We’re not tip toeing through all of the TULIP today, but rather just looking into the place many Calvinists go to defend the idea of Election – meaning the idea that God decided from eternity past who would have faith and who would not, who would love him, and who would hate him, who would be saved, and who would be damned.

Would it surprise you to learn that this is not what Romans 9 is about? Turns out its about the nation of Israel and the Gospel.

This section is for the next version of The Bible Vs Grudem and Son which I am in the process of updating. Until then, please check out the following walk through Romans 9 and let me know what you think.

A BRIEF WALK THROUGH ROMANS 9

To conclude this chapter, let’s take a brief walk through Romans 9, which is the Calvinist’s central hub for election talk. When they want to prove the Bible teaches Calvinistic election 9 times out of 10 they head here. A deep dive would take MANY pages, so this will be a quick overview, relatively speaking. I’m just going to walk you through the chapter so you can see the clear difference between a Calvinistic interpretation, and a reasonable one. 

Part 1- Romans 9:1-4 “Paul’s Anguish Over Israel”. 

Paul states that being part of Israel is a great thing, and he would sacrifice himself to see all of them come to Christ. This is a terribly un-calvinist thing to say, as (according to the Calvin interpretation) Paul is about to explain that the non-elect were hated by God from eternity past and God WANTS them to go to hell. This means Paul is expressing a desire for something directly opposed to the will of God, and seems to be showing more love for the lost and desire for their salvation than (According to Calvin) God has for the lost. 

But I’m assured that Paul is a Calvinist, so let’s keep going. 

…the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! (Romans 9: 4-5)

Why were the people of Israel chosen? Why did God even HAVE a chosen people? Paul tells us here, at the start of the chapter. God chose them as the means by which He would give the world the law, temple, and ultimately Jesus. And how did God create a people? He chose a man. That man had sons, and God chose one of those sons. 

The chosen son has sons, and God chose one of them. By the book of Exodus, they were a nation. Paul is about to refer to God’s purpose in election- the reason why God chose Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was not choosing them for salvation and others for damnation. Paul knows, and he expects his reader to know, God’s purpose in election is to fulfill the promise God had made to Abraham; “in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 22:18).

Part 2- Being CHOSEN doesn’t mean being ELECT. 

“not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children.” (Verses 6-7)  

Paul distinguishes between a couple of ideas. First, being born into the chosen people (Israel) doesn’t mean you are PART of God’s people. Being a true Israelite means BELONGING to God (being part of the covenant), not merely living among His people, or even being biologically related to them. Paul compares being born into the nation but not belonging to God, to being born into the family of Abraham, but not into the promise. To enter the promise, you must be born again into the NEW covenant. 

Paul makes this metaphor much more explicitly in Galatians chapter 4. He explains the metaphor in verses 23-24: 

But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants.

Being biologically descended from Abraham doesn’t mean a person is an Israelite – both literally (because Abraham had other sons) and metaphorically (as TRUE Israel are those who belong to God). You are not part of the Chosen (elect) people because you are born into that group, and to illustrate this idea, Paul explains how God chose a particular son of Abraham and not ALL of Abraham’s sons to be the “chosen” people. Abraham’s first son was not the chosen son. God chose Isaac, even though he was not the first son fathered by Abraham. The descendants of Ishmael are children of Abraham, but NOT the chosen people. 

“it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.”(v8) 

That promise is part of the covenant God made with Abraham. That covenant would be the foundation for the covenant made with the chosen people through Moses, and eventually these would be replaced with the new covenant through Jesus Christ. The old covenant is the law. As Paul says in Galatians 4:25,

Hagar stands for Mount Sinai

And then in verse 28

Now you, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise. 

Hagar was the mother of Ishmael. They represent the old covenant of the law. Isaac represents the new covenant of faith in Jesus Christ. This will be what Paul comes back to at the end of the chapter.  

Paul goes down another generation and shows the same thing – God chose who Israel would be. 

“Rebekah’s children were conceived at the same time by our father Isaac. Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God’s purpose in election might stand:  not by works but by him who calls—she was told, “The older will serve the younger.”  Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” (v10-13)

Calvin says, “There! God chooses one to love and the other to hate! This means that each individual- before they are born or can do anything good or bad- is loved by God and elected to salvation, or hated by God and elected to damnation.” 

Yes, God is “electing” Jacob – choosing him. But for what? Salvation? No. To be the son that carries the promise. God’s purpose in election– in choosing a particular man (Abraham) and particular sons (Isaac and Jacob) is to fulfill the promise God had made to Abraham; “in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 22:18).

