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In the classic book Your God is Too Small, J.B. Phillips reminds us that the God of the Bible is a truly awesome figure—all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing, and holy. Phillips wrote the book because he saw a tendency among Christians to bring God down to their own levels, to domesticate Him, to turn Him into a “nice guy” who could be cajoled into doing what they wanted. Similar tendencies still trouble us. Among them is the theological movement called “open theism.” Open theists deny that God plans all things or even that He knows all things. God becomes contingent, reacting many times to our initiatives. This God is indeed too small.
By contrast, the Scriptures present God as one who knows and plans everything. And Romans 9:6–29 reveals this truth as clearly as any passage in the Bible. In these verses, Paul describes a God who takes the initiative in creating His people. Again and again, Paul quotes Old Testament passages that begin with the divine “I” to underscore the sovereign working of God:
“ ‘At this time I will come and Sarah shall have a son’ ” (v. 9; Gen. 18:10, 14).
“ ‘Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated’ ” (v. 13; Mal. 1:2–3).
“ ‘I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion’ ” (v. 15; Ex. 33:19).
“ ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth’ ” (v. 17; Ex. 9:16).
“ ‘I will call them My people, who were not My people, and her beloved, who was not beloved’ ” (v. 25; Hos. 2:23).
The point cannot be missed: God is in charge of history and of the creation of His people.
Paul makes this argument to defend the proposition in verse 6a: “But it is not that the word of God has taken no effect.” The failure of many Jews to respond to the gospel forces Paul to raise this issue. How could God promise to bless Israel (vv. 4–5) and then bless only a small part of Israel, and—even more remarkable—extend the blessing to gentiles? Did God pull a “bait-and-switch” maneuver? Is He unfaithful to His promises?
Paul’s first response, in verses 6b–29, focuses on a key issue: Just what has God promised? Using the examples of God’s choosing of Isaac (vv. 7–9) and Jacob (vv. 10–13), Paul shows that God never promised to bring His salvation to all of Israel. There always has been an “Israel within Israel” (v. 6b), a spiritual remnant of believers in the midst of national Israel as a whole (cf. vv. 27–28). And how has that spiritual Israel come into existence? Through the sovereign initiative of God, as the texts we cited above reveal. He is the one who “calls” His people into being (vv. 7, 24).
Therefore, God has not been unfaithful to His promises, for He never promised that every single Israelite would belong to His spiritual people. If, in Paul’s day, only some Jews were being saved, this was in accord with the plan of God as it had been revealed throughout history. And if God was bringing Gentiles into His people as well, that was His prerogative. He has mercy on whomever He chooses (v. 15).
What emerges from Romans 9:6–29 is a theology of God’s sovereignty in election. To be sure, some interpreters deny that we can use this passage to draw conclusions about election in general. They argue that Paul is talking only about the way God worked to bring the people of Israel into existence. However, while Paul chooses examples from the way God acted to bring Israel into existence, his application from those examples makes clear that he has the issue of individual salvation in view (see vv. 22–24 especially). Others say that we must assume the priority of human faith throughout the passage. Paul certainly would not want to deny the importance of faith, since he has said so much about it in Romans already. But his insistence that God’s election depends on His mercy and neither on “him who wills, nor . . . him who runs” (v. 16) makes clear that human beings contribute nothing to their election.
The same point is made implicitly in the way Paul answers the objections to his teaching about God’s sovereignty in election in verses 19–23. Here, in response to the charge that God is unfair to have mercy on some and “harden” others (v. 18), was the perfect place for Paul to say, in effect, “Of course, God is fair because He elects only those who first believe.” But he says nothing of the kind. Indeed, he responds with a renewed emphasis on God’s right to deal with human beings in any way He chooses.
We believe because God chose us; we are not chosen because we believe. To be sure, human beings are still fully responsible to respond to the gospel. Paul’s insistence on God’s sovereign election of Israel in 9:6–29 gives way to an equal insistence in 9:30–10:21 on the responsibility of Israel to believe in Christ and to submit to God’s righteousness. The Biblical teaching is that God is fully sovereign in election at the same time as human beings are fully responsible to believe. Both are clearly taught in the Bible. Our job is to believe them both, even if we cannot fully explain the way they work together.
We must not allow the Biblical truth of human responsibility to whittle away at the Biblical picture of a sovereign God who ultimately decides on the basis of nothing other than His own will who is to be saved. Anything less is a “God who is too small.”