3    Israel’s Unbelief Is  Consistent with God’s  Plan—part 2  It Is Consistent with His Person (9:14-24)

What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! 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 then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For 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.” So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? 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? 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? And He did so in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles. (9:14–24)

Paul’s second point in explaining that Israel’s unbelief is not inconsistent with God’s revealed plan is that her unbelief in no way reflects against or demeans God’s person, in particular His sovereign power and justice. In this passage the apostle answers two anticipated questions that are often raised about God’s electing some people for salvation while others are left to damnation.

THE FIRST ANTICIPATED QUESTION ANSWERED

What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! 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 then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For 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.” So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. (9:14–18)

The question behind this paragraph is a question of God’s fairness. If He only chose some to be the heirs of promise, and not others, people will say He is unfair. Paul had just reminded his Jewish readers that God sovereignly chose Isaac above Ishmael and Jacob above his twin brother Esau before they were born (Rom. 9:16–13). They were not chosen or rejected because of who they were or would be or because of what they had done or would do, “but because of Him who calls” (v. 11), that is, wholly on the basis of God’s sovereign will. Isaac and Jacob were “the children of the promise” (v. 8); Ishmael and Esau were not. So, in the sense of spiritual salvation, God has chosen some to believe.

The natural human response is to assert that God was unjustly arbitrary in choosing one over the other long before they would have opportunity to trust or reject Him or to be obedient or disobedient. That natural response, however, is tantamount to saying that there is injustice with God. So Paul asks rhetorically if we have a right to accuse God of being unjust.

That accusation has been raised throughout the history of the church and is still heard today when God’s election and predestination are proclaimed. How can God elect one person and reject another before they are even born? In light of human wisdom and standards, especially in democratic societies, where all people are considered equal before the law, the ideas of election and predestination are repulsive and unacceptable. Those doctrines, it is claimed, could not possibly characterize a God who is truly just and righteous. To the saved but ignorant or immature mind, God simply could not do such a thing, and to the unsaved mind, a god like that would not be worthy of recognition, much less worship.

Soon after his great afflictions began, Job’s wife advised him to “Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9), implying that God was grossly unfair and did not deserve the worship of a faithful man who was allowed to be so tormented.

In light of such human objections and conjectures, Paul proceeds to defend God’s person. May it never be! he declares, using the strongest Greek negative (mē genoito), which he employs some ten times in this epistle. The phrase sometimes is translated idiomatically (as in the KJV) as “God forbid!” The idea is that of “No, no, a thousand times no!” The very idea that God could be unjust or unrighteous to the slightest degree is blasphemy. Even with his limited understanding of God, long before any of His revealed Word was recorded, Abraham affirmed rhetorically, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” (Gen. 18:25).

Because God Himself is the measure of righteousness and justice, He has no capacity for unrighteousness or injustice. It is His very character to be gracious, compassionate, merciful, and loving. The psalmists repeatedly declared that cardinal truth. David asserted that “the righteous God tries the hearts and minds” (Ps. 7:9) and “The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger and great in lovingkindness” (145:8). Other psalmists proclaimed: “Thy right hand is full of righteousness” (48:10); “Thy righteousness, O God, reaches to the heavens” (71:19); “Gracious is the Lord, and righteous” (116:5); “Righteous art Thou, O Lord, and upright are Thy judgments” (119:137); and “Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness” (119:142).

With equal certainty Jeremiah testified, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness on earth” (Jer. 9:23–24). By His very nature, God always has been and always will be righteous and just. As He reveals through Malachi, “I, the Lord, do not change” (Mal. 3:6).

As he did with the previous point, in response to the accusation that God’s sovereign election is unfair, Paul cites two texts from the Old Testament Scriptures that clearly illustrate otherwise. He does not resort to rational argument or to philosophical apologetics but bases his assertion directly on God’s own Word.

First, he cites Exodus 33:19, declaring, For He [God] says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

Moses had just come through a very trying experience. While he had been on Mount Sinai receiving the two tablets of the testimony from God, his brother Aaron, the high priest, led the impatient people of Israel to melt down their gold jewelry to make a calf to worship as if it represented the true God (Ex. 32:2–6). In response to that great apostasy, God commanded that “about three thousand men” be put to death (v. 28). He would have been perfectly justified in killing all the Israelites who had participated in the idolatry, but He sovereignly chose to execute only those three thousand as a warning to the others and to preserve His witness nation.

