Vessels of Destruction

Reformation is needed in almost every day. If Paul, within years of founding the Corinthian congregation, needs to see them reformed, we can't be surprised that churches need reforming regularly in the history of the church. Sometimes that reform is more in the nature of a revitalization, but I think people have, especially in America, been too content to be satisfied with entertainment and with shallowness, and we need a seriousness about God, about Christ, and about His Word, and I think to be drawn again to a passionate interest in the Word is going to take a major reformation of the church today. My hope is that this series will serve the church by causing people to reflect on what the church ought to be according to the Word of God. In Romans chapter 9, the apostle Paul says that God prepares some vessels fit for destruction. This is probably one of the most scary passages that we run up against because the text certainly seems to suggest that God creates people for His own purpose who are already wicked and then punishes them for acting out the state in which they were made. If that's the proper interpretation of the passage, it certainly is scary. Welcome to Renewing Your Mind on this Saturday. I'm Lee Webb.

Today Dr. R.C. Sproul continues his series on the hard sayings of the Bible, and this hard saying from Romans chapter 9 has been a source of anxiety for Christians of every generation. It's caused some to wonder, is God the author of evil? What did Paul mean when he wrote this? Let's find out.

Here's Dr. Sproul. We come to the conclusion now of our brief series on the hard sayings of the Bible, and I think what I've done here is saved the worst till last. That is the passage that I want to look at today I think is one of the most difficult texts in all of Scripture to deal with, if not the most difficult, and it's found in Paul's letter to the Romans in chapter 9. We remember that in chapter 9, Paul deals with the election of Jacob and the passing over of Esau, and in verse 14 of this chapter he raises this question, What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God?

Certainly not. For He says to Moses, I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion. So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show my power in you, and that my name may be declared in all the earth. Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens. Now we've already examined the problem of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart in an earlier message, but I've read this portion of the text as background for the very difficult part that follows.

In verse 19 Paul says, anticipating objections to the doctrine of election, You will say to me then, Why does he still find fault? For who has resisted his will? But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, Why have you made me like this?

Does not the potter have power over the clay? From the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? What if God, wanting to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he called? Not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles. As he says also in Hosea, I will call them my people who were not my people, and her beloved who was not beloved.

And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people, there they shall be called sons of the living God. Now, what is so problematic about this text is Paul's reference to the metaphor of the potter who makes clay and who uses the clay to prepare vessels fit for destruction. And he raises the question, Will anyone say to God, Why have you made me thus?

Now, the problem that this passage poses is this. Is the Apostle saying that God creates human beings, evil, and then punishes them for the deeds that they perform according to their nature? Does God, like the potter, take a piece of clay that from the very beginning is destined to destruction, and He shapes it and molds it according to that end and for that purpose? And after He makes it, He condemns it to judgment? I mean, this is probably one of the most scary passages that we run up against because the text certainly seems to suggest that God creates people for His own purpose who are already wicked and then punishes them for acting out the state in which they were made. Now, there are those who take this text to mean exactly that, though they are few in number in church history. The normal understanding of this text is a reference to the broader context of the chapter, which deals with the election of Jacob rather than Esau, by which God shows mercy to one sinner and passes over the other sinner. But that both Jacob and Esau are considered in divine election as fallen sinners. One receives mercy, the other receives justice, and no one receives injustice.

And that's the problem that we're going to deal with. Let me first of all make a reference to the thinking of Martin Luther on this text. In his famous book, The Bondage of the Will, Luther makes this comment, That's an interesting statement that Luther makes there. He's speaking, of course, to Erasmus and talking about the propensity of the human heart to fashion God in man's own image.

And to create an idol in our understanding of God. The God that we want to believe in is a God who not only is sometimes merciful, but who is always merciful and who never condemns anybody and never hardens anybody. Luther goes on to say, You cannot comprehend how a just God can condemn those who are born in sin and cannot help themselves, but must, by a necessity of their natural constitution, continue in sin and remain children of wrath.

Let me say it again. You cannot comprehend how a just God can condemn those who are born in sin and cannot help themselves, but must, by a necessity of their natural constitution, continue in sin and remain children of wrath. Luther is saying we cannot see how God can be just in this manner to have people who are born in a state of sin into such a degree of sin that they are rendered morally incapable of turning themselves away from their sin and inclining themselves to righteousness. And how can these people then be held accountable by a just God if they're only doing what comes naturally, if they're only working out what is their constitutive nature to do? And Luther is saying that we cannot comprehend how a just God can condemn people who are born in sin. Now, before I finish this quote from Luther, let me just make the problem even more exacerbating.

