Paul’s Jewish interlocutor, asks the following question with respect to Paul’s discussion of God’s hardening of Pharaoh in Rom 9:14-18:
You will say to me then, "Why does He find fault? For who resists His will?" (Rom 9:19, NASB)
Commenting on this and Paul’s response, as well as its strongly anti-Reformed theology, J.D. Myers writes:
In Romans 9:20, Paul sets out to answer this objection. Note carefully what this means. The fact that Paul seeks to refute an imaginary objector who believes that no one can resist God’s will, means that Paul himself believes that people can and do resist God’s will. Exhibit A for Paul is the objector himself. Using a bit of light irony, Paul says, “Who are you to reply against God?” Paul has pointed out from Scripture that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened by God and by his own response to God. When the objector states (through the pen of Paul) that Pharaoh should not have been found guilty for no one can resist God’s will, Paul humorously points out that the objector himself is resisting God! Paul is saying, “You say that Pharaoh should not be held accountable for his actions because people cannot resist God’s will? You are resisting God’s will right now by questioning what God did with Pharaoh!” As Paul Marton and Roger Forster point out, “The critic is a living demonstration that his criticism is nonsense!” (Foster and Marston, God’s Strategy, 72).
This is a brilliant move by Paul, for it not only defends God’s ability to harden Pharaoh’s heart while at the same time holding Pharaoh accountable for hardening his own heart, Paul is now able to use this point to return to his overall theme of why and how God has now turned to the Gentiles to fulfill his strategy on earth. Though Paul has used the negative examples of Esau and Pharaoh, the objection of his Jewish interlocutor allows Paul to turn the argument back toward the Jewish people themselves. Paul has been arguing up to this point that God raised up the people of Israel to accomplish a particular function in His plan for the world, but because the Israelites failed in their God-given mission, God grafted the Gentiles in to this plan so that they might carry God’s plan forward. By objecting that Pharaoh could only do what God had raised him up to do, the deterministic Jewish objector is also implying that the Jewish people only did what God wanted them to do, and hence, “He shouldn’t blame us! We can only do what He wills!” In response, Paul gently mocks this objector by saying, “Really? You just told God what He should and should not do. If you are right that we can only do what God ordains, then you have no right to argue with God in how He grafted the Gentiles in to His plan.”
What is Paul saying? “The claim that Paul is making [is] that the people of God now can legitimately include pagans should God wish to call them” (Campbell, The Deliverance of God, 777). The Jewish objector is upset that God has included the Gentiles in to His plan of redemption, because the Jewish people only “failed” because they could only do what God determined, and furthermore, the Gentiles were not worthy to be included in God’s plan. Paul disagrees with these points from the deterministic Jewish objector and argues instead that God does not determine or control people’s lives, but works with people as H finds them to accomplish His purposes. In His wisdom, He is still able to accomplish His purposes. In His wisdom, He is still able to accomplish His will, but He does so without compromising the divine gift of freedom which He bestowed upon humanity. God does not make people what they are, but works with people as they are. This allows Him to accomplish His will, while still holding people responsible for their own decisions and actions. This was true for Esau and Edom as it was for Pharaoh and Egypt. This is also true for Jews and Gentiles. (J.D. Myers, The Re-Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:10-24 [Dallas, Oreg.: Redeeming Press, 2017], 71-73, italics in original)
