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Western theology has committed a terrible disservice to this imagery of a potter and clay by making it seem as if God is a deterministic puppet master up in heaven pulling the strings of people and nations down here on earth.

This is exactly the opposite of what Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Paul meant by using this terminology.

The Potter and the Clay in Jeremiah 18

In Jeremiah 18, for example, while God is equated with the potter, God calls upon Israel to turn from her wicked ways and obey His voice so that they, as the pot which God is fashioning, will not be marred (cf. Jer 18:8-11).

God calls upon Israel to come into conformity to the work of His hands. If they do not, they will become marred, and He will have to reform the clay again into another vessel (Jer 18:4). He does not destroy or discard the clay; He simply forms it into another pot which will be used for a different purpose.

A similar understanding is seen in Isaiah 54 and Romans 9.

The Potter and the Clay is not teaching Determinism

There is no deterministic message in the image of the potter and the clay in Isaiah 54, Jeremiah 18, or Romans 9. If we accept the deterministic perspective of these texts, just imagine for a moment what sort of God is being portrayed. H. H. Rowley sums it up best:

Neither Jeremiah nor Paul had in mind an aimless dilettante, working in a casual and haphazard way, turning out vessels according to the chance whim of the moment … To suppose that a crazy potter, who made vessels with no other thought than that he would afterwards knock them to pieces, is the type and figure of God, is supremely dishonoring to God. The vessel of dishonor which the potter makes is still something that he wants, and that has a definite use … The instruments of wrath … were what the New Testament calls ‘vessels of dishonor,’ serving God indeed, but with no exalted service. They were not puppets in His hand, compelled to do His will without moral responsibility for their deed, but chosen because He saw that the very iniquity of their heart would lead them to the course that He could use (Rowley, Doctrine of Election, p. 40-41)

Neither Isaiah, nor Jeremiah, nor Paul had in mind a potter who purposefully created pots just so that He could smash them. No potter would do that, then or now. Instead, God is the wise potter who works with the clay to form useful tools. The vessels of “dishonor” are not vessels which are destroyed, but vessels which will be used in “ignoble” ways. They still serve important purposes and help with vital tasks, but they are not vessels of honor.

Typically, vessels of dishonor do end up being destroyed (which is not necessarily hell!), but this is not because the potter made them for such a purpose, but because unclean vessels, when they have served their purpose, are usually not useful for anything else.

And what makes one vessel clean or unclean? As H. H. Rowley pointed out above, God allows humans to determine what kind of vessel they will be, and then He uses those who have made themselves vessels of dishonor.

A careful reading of Romans 9:22 reveals this very point. W. E. Vine, in his Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, says that the word “destruction” is used “metaphorically of men persistent in evil (Rom 9:22), where ‘fitted’ is in the middle voice, indicating that the vessels of wrath fitted themselves for destruction” (Vine’s Expository Dictionary, 2:165)

None of this Relates to Person’s Eternal Destiny

Again, none of this has anything to do with whether or not a person goes to heaven or hell after death. The way a vessel is used refers primarily to how God uses individuals, kings, and nations in this life. Marston and Forster add this:

The basic lump that forms a nation will either be built up or broken down by the Lord, depending on their own moral response. If a nation does repent and God builds them up, then it is for him alone to decide how the finished vessel will fit into his plan … God alone determines the special features / privileges / responsibilities of a particular nation (Forster & Marston, God’s Strategy, 74).

To read more on Romans 9, get my book The Re-Justification of God.

If you want to read more about Calvinism, check out other posts in this blog series: Words of Calvinism and the Word of God.

Why did God harden Pharaoh’s Heart?

By Jeremy Myers

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In Romans 9, Paul writes about the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart for the purposes of making God’s glory known. This seems rather harsh to some.

What does Paul mean?

Who Hardened Pharaoh’s Heart First?

In this debate, Calvinists say that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart first from eternity past because God needed a vessel of destruction through whom to reveal His wrath. They say that the text is quite clear in teaching that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart (Exod 9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:4, 8).

Non-Calvinists respond that in the Exodus account, the text frequently states that Pharaoh hardened his own heart before God hardened it (Exod 8:15, 32; 9:34). There are also several references which state that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened without giving indication about the source of this hardening (Exod 7:13, 14, 22; 8:19; 9:7, 35).

But in response to this, Calvinists argue back that although the text says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart before God hardened it, before Moses even went to speak to Pharaoh, God told Him that He planned to harden Pharaoh’s heart (Exod 4:21; 7:3).

