Sunday, July 9, 2023

Patrick Henry Reardon on Romans 9:14-24

  

God’s ability to bring good out of evil does not warrant anyone to do evil. Nor should it lessen any man’s efforts to do good. “Now if men, when they choose, choose what is best,” said John Chrysostom:

 

much more does God. Moreover, the fact of their being chosen is both a sign of the loving kindness of God and of their own moral goodness. . . . God himself has made us holy, but we must continue to be holy. A holy man is someone who partakes of the faith; a blameless man is someone who leads a life without reproach. (John Chrysostom, Homilies on Ephesians 1)

 

The man whom God rejects has no just case against God, because God causes no man’s failure. Even though the Scriptures speak of God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart (verses 17-18; Ex 4.21; 7.3; 9.12), this is a metaphor describing God’s providential use of Pharaoh’s heart. Pharaoh himself is the only one responsible for his hard heart (Ex 7.14, 22; 8.5, 19, 32).

 

Pharaoh’s sin cannot be ascribed to God, as though God had decreed that sin. God foreknew that sin and predestined (determined ahead of time) how to employ that sin to bring about His own deliverance of Israel form Egypt. There is no unrighteousness in God (verse 14). (Patrick Henry Reardon, Romans: An Orthodox Commentary [Yonkers, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2018], 120-21)