Introduction
After traveling around the last few weeks it feels good to get back into the rhythm of things. And in the spirit of that I thought I should open with a Lord of the Rings reference.
One of my favorite parts of The Lord of the Rings isn’t actually in the films. After Frodo destroys the Ring, the hobbits finally make their way home, expecting everything to be just as they left it. But it isn’t. The Shire itself has been scarred by evil. Evil had spread fear, destruction, and tyranny even there.
Yet Tolkien makes a remarkable point. The hobbits who return are no longer the same hobbits who left. Now in some sense they are. Gandalf tells them, “You have grown up very much, and yet you haven’t grown at all. You are still the same hobbits as ever.” But they had indeed been changed by their adventure. Before their journey they loved the Shire because it was comfortable. Now, even though it had been scarred by evil that they had to fight to overthrow, and even though they had to work to restore it to glory, they love it all the more because they understood what nearly destroyed it, and they saw the beauty of it in contrast with that. Before, they had never looked true evil in the face. Now they had. Before, they enjoyed peace without fully appreciating it. Now they treasured it because they knew what it cost.
In other words, the darkness became the backdrop that made the beauty of home shine all the brighter. And now they were all the more willing to live for it, to work for it, and if necessary, to die for it. And that’s a lot like what we’ll see in our passage today. God does not delight in evil or wrath for their own sake. But He ordains history in such a way that His mercy, His grace, and His glory are seen with a brilliance that could never have been known otherwise. The vessels of mercy know the riches of His glory because they have been rescued from the darkness they deserved. And that rescue, that grace, is to lead them to live, work, and even to die for the praise of God’s glorious grace.
So with that in mind, look with me at Romans 9:22-25.
Context
Remember our context. After beautifully laying out the gospel of Christ, our covenant responsibilities, and God’s covenant promises, Paul has been explaining how and why God’s Word has not failed and cannot fail. He’s been showing us that election, and really salvation as a whole, is all ultimately by grace alone—and it’s only the elect according to God’s sovereign decree that are fully and finally of Israel, and thus God’s true people for all eternity. No matter anyone’s ethnicity or pedigree, no matter where we’re from or what our background is, none of us are guaranteed grace. That’s not how God’s covenant works. God has mercy on whomever He wills and He hardens whomever He wills.
God is the sovereign Creator of all who has absolute sovereign rights over all. He is the potter and we are the pot, and He can do whatever He wants with us… And because, outside of God’s grace in Christ, we are sinners who only deserve death and hell, God can do us no wrong. But also, because God is God, and He is the very standard of what is right and good, God can do no wrong. Indeed, whatever He ordains is right.
But in His divine and glorious wisdom God has chosen to have a people for Himself in Christ. But those people, whether ancient Israel, or the church today, must grab ahold of God’s promises by faith. And some will, and some won’t… but even that is all ultimately according to God’s grand plan. And that brings us to our passage today.
Romans 9:22-25
In verses 22 and 23 Paul says, “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…” To help us understand God’s sovereign grace and covenant faithfulness, Paul throws out a hypothetical question that isn’t really hypothetical at all. Psalm 115:3 tells us that God is totally sovereign and always does what He pleases. Therefore, in some way it must please God to show or display His wrath. He must desire to do it in some way, because He does it.
But if you know your Bible well you might know that God’s wrath is at times referred to as His strange work. That’s how Isaiah 28:21 refers to it. Or consider Lamentations 3:33. There God’s Word says that when God afflicts, or brings down His wrath and fury upon sinners, He does not do so from the heart. In other words, it’s not what flows most naturally from who He is in the core of His being. It is right and necessary for God to unleash His wrath and fury upon sinners outside of Christ, but it is not what is most natural to His nature. As Ezekiel 33:11 says, He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
But how can this be if God only does what He pleases, if He only does what brings Him pleasure? The answer must be that there is something beyond showing His wrath, something tied to showing His wrath that brings Him pleasure. And that’s what we see here. God desires to show His wrath and power in order to make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy.
