very real kinds of objections that Paul himself has wrestled with, and that he has received in presenting the gospel, especially when interacting with fellow Jews.

But he writes this letter to a mixed church of Jews and Gentiles, with Gentiles likely significantly outnumbering his fellow Israelites, who have proven reluctant to accept Jesus of Nazareth as God’s Messiah. So Paul essentially talks to both groups in this letter to remove self-exalting arrogance, that they should all alike be humbly and gratefully embracing the gospel that unites them in Christ Jesus. So it is my belief that such a context informs what Paul is doing here even when emphasizing the mercy of God.

Paul’s desire for the reader is that we should…

Be humbled and united in exalting God’s great mercy.

I believe that is Paul’s aim, and I will therefore aim to maintain the same spirit exalting God’s great mercy to us in making us his children. Paul is not bludgeoning us with God’s sovereign mercy; he wants us to gratefully marvel at God’s mercy to anyone, and therefore to us in particular. All of this should lead us to grateful humility, and in fact to being united in a grateful praise to God for his great mercy.

But Paul knows that God’s higher ways are challenging for us to understand and accept, so he meets us where we are in terms of that struggle. Perhaps we too might ask if God is being unjust or unrighteous in sovereignly choosing certain ones to be the recipients of his saving promise.

Romans 9:14 ESV

¹⁴ What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means!

Paul’s emphatic answer to any accusation of unrighteousness in God is “May it never be!” Whatever way we attempt to explain God’s ways to our finite human minds, what must be wiped off the table entirely is that there is anything other than perfect goodness and righteousness in God’s character and all his ways.

God is perfectly righteous in his character and all his ways. (verse 14)

If bring we God down to a level where his character can be questioned, we no longer have a good and true and living God who is worthy of all worship. He would then just be equivalent to tyrannical and arbitrary Greek gods, who are inventions in our own image. No, our God is unassailable in his character. His righteousness is purer and cleaner than the freshest snow, and his righteousness shines more radiantly and with greater heat of perfection than the largest star.

Yet Paul knows full well that there are intellectual (or philosophical) difficulties for us in human terms with the ways of God. In a doxology at the end of chapter 11 he reminds us, “Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” (see Rom 11:33-36) But it is still helpful for Paul to indicate for us here that God’s freedom is limited only by his own character. Where God’s freedom is emphasized in verses 15 & 18, it is such great comfort to us to know that God is righteous. What God freely does is always righteous.

Again, Paul sympathetically understands that this is a place where we in our human finitude get hung up, and where we run the risk of elevating our own understanding and trying to bring God down to our level. It seems to me that Paul wants us to yes, improve our comprehension of mercy, but at the same time he does not remove the tension between God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility (emphasized later). What Paul wants is for us to first accept the higher ways of our God of perfect righteousness, which will then lead us to at least a better, albeit limited, understanding of how God is working. And that should cause us to exalt God for his mercy, in grateful humility and unity of worship.

So first we must embrace God’s total perfection of character and the complete supremacy of his activity. When we do that, we will be on our way to understanding and responding to his mercy. Now we’re ready to accept what mercy means and how we should respond. I argue that Paul’s point is that we should…

Marvel at God’s mercy to undeserving people. For God is justified in judicially hardening sinners for the sake of his name. (verses 15-18)

We should marvel at God’s mercy to Israel and to us, an undeserving people. For God would be just in judicially hardened us in our sin, like Pharaoh.

Carefully pondering the meaning of mercy is fundamental here. We must embrace what mercy means to help us get where Paul is going with this, and then it should cause us to humbly and gratefully marvel at God’s mercy to anyone, and especially to us.

So what is mercy? Mercy is the quality in God by which he is forgiving and favorable in compassion toward an offender or adversary. Mercy is specifically God’s kindness to spare us in our sorry plight, although we don’t deserve it.  

Interestingly, and as we already noted, what Paul emphasizes is God’s own freedom in his mercy. He quotes God’s words to Moses…

Romans 9:15 ESV

¹⁵ For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

So Paul’s first contradiction to the accusation of any unrighteousness on God’s part comes from the example of God telling Moses that he will have mercy on whomever he chooses, and compassion on whomever he chooses. But the meaning of mercy is paramount.