As one is reading all the exegetical and theological arguments surrounding this debate about who hardened Pharaoh’s heart first, it begins to sound a bit like the question of which came first: the chicken or the egg.

It Doesn’t Matter Who Hardened Pharaoh’s Heart First!

Rather than summarizing all the exegetical and theological arguments on both sides of this debate, it seems best to avoid all the rhetoric and cut through to the main question which neither side seems to be asking.

The real question is this: “What does it mean for Pharaoh’s heart to be hardened?”

The issue is not about who hardened Pharaoh’s heart first—though that is where most of the ink has been spilled—but rather about what it means for Pharaoh’s heart to be hardened.

People on both sides of the debate often assume that the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart means that Pharaoh was solidified in his status as an unregenerate person headed for hell.

But what if the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart doesn’t mean this at all? What if it simply refers instead to the resolve in Pharaoh’s heart to keep the Israelites as his slaves, and has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Pharaoh’s eternal destiny?

What if God, in His desire to make His glory known to both the Israelites and the Egyptians, made certain that Pharaoh would resist the will of God to deliver the people of Israel from Egypt, so that all those who witnessed and heard of these events would know that the God of Israel alone was God?

Could not God, in His gracious sovereignty, harden Pharaoh’s heart without affecting whatsoever Pharaoh’s ability to believe in God’s promises and thus become part of God’s redeemed people?

Of course He could!

Dr. J. Sidlow Baxter makes a similar point:

The awesome words to Pharaoh 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 all 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 will, He hardeneth” (Exod 9:18), 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. The hardening process developed inasmuch as the plagues forced Pharaoh to an issue which crystallized his sin. … Pharaoh’s eternal destiny is not the thing in question (Baxter, Explore the Book, VI:88-89).

This means that the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, whether it is done by God or Pharaoh, or by some symbiotic combination of the two, has absolutely nothing to do with Pharaoh’s eternal destiny.

Even if the Exodus account laid all the responsibility for the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart upon God Himself, and none upon Pharaoh, this still would tell us nothing about whether or not Pharaoh concluded His life as one of God’s redeemed.

Pharaoh’s eternal destiny is not under discussion in Exodus or in Romans, and so Pharaoh’s heart can be hardened so that God’s purposes are achieved, while still leaving plenty of room for Pharaoh to believe in God’s promises and become one of God’s people.

If you want a longer and more detailed explanation of why God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, check out my new book: The Re-Justification of God.

If you want to read more about Calvinism, check out other posts in this blog series: Words of Calvinism and the Word of God.

Why did God love Jacob and hate Esau?

By Jeremy Myers

27 Comments

Paul writes a difficult statement in Romans 9:13:

Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.

Scholars debate whether or not God actually hated Esau. There are two main opinions on this question.

Option 1: Hate = “Love Less”

Some argue that the reference to hate in Malachi 1:2-3 is a Hebrew idiom for “love less.” They point out that Jesus instructs us to love our enemies rather than hate them (Matt 5:44), point to the places where Jesus tells His disciples to both hate and love their parents (Luke 14:26; Mark 10:19), and remind people that God has strictly forbidden the Israelites from hating the Edomites (Deut 23:7).

Greg Boyd succinctly explains this idea:

Some might suppose that God’s pronouncement that he “loved” Jacob and “hated” Esau shows that he is speaking about their individual eternal destinies, but this is mistaken. In Hebraic thought, when “love” and “hate” are contrasted they usually are meant hyperbolically. The expression simply means to strongly prefer one person or thing over another.

So, for example, when Jesus said, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:26), he was not saying we should literally hate these people. Elsewhere he taught people to love and respect their parents, as the Old Testament also taught (Mk 10:19). Indeed, he commanded us to love even our enemies (Mt 5:44)! What Jesus was saying was that he must be preferred above parents, spouses, children, siblings and even life itself. The meaning of Malachi’s phrase, then, is simply that God preferred Israel over Edom to be the people he wanted to work with to reach out to the world (See “How do you respond to Romans 9?“)

Option 2: Hate = Hate

Others, however, argue that God did in fact hate Esau (and the Edomites), for that is what the text clearly states. The Calvinistic commentator John Murray provides a good explanation of this view:

We must, therefore, recognize that there is in God a holy hate that cannot be defined in terms of not loving or loving less. Furthermore, we may not tone down the reality of intensity of this hate by speaking of it as “anthropopathic” … The case is rather, as in all virtue, that this holy hate in us is patterned after holy hate in God (Murray, Romans, 2:22).

