Romans 9:21

21. Clay May be an image of perfect passivity. It may also, as possessed of alternative possibilities and pliabilities, be, as here, an emblem of free-agency. And the apostle’s question is, Has not God a right to create a free-agent, or to establish a system of equitable free-agency? Has not God the right to do right?

Power The Greek word implies just authority.

Same lump Inasmuch as the same free-agent has an alternative capacity for either course and for either result.

Unto honour In view of his faith and obedience.

Dishonour In view of his unbelief and sin.

Our reader will find the perfect demonstration of our exposition of this verse if he will turn to Jeremiah 18:1-10, and carefully study there the original of Paul’s figure.

Jeremiah, by divine command, goes “down to the potter’s house” to see the potter’s “work on the wheels.” “And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter; so he made it again another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make it.” It is inferable from Romans 9:6-10 that the first intended vessel was a vessel of honour, perhaps a drinking cup or ornamental vase; but the other vessel, consequent upon the mar, was a “vessel of dishonour,” for the wash-room or bedchamber. And now comes the clear exposition of its symbolism of free-agency and divine impartiality.

“Behold, as the clay in the hands of the potter, so are ye in my hand, O house of Israel! At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it: if that nation against whom I have pronounced turn from their evil I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them… If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then will I repent of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them.” Thus the clay was the house of Israel; according as were their temper and conduct would they be moulded into a vessel of honour or of dishonour. So that the very clay is a living free-agent, the Potter is a wise impartial divine Reason, and the being made a vessel of honour or dishonour is conditioned upon the voluntary temper and doing of the agent. Salvation and damnation depended upon a momentous pivotal IF; the two alternatives of that IF were “turn from evil” and salvation, or “do evil” and destruction. And this, the immutable law of God’s free government, enacted before the foundations of the earth were laid, is that eternal purpose of God according to election which is so unrevealed and so mysterious to Barnes, Stuart, Hodge, and the great mass of predestinarians, but perfectly transparent upon the whole surface of God’s word. And this passage is absolutely conclusive against Paul’s predestinarian Jew. The insolent predestinarian Jew flouts the idea that the house of Israel should be subject to the law of not predestined lineal salvation, but a fearfully precarious free-agency, and Paul shows him from Jeremiah’s potter and clay that it had always been so!