Horrified by that “great sin,” Moses made intercession for his people, praying, “Now, if Thou wilt, forgive their sin—and if not, please blot me out from Thy book which Thou hast written!” (vv. 30–31). The Lord replied, “Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book. But go now, lead the people where I told you. Behold, My angel shall go before you; nevertheless in the day when I punish, I will punish them for their sin” (vv. 33–34).

Despite God’s assurance that He would lead and protect His people as they entered and conquered the Promised Land (33:1–3), and despite Moses’ own nearness to the Lord, who spoke to him “just as a man speaks to his friend” (v. 11), this loyal man of God deeply sensed his own inadequacy for such a formidable task and his own and his people’s need for the Lord’s continual presence, guidance, and power (vv. 12–13). In reply to that additional entreaty, God gave assurance, tempered by the declaration of His divine prerogative: “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion” (v. 19). In other words, His sparing the people and continuing to guide and protect them was purely reflective of His mercy and grace. He had the absolute right to condemn or to save as He divinely saw fit. God’s sovereignty and His grace not only are compatible but are inseparable.

Because all men are sinful and deserve God’s condemnation, no person is wronged or treated unjustly if God chooses to condemn him. That is justice. His mercy toward any person is purely by His grace.

Mercy and compassion are essentially synonymous, but mercy refers primarily to action, whereas compassion refers more to the feeling or disposition behind that action.

Continuing simply to declare God’s truth, rather than fruitlessly trying to explain the logic of what is beyond human comprehension, Paul goes on to say, So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. It is not man’s choice or pursuit but God who initiates mercy for the sinner. Salvation is never initiated by human choice or merited by zealous human effort. It always begins in God’s sovereign, gracious, and eternal will. Those who receive God’s mercy receive it solely by His grace. Ishmael desired the blessing but failed to receive it. Esau ran for the blessing, as it were, but also failed to receive it (see Gen. 27).

As the writer of Hebrews explains, “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac; and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son; it was he to whom it was said, ‘In Isaac your descendants shall be called’” (Heb. 11:17–18).

The same writer also makes clear, however, that God’s choosing must be confirmed by man’s faith. “By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, even regarding things to come. By faith Jacob, as he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph” (Heb. 11:20–21, emphasis added). Esau received a blessing from his father but not the blessing he sought with tears, because he was ungodly and sought the blessing without repentance or faith (12:16–17).

Next, Paul cites another supporting passage from Exodus, this time from chapter 9, verse 16: For 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.” Being an absolute monarch, Pharaoh assumed that, certainly within his own realm, everything he said and did was by his own free choice to serve his own human purposes. But the Lord made clear through Moses that Pharaoh was divinely raised up to serve a divine purpose, a purpose of which the king was not even aware.

Exegeirō (raised … up) carries the idea of bringing forward or lifting up and was used of the rise of historical figures to positions of prominence. The word is used several times in the Septuagint. Speaking of the Messiah, Balaam declared to Balak, the king of Moab, “One from Jacob shall have dominion, and shall destroy the remnant from the city” (Num. 24:19). Through the prophet Nathan, the Lord told David that, because of his murder of Uriah and taking his wife, Bathsheba, for himself, “I will raise up evil against you from your own household” (2 Sam. 12:11). One of Job’s “comforters” rightly said of God that “He sets on high those who are lowly, and those who mourn are lifted to safety” (Job 5:11). In much the same way that He raised up Pharaoh, the Lord also raised up “the Chaldeans” to do His will (Hab. 1:6) and one day will “raise up a shepherd [Antichrist] in the land who will not care for the perishing, seek the scattered, heal the broken, or sustain the one standing, but will devour the flesh of the fat sheep and tear off their hoofs” (Zech. 11:16).

The Pharaoh of whom Moses and Paul were speaking was probably Amenhotep II, whom the Lord sovereignly raised to prominence and power. For this very purpose, God declared, I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.” The Lord of all history put that king into a position of great authority in order to demonstrate His far greater divine power and authority that would bring glory to His name … throughout the whole earth.

It is that very divine redemptive power that Jews have celebrated for millennia in Passover, remembering the Lord’s gracious delivering power, as shown by His saving them from the oppressive hand of Pharaoh. That feast is the Old Testament benchmark of redemption—the physical deliverance of Israel from human bondage, and it foreshadowed Christ’s infinitely greater spiritual deliverance of men from sin’s spiritual bondage.