So which view is right? Did God hate Esau?

How can we choose between the two views above? Does God hate Esau and Edom, or does He simply love Edom less than He loves Israel?

The solution to the problem of Romans 9:13 is to agree with those who say that “hate” means “hate,” but to also agree with the others who argue that neither Paul nor Malachi are talking about Esau’s eternal destiny (or anyone else for that matter).

More critical still is to recognize that what God hated is not specifically Esau, for Malachi 1:3 was written many centuries after he had died, nor was God saying He hates the people of Edom.

Instead, God hated how Edom behaved toward Israel.

The Hebrew word used in Malachi 1:3 for “hate” (Heb., sanati) is used in various other places to speak of hatred for the sin and wickedness of people (cf. Psa 26:5; 101:3; 119:104, 128, 163; Prov 8:13; Jer 44:3; Amos 5:21; 6:8; Zech 8:17), not hatred for the people themselves. In light of what many other biblical prophets say about the actions and behavior of Edom (cf. Jer 49:7-22; Lam 4:21-22; Ezek 25:12-14; Amos 1:6-11), this is how we can understand God’s hatred in Malachi 1:3.

God does not hate Edom; He hates how she has behaved. Specifically, God hated how Edom treated Israel.

To read more about this, check out my new book: The Re-Justification of God.

If you want to read more about Calvinism, check out other posts in this blog series: Words of Calvinism and the Word of God.

3 Keys to Understanding Romans 9

By Jeremy Myers

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Romans 9 has been a battleground text for centuries. Calvinists and Arminians have hotly debated this passage since the days of the Reformation.

Since I am neither a Calvinist nor an Arminian, I want to offer my perspective on Romans 9 over the course of the next few posts so that people who are trying to understand what Paul is saying in Romans 9 about election, Esau, Pharaoh, and the potter and the clay. Note that all of these posts are drawn from the longer explanation in my book The Re-Justification of God.

When it comes to understanding Romans 9, there are three keys which I have found helpful in explaining what Paul is teaching in this text. Let us look briefly below at each of these three keys to understanding Romans 9.

1. Salvation in Romans

To begin with, we must recognize that “salvation” in Scripture rarely refers to receiving eternal life. “Salvation” does not mean “forgiveness of sins so we can go to heaven when we die.” The word simply means “deliverance,” and the context must determine what sort of deliverance is in view.

Most often, the deliverance is some sort of physical deliverance from enemies, storms, and sickness, or from some of the temporal consequences of sin (cf. Matt 8:25; 9:22; Mark 5:34; 13:20; Luke 8:48; 23:35; John 12:27; 1 Tim 2:15; 2 Tim 4:18; Jas 5:15; Jude 5; See “save, saving” in Vine’s Expository Dictionary, p. 547). This understanding of “salvation” is especially true in Romans.

Most of the uses of “salvation” in Romans are in connection with wrath. It is not wrong to say that “salvation in Romans” is deliverance from wrath (Hodges, Romans).

So what is wrath?

Just as salvation does not refer to entrance into heaven, wrath does not refer to eternity in hell. Nor is wrath from God.

Though an imaginary objector to Paul does occasionally speak of “God’s wrath” in Romans, Paul does not understand wrath this way. For Paul, “wrath” is what happens to people (both believers and unbelievers) when they stray from God’s guidelines for proper living.

Today, we would speak of “consequences.” While someone today might say that a destroyed marriage is the consequence of adultery, Paul might argue that a destroyed marriage is the “wrath” of adultery. And as all who have experienced the damaging and destructive consequences of sin know, the fall-out from sinful choices often feels like wrath. Sin brings metaphorical earthquakes, hailstorms, raging fires, and flash floods into our lives, leaving behind large swaths of destruction. What better word to describe this than “wrath”?

So in Romans, salvation is deliverance from the devastating consequences of sin. This is the first key to understanding Romans 9.

2. Election is to Service

The second key to understanding Romans 9 is to see that “election” is not to eternal life, but to service. Just as God elected Israel to serve His purposes in the world, so also, God chose the Church for similar purposes. This understanding of election greatly helps us understand some notoriously difficult texts in Romans 9–11.