Paul quotes an Old testament passage “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” Is God saying he loves one unborn baby and hates the other? No! The passage Paul is quoting is NOT in Genesis, where the story of Jacob and Esau is told. Malachi 1:2-3 is the passage Paul is quoting, and the passage is from MUCH later- more than a thousand years later-  when the nation of Israel is asking God how He has loved them, and God reminds them that He chose them to be His people, and he fights for them against the other descendants of Abraham. This passage is not talking about two brothers, but about two or more nations which were descended from those brothers. 

Here loved and hated literally means chosen and not chosen. In the Bible, even in the teaching of Jesus, declaring something loved and something else hated does NOT mean what we mean by it in modern American English. In Luke 14:26, Jesus says,

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

This is not about being hostile to your family, or wanting their destruction, or anything we might think of in modern American English. Jesus is simply using strong figurative language to express the fact that his disciples must be prepared and willing to choose HIM over their own families and even over their own life. Similarly, the language in Malachi is not expressing God’s hate of an unborn baby, and it doesn’t even express hate. It is a strong way of expressing that he has chosen one over the other, and rejected the one for the sake of the first. But just as we can “hate” our mother and father and even our own life, and yet want our mother and father to have salvation and eternal life, so God can “hate” Esau (or the nation he represents in Malachi) and still desire them to be saved. It is NOT a refusal to offer him salvation. 

This is still about God’s relationship with Israel. This is not about one boy being saved while the other is damned. It is about one nation being over the other because of the purpose and action of God. A specific line of Abraham’s descendants would be in a position of privilege over another, because it was the will of God. He chose one line to be His people. This is not about individuals being chosen for salvation. This is about a nation being chosen, to ultimately bring salvation to the world by being the people from which Jesus would be born. 

Part 3- Having Mercy Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Giving Salvation

Paul continues this idea in vs 14-15, 

“Is God unjust? Not at all!  For he says to Moses,

“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,

    and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.”

Because they only have the John Calvin English Dictionary of 1564 and cannot define words without it, the Calvinist sees this and thinks it means God is choosing individuals for salvation – electing random people for seemingly no reason from eternity past. 

Once again, God is not talking about saving individuals, but rather about being merciful to the nation of Israel. Remember how Paul started this chapter by talking about the nation of Israel? Well, Paul does. Apparently John Calvin can’t remember back that far, but Paul does. 

God chose the Jews to be His people, not because they wanted to be, or because they deserved it, but because HE chose them. THIS is the mystery of God’s election. WHY did he choose the Jews? We’re not given any reason other than because He wanted to, much in the same way Job gets no answer other than “I am God and you are not.”

If you look at the passage Paul is quoting here, it is Exodus 33:19. In it, God is not referring to the ‘mercy’ of forgiving someone’s sins. In this passage, God is referring to being with the people of Israel, even though they do not deserve His presence. Also, God is referring to revealing Himself to Moses because He was pleased with Moses, and not because He owed Moses anything. It’s a picture of the Gospel, not a picture of Calvinism. 

Paul is NOT talking about God deciding who will be saved. God is saying He will be with the people he chose out of mercy and compassion. God is saying He will show His glory to Moses, even though Moses didn’t earn that. This is still about God choosing Israel.

Part 4- Hardening a Heart Doesn’t CAUSE it’s Shape

Next, Paul describes the position of Pharaoh, a man who not only ruled the nation of Egypt, but was even worshipped as a god by the Egyptians. The Israelites at this point of the story are not only his citizens, and not only the lowly and poor. They are HIS PROPERTY. God sent Moses, a disgraced former prince of Egypt who had lived for decades as a shepherd, to demand that Pharaoh let the people of Israel go. When the scripture describes God “hardening” Pharaoh, this is what is being described. 

This man rules the most wealthy and powerful nation in the world, and a disgraced shepherd comes from the slaves to DEMAND they be let go? Would this make his heart soft, change his heart toward his slaves so that he feels love and compassion for them, and persuade him to let his slaves go free? Exactly the opposite! It would harden Pharoah in his resolve to keep what he felt was rightfully his as the king and god of Egypt! But God did this on purpose as Paul describes;

…For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”  Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. (v 17-18)

The Calvinist wrongly believes this is Paul telling us that God decides what people will believe, giving faith to some and rebellion to others- what they call “election.” When the Calvinist reads that God “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” they believe it means that God MADE Pharaoh’s heart turn against God. But if he was already Totally Depraved, I have to wonder why God would waste his time making a guy who already hates Him… hate him more? Isn’t this like putting a blindfold on a guy who was born without eyes? 

The Calvinist says that God “hardening” Pharaoh’s heart means CAUSING his heart to be set against God. But when the sun hardens the clay, or the fire hardens the mud bricks, does that CAUSE them to be a particular shape? No, it keeps them from changing shape. Hardening is not a description of causing a thing to take a particular shape, but exposing it to heat until it can no longer change. Eventually it can only break, as Egypt did. 