You see, in Matthew 11:28-30, when Jesus describes who He is in the heart of His being He says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” In other words, as the Lord says to Moses in Exodus 34:6-7, He is, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty…” Indeed He doesn’t merely clear the guilty, He takes their guilt upon Himself, and satisfies God’s wrath for all who will come to Him, who will trust in Him. Why? Because as Micah 7:18 says, He delights in mercy. Restraining His anger, pouring out His mercy, and lavishing His steadfast love upon His people in order to bring Him into right fellowship with Himself flows from the core of who He is.
Are you with me so far? What I’m pointing out is that though God’s justice is always righteous and glorious, His revealed disposition toward His covenant people is one of abundant mercy. God’s wrath is the settled, holy opposition of God’s goodness toward sin… And so it is always just and right when God pours out His wrath. But the justice God pours out is not random or separate from the mercy He pours out. And Scripture portrays mercy as the work in which God especially delights and which most fully displays the abundance of His covenant love. Wrath is His strange work, but mercy is what comes most natural to our God. And the reason He shows wrath the way He does is ultimately for the glory of Christ and the benefit of His vessels of mercy, or the glory of God and the joy of His people.
Now with that in mind look at what our passage says here. Again Paul says, “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…” You see, the wrath of God serves as a contrast to display and make known more fully and beautifully the mercy of God.
I love watching the sunset over the ocean in the Gulf, or watching the sun disappear behind the mountains at the end of the day in the Pacific Northwest. Because when you’re at the beach, away from the bright lights of the city, or in the mountains away from the smog and the glow of over population, something even more beautiful follows the sunset… The night sky is so dark that the stars shine out with such a bright contrast that it is breath taking. And that’s the idea behind what Paul is saying here.
The only way we see the riches of the glory of God rightly as vessels of mercy, is when His mercy is in contrast to His wrath. Therefore, the reason God is pleased to show His wrath is because it makes the infinite glories of His mercy all the more bright and beautiful.
As the old hymn goes, “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all… He gave us eyes to see them, and lips that we might tell how great is God Almighty, who has made all things well.” And so it is here.
The bright and beautiful riches of the glory of God, especially in His great mercy, can only be seen aright in contrast with His great wrath. That’s why, in God’s providence, He ordained the Fall and sin. Had it not been for sin we would have no need for a Savior. And while creation, like God’s wrath, reveals God’s power, redemption and salvation unveil His heart. If not for sin and wrath we would only know God as our Creator and not as our Savior. And what Scripture teaches us here and throughout is that the deepest revelation of God’s heart—who He is at the core of His being—comes through His saving mercy toward sinners.
Augustine said, “For Almighty God… judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.” And the reason He did this is for the glory of Christ. Or as Ephesians 1:6 says, “to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.” So though God does indeed choose to have mercy on some and leave others in their sin in order to show His wrath and power, the reason He does so is so that His vessels of mercy, His people who look to Christ by faith, would be so amazed by His grace that we would live for the praise of His glorious grace. God does what He does for the glory of our Lord and Savior, King Jesus.
In Romans 9:21 Paul said that vessels of wrath made for dishonorable use, and vessels of mercy made for honorable use, all come from the same lump, that is the same lump of people—fallen humanity in Adam. Whether Isaac or Ishmael, Jacob or Esau, Moses or Pharaoh, or us today, all are sinners who are destined for wrath outside of God’s mercy because of Adam’s sin, as well as our own. It was Adam who brought our sinful nature upon us, and prepared us for destruction. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loves His elect, prepared us beforehand through election, through the Covenant of Redemption, choosing to have mercy on a particular people in Christ. He chose to save some, to rescue them from destruction. Even from the same lump of sinful humanity, and at times even from the same family line or from Israel itself, He has mercy on whomever He wills, bringing them out of their sin and into Christ… and He hardens whomever He wills, leaving them in their sin and destined for wrath.