I don't think there's any doubt that the New Testament and the Old Testament teach uniformly that we are indeed born in sin and that we are born with a fallen nature. And then we sin according to that corrupt nature and that God indeed expresses His wrath and judgment upon us even as we work out this sinful nature. Now, Luther's answer, which I find less than satisfactory but nevertheless somewhat insightful, the answer is, says Luther, God is incomprehensible throughout, and therefore His justice as well as His other attributes must be incomprehensible. It is on this very ground that St. Paul exclaims, O the depths and the riches of the knowledge of God, how unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out. Now, says Luther, His judgments would not be past finding out if we could always perceive them to be just. Now, in a flip way, we could say that Luther runs for cover here and hides under the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God. And the incomprehensibility of God is really the first article of systematic theology by which we recognize that though we know God in part, we do not know Him exhaustively and totally or comprehensively. It doesn't mean that we are completely ignorant of the character of God, but that His ways are not our ways and His ways are past finding out and that there is a depth dimension to the very perfection of God that eludes our grasp and our ability to understand in every circumstance. And so what Luther is doing here is reminding Erasmus, and through Erasmus reminding all who would read his work, that God is incomprehensible, not only in His grace, not only in His being, not only in His love, not only in His mercy, but also in His justice. Now, in simple terms, that means we don't always understand the justness of God, but the Bible makes it abundantly clear that He is altogether just. And we assume His justice even when we cannot penetrate it and cannot understand it in its fullest measure. And so I don't think that Luther is simply copping out here, but he is saying this remains a mystery to us, how God can be just and still hold people responsible for their fallen nature and then judge them accordingly.

Now, again, I want to back up a little bit and say we can understand this text in two different ways. One way is to say that we are born in sin because of Adam's sin and that the fall of the human race in Adam involves a judgment upon the entire human race, which human race was represented by Adam and Eve in the fall. Now, earlier in this epistle, Paul in chapter 5 makes it clear that we, in fact, all did fall in Adam and that the situation or the condition that we call original sin is the judgment of God upon Adam and his seed for the first transgression that was made. Now, that's one way of looking at this text, namely that Adam represented all of the human race. And had he passed his probation with flying colors, God would have rewarded him and all of his descendants, and nobody would ever be complaining about injustice. However, the problem is that Adam fell, and with Adam we fell, and we are born under the judgment for this representation that took place in the past. Now, I don't have the time today to work through the whole doctrine of the fall.

We've done that in the past. I'm sure we'll do it again in the future, but this is not nearly as difficult to deal with as the idea that God created Adam himself wicked as a vessel fit for destruction and then visited his judgment upon Adam when Adam sinned. Now, as I say, there are very few people who would go that far to suggest that, that there is that view in church history that even some contemporary thinkers maintain that the inclination to evil by which Adam sinned in the first place was given to him by his Creator, and that God not only ordained that Adam sin, but He created him for that purpose, and Adam nevertheless is somehow responsible for sinning, and he cannot say to God, why have you made me thus? Now, there are two great theological questions that we encounter when we look at the origin of human sin.

One question is this. If God created Adam unfallen, good in every respect, which the Bible seems to teach clearly, how could he have sinned? How could he have sinned without a prior inclination to sin? And if he had a prior inclination to sin, where did he get it? If God made him inclined to sin, then the answer would be God gave him the inclination to sin. So, if God gave him the inclination to sin, that would seem to suggest that God is the author of evil and that God has done something wicked Himself by creating Adam to sin with a propensity for sin, with an inclination for sin, and so on.

Now, the question ultimately is where we put the mystery. Those who argue that God did create Adam with some inclination to sin nevertheless say that God is not unjust in so doing. It's mysterious to them how God could create a person with a disposition to sin and then punish that person for exercising that disposition and still be just in doing it. They say, I don't know how that can be.

It remains a mystery to them. The advantage of that position is that it retains clearly the sovereignty of God. There's no lack of God's sovereignty in that, but it does raise a question about the goodness of God. On the other hand, if we say that God created Adam without any disposition to sin, then it remains an insoluble problem to answer the question, how then could he have sinned? And the host of theologians in church history have usually chosen to put the mystery at that point, saying we don't know how Adam could have sinned. We only know that he did sin and that God didn't make him sin. In that regard, God's goodness is preserved, but it raises a question about His sovereignty.