In many ways, this was the same experience Jesus had with the religious leaders. He did not CAUSE them to do anything, but merely revealed himself more and more until they were consumed by their hate and had him killed. Jesus hardened them against him by refusing to kiss their rings, follow their rules, and instead called them out on their sin. Just as in Exodus, God here uses the hard hearts of those opposing Him to fulfill His purpose. 

Just in case you need more reasons to reject Calvin’s interpretation of this section, consider the passage Paul is referencing. Romans 9:18 says that God “hardens whom he wants to harden.” Again, Calvin tells us that this means God hardened Pharaoh’s heart against Him, and they extrapolate this to mean that God does this to all people who are not chosen to be the elect from eternity past. From this passage and others like it, Calvin tells us that it is God who decided who loves God and who hates Him. 

First off, this is a ridiculous stretch.  Even if God caused and determined every thought and feeling of Pharaoh’s heart and mind, it would not follow that God does the same thing to anyone else. 

“AHA!” retorts Calvin, “BUT! Does not Exodus ch 9 verse 12 say, “the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart”?

It does, and I believe I explained above what that means. However, to throw a wrench into the Calvinist interpretation of both Romans 9 and Exodus 9, Exodus 9 verse 34 says this:

When Pharaoh saw that the rain and hail and thunder had stopped, he sinned again: He and his officials hardened their hearts.

They did WHAT? But didn’t God do that from eternity past? 

Apparently not. 

Part 5 – Choosing Israel FROM the Nations FOR the Nations

Remember what the beginning of the chapter is about? It comes from the end of chapter 8. Paul ends chapter 8 talking about the security in the love of God through Jesus Christ;

…in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,  neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39)

Paul starts chapter 9 expressing his desire that the Jews would ALL be in Christ and know the salvation he knows. Through all of chapter 9, THAT is what he is talking about. 

When he begins talking about Pharaoh, Paul is still talking about nations, and God making choices to show love to the people of Israel. Previously, in verses 10-13, Paul contrasted Israel with the other nations descended from Isaac. Here in v15 he has just explained that God had mercy and compassion on Moses and the nation of Israel, and here he contrasts that with Pharaoh and the nation of Egypt. 

Ishmael was a son of Abraham, but God did not choose him to be the father of the Israelites. Esau was a son of Isaac, but God did not choose him to be the father of the Israelites. Egypt WAS great, but God did not choose them to be HIS people. He used them to make His name great, not by being with them as He did with the unworthy Israelites, but by crushing them to free the unworthy Israelites. And even there, His election was not individual, excluding the Egyptians. Some Egyptians chose to go out with the Israelites, and once they had left Egypt, many Israelites rebelled against God and were destroyed for it. The choosing was national, not personal. God did not smite EACH EGYPTIAN, but Egypt. Each person still had to “choose for yourselves today whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15). To clarify what it means to be chosen by God to be His people, consider a prophecy in Isaiah 16. Verses 24-25 say;

In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.”

Why would God refer to the Egyptians – those He rejected – those NOT his chosen people – as “Egypt, my people”? The Assyrians weren’t even descended from Abraham! Why would God say this about them? Because of what happens in verse 21:

the Egyptians will know the Lord in that day and worship with sacrifice and offering, and they will make vows to the Lord and perform them.

But HOW will the Egyptians even know WHO the true God is, and how to worship God?

Paul has already told us: 

…the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises.  Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! (Romans 9:4-5)

Again, Paul is not describing God choosing individuals to be saved and letting others be damned. Paul is describing the way God has chosen the nation of Israel TO BE A BLESSING to ALL the other nations. God said to Abraham:

in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed (Genesis 22:18)

And from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised!

Part 6- Clay Vs Potter is Calvin Vs God

Paul follows the train of thought he has established from the Jews questioning why not all of Israel is being saved: 

It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. (v6) What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! (v14) One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” (v19)

Paul imagines the backtalk from his audience, and I think the imaginary back talker is the Calvinist appealing to the doctrine of election as defined by Calvin (a deterministic election): 

“Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?”

The nation of Israel is rejecting the Messiah – surely (he thinks) this is the will of God! He determined it! It is HIS WILL. Why are we getting blamed for His will being done? If the people of Israel are hardened against Jesus, then it must be God’s fault! If the Jews are hardened against Jesus it is because of God hardening them!

Paul is not having it.

But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” 

Calvin interprets this section to be a picture of God creating humanity as a potter makes clay pots. God takes a chunk of clay and says, “This one will be elect and be saved.” He takes another chunk of clay and says, “This one will NOT be elect. He will go to hell!” This is, in the mind of Calvin, a picture of God in the act of electing the saved and rejecting the damned from eternity past.