Though God is sovereign over all, He is in a way in which He is never guilty of sin. Our sin and condemnation is on us, not Him. But our salvation is all of God. He gets all the credit. He gets all the glory. That’s why Paul is careful with his words when he says vessels of wrath were prepared for destruction, but vessels of mercy were prepared beforehand for glory. Adam and our own sinful hearts prepare us for destruction, but God and His grace in Christ is what prepares us for glory, and this began before the foundation of the world within the triune God Himself. God’s Word has not and cannot fail because this is how God’s covenant of grace has always worked. And this is right and good, because as R. C. Sproul said so well, “Nobody has ever been a victim of injustice at the hands of God. Some get justice. Some get mercy. [But because we all deserve death and hell outside of Christ,] No one gets injustice.”
In Romans 9:11 Paul told us that it is God’s purpose of election that is behind all of this… But what is His purpose of election? Well, that’s what we see in our passage today. In Romans 9:23-25 we see that it is, “to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— 24 even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? 25 As indeed he says in Hosea, “Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’ and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’”
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on verses 24 and 25, so I’ll just give you the gist. The idea is that God’s grand plan of redemption is not simply about ethnic Israel, but people from every nation and generation. God’s elect are Jews and Gentiles. Indeed, as Jesus says in the Great Commission, every nation is to be discipled. God is after the world. His plan is to cover the earth in the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And before the return of Christ, it will happen.
In Psalm 2:8 the Father says to the Son, “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.” And Jesus asks… He not only asks, but He lives, dies, rises again, and ascends to the right hand of the Father to secure the nations. Which is why heaven cries out in Revelation 11:15, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”
God’s Word says, “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before [Him]. For kingship belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations” (Psalm 22:27-28). He will “have dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth” (Psalm 72:8)! Or Psalm 86:9, “All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name.”
Indeed, this idea is woven into Romans itself, as Paul stated back in Romans 1:5, the mission is to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations for the sake of the name of Christ. And that’s what Paul is saying here too. Throughout Romans 9 Paul has been showing us that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. In other words, God’s covenant promises—especially His promises to Abraham, that He would be blessed, that in Him all nations would be blessed, and the He would inherit the earth—are all ultimately fulfilled in Christ and in those who are rightly in Christ. True children of Abraham, and thus true children of God, are what they are by God’s sovereign mercy and grace in Christ through faith. And this reality is meant to take over the world. And eventually it will… By the grace of God and the obedient faith of His people, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:10-11).
Now this brings us back to where I want to draw your focus. God’s purpose of election is ultimately about the fame of His name covering the earth. And the way He has chosen to make this happen is by making known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy, which He has prepared beforehand for glory, even Gentiles like us that He has called out of darkness into His marvelous Light. But when Paul speaks of God making known His glory, he doesn’t simply mean mere knowledge. God’s ultimate purpose is not knowledge but worship. As the Westminster Catechism states, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.” And that’s more like what Paul has in mind here.
It’s like what we read earlier from 1 Peter 2:9-10: “[We] are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that [we] may proclaim the excellencies [in word and deed] of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once [we] were not a people, but now [we] are God’s people; once [we] had not received mercy, but now [we] have received mercy.” God making known the riches of His glory to vessel of mercy like us that He prepared beforehand for glory is not merely about making something known to us, but also in and through us. Indeed, this is all a part of our calling. This is our occupation. This is the meaning of our lives.
God called us out of darkness into His marvelous Light to shine out His Light… to be salt and Light… to proclaim, to make known and display His excellencies—that is His beauty, His worth, His goodness, His glory… Whether we eat or drink, or whatever we do, we are to do all for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). And because of His great mercy, by His grace we can. Because of His grace in Christ we can and we must live for the praise of His glorious grace in Christ.
To be sure, as Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:9, “God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ…” And thus we are destined for glory. But even now our calling in this life is all about glory—for the praise of His glorious grace. Indeed, that is God’s grand purpose of election.