The context for this quote occurs in Ex 32-33. It takes place right after the people have sinned greatly against God in making a golden calf to worship while Moses was on the mountain, receiving the law from God. God says therefore that they should still go up into the promised land, but that his presence would not go with them as he has been with them in the wilderness, “lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people” (Ex 33:3). They have displayed yet again that they are an undeserving people.

But Moses plays an intercessory role and pleads with God to remember that he had set his favor on Moses himself, and that God had made this nation his people. Moses knows that this people are nothing without God’s presence. They will be just as every other people on the planet. And he knows he’s asking God to be forgiving and merciful, even though they don’t deserve it.

God mercifully agrees, and Moses, probably seeking confirmation, then also asks for God to show him his glory. God agrees to this also, with careful parameters so Moses doesn’t get incinerated from seeing the fullness of God’s holy glory. And it’s here before God does this that he says, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” (Ex 33:19)

How should we understand this? God tells Moses unequivocally that whether it’s Moses or the people, God is being gracious and merciful not because anyone deserves it, but by his own freedom to do so. It exalts God’s mercy alone for him to keep his promises and maintain his covenant relationship with his chosen people despite their unworthiness and unfaithfulness.

This theme fits perfectly with what Paul has taught in the early part of Romans, that we all alike are deserving of God’s wrath because of our sin. All the work of God for us and in us is mercy. Paul therefore extrapolates from this quote, that it does not depend on him who wills or runs, but on God, who has mercy.

Romans 9:16 ESV

¹⁶ So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.

Will emphasizes human initiative, and run human effort. Paul is clearly not denying that we, or that Jacob and Esau have a will, and that we are actively running the race of this life.

Instead, what Paul declares is that God’s choosing is purely by his mercy, not by anyone’s will or effort, not even that of Moses. Again, this does not deny that the people repented and that Moses interceded, but God’s mercy was God’s mercy, not something he was beholden to do because of their will or effort.

As Paul continues, he basically gives the other side of God also being righteous when he does not have mercy on everyone. By the example of Pharaoh we are reassured that God is righteous to judicially harden sinners, which he does for his greater, good purposes. So the second quotation is meant to be a contrast, but which also furthers our understanding of God’s righteousness and mercy when he justly hardens sinners for the sake of his glory among the nations.

Romans 9:17–18 ESV

¹⁷ For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” ¹⁸ So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

This quotation from Scripture is earlier (Ex 9:16), in the midst of the plagues in Egypt. After the 6th plague (out of 10) God instructs Moses to tell Pharaoh, ‘here’s why I haven’t destroyed you off the face of the earth already’ (Ex 9:15). It’s because I have raised you up to this position of influence as Pharaoh over Egypt for this purpose, that by your stubbornness against my command, I am displaying my power over Egypt and over the entire earth in these plagues, to make my name renowned in all the earth.

Even as God said here, word spread about what God did in rescuing Israel out of the hand of Pharaoh in such a great defeat. When Israel goes to enter the promised land, the peoples in Canaan had already heard of what God had done in Egypt and were afraid of Israel’s God.

Now the point that Paul makes here (as verse 18 clarifies) is that it was God’s will for Pharaoh to be hardened in order that God might use him in this way. Some might say that God hardened a Pharaoh who was hardening himself, and such a view can be defended from the fact that half of the times the Exodus narrative says that Pharaoh hardened his heart, and the other half it says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Others might make the argument that God spoke to Moses about hardening Pharaoh’s heart before Pharaoh had himself done anything yet. At the very least we might say that God was working through Pharaoh’s own will to work His will.

We must admit that such is the tension we face in the whole theological presentation of Scripture on God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. If we push so hard in either direction that we are even kind of attempting to explain away the other, we find ourselves disagreeing with the clear presentation of God’s word. We are forced to accept that it is a tension we cannot fully resolve in our finite minds, but that it presents no problem in the perfect mind of the sovereign God of the universe. This reality should humble us. It should cause us to be less dogmatic and more patient with one another. And above all it should lead to worshiping the God who holds all these things in his righteous and trustworthy hands.