For example, Paul writes in Romans 11:17-21 that the elect branches were cut off so that non-elect branches could be grafted in, which in turn will lead to the elect-which-became-non-elect to be re-grafted back in and become re-elect. If Paul is referring to eternal life when he speaks of election, none of this makes any sense. How can a people or a nation whom God elected “to eternal life” before the foundation of the world go from being elect to non-elect and then re-elect?

However, this makes perfect sense when we recognize that election is not to eternal life but to service. God wants to bless the world through His people, and if one group of people fails in this God-given task, then God will simply find someone else to do it while He continues to lead the first group to fulfill His overarching purposes—albeit in different ways than originally intended. If this second group also fails, they too will be moved into an alternative role in accomplishing God’s will (Rom 11:17-21).

If necessary, God could raise up a people for Himself from rocks (Matt 3:9). In this way, when Paul writes about branches being cut off so others can be grated in which will lead to the cut off branches being grafted back in again, he is not talking about people losing and regaining eternal life, but about losing and re-gaining places of privilege and purpose in God’s plan for this world.

God’s plan of redemption started with Israel, shifted to the Gentiles, and eventually will reincorporate Israel so that “of Him and through Him and to Him are all things” (Rom 11:36).

This idea really helps us understand Romans 9. Election is to service, so that God can elect even people like Esau and Pharaoh to service, and this has nothing whatsoever to do with their eternal destiny.

3. Election is Corporate AND Individual

The third and final key to understanding Romans 9 is that election is both corporate and individual.

There is a long-standing debate about election, regarding whether Paul is talking about corporate election or individual election. That is, when Paul writes about the election of Israel, or God’s choice of Jacob over Esau, is Paul talking about the individuals within Israel, and the individual destinies of Jacob and Esau, or is Paul referring instead to the national and corporate destinies of Israel (which came from Jacob) and Edom (which came from Esau)?

Usually, the battle lines over this debate are determined by whether a person is a Calvinist or not. As Calvinists believe and teach the individual election of certain people to eternal life, they are more likely to understand and explain Romans 9 in this light. Those who do not hold to Calvinism tend to interpret Romans 9 as teaching corporate election. Henry Halley, author of Halley’s Bible Handbook, is one such writer:

Paul is not discussing the predestination of individuals to salvation or condemnation, but is asserting God’s absolute sovereignty in the choice and management of nations for world functions (Halley’s Bible Handbook, 527).

So which is it? Is Paul talking about individual election or corporate election?

I believe that in Romans 9 Paul is teaching both corporate and individual election.

Since it is the purposes of God that determine who gets elected and to what form of service they are elected, then it is God who decides when He needs to call individuals and when He needs to call nations or groups of people to perform certain tasks.

Of course, even when election is corporate, it is true that God’s purpose for that group of people is carried out by individuals within the group, and so in this sense, we can say that even corporate election has an individual aspect.

On the other hand, the benefit to corporate election is that even if some individuals within the corporate identity do not contribute to fulfill the purpose of the corporate entity, there will be some within the group that will fulfill their purpose, thus accomplishing God’s purpose in election.

With these three keys before us, the difficult chapter of Romans 9 becomes much less difficult. If you want to read more, you can get my book, The Re-Justification of God.

If you want to read more about Calvinism, check out other posts in this blog series: Words of Calvinism and the Word of God.

Romans 8:28-30 and the “Golden Chain of Salvation”

By Jeremy Myers

26 Comments

Yesterday we considered the problem with the Calvinistic ordo salutis in Romans 8:28-30.

I suggested that there is a different way of understanding this text in light of Paul’s overall argument. We consider this alternative today.

The “Golden Chain” of Romans 8:28-30

The first thing to consider is the “golden chain” which begins with the foreknowledge of God and ends with glorification.

Through repeated use of the plural pronoun “whom” (Gk., ous), all those whom God foreknew are also those who arrive at glorification. That is, the same group which is identified by the “whom” in Romans 8:29 seem to be the exact same group which reach glorification in Romans 8:30.

Most Calvinists would agree with this, and say that this proves that God has some sort of eternal divine foreknowledge of all things. But note what happens when we apply this sort of foreknowledge to Romans 8:29-30.

All those whom God foreknew (which is everybody and everything), are also those who are predestined, called, justified, and glorified. Understanding God’s foreknowledge in Romans 8:29-30 as encompassing all people leads to the inevitable conclusion that all people will be glorified. But if only a certain group of people out of all humanity will be glorified, then this leads us backward through the “golden chain” to see that God’s foreknowledge is also limited to a certain group of people.

