Are we saying, then, that God was unfair? Of course not! For God said to Moses, “I will show mercy to anyone I choose, and I will show compassion to anyone I choose.” So it is God who decides to show mercy. We can neither choose it nor work for it. For the Scriptures say that God told Pharaoh, “I have appointed you for the very purpose of displaying My power in you and to spread My fame throughout the earth.” So you see, God chooses to show mercy to some, and He chooses to harden the hearts of others so they refuse to listen.
Romans 9:14-18
Is God unrighteous / unjust? [ἀδικία] This is almost anathema for Paul. He has taken all this time to show us that the righteousness of God is being revealed. He has said that only God can be just and justifier. He and He only is the one who makes righteous and imputes His righteous to the sinful person who is in Christ. Now he dares to write Is God unjust, unrighteous? Oh the depth of the question. After all the painstaking attempts to demonstrate God’s righteousness and His radical new way of dealing with us (not on the basis on the old law) now he turns it around and arrests their / our attention with this question, the second of his rhetorical questions.
This is like the shocking statement by the young woman who stood in a church a couple of years ago and gave her testimony, ending it with “God is wicked”. Her comment almost sent the congregation into paroxysms of shock. The words “God” and “wicked” don’t go together. But I guess most reading this know that the girl was not meaning God was wicked; she was actually saying that God was radically awesome. The word or term “wicked” has changed in its usage for modern kids nowadays. The word [ἀδικία] hadn’t changed in its usage for Paul so there was a shock factor in putting those two words together. He was trying to shock his audience awake. No, there is no way in the wide world or the wide universe that God is unjust, unrighteous or full of unrighteousness. He doesn’t play games with us. What He says is truth; unchanging and reliable truth.
Furthermore we need to note Paul’s comment contains an interesting particle. μὴ ἀδικία – μὴ is a negative particle that expects the answer No. There is no other way to answer the question. It is more like saying God is not unrighteous, is he? That question must be answered with a “No.” No, he is not. There is no other answer that can be given.
Don’t think about your rights before God. Wrong move! You don’t have any. Paul has painstakingly shown us that no one is righteous, not even one. No one deserves mercy. It is up to God if He chooses to grant it. No one can complain because all deserve judgement. It is like the example of Jesus’ parable in Matthew 20 about hiring the workers then paying the ones hired in the last hour a full days wages, the same as the ones who worked a full day received. Is that just? Yes it is just. It is fair? One could dispute the fairness. In fact it is fair too, for the ones who received the day’s wages. What is out of the ordinary is giving a day’s wages to those who have only worked an hour. But that is God’s business. Who are we to complain?
We will look at the two examples Paul actually uses in this section in the next Gem. They are very interesting. That’s right there are two examples in Rom 9:14-18. Not just one. You seek them out.
Abundance and obedience go hand in hand. Obey God first and expect to receive his abundance second, not vice versa.
AR Bernard
No one is fit to comprehend heavenly things until he has surrendered himself to suffer adversity for Christ.
Thomas a Kempis