“You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?”
Romans 9:19-24
Once again, Paul answers another objection about God’s fairness. The previous two verses referred to the time in Israel’s history when God hardened Pharaoh’s heart despite the plagues God sent against Egypt (Exodus 10:1). Pharaoh first said no. Still, God is the one who made sure Pharaoh’s heart did not soften in surrender or repentance so that Pharaoh would keep on saying “no” to Moses and Israel.
Is that “fair” of God? How can God find fault with Pharaoh when God is the one who caused the hard heart? After all, how could Pharaoh, or anyone else, resist God’s will? Isn’t God treating Pharaoh as a puppet, punishing him for actions he cannot avoid?
It’s a sensible question from a human perspective. If any person could force Pharaoh as God did, we would generally agree that it is not “fair” to hold someone responsible for a decision that some other person caused them to make. We might even debate whether God forced Pharaoh to say no. We might point out that Pharaoh hardened his own heart repeatedly (Exodus 7:13; 8:15) before God stepped in to make that hardening permanent.
However, none of that matters because the human perspective doesn’t apply to God. He can do as He wishes. He is God. Not only is His perspective more complete than ours (Isaiah 55:8–9), but He is in the position of Creator; we are not.
God did as He liked in Pharaoh’s heart because He is God, and He has an absolute and sovereign right to do so. That is the first and foremost answer to any charge that God treated Pharaoh in an “unfair” or “unjust” way. Let’s not forget that nobody deserves mercy (Romans 3:10; 3:23), so the fact that God withholds it from certain people is not unfair to those particular persons.
Paul’s main point is that God, as the sovereign Creator (Romans 9:20–21), can show mercy to whomever He wishes based only on His own purposes. He does not owe us, His creatures, anything at all. We have universally earned His wrath with our sinfulness. If He chooses to show mercy, it is not unfair of Him to grant that grace only to some of us. Nobody deserves it; no one has the right to say, “You ought to have been merciful to me, too.”