I will argue that an ETSH reading is exegetically unsupported in Romans 9-11. Paul is not giving a treatise on individual predestination; his argument is that God’s word has not failed because God’s purpose was never ethnic descent but faith. God’s election in Romans 9-11 is the corporate body of those who, by faith, enter the promise given to Abraham and fulfilled in Christ.

Romans 9: God’s Word Has Not Failed

The Book of Romans is a presentation of God’s righteousness through Jesus Christ — unequivocally, to both Jew and Gentile (Romans 3-5, 9-11), for transformational gospel living (Romans 12-15), to God’s glory (Romans 4:20; 5:2; 6:4; 8:18; 11:36; 14:11; 15:7, 9,11; 16:28). Paul writes Romans to call for unity within the body of believers (Romans 1:11-12; 4:16; 5:8-11; 15:6-7); specifically for the Jews and Gentiles in Rome… because of the power of the gospel (Romans 1:16). The gospel is the promised faithfulness of God’s word, which has been faithful from the beginning of time to the coming of Jesus (Romans 1-8). Paul explains the implications of our renewed relationship with God (Romans 3-11), Creation (Romans 8), and one another (Romans 12-15). We zoom in on Romans 9 to bring to conclusion Paul’s question: ‘What is God doing with ethnic Israel?’

Romans 9:1-5

I speak the truth in Christ — I am not lying; my conscience testifies to me through the Holy Spirit — that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the benefit of my brothers and sisters, my own flesh and blood. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the temple service, and the promises. The ancestors are theirs, and from them, by physical descent, came the Christ, who is God over all, praised forever. Amen. (Romans 9:1-5)

The progression of questions in Romans 3:8; 6:1; 7:7; 9:1-5 are all engaging the Jew-Gentile, law-faith relationship. Paraphrasing Paul, ‘I’m glad God has saved me, but what does God’s treatment of His chosen people say about Him, since they have rejected the Messiah?’ Paul is witnessing ethnic Israel’s collective rejection of Christ in real time and grieves this with sorrow and unceasing anguish. It is not looking good for God’s chosen people, for whom belongs the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the temple service, and the promises (Romans 9:4). It brings into question, ‘What does it even mean to be chosen?’

On the ETSH, Paul’s sorrow for a people who are cursed and cut off as part of God’s sovereign plan is somewhat confusing. Should Christians grieve for Pharaoh, raised up to display God’s glory (Romans 9:17)? Is our right response to wish ourselves accursed and cut off as Paul does (Romans 9:3)? The substitutionary logic of 9:3 goes beyond an emotional and pastoral response, ‘I could wish myself accursed for their sake,’ implying their salvation is available to be transferred. This would seemingly place Paul in a position that is more compassionate than God. When the merciful God judges and condemns, in general, the normative American Christian response has been celebration or good riddance.

At a minimum, Paul’s grief reads as odd against a fixed, pre-temporal hardened Israel outside of the category of unsaved but elect. Paul may be emotionally consistent; however, it is theologically incompatible for him to wish to substitute himself for a people predetermined as accursed, evidenced by the visible signs of unbelief. These questions are not even in consideration when reading the text without bringing in the ETSH. This is the problem with the ETSH: God’s character of faithfulness, love, mercy, and redemption begin to unravel. External theological packages must be imported to make the text cohere with God’s character.

Paul’s grieving indicates that salvation for Israel was genuinely desired and that a fully available alternative exists. As we will explore, this fits better with a corporate/historical hardening argument than with an individual pre-temporal decree of hardening/damnation. Paul wishing condemnation upon himself so that rejecting-Israel might be saved is a picture of Christ’s work on the cross.

Of Note: Christ’ Divinity. Romans 9:5 seems to explicitly state that Jesus is God, “Christ, who is God over all, praised forever.” Other translations interpret this verse differently, “Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever” (NASB95). There is at a minimum, praise for God who is blessed with giving Christ as an authority over all. Jesus’ authority originates from God1 and imitates the divine nature. Jesus Christ’s authority is evidence for His divinity2 (see Col 1:16-19).

Romans 9:6 – The Thesis Statement

Now it is not as though the word of God has failed, because not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. (Romans 9:6)

Romans 9:6 begins the thesis statement Paul will explain through chapters 9-11: God’s word has not failed because God’s purpose was never ethnic descent. There is, and has always been, a remnant Israel within ethnic Israel. Paul is corporately referencing two different groups to show how God’s choice (election) is consistent with faith (belief or unbelief)3 AND the inclusion of Gentiles in His promise.

Although it looks bleak for unbelieving Israel, Paul will demonstrate how God’s promise remains intact because His Word cannot fail. Paul’s summary in chapter 9, ‘… because not all who are descended from Israel are Israel’ was foreshadowed in Romans 2:28-29, “For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, and true circumcision is not something visible in the flesh. On the contrary, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart — by the Spirit, not the letter. That person’s praise is not from people but from God.” Paul makes a distinction between ethnic Israel and true Israel. He will demonstrate the validity of the claim that ethnic descent was not God’s vehicle for the promises in the following verses using Abraham’s ‘seed’4 or descendants.

ETSH proposes that God’s word not failing is compatible with individual unconditional election such that the elect are the ‘true Israel.’ This proposition will be tested as this thesis is carried throughout Romans 9-11. And it is important to note that from the very beginning, to be clear, Paul does not say ‘not all are individually elect though all are descended from Israel.’ Paul makes a statement about corporate identity, ‘not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.’ The vehicle for God’s redemptive action belongs to the people of promise, not individual election status.

Romans 9:7-12 – The Corporate vs Individual Distinction

Neither is it the case that all of Abraham’s children are his descendants. On the contrary, your offspring will be traced through Isaac. That is, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but the children of the promise are considered to be the offspring. For this is the statement of the promise: At this time I will come, and Sarah will have a son. And not only that, but Rebekah conceived children through one man, our father Isaac. For though her sons had not been born yet or done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to election might stand — not from works but from the one who calls — she was told, The older will serve the younger. (Romans 9:7-12)

As explained in Romans 4:13-18, God’s promise is fulfilled through faith. A distinction is being made – Abraham’s physical offspring, corporately, was not the basis for their designated relationship as God’s children. Abraham has Isaac, Ishmael, and others (Genesis 25:1–6); thus, ‘neither is it the case that all of Abraham’s children are his descendants’ (Romans 9:7). Being a part of God’s children was a specification for those who were children of the promise (9:8). The promise defines the corporate body of individuals who are included in this chosen relationship with God. The corporate provision enables the individual relationship with God. That order matters, and it is the order ETSH proponents reverse, misunderstand, or ignore.

The particulars of the promise was reiterated when God visited Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 18), reaffirming that it was not about Abraham’s offspring (Ishmael, his own attempt to ‘help’ God) but about God’s fulfillment of His word (see also Gal 4:21-31). Paul makes this explicit in Galatians 3:16-18: the promises were to Abraham and to his seed – singular, Christ – and the law, which came 430 years later, does not invalidate the promise.

God’s chosen people stand upon God’s word, the fulfillment of His promises (Romans 9:8). Regardless of Abraham’s age, how many sons Rebekah had, what the sons’ personalities would be, or their deeds, God’s promises will be fulfilled how He said they would, ‘For though her sons had not been born yet or done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to election might stand— not from works but from the one who calls—she was told, the older will serve the younger.’ The individual, prebirth framing has the rhetorical force of solidifying the fact that no one can earn or work their way into a designation as children of the promise. It is not from works but through faith. God’s election of a chosen people was for the role and purpose of bringing blessings ‘to all peoples on the earth.’

As ETSH reading will rely heavily upon the Paul’s individual mentioning of Jacob and Esau in Romans 9:11. This necessarily becomes important with this hermeneutical viewpoint. They read the individual, pre-natal, deed-exclusion language applied to Jacob and Esau as persons, not nations. This becomes an indicator that Paul means something more for individuals in this text.

However, in answering the question, “What about ethnic Israel?,’ Paul says your ethnicity does not matter at all and neither does your works! There is no obstacle that cannot be overcome nor participation from humanity that aids God fulfilling His promise – because God’s Word does not fail (Romans 9:6).

Romans 9 demonstrates how the fulfillment of the promises solely rely upon God’s actions and prerogative:

1. Although Isaac and Ishmael had different mothers, Jacob and Esau had the same mother. God upends the social order of favor going to the firstborn, eliminating any doubt that the choosing was about God’s agency not Israel’s lineage or merit.

2. Even as Jacob and Esau are within the lineage of Abraham, Jacob was chosen to receive blessings and a particular relationship with God, simply because of God’s choice (election)… ‘so that God’s purpose according to election might stand— not from works but from the one who calls’ (Romans 9:11). Paul adds specific clarification removing any possibility of Jacob’s merit, morality, or works, ‘For though her sons had not been born yet or done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to election might stand— not from works but from the one who calls… (9:11-12)” The circumstances rely solely upon God’s doing and it’s a good thing too because Jacob’s character is not the shining example we are asking folks to emulate. Another testament of God’s mercy and kindness.

Romans 9:12 quotes Genesis 25:23: ‘Two nations are in your womb; two peoples will come from you and be separated. One people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.’ The Genesis text is explicitly about nations, not the eternal destiny of individuals. The corporate or collective nature in which election occurs stands in stark contrast to the individualistic ETSH hermeneutic. Paul’s point here is that God’s choice between Jacob and Esau explains predestination while reiterating that God’s children have nothing to do with physical descent or merit (Romans 9:11-12). Paul is also planting a not-by-works principle now, in a most vivid and personal form (prebirth individual deeds), foreshadowing his explanation for why ethnic Israel as a whole stumbled over works, not faith (Romans 9:30-10:4).

Paul could have made the point about which line would carry the promise without mentioning fetal non-action. However, by emphasizing that Jacob and Esau had not yet been born or done anything good or bad, Paul makes the not-by-works argument vivid and airtight. No appeal can be made to merit, morality, lineage, social order, or even the absence of prior sin. The individual, prenatal framing does not turn the passage into a doctrine of individual election to salvation; it eliminates every possible claim that Jacob, Israel, or anyone else earned the promise by personal achievement.

God’s purpose was fulfilled through this promise, and by extension to those believing in God to be faithful to His purposes of always having a chosen people to Himself – despite lineage or works. God’s promise was never about an individual election to salvation for Abraham’s descendants, even in Paul references individuals in Romans 9:11. The thrust of God’s promises is based upon faith, not election.

Romans 9:13 – Love, Hate, and the Malachi Context

As it is written: I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau. (Romans 9:13, ; quoting Malachi 1:2-3)

Paul quotes Malachi 1:2-3 to emphasize God’s choice of Jacob over Esau. The surrounding context of Malachi reflects on these figures as corporate representatives for two nations, two lineages, and two different relationships with God. God’s message through Malachi to the nation of Israel is, ‘You know I’ve loved you because look at how I’ve showed up for you and how I am about to bless you even more, even though you are just as underserving as the nation of Edom.’ Malachi’s message has nothing to do with individual salvation, individual election, or a predetermined choosing that places persons in an elite group destined for heaven. It is about God’s choice of or favor on the nation Israel in comparison to the nation of Edom – a continuation of the promise He has already made and kept despite Israel’s behavior.