In other words, we must either say that this verse teaches universalism, or that we have misunderstood the terms and logic Paul uses in this text. I vote for the latter.

Greg Boyd is exactly right when he says this about Romans 8:28-30:

If Paul is using the term proginōskō (lit., “to know before”) in a cognitive sense—that is, to say that God possessed certain information ahead of time—then far from implying that God foreknows everything, this text would actually be denying that God foreknows everything.

… It is more likely that Paul is using the term know in the customary Semitic sense of affection rather than in a merely cognitive sense. To “know” someone is to love that one. So to “foreknow” someone means to love that one ahead of time. Three chapters later Paul refers to Israel as “[God’s] people whom he foreknew” (Rom 11:2). If this is in fact its meaning in 8:29, then Paul is simply claiming that God loved the church before he called them just as he loved Israel before he called them.

… What God loved ahead of time (ultimately from the foundation of the world) was the bride of Christ, the body of Christ, the church considered as a corporate whole (Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, 118. Such a view is not without significant lexical challenges, however. See Olson, Beyond Calvinism and Arminianism, 152-173).

Whatever foreknowledge Paul is talking about, he is not referring to some sort of exhaustive, all-encompassing knowledge of all events and all people from before all time, for this would lead to the conclusion that all those whom God foreknows will end up in glorification.

Paul’s Golden Chain in Romans 8:28-30

So what is Paul saying?

First, we must remember that in Scripture, and especially in Pauline theology, Jesus Christ is the ultimate elect one, and individual people become elect, not through an eternal divine decree from God, but by joining with Christ by faith.

In other words, God does not predestine or elect people to be in Christ; no, God elects Jesus, and by default, all who join with Jesus by faith also become elect as members of the “body of Christ.”

Second, we must also recall that election is not to eternal life, but to service.

God does not choose, out of the mass of humanity, some to spend eternity with Him in heaven, while all others are destined for eternal suffering in hell. This is not the biblical teaching of election.

Instead, election is to service, and God chooses some out of the mass of humanity to serve Him or perform certain tasks to accomplish His will in human history.

While He sometimes chooses unregenerate individuals for this purpose (such as King Cyrus, Judas, and a few others), all who are in Jesus Christ automatically become “elect” in Christ. That is, all who become members of the body of Christ are also elected or chosen by God to serve God’s purposes in this world.

These two points help us understand what Paul is saying in Romans 8:28-30.

Note that when Paul introduces the idea of God’s calling in Romans 8:28, he says that this calling is “according to His purpose.” And what is God’s purpose? In Romans 8:29, Paul states that those whom God foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.

This calling of God is a calling upon believers to serve God’s purposes. Since all who are called are also justified, Paul cannot be referring to some sort of general call of the gospel to the world, but rather to a calling of God to believers to serve Him and come into conformity to Jesus Christ, “that He might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Romans 8:29).

We can see this more clearly if we include some elements in Paul’s “golden chain” which he left out.

For example, though Scripture includes proclaiming the gospel, human faith, Spiritual regeneration, and sanctification into the theological chain of events which contribute to the “salvation package,” Paul makes no mention of these.

Why not?

Maybe it was because he understood these other terms to be synonyms with the terms he did mention, or maybe it was because Paul’s list of terms places an emphasis on God’s role in salvation.

If we were to include these other four terms inside Paul’s chain of events, the list would look like this: Foreknowledge, predestination, proclaiming the gospel, faith, regeneration, calling, justification, faithfulness, sanctification, glorification.

Note that in this list, regeneration, calling, and justification are simultaneous events which follow faith but precede sanctification (cf. Jude 1). When a person responds to the gospel in faith, God regenerates them to new life, calls them to a specific purpose, and declares them righteous in His sight.

I do not, of course, want to add words to what Paul is saying. He included the terms he did because he wanted to make a specific point to his readers.

In Romans 8, Paul’s emphasis is on God’s part in the plan of salvation. There is nothing in Romans 8:28-30 about a human’s responsibility to believe in Jesus or to walk by faith for sanctification.

Paul is emphasizing God’s role while ignoring man’s role, but this does not mean that mankind has no role.

In the overall scheme of redemption, God alone is the one who foreknows what He will do, takes steps to make sure it happens, calls believers to a greater purpose in service to Him, justifies those who believe, and glorifies for eternity all whom He justified.

In Romans 8:28-30, Paul is not talking about an eternal decree from eternity past about to whom He would give eternal life, but rather, God’s plan from eternity past to bring those who believe in Jesus into conformity to the image of Jesus Christ, which does not fully occur until glorification (cf. Eph 1:4; 4:1; 5:27; Col 1:22-23).