In verse 22, Paul uses the phrase, “objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction,” and Calvin believes this is Paul describing those who God made for damnation. Calvin thinks this is a description of God making people for the purpose of sending those people to hell. Calvin is wrong. 

Paul is referencing Isaiah 29:16 and 45:9, and like everything else Paul quotes, he expects you to know the context, and like every other verse he quotes, the context destroys Calvin’s use of it. These passages DO NOT describe God as the potter making sinners and saints. It describes sinners as pottery who arrogantly think they have the right to criticise or reject the potter, or as babies who are demanding authority to judge or reject their parents, even saying “You didn’t make me!” 

Will the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you doing?’ Or the thing you are making say, ‘He has no hands’? 

… Or [her baby] to a woman, ‘To what are you giving birth?’” (Isaiah 45: 9-10)

The assumption Paul is attacking in this entire chapter is the belief that, if one was born into the nation of Israel, he was born CHOSEN, and thus salvation is FOR HIM. The gentiles, by contrast, are those who were “made for destruction.” Some Jews will then look at the gentiles coming to Christ and those Jews rejecting Christ and ask, “Is God unjust?” (v 14). Paul answers in vs 15 & 16, 

“Not at all! For he says to Moses,

“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,

    and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.

Paul is elaborating on this same thought in vs 21-25.

Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use? (v21)

Note that Paul does not here say ‘some to be preserved and others to be destroyed.’ All of them are being used for something, but some are for ‘special purposes’. These are the Jews. They were chosen for a special purpose, because God made them to be special.  

What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? (v22)

Once again Calvin will see this and insist that God is creating some people for the purpose of destroying them – electing them to damnation – and creating others for salvation –  electing them to forgiveness. But once again both the context and the Old Testament passages Paul quotes debunk this. 

Paul asks, what if God – God who we know chooses to show his wrath (like He did on Egypt) and who chooses to make His power known (like He did against Egypt) did not use His great power to completely destroy the gentiles? What if God instead had great patience on them, even though they were prepared for destruction? And Paul then suggests WHY God would do this;

What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? (v23-24)

Who are the “Objects of His mercy?” Paul already reminded us in vs 15 what we learn from Exodus 33 – it is the nation of Israel. The Jews were the chosen people, the objects of His mercy (because they did not EARN their place as His people and did not deserve it). The Gentiles were seen as filthy, unclean, wicked idolaters (the “objects of His wrath”) by the Jews, and yet, through Christ, God is having mercy on THEM. Paul suggests that by having mercy on the Gentiles, God is showing the Jews the “riches of His glory.” 

These are not, as the Calvinists wrongly believe, the un-elect, doomed from eternity past to hell. These are, as Paul described in vs 24, “whom he also called… from the Gentiles”. 

Paul concludes by pointing out that it has always been by faith and not by being part of the “chosen” people. He gives several Old Testament examples of times Gentiles were accepted, or prophesied of a time they would come to God, and the Jews were rejected even though they were doing religious things taught in the law of Moses.

Paul quotes Hosea 2:23 and 1:10. This was a difficult time in the history of Israel where they were so wicked that God considered them as if they were an unfaithful wife. In Hosea, God said to them, “you are not my people, and I am not your God.” At this point in their history, it was the nation of Israel who was “the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction”. Paul then quotes Isaiah chapters 9 and 10, where again God is letting the enemies of his people act as his tool of punishment for their wickedness. But in both cases, God includes in the proclamation of their wickedness the promise of eventual reconciliation. He would have mercy on them because He chose to have mercy on them.

Paul clarifies that the distinction between those saved and those lost is not a matter of election in the Calvinist sense, as it was not a matter of being born into Israel in a biological sense. It is coming to God through faith in Christ, as opposed to attempting to come to God by one’s own works. 

What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. (v 30-32)

In a sense, the Jews Paul is responding to are demanding that God be a Calvinist! 

“We were MADE to be special! THEY were made to be DESTROYED! WE were CHOSEN. THEY were rejected! But now that the Messiah is here, Jews are rejecting Him and Gentiles are being saved through him!  The Elect are being lost and those who are NOT the chosen ones are being saved! Has God’s word failed? Is He unjust?” 

So Paul resolves the conflict with the true gospel, “a righteousness that is by faith.”

This is the same for all of the book of Romans and all of the New Testament. The Calvinist interpretation does damage to the intention of the text, and ignores the context to force in its dogma. Paul was not a Calvinist. He was a first century Jew. The only way to get Paul to sound like a Calvinist is to ignore who he was and pretend he was John Calvin.