I’ve already addressed the ETSH’s objection that Paul chooses individual figures and as re-application of what was corporate. We’ve established that Paul’s point in 9:10-12 is not ‘God chose Jacob as an individual for salvation.’; his point is that God’s choosing preceded any works, morality, or merit on either person’s part so that ‘God’s purpose according to election might stand, not from works but from the one who calls.’ The individual figures serve to illustrate the principle that God’s purpose in election cannot be accounted for by human achievement or lineage. They are instruments of the argument, not the argument’s subject.

Additionally, individual figures representing corporate realities is standard intertextual practice. Paul quotes Malachi precisely because the corporate/national reading of Malachi supports his corporate/national framework for Romans 9. Paul’s argument is about Israel-as-nation and his use of Malachi limits any re-application. The ETSH is using Paul’s use of Malachi as evidence for a reading the quote itself doesn’t support.

Does God Hate?

The language of love and hate in Romans 9:13 is misread through a 21st-century Western-European worldview. The usage of ‘hate’ in Malachi, Romans, and Luke 14:26 are all relative to the comparison. God is not ‘hating’ as to condemn, turn His back on, or anything of the sort. The emphasis is placed on the love being so defining that not having it seems, by comparison, to be hate. This is not about an emotional connection but categorical status and prioritization. Compare Luke 14:26: ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters — yes, and even his own life — he cannot be my disciple.’ God is not asking us to violate the fifth commandment. The point is that loving Jesus with total devotion reprioritizes every other love.

In both Luke, Malachi, and Romans, the effort is to draw the contrast between relationship with God and relationship without. God’s corporate election of the children of promise is irrespective of individual salvation with this language. Neither Gentiles nor Edomites are to be actually and permanently rejected by God. In direct contradiction to the ETSH, God’s plan for election was to Esau’s benefit; as Christ’s plan for discipleship (Luke 14) to your family’s benefit.

Romans 9:14 – Is God Unjust?

What should we say then? Is there injustice with God? Absolutely not! (Romans 9:14)

There are two ways to read Paul’s question here, and your answer depends entirely on your hermeneutical starting point.

Option 1: Unconditional Election to Salvation (ETSH Reading)

If you understand God to be electing some to salvation and others to damnation, you will read Paul as asking: ‘Is God unfair to choose some and reject others?’5 With this understanding election the primary soteriological category. Jesus is great, the resurrection is cool but are you election becomes the main question. Everything else, on this reading, is subject to that status of election.

Now that election to salvation of individuals has such a priority, the natural response is to follow up with many questions about the doctrine of election. When did God determine or decree condemnation? Does God decree condemnation before sin entered the world or afterwards? Who originates sin? Is God’s calling effectual? Does God will for all or some to be saved? Is reprobation6 a result of sin or a result of God’s good pleasure? Is there such a thing as free will? How is determinism defined – unlimited, to include sinful acts, limited to salvific actions, is it some form of compatibilism, or is it an ‘antinomy’7 of the mystery of God?

On the ETSH order of salvation, election comes first then regeneration-faith. Regeneration, necessarily and logically, precedes faith even if I were to accept the line of reasoning that a delay, temporally, doesn’t exist. There is a salvific limbo in which people walk around elect, not having the benefits of election, because they have not yet believed. Thus, God chooses a person prenatally and then again for the purposes of bringing election to its fruition via regeneration. This discussion will not discuss the nature of the atonement; however, it is important to distinguish between the intent (the purpose of the atonement), extent (who the atonement is for), and the application of the atonement (who receives the benefits and when).8

When regeneration does occur, faith is a guaranteed mechanical output carrying very little risk, weight, or independence for the agent. This is how ETSH places the emphasis of soteriology on the doctrine of election rather than faith, reducing the resurrection to a means of bringing about election rather than Jesus.9 As a result, we have the 4 Solas: by scripture alone, through grace alone, because of election alone, to the glory of God alone. This is a major digression from the original context in which Paul reveals God’s plan for ethnic Israel to the salvific fates of individuals.

Option 2: Corporate Conditional Election (Contextual Reading)

Within the context of Paul answering his main thesis about ethnic Israel, he asks, “Is God’s sovereignty in choosing unjust?” Or, “Is God’s treatment of ethnic Israel unjust?” Paul’s answer is emphatic, “May it never be! Heaven forbid! Absolutely not!”

F. Leroy Forlines describes the cultural context in which Paul’s audience assumed unconditional corporate election for Jews as the seed of Abraham, ‘The Jews understood that they were the Covenant Seed of Abraham. Through the Abrahamic Covenant, God elected or chose Israel to be His people... They believed in corporate salvation or corporate election. This election included each individual Jew, but Jews did not believe they were chosen individually. Election applied to them as individuals because they were members of the group.’10

What did God choose? God has consistently chosen people or groups of people to carry out His purposes to bring salvation to mankind. He chose to carry the plan out with whom He wanted to carry it out with: Abraham, not Haran or Terah; Isaac, not Ishmael; Jacob, not Esau; responsive-ethnic-Israel, not hardened-ethnic-Israel. God’s choosing does not fit the social and cultural norms; He has a right to give of His generosity. God is calling persons and groups to a task and purpose, not to salvation. God’s election to service, task, purpose, or function does not necessitate election to salvation.

Romans 9:15-16 – Mercy as God’s Essence, Not Arbitrary Selection

For he tells Moses, I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then, it does not depend on human will or effort but on God who shows mercy. (Romans 9:15-16, ; quoting Exodus 33:19)

Paul demonstrates that God is not unrighteous or unfair in His dealing with ethnic Israel: ‘God shows mercy on whom He pleases.’ This idiom does not emphasize that God’s mercy is unpredictable or arbitrary, as some ETSH interpreters have claimed. Instead, it emphasizes the certainty, intensity, and reliability of God’s mercy. Old Testament scholar, Frederick Bush, points out, “The meaning that the expression is normally given in English, i.e. an arbitrary expression of God’s free, sovereign will, makes almost no sense in the context of Exodus 33:19, where it is a revelation of the very name, or essence, or goodness of God.” It is, says Bush, “equivalent to ‘I am indeed the one who is gracious and merciful.’”11

The ETSH misreads this as God saving whom He wants and condemning whom He wants. One has to show up to this text with a preconceived systematic soteriology and insert election to salvation forcing these words to go beyond what is grammatical, contextual, historical, and natural.

The scene in which Paul quotes is epic. The people recently rescued from slavery in Egypt have committed the gravest possible offense – fashioning and worshipping an idol at the very foot of the mountain where God is writing His law. They have broken the covenant relationship. That doesn’t deter Moses from asking to see God’s glory. Moses understands the importance of God’s choosing and Israel’s connection with God’s presence as they have been tasked to worship Him and enter into a promised land. God responds with affirmation, not condemnation, but rather an outpouring of His essence and character – mercy and compassion. This is the context in which God declares who He is, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim the name ‘the Lord’ before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” This is not a statement of arbitrary selection; it is God announcing that His mercy is entirely His own to give… and He is giving it!

Particular Usages of Compassion

The Hebrew word for compassion (racham) appears 46 times in the Old Testament. It expresses kindness, forgiveness, mercy, and love toward others – often from God toward His people in distress or those who turn from sin. It does not correlate to salvific status. There are times where God says He will explicitly not show compassion (Isaiah 9:17; 27:11) – reserved for the godless and evildoers, folks who have rejected God. This compassionless is not a permanent condition which cannot be undone by repentance. Isaiah 55:7 states, “Let the wicked one abandon his way and the sinful one his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, so he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will freely forgive.” This is not pre-selective eternal predestination. This is God’s responsive mercy to human repentance.

Foreshadowing future verses (Romans 10:21-11:36) as evidence that the Lord’s rejection of Israel is not a permanent condition, and thus an explicit rejection of the ETSH theology, I will review an example in Zechariah. Israel was rejected by the Lord for their sinfulness (Zechariah 7), yet in Zechariah 10:6 God says, “I will strengthen the house of Judah and deliver the house of Joseph. I will restore them because I have compassion on them, and they will be as though I had never rejected them. For I am the Lord their God, and I will answer them.” (emphasis mine) The trigger for God’s compassion on rejected Israel was their repentance (Zechariah 9:17) and faith (Zechariah 9:23), as well as the coming of a King, Zech 9:9: “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout in triumph, Daughter Jerusalem! Look, your King is coming to you; he is righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” It is a part of God’s compassion and mercy that Israel will never be permanently rejected because He has compassion on whom He has compassion, and mercy on whom He wills – through the Elect One, Jesus Christ!

‘It does not depend on human will or effort but on God who shows mercy’ (Romans 9:16 ) is asking and answering, “What does God’s compassion depend on?” Answer = God alone. The point is not that God saves arbitrarily but that God’s mercy is entirely His own prerogative to give, unconstrained by human lineage, achievement, works or zeal.

God’s mercy corresponds with the same principle, Jesus himself illustrates in Matthew 20:1-16, the parable of the workers in the vineyard. Workers hired at different hours receive the same wage. Those hired first complain about the equality of the payment. The vineyard owner responds, “Friend, I’m doing you no wrong. Didn’t you agree with me on a denarius? Take what’s yours and go. I want to give this last man the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with what is mine? Are you jealous because I’m generous?’” Jesus is paraphrasing the Exodus 33 idiom: ‘I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy.’ The landowner’s mercy is not arbitrary selection for eternal destiny. It is sovereign generosity that cannot be constrained by the workers’ calculations, neither their social and cultural expectations, about who has earned what. This is the framework Paul is operating in, one in which ETSH misses entirely. Compassion was not about human will, nor zeal (Romans 10:2-3), works, nor foreknowledge of their future morals and decisions. Compassion is about God’s choice, so that ‘election might stand.’ It’s all about mercy!

ETSH on Romans 9:16

Romans 9:16 is not asking and answering, “Who is involved in man’s salvation?” God saves because of mercy, not because of regeneration that precedes faith, as the ETSH order of salvation requires. In general, ETSH orders salvation in this manner:

God decrees Creation and the Fall. God elects some to salvation (passes over or reprobates others). God effectually calls the elect. The elect are regenerated first and then respond by believing. The atonement is for the elect only, not only the call butuding the application of redemptive benefits.

ETSH reduces the resurrection to a means of bringing about election. God’s sovereignty and election are the end, His mercy, Jesus, and the resurrection the means to bring it about.12 Thus, the main consideration ultimately becomes, “Are you elect or not?” If not, God’s compassion, mercy, Jesus and the Resurrection aren’t irrelevant, because of Hell, but they are definitely unavailable to you regardless of your belief, faith, witness, works, repentance, etc.

Furthermore, ETSH has a lot to prove to suggest that the biblical reference to compassion correlates directly to someone’s salvific status. That proof, contextually, would have to start prior to Romans 9:16.

Romans 9:17-18 – Pharaoh and the Purpose of Hardening

For the Scripture tells Pharaoh, I raised you up for this reason so that I may display my power in you and that my name may be proclaimed in the whole earth. So then, he has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy and he hardens whom he wants to harden. (Romans 9:17-18)

Four key points govern any faithful reading of judicial hardening in this text:

1. God uses judicial hardening for a specific purpose.

2. God does not arbitrarily harden people.

3. God’s hardening is not permanent.

4. God’s interaction with Pharaoh and with Israel during Christ’s time does not establish a universal pattern of God predetermining all persons before birth.

