Romans 9:22-26
(22) What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:
(23) And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory,
(24) Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?
(25) As he saith also in Osee, I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved.
(26) And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people; there shall they be called the children of the living God.
Having stated that God is like a potter, Paul now applied this illustration to God’s sovereign purpose for different people. He stated the two alternatives as conditional clauses (What if. . . ?) and left unstated the obvious common conclusion: Does not God have that right? The one alternative is that God . . . bore with great patience (cf. 2 Peter 3:9) the objects (lit., “vessels”; cf. Rom. 9:21) of His wrath—prepared for destruction (apoleian, “ruin”). The perfect participle “prepared” describes past action with a continuing result or state. “Prepared” may be reflexive (“prepared themselves”), but it seems preferable to take it as passive (“were prepared”). The thought is that they have been and are in a state of readiness or ripeness to receive God’s wrath. The objects of God’s wrath are the unsaved (1:18), who will suffer eternal judgment (John 3:36). God has patiently endured their antagonism to Him (cf. Acts 14:16; Rom. 3:25), but their judgment is coming. Those who oppose Him and refuse to turn to Him (Matt. 23:37) are then “prepared” by Him for condemnation. They are “storing up [God’s] wrath” against themselves (Rom. 2:5). In hell they will experience His wrath, and His power will be made known (cf. 9:17). God does not delight in wrath, and He did not choose some people to go to hell. Choosing (v. 22) should be rendered “willing.” Some are prepared by God for eternal judgment not because He delights to do so, but because of their sin. In view of their sin, which makes them “ripe” for destruction, God is willing to exhibit His wrath, and He will do so at the proper time.
The other alternative relates to God’s dealings with the objects (lit., “vessels”; cf. v. 21) of His mercy. God chose them as such in order to make the riches of His glory known and He prepared them in advance for glory (cf. 8:29-31; Col. 1:27; 3:4). The verb “He prepared in advance” (Rom. 9:23) is proetoimasen, “He made ready beforehand,” which God does by bestowing salvation. (The word “prepared” in v. 22 is katertismena, “are made or prepared or ripened.”)
Up to this point Paul had been speaking conditionally and objectively, but in verse 24 he was more direct—even us—because he and his readers were some of the vessels of mercy sovereignly chosen by God. God not only chose them but He also called them, including Jews and Gentiles. The point is that God’s sovereign choice was manifested not only in the Jews’ ancestry (in Isaac and Jacob, vv. 6-13), but also in Paul’s generation and today. To back up his conclusion and particularly the part about Gentiles, Paul quoted two verses from Hosea (2:23; 1:10). God directed Hosea to give his children symbolic names—one son Lo-Ammi (not my people) and the daughter Lo-Ruhamah (not . . . loved). These represented God’s abandonment of the Northern Kingdom of Israel to the Assyrian Captivity and Exile (Hosea 1:2-9).
God was not permanently casting away the people of Israel, however. In the verses quoted by Paul God promised to restore them as His beloved and as His people. By ethnic heritage the Gentiles were not God’s people, so Paul was led by the Spirit of God to apply these verses to Gentiles—and Jews also—who were sovereignly chosen by God and called to be His people in Christ. The quotation of Hosea 2:23 is rather free with the order of the clauses reversed to fit the application to Gentiles. Paul was applying these verses from Hosea to the Gentiles, not reinterpreting them. He was not saying that Israel of the Old Testament is part of the church.
Excerpt from:
Walvoord, J. F., Zuck, R. B., & Dallas Theological Seminary. (1983-c1985). The Bible knowledge commentary : An Exposition of the Scriptures. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
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