Romans 9 is a chapter that causes a lot of controversy because it deals with election. I don’t mean politics here. I’m talking about what many people refer to as predestination. This is the concept that because God is sovereign, he chooses who is predestined to spend eternity with him and who is predestined to live separately from him. There’s not choice and no alternative. Paul offers a different perspective.
Paul reminds us that election is real, but that we don’t come to it by heritage or status. Election into being part of God’s family comes through faith. God is intentional. He wants us to be with him, but he understands that the world operates the way that it does because of sin. Due to this, in his sovereign power, he chooses people to fulfill specific purposes. Throughout Romans 9, Paul gives examples of instances where God has done this: Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Pharaoh, etc.
Throughout the history of the people of Israel, God has used specific people in specific ways to show his will and his power. Despite this, though, he has mercy that is available to us. He wants to meet us where we are and to choose to follow him. What Paul is getting at is that election has less to do with your role in life and more to do with a repentant heart. God may have chosen Jacob to play a different role than Esau, but did Esau choose to accept God’s mercy? Did Pharoah choose God’s mercy? Did the people who refused to believe that Jesus was the Messiah?
Think about it this way: if grace is grace then it needs to be freely available. If some people were destined to never have the option to receive it, then would it really be grace at all? It’s like those April Fool’s pranks that say that Publix Subs are going to get their own restaurant; they fool us every year. God wouldn’t make grace an April Fool’s prank, so election is about faith and not about who you are born to be.
God is the potter and we are the clay. As Paul says in verses 20-23:
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?” 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? 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, in order to make known the riches of his
glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory...
God is our creator and he has the right to do what he wants in the world in his sovereign will. There are some things that we are not meant to understand, but we know that he extends his mercy to us and that in whatever place or circumstance we are called to be in this world, his molding of our lives will show us his glory. If we have faith, then we know the way forward, no matter our role and no matter our circumstances, because when we believe in Jesus, we are destined to be adopted members of his family forever and nothing can change that.