And so we're on the horns of a dilemma here. Which view we take is going to raise a significant question about the character of God, either with respect to His justice or with respect to His sovereignty. Most people don't feel the weight of the dilemma and simply say, well, it was man's free will, but they haven't really wrestled with how free will is exercised. Luther, in his own work on Romans, quotes Augustine from Augustine's Enchiridion, where he says this, blessed Augustine writes, quote, the whole human race was condemned in its apostate root by a divine judgment so just that not even if a single man were saved from it, no one could possibly rail against God's justice. And those that are saved had to be saved on such terms that it would show, by contrast, with the greater number of those not saved but abandoned to their holy just damnation, what the whole mass deserved and to what end God's merited judgment would have brought them had not God's unmerited mercy intervened. What Augustine is saying, though, clearly here is that this judgment is a judgment given to the whole human race after the fall. And that after the fall, once the world has fallen, God is under no obligation according to His justice to save a single person. And if every person perished after Adam, God would be perfectly just in condemning them. And so we see that Augustine takes the position here that this being made sinful is itself a judgment on the fall of Adam. Now the question is which of these views is Paul teaching? I think he's teaching the latter rather than the former because the context in which he is writing here is emphasizing the mercy of God on sinners.

And that is the general concept here in the text. We know that Pharaoh was judged for his sin after he was hardened, but he was a sinner before he was hardened. And he is responding to the statement, He has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens.

And you will say to me, Why then does he still find fault? For who has resisted his will? And Paul answers, But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God?

And so on. And in verse 22, what of God wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? There is a certain patience in longsuffering that God is manifesting to people who are manifestly wicked, but He says He prepared them for destruction. The one thing I want us to notice in closing is that Paul contrasts those who were prepared for destruction with those who were prepared for mercy. The voice of the verb that is used here to prepare is passive with respect to those vessels fit for destruction and active with respect to those vessels fit for mercy.

And there's something in that distinction that I think is important. It's one thing to say that God actively prepared a vessel fit for destruction. It's another thing that He did it passively. The fact that it's passive in a certain sense absolves God from being the author of evil.

This question of God being the author of evil has been at the center of intense disagreement. We can be grateful that Dr. R.C. Sproul addressed it head on today here on Renewing Your Mind.

And I hope you'll stay with us because R.C. will have a final thought in just a moment. What we just heard is the final lesson of his series, Hard Sayings of the Bible. It's a 12-part series, and if you've missed any of the programs along the way, let me recommend the complete series to you. What does it mean when God says that He hardened Pharaoh's heart? Was the earth created in six literal days?

Why was Rahab commended for lying? You'll hear answers to all of these questions in the digital download of the series that we're offering. You can request it with your gift of any amount to Ligonier Ministries. There are a couple of ways you can reach us. One is by phone at 800-435-4343. If you prefer to go online, our web address is renewingyourmind.org. This is a series that I think will help you as you solidify your understanding of the difficult passages we read in Scripture. It's also an excellent resource if you teach a Sunday school class at your church or lead a small group in your home.

You'll receive each of the 12 videos by digital download when you request them with your gift of any amount. Our phone number again is 800-435-4343, and our web address, renewingyourmind.org. As we've wrestled with this text, we remember again that in this text, in the broader context of Romans 9, Paul appeals to the Old Testament book of Hosea, where God promises to make a people who were no people. And the analogy that he uses there again refers to the salvation of people who were fallen. And he also uses the term, oh man. But indeed, oh man, who are you to reply against God?

Our natural tendency is to interpret that question to mean all men universally. But if we look carefully at the book of Romans, we will see that the expression, oh man, that Paul uses on several occasions in this epistle is a term that he uses to describe Israel. And again, the broader context of Romans 9 has to do with God's being merciful to some within Israel and judging the rest.

But the basis for that judgment is that those who were of Israel, who were supposedly the holy people of God, were nevertheless wicked, and some of Israel were not to receive God's saving grace. Well, this concludes our look at some of the hard sayings that we find in the Bible, but the series we'll begin next Saturday goes hand in glove with this one. It's Dr. Sproul's sweeping look at classical apologetics, defending your faith. We'll feature the first lesson in that series next week, and I hope you'll make plans to join us here on Renewing Your Mind. .