Was Pharaoh predetermined for hell? Under the ETSH, there is no other option for Pharaoh; salvation was not available to him because God raised him up for destruction. The text does not support this interpretation. In what way was Pharaoh ‘raised up’?

According to the Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, ‘raised up’ can mean:

1. to awaken someone from sleep, awaken

2. to raise up from the dead, raise

3. to bring to a sitting position, raise up

4. to cause to appear, bring into being

5. to give one higher status, elevate13

All of these are in reference to someone in existence being elevated, positioned, awakened, or raised up from their former status. None of these definitions refer to someone being predetermined from birth into a role leading to their damnation. Paul’s quotation of Exodus 9:16 confirms this: “However, I have let you live for this purpose: to show you my power and to make my name known on the whole earth” (emphasis mine). The Hebrew root is amad, to stand. Its plain sense is ‘I have caused you to stand’ or ‘I have kept you standing / established you (in your position),’ consistent with a preservation-in-office reading not an predetermination-from-nothing interpretation. By contrast, words for being formed from the womb are deliberately different: yatsar, to form or to fashion (see Jeremiah 1:5, Isaiah 49:1, 5; Psalm 139:13) and in Greek, plasso, to mold or to form. Paul uses plasso two verses later in Romans 9:20, “Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?’” If Paul wanted to say Pharaoh was predetermined-from-birth for this role, he had the vocabulary to do so, present right there in the same paragraph (see also Gal 1:5).

God uses Pharaoh for a function. He raised (elevated, positioned) Pharaoh to his status; preserved him in this role despite his disobedience and preserved him in his disobedience temporarily for a purpose. Furthermore, Pharaoh was not a morally neutral figure. He was already enslaving and oppressing Israel. Pharaoh hardens his own heart multiple times before God participates in the hardening.

Pharaoh’s heart is hard after the first plague (Exodus 7:13-14, 22). He hardens it himself after the second (8:15), third (8:19), and fourth plagues (8:32). After the fifth, it is still hard (9:7). It is not until the sixth plague that the Lord hardens Pharaoh’s heart (9:12), well after Pharaoh has already done it repeatedly and of his own agency. After the seventh plague, ‘he sinned again and hardened his heart’ (9:34); the text again specifying this was Pharaoh’s own doing. God’s partial hardening does not override Pharaoh’s will; it sustains the trajectory Pharaoh has already chosen. God hardens (Exodus 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:8) Pharaoh so that His purposes of the Exodus can be fulfilled.

The majority of God’s involvement occurs once things become so unbearable that even Pharaoh’s officials complained. After the seventh and eighth plague, you begin to see a repentant response from Pharaoh’s officials: some of Pharaoh’s officials feared the word of the LORD and protected their servants and livestock (Exodus 9:20). They were also openly urging Pharaoh to let Israel go (Exodus 10:7). Pharaoh’s resistance becomes increasingly unsustainable and isolated as God’s judgments expose his inferiority and folly.

God brings upon a partial hardening so that an unprecedented Exodus (Exodus14:17-18) would take place. Furthermore, the circumstances surrounding the events were such that Israel would know (Exodus10:1-2), the Egyptians would know (Exodus11:9; 12:12) , Pharaoh would know (Exodus14:4) and the world would know the power of God (Num 14:13-16; Josh 2:9-11, 9:9; 1 Sam 4:7-8). God’s uses Pharaoh to accomplish His purposes, the proclamation of His name throughout the earth and to bless the nations through Israel.

Further, evidenced from Paul’s use of harden (skleryno or sklerotes)14 which usually follows an explicit reference to the fact that an additional unrepentance leads to a person’s damnation, not a hardening alone. A few examples:

• Romans 2:5, “Because of your hardened and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment is revealed.” (emphasis mine)

• Acts 19:9, “But when some became hardened and would not believe, slandering the Way in front of the crowd, he withdrew from them, taking the disciples, and conducted discussions every day in the lecture hall of Tyrannus.” (emphasis mine).

• Romans 11:25 specifically refers to the hardening as a partial hardening, “I don’t want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you will not be conceited: A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.”

All indicators point to hardening being a temporary condition of one’s inability to receive new information, to understand, or comprehend.

God hardens whom he wants to harden. Again, not about individual pre-birth election to salvation. Hardening contrasts with mercy in the the text, which is also not equal to salvation. God’s mercy is the kindness that allows us to receive salvation; however, His mercy is not salvation in this text. Mercy repeatedly occupies a cause-clause, and not the main verb of salvation (Ephesians 2:4-5; Titus 3:5; 1 Peter 1:3; Jude 21). Again, Paul’s point is about God’s choosing a people for a purpose, according to His will. It is not about election to salvation.

New Testament Professor Michael Bird summarizes Romans 9:18 this way:

The ETSH will again place emphasis on individual fates being determined. The LORD visits Moses in Midian and instructs him, “When you go back to Egypt, make sure you do before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put within your power. But I will harden his heart so that he won’t let the people go.” (Exodus 4:21) ETSH proponents see this as a sequencing issue which explains every hardening circumstance that follows. They read God’s future tense promise as a predetermined fate for Pharaoh the moment it was uttered. Some will argue that Pharaoh’s fate was predetermined or ‘raised up’ from birth and his entire existence was meant for this Exodus moment.

Admittedly, you can read the text this as a sequencing narrative. We can also look at other alternatives to see which one lends more support to God’s character, grammar, and context. The ETSH sequencing argument has grammatical concerns. Why do we read God’s future tense declaration and then force causation, despite the natural sequencing present in the Exodus narrative? Do we force that same degree of causation to God’s future tense in other scriptures? Are there instances in which He delays the execution of a decree or declared objective? The whole Biblical salvific redemptive history is God doing so (see Jonah, 2 Kings 20:1-6; Exodus 32:9-14; Jeremiah 18:7-10; and the delay of Christ’s return)!

ETSH wants stress individuality because their hermeneutic necessitates the bolstering of individual destinies.16 However, if Paul wanted to communicate pre-temporal determination from birth, he had the vocabulary present two verses later to do so. Paul’s grammatical decision is not silence, it is choice.

This discussion, again a digression from Paul’s main point, quickly delves into a philosophical discussion about theological fatalism. Does God determine all things? Philosophically, God’s infallible foreknowledge seems to remove real agency and freedom. As a result, Christians have moved towards divine determinism, Molinism, or open theism. Some have approached it from the standpoint of an eternal now, thus voiding foreknowledge because God is outside of time. God simply and timelessly beholds all knowledge – past, present, and future – in the eternal now.

Compatibilists would reject me labeling them as a subcategory of determinism by arguing that God is not forcing sinful human beings to do anything they are not already wanting from a sinful nature – which is inherent to their being since birth. Sure, but I will point out that there is no real agency to resist first cause even on compatibilism. This is why, on ETSH, the question around God’s choosing becomes so important, “Why does God choose some and reject others?” And with that move, election becomes a theological cover for elitism in Christianity. Consequently, all of this is tangential to thrust of Paul’s explanation in Romans 9-11.

Romans 9:19-21 – The Potter and the Clay

You will say to me, therefore, ‘Why then does he still find fault? For who resists his will?’ On the contrary, who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Will what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ Or has the potter no right over the clay, to make from the same lump one piece of pottery for honor and another for dishonor? (Romans 9:19-21)

Who can resists God’s settled intent or purpose? Paul anticipates the question(s) and provides the answer. This is a similar question to Rom 3:5-6, “But if our unrighteousness highlights God’s righteousness, what are we to say? I am using a human argument: Is God unrighteous to inflict wrath? Absolutely not! Otherwise, how will God judge the world?” Paul’s response to both questions about God’s fairness or integrity are the same, it is a failure human of perspective. ‘I am using a human argument’ (Romans 3) parallels ‘On the contrary, who are you, a human being, to talk back to God?’ (Romans 9). Paul is saying God’s righteous purposes cannot be evaluated from a completely anthropomorphic lens.

ETSH will argue that Paul expands upon Old Testament texts from a corporate/instrumental reading to individual salvation. Their hermeneutic is answering in Romans 9:19, “If God chooses and rejects, pardons and punishes, whom He pleases, why are those blamed who, if rejected by Him, cannot help sinning and ‘perishing?’”17

Potter-Clay Scriptural Refences

There are four Old Testament occurrences of the potter-clay analogy (Is 29:16; 45:9-13; 64:8; Jer 18:1-11)18 It is worth evaluating each one because Romans 9:20-23 and the follow-on interpretation of Romans 9:30-11 are the crux of the argument between an ETSH and one that is consistent with the Paul’s main thesis.

• Isaiah 29 is a pronouncement of Woe against Israel. Israel’s leaders are called out for plotting in secret, refusing to seek God’s wisdom, while also denying the fact that God sees and knows about their military strategy to partner with other nations rather than God. This is a corporate group of people who try to ‘honor me with lip-service, yet their hearts are far from me, and human rules direct their worship of me ,’ (Isaiah 29:13). Isaiah 30:18 shows hopefulness because the LORD is still ‘waiting to show you mercy, and is rising up to show you compassion, for the LORD is a just God.’ In this case, Israel has attempted to invert the potter-clay relationship, trying to position themselves as the potter suggesting the God has no understanding, questioning His omniscience directly. This verse has little bearing on Paul’s usage of the potter-clay analogy in Romans 9 but it should be noted that this potter-clay relationship is not one considering individual salvation or reprobation, there is an opportunity for repentance, and it recognizes Israel corporately.

• In Isaiah 45, Cyrus, a pagan Persian King is God’s instrument to end Israel’s exile in Babylonia. God rebukes those who are disappointed or uncomfortable with Him using a foreign, non-covenant king as his chosen instrument of deliverance, “Woe to the one who argues with his Maker—one clay pot among many. Does clay say to the one forming it, ‘What are you making?’ Or does your work say, ‘He has no hands’?” (Isaiah 45:9) This correlates well with God’s use of Pharaoh to bring deliverance to His people. God used Pharaoh, He also used Cyrus, “I have stirred him up in righteousness, and will level all roads for him.” Furthermore, Cyrus will ‘rebuild my city, and set my exiles free, not for a price or a bribe’ (Isaiah 45:13) Ultimately, God saves, Cyrus, Jonah, Israel, etc. are merely the instrument (Is 45:15-17, 23). Whether raised up, stirred up, or provoked by a large fish, God will accomplish His will.

• Isaiah 64:8, “Yet LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we all are the work of your hands.” The corporate body of Israel understands the hierarchy and relationship appropriately in this instance, and they are repentant (Isaiah 64:5-7). They appeal to the Father for mercy. The LORD’s response in Isaiah 65 is interesting and directly applicable to our interpretation for Romans 9-11, “I was sought by those who did not ask; I was found by those who did not seek me. I said, ‘Here I am, here I am,’ to a nation that did not call on my name. I spread out my hands all day long to a rebellious people who walk in the path that is not good, following their own thoughts.” (Is 65:1–2) Paul quotes this directly in Romans 10:20-21.