Using Pharaoh’s proud arrogance, the Lord demonstrated that His miraculous power was far greater than the Satan-empowered miracles of Pharaoh’s magicians. He made a path through the Red Sea to deliver His people and then brought back that same sea to rush over and drown Pharaoh’s entire army. Celebrating that gracious deliverance,

The song continues through verse 18, declaring God’s sovereign mercy in behalf of His people and His divine wrath against their enemies. Israel sang, “The peoples have heard, they tremble; anguish has gripped the inhabitants of Philistia. Then the chiefs of Edom were dismayed; the leaders of Moab, trembling grips them; all the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away” (Ex. 15:14–15). Just as the Lord had predicted, that great deliverance caused His name [to] be proclaimed throughout the whole earth. He became known even by the pagans as the awesome and fearful God who delivered Israel from Egypt (cf. Josh. 9:9).

Even earlier in Israel’s history, as the conquest of Canaan began, the Gentile prostitute Rahab verified that the Lord’s intention was being fulfilled, telling the Israelite spies in Jericho,

Psalms 105, 106, and 136 all celebrate God’s sovereign demonstration of His power and glory by delivering His people from Egypt. As one commentator has observed, Pharaoh was the open adversary of God, an avowed enemy following his own designs; yet a divine purpose was being fulfilled in his life. Only that purpose, and nothing else, can explain Pharaoh’s very being.

That mighty act of God demonstrated two great truths. He delivered Israel to exhibit His sovereign mercy on [those] whom He desires, and He raised up and destroyed Pharaoh to exhibit the corollary truth that He hardens those whom He desires. Only His divine desire determines which it will be.

Moses was a Jew, whereas Pharaoh was a Gentile; but both of them were sinners. Both were murderers, and both witnessed God’s miracles. Yet Moses was redeemed and Pharaoh was not. God raised up Pharaoh in order to reveal His own glory and power, and God had mercy on Moses in order to use him to deliver His people Israel. Pharaoh was a ruler, whereas Moses’ people were slaves under Pharaoh. But Moses received God’s mercy and compassion, because that was God’s will. The Lord’s work is sovereign, and He acts entirely according to His own will to accomplish His own purposes. The issue was not the presumed rights of either men but rather the sovereign will of God.

Hardens translates sklērunō, which literally means to make hard and metaphorically means to render stubborn and obstinate. The Exodus account of Moses’ confrontation with Pharaoh speaks ten times of God’s hardening that ruler’s heart (see, e.g., 4:21; 7:3, 13). That same passage also informs us that Pharaoh hardened his own heart (see, e.g., 8:32; 9:34), confirming God’s act by his own. Such passages point up the humanly unreconcilable tension between God’s sovereignty and man’s will. Esau was rejected before he was born, and, also before he was born, Judas was appointed to betray Christ (see Acts 1:16; John 6:70–71). Yet both men themselves chose to follow sin and unbelief.

During His incarnation, Jesus clearly revealed that God’s choosing of men always precedes their choosing Him. He told a group of unbelieving Jews, “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:44). On a later occasion, He explained to His disciples, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you” (John 15:16). But He also said to unbelieving Jews, “You shall die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24). In the familiar words of John 3:18, Jesus said that “he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” Because of men’s natural and willing unbelief, God is just in condemning those who already deserve it.

THE SECOND ANTICIPATED QUESTION ANSWERED

So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? 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? 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? And He did so in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles. (9:18–24)

The second question, or objection, that Paul anticipates and responds to is: Why does God then still find fault? For who resists His will? In other words, if God sovereignly has mercy on whom He desires and hardens whom He desires, how can human beings be held responsible? How can they be blamed for their unbelief and sin, when their destiny has already been divinely determined? Again, such reasoning challenges God’s justice and righteousness.

As Israel was conquering Canaan, “Joshua waged war a long time with all these [Canaanite] kings. There was not a city which made peace with the sons of Israel except the Hivites living in Gibeon; they took them all in battle. For it was of the Lord to harden their hearts, to meet Israel in battle in order that he might utterly destroy them, that they might receive no mercy, but that he might destroy them, just as the Lord had commanded Moses” (Josh. 11:18–20).