I love the way Jonathan Edwards put it. He said, “The creation of the world seems to have been especially for this end, that the eternal Son of God might obtain a spouse towards whom He might fully exercise the infinite benevolence of His nature, and to whom He might, as it were, open and pour forth all that immense fountain of condescension, love, and grace that was in His heart, and that in this way God might be glorified.”
You see beloved, God knows what He’s doing… And what He’s doing is always right, because He is always right, just, and good. Nothing is meaningless. Whatever our God ordains is right because it’s always ultimately for His glory, the good of His people, and the life of His world. He is the Creator, we are the creation, and He has divine rights to do whatever He wills. But because He is who He is, everything He wills is always good and glorious. And He is so good and glorious in fact, that at the very core of who He is—from His heart—flows mercy and grace. And He delights to lavish that mercy and grace upon His people in Christ. Indeed that is why everything exist. And therefore, that’s why we exist as well. God created us and redeemed us, He brings us out of darkness and into the His marvelous Light, the Light of His glory and grace, so that He could continually lavish His grace upon us, and so that we would be so amazed by His grace that we would live for His glory.
Conclusion
So what does that look like? How then should we live in light of what we see here? What should this truth produce in us?
First, humility. None of us are vessels of mercy because we were wiser, better, or more deserving than anyone else. We all came from the same lump. If God has shown us mercy, then all boasting is forever excluded.
Second, assurance. If God prepared us beforehand for glory, then our salvation rests not on the strength of our grip upon Christ, but upon Christ’s eternal grip upon us. The God who began this work will finish it.
Third, worship. God’s purpose is not merely that we understand His glory, but that we proclaim it. We have been called out of darkness into His marvelous light so that every area of life becomes an act of praise—all of Christ for all of life. Fathers should lead their homes for His glory. Mothers should build faithful households for His glory. Children should obey for His glory. How we teach and learn, how we work and do business, how we dress, and even how we eat and drink should all be done with great intention for His glory.
Of course we should be a church that worships together with reverence for His glory. But every meal, every conversation, every vocation, every act of love is another opportunity to display the riches of His glorious grace. We must walk in obedience to God’s Word by faith for God’s glory. And every act of obedience in word and deed—in the heart, in the mind, and in any and every area of life—is a part of proclaiming the excellencies of our great God who called us out of darkness and into His marvelous Light. And therefore it is an act of warfare that pushes back the darkness and advances the Kingdom of Light, working for the Day when the gospel has triumphed over all.
And that leads me to my final application, hope. God’s purpose has never been merely to rescue isolated individuals. His purpose is to fill the earth with worshippers. The same God who called us out of darkness is still calling sinners from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. Christ has purchased the nations, and He will have them. Therefore, we labor, we pray, we preach, we disciple, and we build with confidence, because history is moving exactly where our sovereign God has ordained it to go—the Day when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
And this brings me back to where we began. When the hobbits returned to the Shire, they did not return merely to enjoy their home. They returned determined to restore it. Having seen the darkness, they loved the light all the more. Having seen tyranny, they cherished peace all the more. Having witnessed evil, they were now willing to fight for the good. They had been changed… And so have we… But all the more so, because we have been transformed by grace.
And that’s our calling as well. Christ has rescued us from a far greater darkness than Mordor. He has delivered us from sin, death, and the wrath of God itself. He has made us vessels of mercy, prepared beforehand for glory. And now He sends us back into His world—not to hide from it, nor to surrender it to the darkness, but to proclaim His excellencies in every corner of life. We are to cultivate, build, disciple, raise families, conduct business, govern justly, create beauty, preach the gospel, love our neighbors, and seek to transform the world around us until every part of God’s world bears witness to the glory of King Jesus.
So until that Day, may we never lose our wonder at God’s sovereign mercy. May we be so amazed by His grace that we gladly spend our lives for the praise of His glorious grace. Amen.