Romans pt13: The Wrath of God (9:14-24)

It is paramount that when we come to passages like this, we read the text from its correct context; this is one of those passages where, if we read Romans forwards, 9:14-24 can easily become a brutal description of Gods seemingly creating people that he knows will be destroyed in the fires of hell, and then arguing that this behavior is perfectly acceptable because “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?” (V20-21).

I have heard this particular passage interpreted in a very calvinistic way that paints God as an unChristlike cosmic tyrant who creates some people to be lifted up and loved, and others to be crushed and tortured “that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth” (V17). But I suggest that this is a complete misreading, not just of the text, but of the character of God.

This is where I find this principle of interpretation from Augustine quite helpful:

“Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.” (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, 1.36.40)

If your reading of the text makes God less Christlike and less loving towards people, Augustine would argue that you have misinterpreted the text and you should go back and begin your search through the scriptures again. Reading the Bible correctly (through the lens of Jesus) makes you more loving and less judgmental. So lets look at this text again, taking the context of this mixed Jewish/Gentile Weak/Strong framework and look at it with fresh eyes.

We begin with the question “Is God unjust?”, a question which arises, not from a view that God is creating people and then throwing them into eternal conscious torment, but rather, from an attempt by the Jewish Christians to understand why God is accepting the Gentiles as his people instead of remaining solely focused on the Jewish people.

For the Jews, this feels like an insult; they are in covenant with God, and he has promised to set things right in the world through them. Why is it, then, that God is bringing in the Gentiles as his people? Isn’t that unjust? Isn’t he breaking his covenant with them?

There are three movements in Paul’s Answer:

Movement One: Israel Received Gods Mercy, V14-15

“14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

Romans 9:14-15 is a quotation from Exodus 33, where Moses is hidden in a cleft of a rock, and God passes in front of him, revealing a portion of his glory. Why is this important? Because of what happened just before this in Exodus 32 where Israel worships the golden calf, a capital offense worthy of being wiped out.(1)

No-one in the ancient world would think a god out of line to wipe his own people out because of idolatry, and the very idea that a god would be merciful to his/her people after this sort of blatant rebellion would be unheard of. It is a shocking fact of mercy that spared Israel.

“So,” Paul says, “You think God is unjust for bringing in Gentiles? Let me remind you just how good God has been to you!” And he quotes Genesis 32 and reminds them that, had God abandoned them — if he had not sent them manna and water — they would have been wiped out in the wilderness. But he didn’t.

Movement two: Even Pharaoh Received Mercy – V16-18

Next Paul makes the same argument from the inverse perspective in V16-18:

“16 It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. 17 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.” 18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden” (Ro 9:16–18).

In his second argument that God has acted justly, he points to Exodus 9:16 where Moses speaks to Pharaoh and says that God has raised him up “that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth” (Ex 9:16).

I’ve heard many preachers misrepresent this passage as saying, “well, God raises up tyrants and evil rulers to do his work in the world.” But that is not at all what Paul is getting at here.

Instead, Paul is saying that God intends for Pharaoh, the great oppressor, and enslaver of Israel, to make the name of God famous in all the earth by simply refusing to intervene during his rise to power and infamy so that his devious heart would be displayed, his pride would be seen, and his repeated lies and broken promises would be known everywhere.

If you take the entire passage, here is a paraphrase of Paul’s arguments:

“God made Abraham and Israel, yes, but God also made Pharaoh. They are from the same lump of clay. Just because God used Israel to show the world his love, doesn’t mean he can’t use Pharaoh to show the world what he hates.”

I want to let Eugene Peterson paraphrase this passage for us:

“Isn’t it obvious that a potter has a perfect right to shape one lump of clay into a vase for holding flowers and another into a pot for cooking beans? If God needs one style of pottery especially designed to show his angry displeasure and another style carefully crafted to show his glorious goodness, isn’t that all right?” (Ro 9:22–23, MSG).

Paul is suggesting that sometimes God will put evil people on display, letting their offenses grow and grow in order to show rot and grime and greed and disdain for everything that God loves. This is the Wrath of God, magnifying our darkness so that it cannot be ignored. Paul sees this as an effective argument against the arrogance of those claiming that God is unjust.