  The LORD does not respond with unconditional mercy for all Israel. In fact, He says, you’ve been disobedient but there is a nation who wasn’t looking, asking, nor calling upon my name and found me. God has held out His hands all day long to a rebellious people still bent on rejecting Him. Then the LORD distinguishes between those who are His servants (true Israel) and those who are not (unfaithful Israel). Thus ‘not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.’ From this ‘new wine’ He preserves a remnant (Isaiah 65:8-15, see Romans 11:5). He will give those who are truly His ‘another name’ (Isaiah 65:15) and a new heaven and earth will be created for their dwelling place (Is 65:16-25).

  In Isaiah 64:5–7, Israel is sinful, unclean, rebellious, and in need of mercy. They are not clay, whom before birth, are assigned to salvation or destruction. The fact that Paul quotes Isaiah 65 in Romans 10 weakens any argument to isolate Romans 9:20-23 and expand on concepts outside of context with the Old Testament scriptures from where they come. Romans 9:5 begins a conversation that continues all the way to Romans 11. God’s mercy is conditioned for a corporate group of people who seek Him (Is 64:10), respond to His call (Is 64:12), and who hear when God speaks (Is 64:12). His mercy is extended to an outside group who wasn’t even seeking Him (Is 65:1; Romans 10:20). Thus God is not unrighteous because His mercy has been extended to the Gentiles, it is a fulfilment. Israel is culpable for their rebellion (Is 65:2, see Romans 10:21); however, a remnant will be preserved (Is 65:8-12, see Romans 11:5). In light of these implications, Romans 9:20-23 cannot be interpreted to be a closed, irreversible system for individual election. Unbelief and eternal damnation may be proximate to the hardened vessels created for destruction, but it is NOT a predetermined condition.

• Jeremiah 18:1-12 presents the fullest treatment of the potter-clay relationship. The LORD instructs Jeremiah to the potter’s house so he can observe what takes place, upon which the LORD Himself provides the interpretation. Jeremiah watches a potter rework spoiled clay into another vessel, ‘as it seemed right for him to do.’ In response, God declares that the House of Israel is the clay in His hand. God announces to uproot, tear down or destroy a nation; however, He will also relent when that kingdom or nations repents. In the same way, God also announces to build or plant a nation or kingdom, yet if it does evil God will relent. In Jeremiah’s context, Israel is about to be uprooted unless they repent. God warns them but He also knows their response, “It’s hopeless. We will continue to follow our plans, and each of us will continue to act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.” (Jeremiah 18:12)

The LORD’s own potter analogy is explicitly corporate (nations) and conditional based upon repentance/turning. It is explicitly not a statement of unconditional individual fixed destiny from birth. God reworks the clay in response to the clay’s behavior. This passage is about God’s right to deal with nations or people-groups, and it demonstrates that God’s sovereignty includes genuine human response. This is congruent with the context, grammar, and natural reading of Romans 9-11.

In conclusion, the potter-clay image comes from Jeremiah 18-19. The contextual argument of Jeremiah is decisive: the potter is forming the clay, the clay is marred in his hands, and he reshapes it into a different vessel. God’s message to Israel, through Jeremiah, is that He will use them for His purpose regardless of their disobedience; but, He will reshape them. The clay’s condition is the result of its own choices. Jeremiah 18:15 records that they have stumbled in their ways. Jeremiah 19:15 gives the explicit reason for the lesser vessel, ‘they stiffened their necks.’ The agency belongs to Israel, not to a divine decree that made them this way before they were born. Paul’s use of Jeremiah does not exceed the original text’s own interpretive boundaries, thus constraining ETSH’s interpretation attempt to suggest Paul adds application to individual selection.

Honor and dishonor in this passage are not synonyms for heaven and hell. They describe the function and dignity of a vessel relative to its maker’s purposes. A vessel for dishonor can be reshaped. Israel can repent. The text itself is a call to repentance, not a verdict of permanent condemnation.

ETSH’s understanding of individual salvation wants an answer for God’s fairness, “Why then does he still find fault? For who resists his will?” This is in direct response to the previous verse (Romans 9:18) in which God is electing individuals for salvation and actively hardening others for damnation. The ETSH sees Paul’s ‘silence’ to the interlocutor’s question (Romans 9:19) as confirmation that Paul is endorsing individual election to salvation.19 On their view, Paul should simply correct the objector’s premise if the issues about historical role and not individual soteriology. Paul’s ‘answer’ then is a refusal to grant a creature any standing to interrogate the Creator’s right to unconditionally hardening/rejecting individuals apart from their choices.

The viewpoint or hermeneutic arriving at Romans 9:19 has already received direction from prior verses. The weight of the point of contention is here but it is not solved here. Paul is actually referencing God’s sovereign right to reshape the covenant community itself, cutting off ethnic Israel-at-large from the promise and grafting in Gentiles (which is where Paul is heading in 9:24-30 and lands explicitly in Ch 11). The Jewish interlocutor is protesting that God has no right to redefine His own covenant terms. In response to the ETSH, Paul’s silence on a premise while rebuking the tone of the objection doesn’t logically endorse the premise. This is quite natural in conversation in which the eternal fates of specific persons is neither the focus nor intention of the conversation.

The ETSH Understanding of Creature vs Creator

The problem with the ETSH Creature-Creator approach is the derision with which they imply God considers human beings. Because of the ETSH, a systematic theology for soteriology like TULIP has to be invented (or they would say discovered/drawn out of the text). The first T in TULIP stands for total depravity. Look up any church’s “What We Believe,” and you will find something to the effect of, “We teach, as a result of the Fall, all of humanity is by nature utterly indisposed to and incapable of any good. Left to our own we would not and cannot choose God. Therefore, in order for anyone to be saved, God must actively intervene and change the nature, disposition, and will of that person.”

On this view, humanity is dead dead dead, no life in them, fit for destruction, children of wrath deserving punishment and depravity. They love quoting Romans 3:10-11, “There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God.” As well as Ephesians 2:1, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins.”

This is the template for a ‘Christian’ hierarchy and it is the theological grammar and covering for sacralized elitism. This view of humanity is disunifying and degrading. Remember, Paul’s main point for writing Romans is unity within the body believers from the power of the gospel, which is the promised faithfulness of God’s word throughout time. The implications on the Christian’s relationship with God, Creation, and one another is transformational gospel living to God’s glory.

Nothing about the ETSH viewpoint of humanity is unifying. Nor is it considerate of how God actually views humanity, wants us to view one another, and wants us to interact with Creation. When elitism draws from these wells, it produces a disassociation from Creation as well as ‘us,’ God’s elect, versus ‘them,’ those who have not (and oftentimes cannot) conform to man-centered standards. Religious persons no longer see all human beings as image-bearers worthy of God’s love. In fact, everyone is born deserving the opposite. Furthermore, the elect must participate in bringing judgment upon them or paternalistically save them from themselves! On this view, ‘others’ are disposable, a problem, and worse, the enemy.

This is why Western-European Christian ‘missions’ often looks a lot like colonialism. Missionaries bring their culture and their economic inequality; folks aren’t ‘saved’ until they’ve adopted the Western-European Christian worldview, worship style, politics, family structures and respectability codes. This is why a natural disaster overseas is God’s judgment, but at home its a tragedy. This is why people feel like projects when Americans proselytize rather than neighbors. This is why Christian nationalism can confuse cultural dominance with faithfulness. This is theology underneath immigration debates – the stranger is welcomed in theory but feared in practice, especially when hospitality threatens comfort, resources, or cultural control. The melting pot metaphor is useful only when whatever the end result of the melting looks a lot like John Wayne. This theology is why churches can fund global missions while ignoring predatory housing, medical debt, or underfunded schools in their own city. This is why the “unreached” can be romanticized while actual neighbors are despised. As another pastor pointed out, it is why the unborn are a convenient group to fight for, but Christians perpetuate policies and conditions for poverty to prevail.20 This is why racial reconciliation can be reduced to friendship without repair. Its why someone can call themselves a Christian and still support Trump.

And I could go on! See:

Romans 9:22-24 – Objects of Wrath: The Passive Voice Matters

And what if God, wanting to display his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience objects of wrath prepared for destruction? And what if he did this to make known the riches of his glory on objects of mercy that he prepared beforehand for glory — on us, the ones he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? (Romans 9:22-24)

Admittedly there is strong language used in this text, ‘God, wanting to display his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience objects of wrath prepared for destruction’ (emphasis mine). After reading Isaiah 64-65 and Jeremiah 18, this strong language for a rebellious people is not unusual. Is this permanent a situation, what is destruction, who does the preparation, and for whom does it apply?

There are four major interpretations of the implications of ‘objects of wrath’: 1) individuals predestined for judgment 2) individuals who’ve made themselves fit for judgment 3) individuals currently opposing God, 4) nations currently opposing God.

Individuals Predestined for Judgment

Many will interpret ‘objects of wrath prepared for destruction’ as individuals remaining under God’s judgment, which is implied to be predetermined beforehand since the text does not explicitly state this here. For them Pharaoh was ‘raised up’ as in born for the occasion for God to demonstrate His glory. ETSH proponents will say that even if God is not explicitly named in Romans 9:22, the divine passive is implied. Therefore, God is the doer or divine producer of an action or an effect, which in this case is eternal damnation. On this view, ‘wrath’ means God’s righteous judgment and ‘destruction’ means eternal damnation, contrasted with the “vessels of mercy” who receive salvation/mercy. The sequence between someone is designated a vessel of mercy versus a vessel of wrath varies depending on one’s view of election.

This creates several tensions that ETSH must resolve. One of the strongest tensions that doesn’t seem to be answered by this view, despite Paul’s adamant opposition in Romans 9:19-21, is the follow-on progression that attributes evil or injustice to God. If God created humanity, then election, then actively or passively chose some to be objects of wrath for destruction, is God thus creating evil? If not, then what is happening? Many will appeal to mystery, antinomy, or refer to Paul’s earlier words in Romans 9:19-21. No logical nor satisfying answer is offered.

Understandably, all tensions with God cannot be resolved. However, God being the first mover or cause towards evil’s existence, as a result of His own choosing, seems to be one issue that necessitates a bit more clarity and closure than ‘its for me to know and you to find out.’ And again, this interpretation of the text has drifted dramatically from the text’s intended purpose of explaining, “What is God doing with ethnic Israel?” Election functions as the controlling soteriological category, with the Fall and resurrection serving as the outworking of election. How does that square with Paul’s argument governed by Christ, faith, mercy, and the Jew-Gentile question in Romans 9–11?

There is also tension in their explanation of those ‘remaining under God’s judgment,’ as if there was an ever an option to do otherwise. If the Fall occurs before God’s election, thus a prior condemning of all persons before He chooses to save some, passing over or reprobating others, then it seems as if predestination was in response to mankind, and therefore a conditioned reaction, not necessarily a plan from the beginning. How does that square with scripture (Ephesians 1:4–10, 2 Timothy 1:9, Titus 1:2, 1 Peter 1:20)?

