Think Wink.

Last week, I posted about God’s righteousness in his having mercy unconditionally upon anyone he he wills.  This giving of his mercy depends not upon man’s willing, theleo, or man’s exertion, trecho.  It depends upon God, who has mercy.  I tried to demonstrate that this dispencing of mercy, unconditionally, is the expression of his moral character.  This is how God acts, namely without regard to man and his actions and desires.  God’s moral character is the expression of his name.  God has this character because he is Yahweh.  To be Yahweh is to have this moral character.  Yahweh is a name that means one is self-existing, self-determining free from any outside influences.  That name is the honor, the glory (kabowd) of God.  If God does not act according to his name, freely and sovereignly exercising mercy and grace upon any whom he wills, then he has blasphemed himself.  Indeed, he has dishonored himself.  To show that God will not have his name dishonored and yet still justly/righteously have mercy and forgiveness upon sinners, God curcified Christ (Romans 3:25-26).  So God’s righteousness, his justice, is his unswerving allegiance to his name and to preserve the glory/honor of that name.  By unconditionally having mercy, God is displaying the honor of his name.  In Romans 9:13, Paul quotes God as saying that he loved Jacob and hated Esau.  Romans 9:15-16 defends God’s righteousness in his unconditional love/mercy.  What about his hatred/hardening?  Is God righteous to unconditionally harden whomever he wills?  Can God hate people?  Romans 9:17-18 is Paul’s defense of the righteousness of God in unconditional hardening.  Paul writes,

For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”  So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

Now first I want to demonstrate that in v.18 when Paul says “he hardens whomever he wills,” the word “harden” means just what it means and that its implications are the same as the mercy, the hardening is to eternal destiny.  I have seven reasons that I want to give from the text and its context.  I have taken these from a sermon by John Piper entitled “The Hardening of Pharaoh and the Hope of the World.”

1. The natural meaning of hardening is to harden.  It is what the Greek term literally means.  The issue of the text thus far in Romans 9 has been about eternal destiny.  Therefore the natural meaning of Romans 9:18 is that God’s mercy is unto eternal life in heaven and God’s hardening is unto eternal condemnation in hell.
2. Paul parallels the mercy of God in v.18 with God’s hardening.  Paul has just defined the mercy of God as unconditional.  Therefore Paul is puting hardening in the same terms.  The Greek construction is identical in v.18 for both mercy and hardening.
3. The parallel in v.18 stands in v.15-16 when one replaces mercy with hardening.
4. The parallel still stands in light of v.13 in God loving Jacob and hating Esau, which v.11 says was this love and hate was before they–the twins–were born or had done anything good or bad so that God’s electing purpose might stand not according to works but according to him who calls.
5. The objection raised in v.19 and Paul’s response do not seem to indicate that the objector misunderstood Paul.  If the objector had misunderstood Paul to say God unconditionally hardens and thus man stands condemned, why didn’t Paul correct the misunderstanding?  Why basically accuse them of presumption and tell them to bow down and accept how God works?
6. The vessels of honored use and dishonorable use come from only one lump of clay.  Thus the lump of clay did not determing which use the vessels would receive, only the will of the potter determined what the vessels would become.  The lump of clay had only one nature and vessels of honor and dishonor came from just that one lump.  The Potter does not regard the nature of the clay but only his personal decision.
7. In Romans 11:7, “What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened,” the determining factor of obtaining righteousness is not the seeking of Israel but the election of God.  Those who were elect obtained the goal, the rest were hardened.

Where in Romans 9:17 does Paul draw out hardening if the word is not there?  Romans 9:17 is a quote from Exodus 9:16 and the story of the ten plagues in Exodus 4-14.  The question becomes why did Paul chose this verse because there are numerous verses in this large passage of Scripture in which Moses records Pharaoh hardening his heart, Pharaoh’s heart being hardened, and God hardening Pharaoh’s heart.  Why this text?  More pressingly, if Pharaoh is said to have hardened his own heart, how is it that Paul used this text to show that God hardens unconditionally those whom he has not elected to receive mercy?  Let us answer this question first and then see how Paul uses Exodus 9:16 as a defense of God’s righteousness in unconditional hardening.

In the first part of the plagues, Pharaoh hardens his own heart.  It is the latter plagues that Moses says that God is hardening Pharaoh.  This is very true and I am not denying this.  This hardening of God is the fulfillment of Exodus 7:3 in which God says that he will harden the heart of Pharaoh.  In the confrontation before Exodus 7, it appears that Pharaoh hardens his own heart after the duel of the snakes of the magicians and Moses’ staff occurs, although the phrase never appears in that passage.  Now before this confronation occured and before Moses ever left Midian where he was in hiding, God said this in Exodus 4:21, “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.’”  So when Pharaoh refused to let the Israelites go and worship God in the desert, it was God who hardened Pharaoh’s heart.  Now you will note after almost every time Pharaoh’s heart is hardened, the phrase “as the LORD has said” appears.  God said that in order for Moses to perform all that he was empowered by God to do, God was going to harden Pharaoh’s heart.  Therefore every time Pharaoh hardened his heat, his heart was hardened, or the text actually says God hardened it, it was God working to bring that hardening about.  He made this decision before Moses ever left to free the people of God.  Thus the argument that God hardened Pharaoh after he first hardened himself doesn’t work because God had said that He would harden Pharaoh’s heart.  The hardening was “as the LORD had said.”  It is unconditional.  God determined to harden Pharaoh before he ever sent Moses into Egypt as a liberator.  That’s what Paul saw in the Exodus story.

Now how does Exodus 9:16, “But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth,” defend God’s righteousness in unconditional hardening?  Look at the last half of the verse, “so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.”  It comes down again to the honor of God’s name that is at stake here.  Unconditional hardening by God is him defending his own honor in all things in all of the earth.  As we all know, Rahab knew full well what God did to Pharaoh and to Egypt and therefore helped the Israelite spies.  God’s name was honored by hardening Pharaoh’s heart.  Thus God is righteous in unconditional hardening.

Now some may object that Pharaoh’s hardening was more of a historical role than an eternal role.  That is very much true.  But Paul isn’t arguing for that kind of an interpretation in Romans 9:1-16.  The whole chapter up until this point is about salvation and eternal destiny.  To try to contrue the hardening of Pharaoh as historical would be faithful to the Exodus account.  But we are trying to understand how Paul is using the text.  He has identified the principle of God’s hardening of the human heart to rebel against him.  The principle still stands and Paul is placing the principle is a salvific context.  Therefore we are still consistant to Paul in Romans 9 to understand him to refering to salvation, as the objection in v.19 shows; and we are faithful to Moses in Exodus 4-14 to understand him to be refering to historical role.  Thus God’s unconditional election and reprobation is consistant to God’s name.  Doing that which is consistant to his name is what makes God righteous.  Therefore I conclude with the many Reformed scholars before me that God is righteous to unconditionally elect to both salvation and to reprobation.

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