PAUL now answers the critical question which he has posed in verse 19. Here is the wonder of the honesty and courage of the apostle Paul. He does not avoid the difficulties, or avoid the difficult question. He faces them, and even introduces them so there might be no misunderstanding of his teaching, or leverage to deny his teaching.

In my study of this chapter I have been brought face to face with God in a much deeper and powerful way than I have ever done before. It has been brought home to me that God is God, and he is high above us and sovereign over us and I am an insignificant creature who has sinned against his holiness, and tarnished his glory. I have found myself humbled before this great and eternal God, and moved to bow before him in humble submission and deep worship and adoration. This is the only way, I am convinced, that we can come to this teaching of Paul here, given by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, for if we come in any other spirit we shall set up ourselves against God, and so have no chance of understanding this teaching, let alone the truths of the Bible as a whole.

PAUL'S ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION.

1. By Rebuke.

The first approach of the apostle to this criticism of his teaching is one of challenge and rebuke. Paul challenges us to face who we are, and that we have no right to make this criticism in a contentious way and so challenge God. Paul challenges us over our attitude, and calls us to face that we have no right to question God.

Here Paul brings before us the fearful sin of sinful humanity. How dare we challenge God! How dare we question anything that God say or does. Such challenge would be totally inappropriate if we were sinless and pure, for still we are God's creatures whom he has created. We are his property. It is far more inappropriate for us the challenge God because we are rebels and sinners, and have forfeited by our sin and sinfulness any consideration from God. Such a criticism is a demonstration of our sin and sinfulness, and instead of criticising God we should bow before him crying for mercy.

But then the response to this rebuke from sinful human beings is to say that Paul's teaching is wrong, and that God is not like the way the apostle portrays him. Paul's claim is that his teaching is the teaching and word of God, and is God's revelation concerning himself, and to criticise it, is to criticise God and oppose God. The fact is that to deny that Paul is teaching us the word of God is our arrogance that we feel we know better what God is like than Paul did, and to look down on Paul as blind to the real truth. In fact criticism of Paul's teaching here is simply to show that we are creating God in our own image, and imagining that we with our small minds, however clever and intellectual we are, know better than Paul, and can know God. The fact is that our sin and sinfulness makes it impossible for us to know God truly. Our sin also causes us to make God in our own image in a way that we would like him to be, and in the way we would like him to treat us in spite of our sinfulness.

Paul has already addressed this criticism by showing that what he is teaching is not his own opinions but what is consistently taught throughout the whole of the Old Testament. Paul's illustration of the Potter is taken straight out of the Old Testament where it teaches the total sovereignty of God over us, and that he has every right to do as he pleases, and is righteous and just in so doing. For instance there is Isaiah 69:8 “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hands.” Again in Isaiah 29:16 “You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay. Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'He did not make me?' Can the pot say to the potter, 'He knows nothing!' “. And again Isaiah 45:9 “Woe to him who quarrels with his maker, to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter “what are you making.””

This spirit of contention and pride before God is something that needs to be challenged in us all, and God did this throughout the Old Testament, even with the servants of God. We all need to be humbled before God. So we find Moses, before God could use him, had to be humbled. God appeared to him in the burning bush. Moses came to look at this phenomena and we was pulled up, and told to take off his shoes for he was on holy ground, and told not to come any closer. Joshua was made to face the reality of God when he was met by the Lord before Israel's attack on Jericho. He was halted and told to take off his shoes and he had to fall down before the Lord in submission and worship. Isaiah was treated in the same way when he went into the temple and he saw the Lord, and he fell on his face in fear feeling that he deserved to be consumed by God and that God was going to do it.

When we come and ask questions in the contentious arrogant way to this question Paul presents to us, then we simply show our rebellion against God, and our unwillingness to submit before him.

2. By argument.

The challenge Paul brings before us in answer to the criticism of God made in the question of verse 19, is to point out the stupidity of a 'made' object challenging the one who made it. Paul says “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this.'” and then reinforces the argument by using the illustration of the potter.

The illustration of the potter is one Paul has taken from the Old Testament and specially the prophet Isaiah. From this we can see that, although Paul was inspired by the Holy Ghost and wrote under the inspiration of God, and could claim that because of this he was speaking the truth of God, yet he reinforced the divine inspiration of what he wrote by showing that what he wrote has always been the teaching of God in his inspired word.

The illustration is plain but powerful. The clay is entirely in the hands of the potter to make whatsoever pot he has a mind to make. The clay has no say in the matter whatsoever. We can also see that the clay has no rights and can not complain whatever the potter decides to make each lump of clay into. In the same way from the whole lump of humanity God can, and has every right to form from that lump anything he chooses.

However it is important to understand what is being spoken of here. The lump of clay illustrates the whole lump of humanity as it is now. It represents fallen humanity. It represents humanity which is sinful and already under condemnation. The apostle, in speaking about the lump of clay, that is of humanity, is not speaking about humanity as God originally created it, but rather the lump of humanity which resulted from Adam's sin. As we have already considered, when God created Adam, he created him very good, and in his own image, and to have fellowship with himself, which Adam enjoyed when he walked with God in the garden of Eden in the cool of the day. Humanity as it is now, and has been ever since Adam sinned, is a corrupt humanity and a sinful humanity, and already under the sentence of death, because of sin. God has, and had, no obligation to do anything but execute the sentence of death upon humanity, and humanity has nothing to complain of if this is what God does. Nor has any human being got anything to complain of if he condemns them to death and hell, for that is what each one of us deserves.

This seems very hard to our minds, and we react against it, and deny that God would do any such thing. The reason for this is that the God of this world, the devil, has blinded the minds of fallen human beings, and they can't see or appreciate either their sinfulness in the sight of God, or the deserving due for this sin. However whenever God has revealed himself to human beings in all the purity and holiness of his person, the result is that a realisation of what we deserve is only too clear to us, as Isaiah realised in Isaiah 6 when he saw the Lord high and lifted up.

The amazing thing is that God has not executed his justice on the human race. It is not that God condemns that is surprising, for this is right, and to be expected. The surprising thing is that God shows mercy to some, and went to such lengths, and accepted such cost, to make it possible for him to show mercy to some without violating his holiness.

So we see it is just and a simple act of justice, for God to condemn sinful mankind, and it is an act of pure mercy and grace for God to show mercy to those to whom he shows mercy.

However, Paul is at pains to point out that it is entirely in the hands of God who he leaves in condemnation and death, and to whom he shows his mercy. The point is that there is nothing we have or can do that has any effect over God's choice as to who should receive mercy. We are all equally deserving of condemnation. We are all rebels against God. There is nothing in any of us that God can take into account in his decision to show mercy to a person. Mercy is entirely in the hands of God, just like the clay is in the hands of the potter.

Our salvation is entirely in the hands of God, and it is his sovereign choice if he chooses to show us mercy, and we can claim nothing in ourselves as a reason why he may have done it, or anything that we can claim deserves such favour from God.

Just as the clay is impotent to influence the potter as to what he makes with the clay, so we are totally in the hands of God as to whether we are left in death, or we are raised to life. It is God's sovereign mercy alone that decides, and there is nothing which can influence the choice expect the sovereign decision of God.

What Paul shows us here is that God has every right to this sovereign choice. He is not acting unjustly or unrighteously because we all deserve in justice to be damned. God is not unjust because we are already condemned for our sin.

CONCLUSION.