Individuals Who’ve Made Themselves Fit for Judgment

Other ETSH suggest that compatibilism or free will is the individual’s own agency making them fit for judgment. In verse 23, God is explicitly said to have prepared the vessels of mercy. In verse 22, Paul says the vessels of wrath are “prepared for destruction,” but does not explicitly say God prepared them. Arminian and some other interpreters argue that Paul deliberately leaves room for human responsibility – people become “vessels of wrath” through persistent rebellion against God.

Thus, instead of God passively producing objects of wrath prepared for destruction, the individual themselves are doing so through their own agency. For compatibilists, God partners with them much like He partners with Pharaoh’s own stubbornness of heart. The contention is grammatical and theological.

Grammatical Considerations for Romans 9:22

εἰ δὲ θέλων ὁ θεὸς ἐνδείξασθαι τὴν ὀργὴν καὶ γνωρίσαι τὸ δυνατὸν αὐτοῦ ἤνεγκεν ἐν πολλῇ μακροθυμίᾳ σκεύη ὀργῆς κατηρτισμένα εἰς ἀπώλειαν.

We are primarily considering σκεύη ὀργῆς κατηρτισμένα εἰς ἀπώλειαν, objects of wrath prepared for destruction. Κατηρτισμένα, ‘having been or themselves having been prepared,’ is a perfect, plural, participle that can either be middle or passive voice. English does not formally make this distinction, instead using context to imply the differences. To infer that the individuals prepared themselves for destruction is a middle voice reading of this text. Context will explain whether middle or passive is Paul’s original intent in this passage, as grammar alone cannot.

Passive Voice:

Although the grammar alone cannot determine the meaning of the perfect participle in the middle-passive form alone, the direct middle is rare in the New Testament and the fact that every middle-passive form is taken in the passive is a strong argument against a direct middle rendering.21 Proponents of the passive voice believe that the context in previous verses (mercy is salvation, hardening is damnation, individual election to salvation, and God’s will in shaping vessels) suggests a theological trend towards a passive reading of this text – a divine passive in which God prepares objects of wrath for destruction.

Direct Middle:

The direct middle is where the subject acts on themselves. Proponents of the direct middle voice believe that God cannot be culpable for any evil. A middle voice reading of this text makes it more obvious that the destruction for vessels of wrath is their own preparation.

Either way the interpretation being along the lines of ‘God’s purpose was to display wrath via prepared vessels.’ Therefore, because God wanted to make his power known, He withheld condemnation so as to have more of an opportunity to show His power more fully in condemnation. The emphasis is centered on God’s power through condemnation, rather than God’s mercy. Thus, the text reads with emphasis on Pharaoh being raised up and hardened to show God’s power in bringing a nation down more so than His mercy in bring one nation up.

Although there is an attempt to remove culpability from God, many of the same tensions remain. Is election the foremost soteriological category? How would they reconcile the rare usage of the word mercy? Using maercy as salvation would make Romans the only text explicitly using ἔλεος (eleos) in that manner. The burden of proof would be upon ETSH advocates to explain why mercy is not the kindness that allows us to receive salvation versus salvation itself.

Compatibilism may solve some of the culpability tension; however, where is compatibilism possible in your order salutis as well as the reading of this text, since wrath and destruction are final and predetermined? And if reprobation/passing over does not happen at birth, when does election occur or apply? And if God’s righteous judgment does not necessarily mean ‘eternal individual reprobation/passive over before birth,’ then where is the consistency with this text and your view of election?

Of note, some ETSH proponents will make strong distinctions between reprobation and passing over. I see their explanations as distinctions without any real difference, particularly when so much emphasis is placed on God’s action, choosing and individuality in hardening whom he wills (Romans 9:18). Similarly various viewpoints wrestle with the arbitrariness with which some are elect and others are not. Some try to reconcile this with Molinism or compatibilism. Again, I’m not sure there is any real practical or moral difference between them.

Individuals Currently Opposing God

On this view, ‘wrath’ is a present, historical outworking of judgment, not necessarily God being unkind, but rather God not extended kindness. Romans 1:18, “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven” is a present-tense revelation from God through the giving over of people to their own sin. Of note, this is not explicitly final judgment in context. Wrath would directly contrast with mercy, meaning kindness. ‘Destruction’ means annihilation or eternal damnation, and ‘glory,’ means present-day and ultimately eternal salvation.

More emphasis is placed on God’s wanting or wishing. θέλων, is to be read as “concessive.” This grammatical category for Greek participles reads as God was willing to show wrath but made His power known through His patience in dealing with individuals currently opposing Him (whom headed on a pathway to destruction). See NET, NCV, KJV 1900, CJB, NASB95, NLT and other translations. The middle or passive voice for κατηρτισμένα, ‘having been or themselves having been prepared,’ is less contentious for it is more naturally implied that destruction is of their own doing.

Nations Currently Opposing God

The entire context beginning in 9:6 is about people-groups. This continues with the clay-potter analogy having nations in mind for the vessels. And it continues when Paul concludes this train of thought referring to people-groups in Romans 9:24-26. There would need to be significant reason to show for a reading that specifies interpretation to the individual against the OT usage, multiple NT usages, as well as the immediate surrounding texts in Romans. That reasoning has not been thoroughly demonstrated without bringing an entire hermeneutic and systematic theology on to the text, rather the reading the text grammatically, contextually, and naturally.

‘Prepared for destruction’ is strong language for a corporate/reversible category. ἀπώλειαν, destruction, is Paul’s standard word for final, eschatological destruction (Philippians 1:28, 3:19; 2 Thessalonians 2:3). However, Paul is describing the present trajectory of a corporate body rhetorically, not making a metaphysical claim about unchangeable individual fate. This is consistent with ‘if they do not persist in unbelief’ indicating that vessels can move categories by faith, as Romans 11:23 suggests for hardened Israel. Interpreting the text with the text shows that God’s display of wrath concerns His dealings with nations in redemptive history. The example of Pharaoh shows God using a resistant ruler and nation to advance His purposes. Regardless, the usage of Pharaoh, an individual, as an example for how He has demonstrated mercy and hardening does not negate the fact that the entire passage from Romans 9-11 is about people-groups and the focus being on salvation history rather than individual eternal destinies.

Mercy, wrath, destruction, and glory are as stated previously: kindness, a historical outworking of judgment, annihilation, as well as present-day and ultimately eternal salvation, respectively.

Romans 9:23 uses a different construction: ‘objects of mercy that he prepared beforehand for glory’ – here the agent (God) is specified and the verb is active. The asymmetry is intentional and exegetically significant. Paul is not drawing a parallel between equal and opposite divine decrees – one for salvation, one for damnation. He is contrasting those who have prepared themselves for destruction through sustained hardness with those whom God has actively prepared for glory.

• Verse 24 gives us Paul’s summary identification of these objects of mercy: the ones God called, not only from Jews but also from Gentiles. The corporate nature of the argument is restated explicitly. The elected people of God are not a secret list of predetermined individuals. They are the people, from both ethnic backgrounds, who have entered the promise through faith. Again, the viewpoint or hermeneutic arriving at Romans 9:22-24 has already received direction from prior verses. I believe the grammar is pretty decisive and reinforced by the context of Jeremiah 18, Romans 9:24 and Romans 11.

Dr. Bird’s commentary on Romans 9:24 puts the verses in perspective:

Romans 9:20-24 in Summary

A summary of the four different viewpoints for convenience. Of note, there can be some overlap between positions, these distinctions are generalized and not necessarily exclusive to each perspective.

The preceding table maps the major interpretive options, but the argument now needs to be heard in one continuous reading. The following paraphrase is not intended to replace Paul’s words; it draws together the corporate, conditional, and redemptive-historical claims argued above so the reader can see how Romans 9:19-24 coheres without importing an individual election-to-salvation framework.

Romans 9:25-29 Hosea and Isaiah

As it also says in Hosea, I will call Not my People, My People, and she who is Unloved, Beloved. And it will be in the place where they were told, you are not my people, there they will be called sons of the living God.

But Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, Though the number of Israelites is like the sand of the sea, only the remnant will be saved; since the Lord will execute his sentence completely and decisively on the earth.

And just as Isaiah predicted: If the Lord of Hosts had not left us offspring, we would have become like Sodom, and we would have been made like Gomorrah.

Paul brings in Hosea and Isaiah to demonstrate that God’s plan to have a corporate people always included Gentiles and always depended on a remnant within Israel. Paul quotes Hosea 2:23 and 1:10 which speaks of the restoration of northern Israel who has sinned against the LORD. God promises judgment… but offers mercy (a consistent pattern seen throughout scripture that one can repent and return to God). Note also the corporate nature in which God speaks of mercy and judgment. Furthermore, despite northern Israel’s continual disobedience, God is persistently faithful and promises a future where they will return, be faithful, be united with Judah and will be the LORD’s people. Hosea’s ‘not my people’ becoming ‘my people’ is the corporate movement Paul describes, Gentile nations entering into the covenant community. Isaiah’s remnant confirms that within ethnic Israel, there has always been a group defined by faith rather than lineage.

Paul quotes Isaiah 10:22–23 and 1:9 speaking of the remnant of Israel that will be saved amongst Israel. Despite being as numerous as the sea and potentially eliminated altogether, a remnant will be preserved – an act of God’s kindness. This is an important trajectory in the story in order to answer the original question in Romans 9:6. God’s redemptive work is the point, not an exploration in the manner of soteriology, and the remnant is a key point in answering Romans 9:6. Paul highlights the inclusion of the Gentiles in God’s redemptive work, not as a side note, but as an important trajectory in the story in order to answer the original questions in Romans 9:6. The Gentiles can have hope in God’s examples of restoration and redemption, as demonstrated with northern Israel, who were ‘not My People’ becoming ‘My People.’

Romans 9:30-10:4 The Stumbling Stone and Righteousness by Faith

What should we say then? Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained righteousness—namely the righteousness that comes from faith. But Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not achieved the righteousness of the law. Why is that? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. As it is written, “Look, I am putting a stone in Zion to stumble over and a rock to trip over, and the one who believes on him will not be put to shame.” Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God concerning them is for their salvation. I can testify about them that they have zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. Since they are ignorant of the righteousness of God and attempted to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness obtained it, the righteousness that comes from faith. Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, did not achieve it, because they pursued it as if by works rather than by faith. Paul is explicit, they stumbled over the stumbling stone; God did not make them stumble. Their own pursuit of righteousness by works, including zeal for God based on the law, rather than faith produced the collision with the gospel that prevented them from receiving Christ on their terms.

God’s plan for election includes a predestined people (corporately) to be adopted into His family which includes the Israel within Israel as well as the Gentiles. Paul has not resolved the tension regarding ethnic Israel. To fully answer and interpret the text of Romans 9, we need the context of Romans 10-11.

Conclusion

A textual reading of Romans 9 frees us from a vision of God that requires us to degrade humanity in order to defend sovereignty. It frees us from reading the Creator-creature distinction as permission to treat image-bearers as disposable, predetermined problems, or objects beneath compassion. It frees us from making election the controlling category over Christ, mercy, faith, and love. Most importantly, it frees us to see God’s sovereignty not as sacred hierarchy but as redemptive faithfulness. God is one who keeps His word, reshapes spoiled clay, endures rebellion with patience, and forms one people in Christ from Jew and Gentile alike.

