Excerpted from Explore the Book by J. Sidlow Baxter:
ROMANS
Chapters 9, 10, 11.
Would it be an exaggeration to say that these three chapters have been almost if not quite the most problematical passage in all the Scriptures? They grapple with the titanic and awesome reality of an absolutely sovereign Divine will operating throughout the sin-cursed history of humanity. To my own mind, Romans 9.18 has been the most disturbing verse in the Bible. Linked with its context, it easily seems to suggest that what we call the sovereignty of God is an unspeakably awful Divine despotism.
What are we to say about it? It is wrong to evade it. It is wrong to soften down (supposedly) the meaning of the words which Paul uses. It is wrong to force an artificial "explanation" which does not really explain at all. It is equally wrong, also (as we shall soon see), to infer, with a sort of gloating hyper-Calvinism, more than is actually said.
The apostle has now completed his main argument (1-8), showing how the Gospel saves the individual human sinner. Glorious though the Gospel is, however, he simply cannot leave off there and affect blindness to the acute problem which it raises in relation to the nation Israel. If Gentiles are now accepted, justified, given sonship and promise, on equal footing with the Jews, what about Israel's special covenant relationship with God? Does not this new "Gospel" imply that God has now "cast away His people which He foreknew" (11.2)?
If the new "Gospel" does mean that, are not God's dealings with Israel the most hypocritical enigma and irony of history? Were not the covenant people the repository of most wonderful Messianic promises? Were not the godly among them right in anticipating Messiah's coming as that which would end the sufferings of their people, when the scattered tribes should be regathered as one purified Israel, and the nation, so long ruled by the Gentiles, should at last be exalted over them? Yet now that Messiah had come, instead of consummation for Israel there was the most reactionary of all paradoxes—those to whom the covenant promises were given were apparently shut out, and all the long-looked-for benefits were going to Gentile outsiders!
Well, that is the background problem of Romans 9-11, and it is vital to realise it in considering any of the foreground statements separatedly. But besides this, if we are going to interpret truly any of these Pauline statements on the Divine sovereignty, we must keep to the point and the scope of the passage. As to the former, Paul's purpose is to show that (a) the present by-passing of Israel nationally is not inconsistent with the Divine promises (see 9.6-13); (b) because Israel's present sin and blindness nationally is overruled in blessing to both Jews and Gentiles as individuals (see 9.23-11.25); (c) and because "all Israel shall yet be saved" at a postponed climax, inasmuch as "the gifts and calling of God are irreversible" (see 11.26-36).
As to the scope of the passage, it will by now have become obvious that it is all about God's dealings with men and nations historically and dispensationally, and is not about individual salvation and destiny beyond the grave. Now that is the absolutely vital fact to remember in reading the problem-verses of these chapters, especially the paragraph 9.14-22.
John Calvin is wrong when he reads into these verses election either to salvation or to damnation in the eternal sense. That is not their scope. They belong only to a Divine economy of history. Paul opens the paragraph by asking: "Is there then unrighteousness with God?"—and the rest of the paragraph is meant to show that the answer is "No"; but if these verses referred to eternal life and death, there would be unrighteousness with God; and that which is implanted deepest in our moral nature by God Himself would protest that even God has no honourable right to create human beings whose destiny is a predetermined damnation.
No, this passage does not comprehend the eternal aspects of human destiny: Paul has already dealt with those in chapters 1-8. It is concerned (let us emphasise it again) with the historical and dispenational. Once that is seen, there is no need to "soften down" its terms or to "explain away" one syllable of it. Even the awesome words to Pharaoh (verse 17) can be faced in their full force—"Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show My power in thee, and that My name might be declared throughout al the earth." The words "raised thee up" do not mean that God had raised him up from birth for this purpose: they refer to his elevation to the highest throne on earth. Nay, as they occur in Exodus 9.16, they scarce mean even that, but only that God had kept Pharaoh from dying in the preceding plague, so as to be made the more fully an object lesson to all men.
Moreover, when Paul (still alluding to Pharaoh) says, "And whom He [God] will, He hardeneth" (verse 18), we need not try to soften the word. God did not override Pharaoh's own will. The hardening was a reciprocal process. Eighteen times we are told that Pharaoh's heart was "hardened" in refusal. In about half of these the hardening is attributed to Pharaoh himself; in the others, to God. But the whole contest between God and Pharaoh must be interpreted by what God said to Moses before ever the contest started: "The king of Egypt will not . . ." (Exod. 3.19). The will was already set. The heart was already hard. God overruled Pharaoh's will, but did not override it. The hardening process developed inasmuch as the plagues forced Pharaoh to an issue which crystallised his sin.
Thus Pharaoh was made an object-lesson to all the earth (Rom. 9.17). But Pharaoh's eternal destiny is not the thing in question; and moreover in thus making an example of this "vessel of wrath" who was "fit for [such] destruction" (verse 22), God was working out a vast purpose which was not only righteous, but overrulingly gracious towards many millions of "vessels of mercy which He had afore prepared unto glory," as we learn in verse 23!
It is always important to distinguish between Divine foreknowledge and Divine predestination. God foreknows everything that every man will do; but He does not predetermine everything that every man does. Nay, that would make God the author of sin!
God foreknew that Esau would despise his birthright; that Pharaoh would be wicked; that Moses would sin in anger at Meribah; that the Israelites would rebel at Kadesh-Barnea; that Judas would betray our Lord; that the Jews would crucify their Messiah: but not one of these things did God predetermine. To say that He did would involve Him in the libellous contradiction of predetermining men to commit what He Himself declared to be sin. God did not predetermine these sinful acts of men; but He did foreknow them, and anticipate them, and overrule them in the fulfilling of His further purposes.
We mention this because it involves Esau, Pharaoh, and Moses, all of whom Paul cites in Romans 9. Let us say two things emphatically of Pharaoh in particular: (1) God did not create him to be a wicked man; (2) God did not create him to be a damned soul. And, with mental relief, let us further say that God could never create any man either to be wicked or to be eternally damned. "Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid!" In Romans 9 we simply must not read an after-death significance into what is solely historical. Moses, because of his sin at Meribah, was denied entrance into the promised land; but would we argue that this punishment extended in anyway to the salvation of his soul beyond the grave? Thousands upon thousands of Israelites died in the wilderness because of that grievous sin at Kadesh-Barnea; but were they all lost souls beyond the grave? Look up some of the generous offerings and acts of devotion mentioned earlier in connection with some of them![1]
Reference:
[1] Excerpted from J. Sidlow Baxter's one-volume Bible commentary titled Explore the Book (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1960, 1966, 1977), pp. 86-90. The Roman numerals in the original text have been updated to the current format.
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| J. Sidlow Baxter (1903-1999) |
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