Such commands of God, with which the Old Testament abounds, seem totally capricious and cruel to worldly, carnal minds, which accept only what fits their preconceived ideas of right and wrong, justice and injustice. Consequently, they judge even God by their own finite, biased, and sin-tainted standards.

God’s utterly sovereign will is just as clearly taught in the New Testament. Later in this letter to Rome, Paul tells his readers: “That which Israel is seeking for, it has not obtained, but those who were chosen obtained it, and the rest were hardened” (Rom. 11:7). In his first letter to Thessalonica, he declares that “God has not destined us [believers] for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 5:9).

In His perfect wisdom, and in perfect righteousness and justice, God has destined some people for salvation by His grace and, because of their sin and unbelief, has left others to damnation by His wrath. Speaking of unrepentant unbelievers, Peter writes, “These, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed” (2 Pet. 2:12).

Many critics of such doctrine, supposedly coming to the defense of God’s justice, fail to acknowledge that every human being since the Fall has deserved nothing but God’s just condemnation to an eternity in hell. If God were to exercise only His justice, no person would ever be saved. It is therefore hardly unjust if, according to His sovereign grace, He chooses to elect some sinners for salvation.

It is not, of course, that we can fully understand what God reveals about His sovereign election and predestination. It can only be accepted by faith, acknowledging its truth simply because God has revealed it to be true. As believers, we know that, in ourselves, we deserve only God’s rejection and condemnation. But we also know that, for His own sovereign reasons, God has elected us to be His children and, in His own time and way, brought us to saving faith in Jesus Christ. On the other hand, we also know that our human will had a part in our salvation. Jesus said, “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me.” That is the choice of God’s will. But Jesus immediately went on to say that “the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37). That is the choice of man’s will, which God graciously accedes to for all who believe in His Son.

Continuing simply to proclaim God’s sovereign righteousness and justice rather than trying to explain it, Paul turns a question back on those who would question the Lord. On the contrary, he says, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? In other words, it is blasphemous even to question, not to mention deny, God’s right to hold men accountable when they are captives of His sovereign will.

It is obvious from Paul’s wording that the ones who might be asking such questions would not be seeking God’s truth but rather self-justification. Attempting to excuse their own unbelief, sinfulness, ignorance, and spiritual rebellion, they would be apt to accuse God of injustice.

But because human understanding is so limited, even sincere questions about God’s sovereign election and predestination ultimately must go unanswered. As already noted, it is one of the many truths about God that we must accept by faith, simply because He has revealed it in His Word.

Again taking support from the Old Testament, Paul continues his rebuke of presumptuous unbelievers by showing the absurdity of anyone’s questioning God’s rights. 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?

Many centuries earlier, the prophet Isaiah had used that analogy:

Also using that figure, Jeremiah wrote,

Although it is to an infinitely greater degree, God is the creator of men much as a potter is the creator of his clay vessels. And it is no more rational, and far more arrogant and foolish, for men to question the justice and wisdom of God than, if such were possible, for a clay bowl to question the motives and purposes of the craftsman who made it.

To his humanist friend Erasmus, Martin Luther said,

To fully understand God, we would have to be equal to the God who made us—a notion even more absurd than a clay pot’s being equal to the potter who molded it.

Whatever God’s sovereignty may mean in its fullness, it does not mean and cannot mean that He chose for men to become sinful. The perfectly holy and righteous God is not responsible in the slightest way for the sinfulness of His creatures. Making that truth plain, James declares, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone” (James 1:13). “Thine eyes are too pure to approve evil,” Habakkuk said of the Lord, “and Thou canst not look on wickedness with favor” (Hab. 1:13).

As in the rest of Romans 9—indeed, as in the rest of Scripture—the closing three verses of this passage do not attempt to show the source or origin of evil or try to explain the humanly-inexplicable consistency of God’s justice with His righteousness. The apostle simply makes a declaration in the form of a rhetorical question: 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?

Paul then gives two reasons for, although not a complete explanation of, God’s allowing sin to enter and contaminate His universe. The Greek term behind willing is much stronger than this English word connotes. The Greek word carries the idea of determined intent, not indifferent or helpless acquiescence.

First, Paul says, God determined to allow sin in His creation because it gave Him the opportunity to demonstrate His wrath. God is glorified in displaying His wrath, just as surely as in displaying His grace, because both of those attributes, along with all the others, comprise His divine nature and character, which are perfectly and permanently self-consistent and are worthy of adoration and worship. Even God’s anger, vengeance, and retribution poured out on sinners are glorious, because they display His majestic holiness.