The Wrath of God.

With Augustine’s principle of interpretation in mind, let’s look at the idea of the Wrath of God mentioned in V22.

Jesus began his ministry it started with a proclamation:

18“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)

If this is true, and if this is good news for the poor, prisoners, the blind, and the oppressed, then this means that it is bad news for the rich who ignore the poor, those who build and maintain those prisons, those who do the oppressing and those who profit off of inequality.

Rescuing those who have been oppressed requires confronting those who oppress them.

The wrath of God as a concept has been twisted by powerful religious leaders to portray an unhinged God reacting with harsh, violent retribution towards anyone who commits even the tiniest infraction; a God who would throw a 12-year-old girl into eternal conscious torment for eternity for even the smallest moral offense. This portrait of God presents him as one who has no idea how to actually address evil in the world, only to destroy those who fall victim to it.

This is where we are reminded of Augustines call to read the Bible in a way that makes God more loving and more merciful than our human imagination has allowed, and when we do this it is not hard to see that this view of God is not Christlike, and if your view of God is that he is very different from Jesus, then you have not understood the revelation of Jesus. 

Jesus reveals a God of righteousness, which — despite how it has been used in the modern era — is not a word that refers to strict adherence to moral law. The meaning of righteousness in Hebrew, as these Jewish Christians would have understood it in the first century, “is much more like a verb than a noun because it refers to the power of God to make right what has been wrong.” (2)

I’ve noticed that many of the same people who struggle with the idea of God being angry and wrathful are the same ones who will stand shoulder to shoulder with the oppressed and angrily shout for justice and declare that we needs to “tear the entire system down,” some even suffer brutal consequences and violence for doing so.

Is it so hard to imagine that God feels the same way? Is it so hard to understand his willingness to suffer with them and for them? Perhaps this burning anger towards and action against injustice that dwells within you is a taste of God’s image planted in your chest, growing and calling you towards action. I would argue that when you stand with the oppressed against evil, you are giving the world a righteous display of the Wrath of God, to tear down and rebuild with righteousness.

This is not the same as punishing evil, for Jesus has revealed to us that the wrath of God is not punitive but restorative and recreative.

We have all witnessed God’s work in the world to allow evil people to rise to power in order to expose the rot and cancer that is killing the church; we’ve all listened to podcasts and watched documentaries about those we thought were Godly leaders be exposed as corrupt, abusive (verbally, sexually, emotionally, etc).

And so Paul says all of this in order to get to his summary statement in V22-23:

“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? 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy.” (Ro 9:22–23).

Everlasting Redemption

Many corrupt leaders today think that perhaps they are getting away with something, but they are not. Every step forward takes them one step higher, making their eventual fall that much bigger, exposing their sins to a greater audience, increasing and amplifying the cries for justice (which is synonymous with righteousness in the Old Testament).

There is a line from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing that says: “Oh Villain! Thou art condemned into everlasting redemption.” It’s meant to be a comedy, but I think it is an apt way to think about the work of our cosmic potter. I am also reminded of Jesus’ Parable of the Wheat and the Tares in Matthew 13. The weeds in the garden look like wheat, but they were planted by the enemy, and time will reveal that they threaten what the farmer is trying to grow in us. Remember, when you see the weeds in others, there is no place for condemnation or judgment, for the gardener has shown you mercy. Now go and do the same.

(1) M. Bird, Romans.
(2) Flemming Rutledge, Crucifixion, 134

Discussion Questions:

Have you witnessed the rise of evil men/women who eventually were overtaken and exposed by their own sin?
How do you think God worked through them for good?

Have you seen hidden sin exposed in a way that it led to new life?
How did God work in both them and yourself?

Which passages of scripture have you found hard to interpret in charitable and loving ways?
What might Augustine point to as a the loving acts of Christ that we can emulate through this story/narrative?

Where do you possibly see God’s wrath at work today?
Have you seen Christians loving emulate this character of God?
Where/When? What did God do?