Regardless, and once again, to understand this hardening and this mercy as best we can, we must realize that both Moses and Pharaoh were undeserving sinners (even murderers), worthy of eternal punishment. Moses was an underserving sinner on whom God had mercy, as were the people of Israel, and Pharaoh was a sinner whom God hardened. God did not harden a blank slate. Pharaoh was a sinner. Again, what this actually does is highlight the meaning of mercy and the message of mercy.

The point of this text from Paul is to show us that we can’t dictate to whom God shows mercy and how God ought to show mercy. No one deserves mercy. God is righteous in his freedom to be merciful to whom he wills as he mercifully fulfill his plans as he wills. [repeat] And once again, this does not negate the important teaching of Scripture that we must respond in faith to the God of such mercy.

But the point for today from Paul’s emphasis here is that we should…

Be humbled and united in exalting God’s great mercy.

I pray for our hearts and minds to humbly united in exalted our God of such great mercy.

As we head toward a conclusion with this theme, let me also offer a couple of…

Concluding Practical Applications:

God’s mercy should not divide us but unite us.

We do not desire that our differences should define our relationships in the local church. [The elders at Branson Bible…] Unity does not mean uniformity. (See the Apostle Paul’s discussion in chapter 14 into the beginning of 15 about getting along in lesser convictions, even when we think we are right.) We can be united and still disagree sometimes. What unity will mean is yes being aligned on the most important beliefs and behaviors. Unity will also mean making sincere efforts to have some of our differences not define our relationships.

To that end, if you are struggling with the way we teach something, we encourage you to do two things: 1. With all the fairness you can muster, try to give us the benefit of the doubt that we are motivated to exalt God in our interpretation of his word. And at least seek to understand if our train of thought can be consistently defended from God’s word.  2. If you desire to do so, please feel free to talk to an elder to make sure you are understanding the church’s position correctly. And let us help you to at least seek a possible path where some differences do not define our fellowship together.

In fact, we have an elder specifically designated for various areas of doctrinal discussion, so we will first steer you toward that elder for initial conversation. In such a conversation, our goal will be to listen well to you, to help you understand the church’s position, or what we teach, and then to help you be united and not divisive in your demeanor moving forward with regard to the discussion in question.

Our sincere desire, and I think it is the very point Paul makes in overall context here, is that exaltation of God’s sovereign mercy should not divide us but humble us and unite us.

A final application that is right for us whenever we study, ponder, and worship God for his mercy is this:

Pray that our exaltation of his mercy will teach us to be merciful.

Jesus states this clearly and unequivocally in his teaching: Luke 6:36 “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” In context, Jesus says that others may be persecuting us and treating us as enemies, and yet he calls on us to love them even as we are loved, and to be merciful as God is merciful toward us.

Admittedly, this is so much harder than it sounds in such a simple and direct statement. Which means that we must pray with full dependence on God’s help that we should marvel at his mercy in such a way that it makes us merciful—that we should learn to be loving from the love he has lavished on us.

Let me pray this for us as the praise team returns for a final song before the Lord’s Table.

PRAY

[final song]

COMMUNION:

As we head into passion week in our Christian calendar, consider this: In a display of mercy unmatched in all of his created world, God the Son condescended to become man. And in immeasurable mercy our Lord Jesus took our sin upon himself and suffered not only a horrific, ignominious death, but he did so precisely to take the righteous wrath of God against sin upon his own shoulders—your sin and mine. What mercy! By becoming sin for us he suffered separation from perfect fellowship with the Father and Spirit.

But the Lord who became like his creation is also the Creator, and he rose again, so that by his death and resurrection we can have forgiveness of sin and his righteousness imputed to us, that we could be in right relationship to God.

What depth of mercy and grace for the Son to bring us to his table and to say, “this is my body which is for you. This is my blood shed for you.” As we participate in the Lord’s Table together, be humbled and united in exalting God’s great mercy.