Second, God allowed sin to enter the world in order to make His power known. His power is manifested in His judgment and punishment of sin. The vivid and sobering events found in the closing chapters of Revelation depict God’s ultimate judgmental wrath. The plagues, the fiery judgment, and all the other curses of the apocalypse leave no doubt that the Lord will judge and remove all sin and sinners from the earth before He establishes His millennial kingdom. When Christ comes from heaven in His blood-stained garments, riding a white horse and carrying a sword, He will defeat Antichrist and all his ungodly followers. God’s power, originally displayed in creation, will be equally glorious in destruction. It will be awesomely manifested in His vengeful, but wholly righteous and justified, conquest of all enemies who would attempt to conquer Him.

God has every right to act gloriously in such judgment, but He has, by His mercy, endured with much patience a world of sinners. He has endured their unbelief, rejection, hatred, blasphemy, and iniquity, while patiently allowing time for repentance (cf. Ps. 103:8; 2 Pet. 3:9).

Vessels of wrath prepared for destruction is surely one of the most tragic identifications of unbelievers in all of Scripture. Paul, of course, is speaking of ungodly and unrepentant human vessels, all of whom will feel the ultimate wrath of God, for which they have been prepared for destruction by their own rejection of Him. As already noted, it is not that God makes men sinful but that He leaves them in their sin unless they repent of it and turn to His Son for deliverance.

The Greek verb rendered prepared is passive. God is not the subject doing the preparing. There is the very clear sense in this use of the passive voice to relieve God of the responsibility and to put it fully on the shoulders of those who refuse to heed His Word and believe in His Son. They are prepared by their own rejection for a place (hell) prepared by God, not originally for them but “for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41).

The corollary of that sobering truth regarding unbelievers is the comforting truth regarding believers: And He did so in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.

God allowed sin to enter the world not only to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known but also to demonstrate the riches of His glory by bestowing His grace upon vessels of mercy (cf. Eph. 2:6–7). These are people which He prepared beforehand for glory. In this instance, the Greek verb rendered prepared is in the active voice, and the subject doing the action is specifically God (He). The great work God did in saving the elect puts His glory on display before all angels and all men (cf. Rev. 5:9–14). He has the absolute right to reveal and demonstrate His character in any way He chooses, whether by His just condemnation of unbelievers or by His gracious redemption of believers.

Scripture makes clear that no person is saved apart from faith in Christ, because God sovereignly requires that human response to His grace. But the primary purpose of salvation is not the benefit it brings to those who are saved but rather the honor it brings to the God who saves them, by making known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy. Believers are saved without any merit or work of their own, in order that God may have a means of displaying His glory, which is seen in the grace, the mercy, the compassion, and the forgiveness that He alone grants to those who come to Christ.

Paul closes this passage by identifying us—that is, himself and all other believers—as God’s preordained vessels of mercy. Every believer is among those whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles. That is the glorious truth of the universal offer of God’s grace.

The unfathomable truth that God chooses some men for salvation and others for destruction is not revealed to confuse us or upset us, and certainly not to tempt us to question the character of God’s person. That truth is given to demonstrate God’s glory and sovereignty to all men. It is also given to make believers thankful that He has chosen us, who, in ourselves, were not and are not more worthy of salvation than those who remain lost.

In showing mercy and in judging sin, God makes no distinctions based on race, ethnic background, nationality, intelligence, or even moral or religious merit. He distinguishes only between those whom He has chosen and those whom He has not. That is a hard truth to accept, because it runs directly counter to man’s natural inclinations and standards. To the natural man it seems grossly unfair, and even the best-taught and most faithful believer cannot fully explain it. But the truth is fully biblical and is among the truths taught by Paul that Peter says are “hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction” (2 Pet. 3:16).

For those who receive God’s Word as inerrant, there will always be a tension between fully acknowledging God’s sovereign will and fully acknowledging His requirement of human faith. We can only believe what Scripture teaches, accepting in our hearts what we cannot explain with our minds.

And although Scripture makes clear that God elects and rejects solely on the basis of His divine sovereignty, it makes equally clear that God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezek. 18:32) and has no desire that even one person should perish (2 Pet. 3:9). Without compromising either His holiness or His justice, Jesus assures us that “the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37).