This fits with everything we have seen about election so far. In Romans 8:28-30, Paul is saying nothing about God’s predestination of some to eternal life.

Instead, Paul is saying that God decided in eternity past to make sure that everyone and anyone who joins His family by faith will finally and ultimately be brought into conformity to Jesus Christ at their glorification.

Foreknowledge is not God’s plan from all eternity about whom to give eternal life. It is simply God’s plan about what to do with those who believed.

Since election is to service, God’s foreknowledge does not include the election of individuals to eternal life. God’s predestination is His commitment to carry out His plan. “And what is God’s plan? To bring all who have responded to God’s initiative with love to salvation, to eternal bliss” (Pilch, Cultural World of the Apostles, 91).

The Context of Romans 8:28-30

This understanding of Romans 8:28-30 fits perfectly within the broader context of Romans 8 as well.

In this section of Romans, Paul is writing to Christians who are facing severe testing and trials as a result of their faith in Jesus (cf. Romans 8:17-18).

But Paul wants to encourage his readers by telling them that the suffering they face will result in glory, and that absolutely nothing can separate them from God’s love or God’s purpose in their lives (Romans 8:31-39).

In light of this, the foreknowledge of God takes on a special intimacy and mercy for all who are part of the people of God. Paul’s point in Romans 8 is that God determined from eternity past to bring us to glorification despite our many weaknesses and failures.

God elected and predetermined a destiny for his people in full knowledge of what they were, what they would be without his intervention, and, most significantly, what they would become as a result of his grace on their behalf (Klein, The New Chosen People, 164).

In this way, there is great encouragement in Paul’s words.

Many of the people to whom he is writing (just like many people today), were struggling with feelings of inadequacy, guilt, failure, fear, and doubt. Paul wanted them to know that God knew all about these things from eternity past, and it didn’t stop Him from initiating His plan to rescue and redeem the world, and since God predestined such a plan, He will take care of everything necessary to bring it to completion, which will result in our glorification (cf. Romans 8:31-39).

Ultimately, the whole discussion about the ordo salutis in Romans 8 leads the student of Scripture in the wrong direction about Paul’s point. Paul is not so concerned with laying down a guideline about what happens in which order. He is not intent on describing each individual step in God’s plan of salvation.

Instead, Paul’s only point in writing Romans 8:28-30 is to encourage Christians that no matter what happens to them, God is with them, will not abandon them, and just as He has had them in mind since before the foundation of the world, He will not abandon them to the trials and testing they are facing.

If God is the only one who could bring a charge against them, but He will not do so, and instead, delivered His own Son up for us all (Romans 8:31-34), then we can be sure that absolutely nothing will separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:35-39). If God is for us, who can condemn us? Jesus could. But rather than condemn us, Jesus intercedes for us!

This is an astounding message from Paul which all believers need to hear.

[Paul] is speaking to Christians, about Christians, and to reassure them of God’s love for them and God’s desire for them to cooperate with his Spirit in working for good and in overcoming all tribulation (Marston and Forster, God’s Strategy in Human History, 245).

In Romans 8, Paul is not laying out some sort of mysterious outworking of God’s divine decree, but is describing in great detail the height, breadth, width, and depth of God’s love for His people.

He loves us, has always loved us, and will always love us. He set the plan of redemption in place, and He will bring it to completion. This is Paul’s point in Romans 8.

If you want to read more about Calvinism, check out other posts in this blog series: Words of Calvinism and the Word of God.

Understanding the Potter and the Clay in Romans 9

The Potter and the Clay in Jeremiah 18

The Potter and the Clay is not teaching Determinism

None of this Relates to Person’s Eternal Destiny

Why did God harden Pharaoh’s Heart?

Who Hardened Pharaoh’s Heart First?

It Doesn’t Matter Who Hardened Pharaoh’s Heart First!

Why did God love Jacob and hate Esau?

Option 1: Hate = “Love Less”

Option 2: Hate = Hate

So which view is right? Did God hate Esau?

3 Keys to Understanding Romans 9

1. Salvation in Romans

2. Election is to Service

3. Election is Corporate AND Individual

Romans 8:28-30 and the “Golden Chain of Salvation”

The “Golden Chain” of Romans 8:28-30

Paul’s Golden Chain in Romans 8:28-30

The Context of Romans 8:28-30

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