Romans 9 established that God’s word has not failed and that Israel’s rejection of the Messiah does not mean God’s covenant promise is broken, because God’s election was always about the corporate body of those who believe, not about ethnic descent. Romans 10 now addresses the question that follows: if Israel stumbled over the stumbling stone of faith, how does faith actually work? What is the entry point into the elected people of God? Romans 11 will explain the purpose and manner of Israel’s hardening and how that fits into God’s fulfillment of the covenant promise.

A Note on Sources

Bible quotes are CSB.

You will not see very many quotes from ETSH theologians. This is not because they don’t exist, it is because their view is overrepresented so that there is little need to reinforce their beliefs with precise quotations. Pick up a random commentary, study Bible, or search for your favorite theologians online and you will likely come across an ETSH understanding of this passage. Notable ETSH contributors are Macarthur, Piper, Sproul, Spurgeon, Moo, Schreiner, Wallace, Frame, and on and on.

All these questions, and more, are downstream from our theology, one that has to engage with Romans 9, whether it is consciously recognized or someone who is a product of their environment. Show me how you interpret Romans 9 and I will show whether we are headed towards human flourishing or both human exploitation and elitism. Yes, it is that big of a deal. It is an underpinning of entire Christian worldviews that shape how we love God and love others. One’s interpretation of Romans 9 is an unavoidable and undeniable explanation of how they view humanity and thus how we engage our neighbor.

Roman 9, The Litmus Test Shaping Worldviews for Better or Worse

This is a three-part commentary on God’s word, election, and the corporate people of God. This analysis of Romans 9-11 doesn’t just explain the text but identifies the hermeneutical approaches that helps one understand and misunderstand its meaning. Hermeneutics is the art and science on how a person approaches reading and studying a text. Reflecting upon the condition of American Christianity, there is a human condition that makes a hermeneutic dangerous rather than merely wrong.

Pride is creation’s greatest sin. The theological movement from an Election-to-Salvation Hermeneutic (ETSH) to elitism does not require a conscious decision.

When a person believes they were chosen before birth by God’s sovereign decree – not for anything in them, not for any anticipated faith, but by pure divine prerogative – two psychological outcomes are theoretically available. The first is profound humility: I did nothing to deserve this. The second is a quiet superiority: I was chosen and others were not. Theology intends the first, however, the second is a familiar comfort for our pride which produces an elitists culture. American Christianity brings the consistency of pride to an elitist ETSH and theological system for which they inhabit or choose.

ETSH applied socially, allows people to use religious cover for the indefensible fate of those whom are ‘other.’ The exclusivity in which American Christianity wields power despite the widespread oppression and discrimination of human beings as well as the widening wealth gap must be justified on a macro and individual level. Theological elitism allows American Christians to dismiss narratives of exploitation for: 1) meritocracy in which wealth reflects virtue and poverty reflects failure 2) rugged individualism and the self-made man, 3) trickle-down economics in which breaks for the wealthy are eventual relief for everyone else, 4) an Epstein class that has still not faced any accountability in America, or 5) voting and continuing to support (or quietly ignoring) the most corrupt President ever, 6) conflates the nation of Israel and the Jewish people, while displaying an unexplained loyalty to the nation of Israel, and so on.

The ETSH defends injustice, inaction, and inequality with the Doctrine of Election. They were not chosen because they are better, they are better because they were chosen. Even this distinction collapses when faith is lived out practically. The outcomes have been in people (and their propped-up institutions) who experience their social, economic, racial, and political dominance not as accident, privilege, or historical theft, but as the visible expression of the invisible divine ordering. The conclusion that they are favored, while others are passed over and still personably responsible is a concept in which ETSH reinforces and provides deep theological cover for.

Most Christians are Not Explicitly Articulating and Wrestling with an Interpretation of Romans 9

This power of ETSH is that it breeds a comfortable taxonomy of winners and losers that operates well below the level of conscious theology. You do not need to be able to articulate TULIP or understand what reprobation means. You only need to absorb, through years of formation in a tradition that inserts divine selectivity as a key reality in a world that is fundamentally organized around tribal asymmetric divine favor. Applying that template to every human category available: wealth, race, gender, nationality, class, criminal history, immigration status shows an underlying Christian logic that some people are constituted for dominion and others for their usefulness to the dominant. Therefore, some communities are ordered and others are threatening; some suffering is deserved and other suffering is an outrage. The elect know which is which because the tribal characteristics of a God who suggests your worth was inherent, predetermined, and binary.

This is the theological infrastructure that makes a vote for Donald Trump feel not just politically defensible but spiritually coherent to millions of white evangelical Christians. Not because Trump is elect in any theological sense, but because Trump wins and performs the politics of the elect – the unashamed assertion of hierarchical favor, the unapologetic division of humanity into winners and losers, the theological confidence that some people’s dignity is non-negotiable and other people’s dignity is negotiable depending on what they contribute to the ordered community. His corruption is either the cost of doing business with someone who can help advance Christian nationalist causes or evidence of a winner exploiting the system and punching down on the ‘other.’ When your theology has already taught you that God eternally divides humanity into the favored and the ‘other’ before they have done anything good or bad, the politician who divides humanity into winners and losers is not introducing a foreign concept. He is speaking a language the church already taught you and proliferated into the world.

The gospel of Jesus Christ moves in the opposite direction entirely. It does not find the worthy and confirms their worth. It finds them unworthy and declares their worth. It does not select the strong for glory and pass over the weak. It chooses the weak things of the world to shame the strong, the foolish to shame the wise, the things that are not to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before God (1 Corinthians 1:27-29). A theology whose social imagination is structured around divine selectivity and sacred hierarchy has not arrived at a more rigorous version of that gospel. It has replaced it with a different one.

One of the byproducts of such theology is a Jesus who didn’t die for ALL people, he died only for the elect. Show me how your pastor and church body understands Romans 9-11 and I will show you whether your God finds you among the favored or whether God sends His Son across the cosmos, makes Himself available to every single person in it, and calls you to love your neighbor with the same divine intention.

This elitism is often an implicit conviction that one’s belonging is deserved, that one’s position reflects one’s worth, that those outside the circle are outside for reasons that reflect their inferiority rather than one’s own unearned privilege. It is exclusionary, binary, hypocritical, circular, gnostic, self-righteous, patronizing, most likely complementarian, and closed-minded. It is us versus them. And it justifies it all in the name of Jesus. It is the churches on every corner and multiple private Christian schools within a city, yet the public schools around them are underfunded and the children are all on free meals because of their economic situation. It is having ministries that feed the homeless or tend to pregnant mothers in crisis; yet never materially changing the nature of poverty through policy and hospitality.

I wrote about some of this dynamic in my book review of Rosaria Butterfield’s The Gospel Comes with a House Key. I explain why I cannot recommend this book, in large part due to the effects of ETSH on this former feminist lesbian professor who turned Presbyterian.

How you’ve embraced the theology handed to you or accepted it of your own volition, Romans 9–11 is not an abstract theological debate. Your interpretation of Romans 9-11 is a reflection of your understanding of God’s character, the reliability of Scripture, the nature of the gospel offer, and the atonement. Is salvation available in Christ a genuine extension to all people or only something belonging to a predetermined group. The stakes could not be higher.

What Is the Election to Salvation Hermeneutic (ETSH)?

The dominant reading in most church traditions – Reformed Baptist, Presbyterians, most non-denominational and Baptists, Lutherans, some Catholics, and the Anglican/Episcopal denominations – hold that Romans 9 teaches God’s unconditional selection of specific individuals for salvation. Most discern this choosing happens before birth and they vary greatly on the treatment of those who are damned. I discuss the varying views on the Doctrine of Election here:

This commentary designates that the Election to Salvation Hermeneutic (ETSH) holds that Romans 9 teaches God’s unconditional selection of specific individuals for salvation (and to some degree their damnation as well). On this reading, the word ‘election’ carries individual soteriological weight wherever it appears. This produces a God who, in John Calvin’s own phrase, issues a ‘horrible decree’ – choosing some for glory and passing others by for destruction before they have done anything good or bad.

Further, this commentary argues that reading is exegetically unsupported by the text Paul actually wrote. Romans 9–11 is not primarily a treatise on individual predestination. It is Paul’s answer to a specific pastoral and theological crisis: has God’s word to Israel failed? That question, and its answer, must govern how every verse in these three chapters is read.

The Mechanism: How a Reading of Romans 9 Becomes a Social Imagination

The specific mechanism is not that every person who holds ETSH will consciously become racist, patriarchal, nationalist, anti-poor, or cruel. That would be an unfair claim, and history provides obvious counterexamples. The mechanism is more basic and more dangerous: ETSH trains the reader to imagine God’s relation to humanity through a prior, hidden, asymmetrical decree in which some are eternally favored and ‘others’ (who are eternally passed over, appointed to destruction before they have done anything good or bad, or have brought damnation upon themselves). Once that becomes the controlling way of reading Romans 9, divine selectivity becomes a deep reality beneath human history. Mercy is no longer first encountered as God’s open-handed covenant faithfulness to the world in Christ. The world becomes an execution of God’s sovereign right to distinguish, exclude, harden, and assign different destinies to different persons or peoples.

That theological imagination does not stay sealed inside the doctrine of salvation. It permeates. A doctrine about whom God chooses becomes a template for how the Christian imagines hierarchy, belonging, authority, and social order. If within the character of God and His organizing of the world is an eternally divided humanity according to ‘mystery’, then it becomes easier to sacralize other divisions as well: elect and reprobate, ordered and disorderly, covenant people and outsiders, rulers and ruled, men and women, nation and foreigner, deserving and undeserving poor, Israel and Palestine. The point is not that ETSH logically requires every one of those applications in every person. The point is that ETSH supplies a theological grammar in which unequal standing can be divinely defended rather than interrogated by the universal neighbor-love of Christ, consistency, logic, or humility.

Contempary examples like Doug Wilson, Joel Webbon, John Piper, John Macarthur, and many others matter. Webbon is not being cited as proof that all ETS advocates share his conclusions. He is a useful example because he makes visible the kind of downstream synthesis this commentary is warning about: a public Reformed figure who joins a theology of divine selectivity to patriarchal hierarchy, Christian nationalism, and opposition to interracial marriage. Although this does not prove that ETSH alone caused every one of his positions, it does show that the movement from predestinarian selectivity to sacralized hierarchy is not hypothetical. It has a living, public form.

The pathway works like this: first, a person is confused by what they see in the world – the inequality, the questioning of God’s fairness as to why religion seems to be a byproduct of geography or heritage, the staunch defense of systems of oppression; then a member of the church, or the pastor, or the Christian nationalists manosphere eventually point them to an understanding of Romans 9 read as God’s unconditional determination of individual eternal destiny; third, that reading forms a conception of sovereignty in which God’s freedom is displayed supremely in unequal assignment; fourth, human hierarchy is then interpreted less as a problem to be healed by the gospel and more as a feature of creation, providence, or covenant order; fifth, public theology begins to ask how civil society should reflect that order. At that point the argument has moved from exegesis to social imagination. How one reads ‘Jacob I love, and Esau I hated’ begins to affect how one views image-bearers, women, ethnic difference, poverty, criminal justice, immigration, voting, public policy, and the duty to love one’s neighbor.

