The Pulpit Commentary — Romans — Section 292

Vers. 13-33,- Vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy. We have already seen that God's hatred of Esau was after a millennium of patience. This fact of God's long-suffer- ing with Esau's seed carries the light we need into the difficult section now before us. It is a specious objection that the Divine will is resistless, and so, e.s ea.eh one finds he cannot resist God successfully, what reason has the Most High to find fault with his helpless creatures? . But a little fair thinking on the whole subject of God's sovereignty will show that he has every right to complain. Assume that we a.re all clay in the hands of the potter: what then? Is the potter responsible for the composition of the clay? If one lump is most common clay, out of which no glorious vessel could be fashioned, surely the potter can be held responsible only for the use t-0 which he puts the base lump supplied him, and not for the common character of the clay! It is the unfair use of the figure whioh has led to exegetical difficulty. Let us, the.n, take up the two kinds of vessels here referred to, and see what truths are actually communioated by them. I. 'l'HE VESSELS OF WRATH FITTED UNTO DESTRUCTION. .And here I cannot do better than translate from a writer already quoted. In his little-known work, 'La PnSdestination,' Monsell snys, "The all-importo.nt point for the interpretation of these verses is to decide when the a.et of forming the vessels took place; does this operation represent tho predestination, or the moral government of God in actual time? A word of ver. 28 decides this question, without giving ground for the least hesitation; this word is the key of the whole passage, aud, strange to say, it is omitted by Luther and by the French translations nnterior to thnt of Lausanne. It is the word 'aforn '-'which ho has prepared qfore for his glory.' 'l'he predestination of the vessel, then, is not its fabricntion; it precedes it. '£bus, then, when God is complll\,-d to a potttir who fashions the clay, the qv1ostion is a.bout his aoturu treatment of sinners. They a.re boloro him one identical mnse, vile and shapeless; to make the one portion vessds un\o dishonour, to mnko them promoto his glory without bottl'riug th~ir ccinditic1n, is to tront thom nccordiui; to thoir uuturo; to wnko tho other J.l<)rtic1u Vll.i:ids wu,, h,,uour BOIIIANS. U 290 THE EPISTLE OF !'AUL TO THE ROMANS. [cB, xx.1-88, I is to treat them according t.o his grace which has been given them in Ohrlet before the foundation of t.ho world, As to the vessels of wrath, God is not the Author of their nature, but only of their form ; he h1111 fashioned them, but he hBB not • prepared• them ; their form is already a merited punishment ; he shows therein hie wrath. Oould one belie'l""e that God was irrit.ated a,,aainst those who would be such as he had wished them t-0 be? Would he need • a grand long-suffering' to endure his own work in the state 'l'"hich he had himself determined? Has he raised with one he.nd what he hos overturned with the other? Such a doctrine ends by doing violence to the.t reason in the name of which it has outre.ged our moral sentiments." It is clear, then, that the potter's relation to the vessels of wrath is the.t of the fashioner of material made ready to his hand.. He is not to be blamed if the coarse clay will only make a dishonoured ves..<aeL The preparation of the clay, the contraction of its coarse character, has been anterior t.o the potter's disposal of it. All he can do is to determine the destination which suits the nature of the provided clay. In the very same way, God is not to be held responsible for the coarse characters sinners contract in the process of their development. They have exercised their freedom in reaching the condition when, like clay, they lie before the great Potter's wheel. All that God can be held responsible for is the form as vessels of dishonour they are to take ; and if he shows his deserved wrath in disposing of them as dishononred vessels, he is acting well within his rights. It is in the disposal of incorrigible sinners, in suffering long with them, and in at last dooming them to destruction, that he displays the severe side of his character-that side without which he could not ensure our respect. As for this wrath of God, it has been very happily denominated by some of the Germans "the love-pain(Liebesschmerz) of God."' 1 And there can be no doubt that with his long-suffering there enters a large element of pain. These wrecked lives are not disposed of by God without due sensi- bility. He grieves over them as in human form he grieved over doomed Jerusalem. II. THE VESSELS OF KERCY PREPARED AFORE UNTO GLORY. It is much pleasanter, however, to turn to the vessels of mercy-the vessels which God fashions into "vessels nnto hononr, fitted and prepared for the Master's use." He can and does take men like Isaac and Jacob, whose natural qualities are not of the highest and noblest, and out of their unlikely charact.ers he can by his grace make what is pure and holy. Of Jews and u-entiles he has called a proportion, and they have become Obrist-like, and so glorious. And here we have to notice: 1. That in this way God has made known the riches of his gwry. For if these elect ones had not become the subjects of God's grace, much of God's rich glory would have remained unknown. The fall of man and his deterioration have furnished God with splendid opportunities for the revelation of hia glorious love and transforming power. The whole universe has profited by the manifestation of the riches of God's glory in the vessels of mercy. 2. In the joT'Tna- tion of the vessel,s of mercy God was not working without a plan. Just as a skilful potter, in the formation of some specially fine piece of porcelain, spends anxious thought upon its form and ornamentation, so God afore prepared the vessels of mercy unto glory. The predestination of grace is simply the due foresight and prearrangement of God. There is nothing fortnitous; nothing of chance-work a.bout God's acts of grace. •• There is," says Monsell, "in our chapter only one predestination, that of grace; and not only that, but the words of the apostle are weighed and chosen to prevent all misapprehension : the one are re,ady or fit for perdition, the other are pre:pa;red for glory; the first, it is not God who has made them ready-on the contrary, he endures them 'with a grand long-su1fering;' the latter, it is God who has prepared them- still more, he has prepared them afore. Were it not for the ea.re with which the idea of reprobation is here put aside, I should never have supposed that such e. dogma had presented itself to the spirit of a sacred writer. Paul makes on purpose an antithetio para.llelli;m, as he had done (eh. vi. 23) between wa.ges and gift, and this parallelism fu.ds itself in all the members of the sent.ence. God shows his anger towards the wicktd, and the riches of hls glory towards the saved; but the latter, the mercy, is altogether gratuitous. If he wishes to make bis power known (ver. 22), it is not his power to create evil, but to punish it; and how t.o punish evil if not by evil, how to show his anger towards the clay unleHs by making the vessels unto dishonour? " 1, 3. Jt u faith wl,,i,,;h makes the vessel,, glorU>UB. After quoting several prophecies ' (;f. Weoor's 'V CIIIl Zorne Gott.ea,'.~- 32. ~ ' La Prcdestino,lioD,' pp. 28, 29, on, x.1-21.] THE EPISTLE OF PAUL TO TJIE ROMANS, 291