The Blog

In verse twenty-one, Paul talks about the sovereign choice the potter has the purpose and plan of the clay. With this illustration, Paul is not saying that some of us are worth more than others, but simply that the Creator has control over the created object. The created object has no right to demand anything from his Creator. Its existence depends on him. Keeping this perspective removes any temptation to have pride in our work. In verses twenty-five to twenty-six, Paul quotes some verses from Hosea. About seven hundred years before Jesus’ birth, Hosea told of God’s intention to restore his people. Paul applies Hosea’s message to God’s intention to bring Gentiles into his family after the Jews rejected his plan.
Romans 9:21-26
21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?
22 What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— 24 even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? 25 As he says in Hosea:
“I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people;
and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one,”[a]
26 and,
“In the very place where it was said to them,
‘You are not my people,’
there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’”[b]