This is also why movements influenced by this theological pattern often cluster with more conservative, fundamentalist, hierarchical, and nationalist instincts (see Matt Walsh, Candace Owens, Allie B Stuckey, Charlie Kirk). The claim is not that every conservative or every Calvinist is a Christian nationalist, nor that non-Calvinists cannot be racist, patriarchal, or oppressive. The claim is narrower: when Romans 9 is read as a defense of God’s right to eternally divide persons apart from faith-response, that reading gives later theologians and pastors a ready-made defense of divinely sanctioned asymmetry. When given the choice, humanity will choose to economically exploit, having a religious framework that makes such easier to stomach becomes very useful.

Slave-holder theology used providence, curse, hierarchy, and divine ordering to defend racial domination. Modern Christian nationalism often uses creation order, nation, family, and magistrate to defend hierarchical public policy. Anti-egalitarian and anti-interracial arguments often appeal to fixed boundaries, ordained differences, and the danger of collapsing distinctions. ETSH does not create all of these instincts by itself, but it gives them a powerful theological backdrop: God Himself is imagined as the one who eternally fixes unequal statuses before any human response.

Why the Exceptions Do Not Defeat the Pattern

The obvious objection is important: there have been ETS abolitionists, ETS civil-rights supporters, ETS egalitarians, and ETS who have loved the poor and opposed racial injustice. Reformed Baptist, Charles Spurgeon held a strong doctrine of election and publicly opposed slavery. To state in plainly, in my critique I cannot demonstrate the same exclusionary, binary, hypocritical, circular, gnostic, self-righteous, patronizing, closed-mindedness. I cannot oversimplify and generalize. Fortunately, ETSH does not ‘predetermine’ a person’s ethics. A person can hold ETSH and still be corrected by Scripture, by the cross, by the image of God, by the Great Commission, by neighbor-love, and by the Spirit’s work in the conscience.

AND, the existence of righteous exceptions does not erase the pattern. The exception often requires the ETS proponent to resist or qualify the social logic of the system at precisely the point where it would otherwise move toward hierarchy and exclusion. Spurgeon’s anti-slavery convictions were not the natural social outworking of a doctrine that assigns some people to eternal mercy and others to eternal rejection apart from anything in them. They were the outworking of other biblical commitments: the equal dignity of human beings, the moral horror of man-stealing, the universality of gospel proclamation, the command to love one’s neighbor, and the lordship of Christ over oppressor and oppressed alike. In other words, the ETS abolitionist is often better than the social logic of the system because he is being constrained by other truths.

This is what I mean by saying the exception required inconsistency while the pattern required consistency. Not moral inconsistency, as though the abolitionist ETS proponent lacked integrity. The inconsistency is structural: to oppose slavery, racism, misogyny, and ethnocentric nationalism, the ETS proponent must allow other doctrines to interrupt the social imagination generated by ETSH. They must refuse to let divine selectivity become the master category for human relations like Tim Keller. He must say, in effect, whatever election means, it cannot authorize me to treat any image-bearer as ontologically lesser, socially disposable, politically voiceless, or outside the scope of neighbor-love. That is a faithful Christian move. But it is a move away from the most dangerous implications of the hermeneutic, not a vindication of them.

By contrast, when the ETSH is carried consistently into public theology, it tends to normalize the idea that God’s glory is displayed through fixed unequal relations: some rule and others submit; some belong and others threaten belonging; some are heirs of the covenantal project and others are exploited, excluded, or disciplined for the preservation of the chosen order. That is why its downstream effects are not limited to abstract soteriology. It can shape voting instincts, welfare policy, criminal justice, immigration, gender roles, racial attitudes, and the emotional posture one takes towards suffering people. If the nonelect are ultimately passed over by God, it becomes easier, even if just slightly, to pass over the suffering neighbor. If hierarchy is imagined as the signature of divine order, it becomes easier to baptize and accept hierarchy wherever it already exists.

Therefore, the critique is not that ETSH makes every holder cruel. The critique is that ETSH places a dangerous burden on every holder: they must constantly prevent a theology of unconditional divine division from becoming a social ethic of conditional human worth. Some have done that faithfully. Many have not. And when they have not, the results have been very visible and very devastating. See slave-holder theology, patriarchal theology, racial hierarchy, anti-interracial arguments, exclusivist nationalism, contempt for the poor, capitalism, political programs that confuse defending the chosen order with obeying the crucified Messiah.

A Note on the Breadth of ETSH

ETSH is a spectrum. It is not a monolithic position and can range from hard double predestination (God actively decrees both salvation and damnation), to single predestination (God elects some to salvation but does not actively decree others to damnation), to various forms of compatibilism. Not all who hold this hermeneutic agree on reprobation. This commentary’s argument applies across that spectrum to the common claim: that Romans 9 is primarily about God’s unconditional selection of individuals for eternal salvation. That claim, in any of its forms, misreads what Paul is doing.

Romans 9-11 in the Positive

God’s election in Romans 9–11 is the corporate election of a people, those who are children of the promise through faith, not the individual predetermination of specific persons to salvation or damnation from before birth. Paul’s argument is that God’s word has not failed because God’s purpose was never ethnic descent but faith. In this text, the elect are not a predetermined list of individuals; they are the corporate body of those who, by faith, enter into the promise given to Abraham and fulfilled in Christ. Hardening is purposive and temporary, directed toward a corporate end, the inclusion of the Gentiles and ultimately the salvation of all Israel.

That is Paul’s question in Romans 9:6. It organizes everything that follows through chapter 11. God made a promise to have a people. Israel, God’s chosen people, has largely rejected the Messiah. Does that mean the promise broke? Does it reveal an injustice in God’s character? Paul’s answer across three chapters is an unqualified no. The argument he builds to support that answer is what this four-part commentary traces.

Series Overview

Part One (this piece) establishes the stakes and the positive thesis. Part Two examines Romans 9 verse-by-verse – the thesis statement, the examples of election, the hardening of Pharaoh, and the potter’s clay. Part Three finishes Romans 10-11, following the argument that faith is the entry point into the elected corporate body to the completion of the arc in Romans 11 – the partial hardening, the fullness of the Gentiles, the salvation of all Israel, and Paul’s hymn of praise. Each part is written to stand alone while building the larger case.

Today I seek to deny myself the coping mechanisms that numb the pain and hard things in life. The temporary escapes that only delay emotions, causing them to build up as subconscious resentments from everywhere festers.

Naming my coping mechanisms – alcohol, app games, and TV shows.

Some may roll their eyes at the trivial list I’ve just confessed. To that I say, Praise God. I’m glad my mechanisms aren’t so destructive that everything around me hasn’t crumbled. They are idols in the sense that I have prioritized them over God. No, I’m not a drunk. No, I’m not going to choose worshipping a show versus pledging allegiance to God. However, idolatry shows up in making daily sacrifices to something else rather than using that time to love yourself and others. They have been a habitual daily liturgy I’ve given …

Read more

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

There is so much context to this verse, of which I will call in Drexel for backup if needed, but from an intuitive standpoint, I desired to know more.

I’ve always held a lot of room in my life for joy, kindness and possibility. My mom said I was the happiest little girl and everyone would ask her “Does she always smile like this?” For many years, I was able to find beauty in any season. But last summer, I was probably hanging on to my abundant HOPE by a thread. “Just take 1 thing off our plate Lord…” “Just give 1 steady job…

Read more

They shared everything. They ate together daily. They had no institutional infrastructure, no political protection, no economic stability, and no powerful allies. The empire they lived under was hostile to their existence. Most of them were poor, working class, or enslaved. They had, by every measure of their world, nothing.

Yet they built something that outlasted Rome and their impact… everlasting.

Let us return to, the scripture I talk about most, Acts 2:42-47, for a prescription of biblical community:

Read more

I am writing this because we need change and on a global scale. We need people who are ready to resist because the real threat is looming and I don’t think we’ve identified the appropriate targets. We need all hands on deck, and we need to be focused in the right direction.

Read more

First let me start off with, there is a house directly across from us that is not on the market yet and we are praying that the neighbors want to sell and for new neighbors who want intimate, authentic, baby-monitor-community. I, particularly, am in need of consistent, mature, authentic, and intimate male friendship. If you know anyone looking for the same let me know!

Secondly, the pie is big enough for all of us to eat. Sharing this opportunity for you or someone you know. $50k Godspeed! https://famousamosingredient…

Read more

Here is how the men described their season when asked directly:

On paper, this looks like a healthy group of men. The anonymized data underneath that surface tells a different story.

The Man Who Says He Is Fine

Nearly half of the men who filled this out described themselves as ‘growing – in a good place, wanting to go deeper.’ Those same men also listed physical health, sense of purpose and identity as their biggest gaps. Is their progress towards identity, purpose, and health on the right track and thus growing, desiring to go deeper? Or is this cognitive dissonance in which ‘a good place’ is not taking into account these significant areas. This could imply that the growth …

Read more

It’s funny because I felt similarly last year. If your year is anything like mine, it is shaping up to be a year of clarity. Several things are being revealed and exposed, allowing our family’s goals, language, attitudes, and direction to sharpen into better focus. I’m experiencing clarity in my work, parenting, friendships, perspectives, spiritual disciplines, identity and even convictions!

I met a few people at a John Maxwell conference that were really inspiring. One of the speakers spoke about the importance of community. I meet a lot of people who TALK about community, yet are not willing to commit, submit, and manifest the work necessary for community. I also meet a lot of people who talk about wanting or creating community but having the opportunity to do so, do not live in community themselves. Nonetheless, I was so mesmerized by a complete stranger speaking the same language I do about community that I forgot to take notes. After years of try…

Read more

1-5

Live life according to the seasons… the actual seasons. You can push in your 20s and 30s in ways you wouldn’t consider sane in your 40s.

We have the answers we need if we are only willing to see them and have the courage to step.

Love used to be synonymous with intense like. I ’loved’ a lot of things in which my ‘love’ would only last for a moment. I’ve also ‘loved’ things that didn’t require any real sacrifice or effort for me to love back. Love is a choice, a commitment, an action. Love can include periods of intense like or maybe even dislike, but true love is sustained by something much more embodied.

Truly feel and think about what you really want and go after it. What keeps you up at night? That is an indicator of an underlyin…

Read more

The clearer we get, the more we’re throwing out boxes that no longer fit. If you’ve placed us in one, ooops, it might be out with yesterday’s trash. Life is too short for making yourself small. We all mean well when trying to use our gifts for God’s glory. The beautiful thing about God is His view of time. We could serve everyone better if we tuned in more deeply to time and space, shifting our perspective by a millisecond softens us all.

Read more

Prayer For Help

God I’m down on my knees in prayer
Because the world is so crazy out there.
I’m trying to live, be all I can be.
But amidst the pain the struggle
The rape the racism the hate,
Who can be free? I’m troubled
By our ability to just accept our iniquities.
Sex, power, and money lead to selfishness –
Lust, greed, envy, pride, injustice –
Poisons that saturate our brains.
We convince ourselves of our own truths.
Too hard to do right, too stubborn to change,
Weak-willed, sinful but You still love us the same.
How?

