Paul is making the point that God’s purpose is not contingent on people’s choices. But this raises the question: How then can God blame anyone given that this is all rigged? Yet again Paul anticipates our struggles here. He realises there is a paradox here. A paradox occurs when something is both logically impossible but true nevertheless. It is important to note that Paul doesn’t try to resolve the paradox with some logical explanation. He recognises that God and God’s ways are outside logic. Instead, Paul answers that objection in much the same way that God answered Job’s questions: “Who are you to question me?” You might feel that you need to know more than that to resolve the sense of intellectual tension that this paradox creates for you. But you don’t need to know more. What you need is to approach the whole thing in a different way. A paradox, in theology, does not indicate that there is something inadequate about the idea in question but only about the thinker doing the questioning. It is a chance for us to acknowledge our limitations and accept them. It is a chance to let God be God. The good news here in Romans 9 is that everything has been rigged in our favour. You will never understand how this could be, but you can live in this reality. You can find yourself living every day in things that have been prepared beforehand. That is what it is like living in God’s purpose. It is a sure thing because everything is rigged in our favour.
Think about what God is saying to you through all this.
Read Romans 9:19-29