How when we forget You? Worshipping at our leisure,
We forget Your instructions for our own endeavors.
It is Your will and not our preference.
I Pray Lord, thank you for keeping…

Read more

The Call to Truth and Resistance

Inherent to the Christian witness and testimony, as well as evangelism and missions, is to know truth and to proclaim truth. We are a people constantly pursuing truth, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” In turn, we are truth tellers. Therefore, what we’ve seen, heard, learned, and experienced, we use to disciple others. Discipleship inevitably leads us to being disrupters in our lives, the lives of others, and institutions. We have a communal responsibility to relentlessly uncover and proclaim truth while rejecting lies. We are called to call folks higher… to a Kingdom empowered by the Holy Spirit enriched with the peace, rest, love, and hope of God.

…

Read more

I’m excited to start this year with a post that reflects the weekend of Calibrating Johnna and I just had together. Calibration Course for Renewal is an exercise we do every year. We do it with couples and groups in person. This is an exercise for those wanting a guide that will help them reflect and be more intentional in their marriage, business, friendships, as well as other areas of responsibility.

Calibration Course for Renewal has been extremely helpful on the journey to expand my emotional intelligence. Self-awareness is the first step to intentional change. With Calibration Course for Renewal, we reflect on the last year and prepare for the upcoming year. Together, Johnna and I engage and commit to a communal goal for maturity and accountability. It also helps us determine which relationships can support this vision and which relationships can be impacted by this change. Each year, we identify one word that summarizes our reflections to keep us rooted throughout the year!

If you don’t have a word for 2026, let’s calibrate together!

In keeping with our weekend’s transformational growth, I am starting this first post about my business! ICE, this administration’s war with Venezuela, health insurance premiums’ inevitable rise, Epstein files, fascism, Philip Yancey, and our collective inability to grasp the threat of Christian Nationalism will all have to wait!

Some of you may not know that in 2025, I went all-in on entrepreneurship, after months of struggling with what to do next. My wife has been encouraging this for years. In the following, I’m sharing the methodology that I’ve wrestled through to be genuine to my gifts and talents as I approach King & Co. Consulting. I write and share for accountability, public witness, and guideposts to refer to throughout the year.

THE INCARNATE TRANSFORMATION BUSINESS MODEL

I aspire to translate the passions I have into all areas of life — family, work, entrepreneurship. I want the overflow of who God’s called me to be to manifest in all these areas. One of the areas that I have particularly struggled to have an abundance mindset in is business. This requires a continual reset and ‘rebranding’ (if I’m using that word right). Much of my growth as a person parallels the deconstruction and reconstruction of my thoughts towards business and money.

What are your money habits? What are your emotions towards money? If you had to state three statements about you and money, what would they be? “I am _____ towards money.” “I am _____ of money.” “I am a money-______” Are those statements positive or negative?

Questions like these help me uncover the root of my subconscious and conscious thoughts towards money that influence my behavior and decisions. The journey to a financially abundant mindset is significant in helping me 1) become better at feeling and expressing emotions and 2) being more authentic to who God has called me to be! To be clear, removing the stronghold of a poverty mindset does not equate to material riches. This reframing is apart of the journey!

I believe the world can be transformed by two things, both modeled for us by Jesus — incarnation and community. The idea behind the Incarnate Transformational Business Model is to apply these concepts to business. My usage of this model is to solve one core business challenge - organizational misalignment which includes misaligned people, misaligned systems, and misaligned leadership capacity. As a result, the following outlines how I hope to impact others with my gifts and experiences.

Read more

In the beginning of 2025 we opened King & Co. Calibration - a place to simply be. We welcome guests to a wellness space designed to rest, reset and reconnect. It still feels like a baby of ours and we’re tending to it gently - not forcing a business model built on hustle or stress, but one of authenticity and peace. It’s an overflow of the work we started doing in our marriage on day trips, cycling through the sauna, cold plunge and then processing all our deep thoughts together.

calibration: a process of refining your thoughts, attitudes and behaviors to achieve your desired results. you can check it out here.

We’ve loved sharing this space and meeting new people along the way. We’re praying it continues to grow and be a sanctuary for our community!

Drexel spent the st…

Read more

Transitioning from the sauna to the cold waters, I release the strongholds and blockages preventing me from ‘seeing with my heart’ God’s provision. The frigid water, constricts the essentials to my inner being, allowing the impurities to be released from the edges of my body into the atmosphere.

Release! No longer carry burdens you are not meant to bear. Remove obstacles that are self-induced. Give to God what is His and be who you are called to be. Step into the inform…

Read more

As I wrestled with these questions in the solitude of the sauna, I found myself drawn to the words of Paul in Ephesians 1. We must pray as Paul prayed, for believers to access the power, hope, wisdom and revelation in God, for reimagining our approach to our world and this holiday s…

Read more

I am interrupting the discussion on Ephesians, as well as all of the revelation, spiritual formation, and transformation received over our annual holiday break, in addition to responding to the crisis in our news cycle from a Biblical and Human Dignifying Christian worldview1 to talk about why I write.

How I’m Showing Up In This Article

My writing is rooted in trying to understand my lived experiences from a biblical lens, while trying to balance work, family, and life. These days, I usually only have time to write when I can’t do anything else but get the thoughts out of my head and energy from my chest written down. I finish the Friday workday writing down all the things I didn’t get accomplished in my online task manager (I’m a certified trainer and advocate for the GTD methodology) so I can focus this weekend on the family.

Despite my best intentions, being present with the family mentally, is a consistent challenge. I set out to give Johnna the undivided attention she deserves before she heads out for the night. When she gets distracted, I use it as an excuse to try to handle a few personal items – unanswered messages, making plans to facilitate community, and writing down the tasks I’d forgotten about.

I promise to focus on the kids, yet something keeps coming up: just one more text, five more minutes with this thought. Eventually, I recognize the slope I’ve half-way slipped down and put my phone away. Unfortunately, that doesn’t help because my mind is still racing. I’m physically present - playing blocks with my two-year-old playing blocks, holding my three-month-old – yet I’m mentally elsewhere. I’m sure I’ve missed questions and moments being so consumed by the thoughts that my body and mind have been unable to release.

Family movie night starts and I’m determined to be mentally present. Notwithstanding, I know passively watching TV won’t help so I decide to take the little ones to the salt room. Its not perfect mindfulness; however, we pour salt on each other, built salt mounds, and drive toy trucks. Now its bedtime, I can release some of the energy I’ve been holding for weeks into this article. I try to give myself grace as the other writings groan from being pushed back yet again.

Why I Write

Writing is both personal practice and prophetic2 necessity. It is my mental gym-workout on the topics I get to choose. The exercise of compiling my scattered thoughts, organizing and clarifying them works my mental agility. I wish I could do it more, thus feel free to become a paid subscriber!

I write to find my community. I know you’re out there! People with a deep conviction for community, a resolve for spiritual formation, and a commitment to biblical justice. Those living life authentically, abundantly, and in community - despite the pull towards the status quo or societal norms.

I am seeking to engage in a conversation with others and help make sense of the world in which we live. The pull to conform, the traps to ensnare you in worldliness are everywhere and it will take a community to keep us sane and growing.

Writing is also therapeutic for me. It is my form of resistance against injustice. It is a way to leave a legacy for my children. It’s a participation in the divine opportunity for ‘wording.’

I write prophetically. I write to call out idols. I write to hold myself accountable and those within my community. I hope my writing challenges your systems, faith, and worldview. I hope I’m shattering the cognitive dissonance that allows people to materially benefit from economic and theological systems that overlook and destroy image-bearers. I am trying to make it very clear how I’m moving forward in the world. Yet, these multiple purposes can create tension for my readers. What I communicate as healing may challenge you. What is often a call for community may require boundaries from folks who have no intention of incarnating and coming along on the journey.

Quite practically, I also write to avoid some repetitive conversations. I will definitely have to recycle much of the conversation in this current article! Nonetheless, community, justice, and spiritual formation are ongoing conversations in my life and written articles serve as catalyst for conversation or filters the preoccupied.

Invitation to the Conversation

First thank you for reading! Substack is an online space for community and conversation. You can of course unsubscribe at any time. However, if you stay, I invite you into this public conversation for mutual accountability, clarifying communication, and necessary push back. Like, share, comment, and subscribe! Even if we disagree, I appreciate your willingness to process my words and respond with your own perspective. So far I have been really consistent to engage with folks who choose to participate in the public discourse. My strongest desire is to have these conversations with those in my in-person community and encourage you to do so as well.

In my experience, the following guidelines can be helpful to keep conversations constructing and accessible.

1. To respect my responsibilities and commitments, I must limit myself to the platform for discussions. I’ve encountered several folks who leave the Substack platform in order to like or comment on a post in a off-platform mediums. To be clear, I am not committing to multiple in-person discussions about information that is readily available. Conversely, no one is entitled to a response at all. Part of the benefit of engaging with your written response is it empowers you to work through your own triggers internally before bringing them to the public.

2. You can start the conversation on your own by having read credible sources you disagree with and being able to accurately articulate their point of view. Go beyond surface-level critiques of viewpoints that have been marginalized, mischaracterized/ weaponized and ignored.

3. Agree on what words mean (ex. “free will” “election” “oppression,” “justice,” “capitalism”) so no one can twist definitions mid-conversation.

4. Avoid false dichotomies, thus acknowledging that multiple options are viable. This is rejection framing that limits the conversation to extremes. You don’t like capitalism so you must be a atheist, Marxist, communist, genocidal leftist.

5. Engage the arguments, not made up caricatures. Don’t assume each others beliefs and set a boundary that personal attacks or labels are off-limits. Focus on arguing ideals not labels (see #4).

6. Avoid Whataboutism! Engage the arguments, acknowledge the inconvenient scriptures, engage the Biblical texts and rely on comprehensive historical realities. If someone introduces “what about socialism?” when the topic is capitalism’s failures, then agree to redirect back to the issue at hand.

7. Use scripture in context. Read and use passages in their full biblical and historical context, not as isolated proof-texts.

8. Truth-telling is not always “polite.” Repentance and reconciliation may need to occur across multiple fronts.

9. Name Idols Explicitly. Keep the focus on identifying and resisting idols (Mammon, nationalism, racism) rather than abstract debates.

10. Maturity, grace, and self-work are necessary components for being in conversation, even more so for being in community with people.

If you’re part of my in-person community, we’re likely already having these conversations face-to-face, and those interactions may follow a different rhythm. For everyone else, I thank you for your patience as I try to navigate these intricacies, acknowledge my own feelings in this world, and communicate all of it appropriately. I look forward to engaging with those who want to incarnate on this complex journey.

Blessings!

On day two of vacation, I’ve got two more relationships to deal with before my mind can again be free from the immediate burdens people are trying to place on me… that I didn’t ask for! Nonetheless, I do want to bring one exchange to your attention because it highlights our worldview contrasts and the problem with American ‘Christianity.’

Christian Values for Our Neighbor and Our Sanctification

I recently f…

Read more

This is a post about friendship. I will talk a lot about the news but I am really speaking about community. A type of community that is necessary to help us make sense of the world, the type that is tangible support in times of struggle, and the type that has people invested for everyone’s mutual edification.

Read more