https://youtu.be/rKYDL3hQrhk
In our verse-by-verse study of Romans last time we completed our Expanded Translation of Rom 9:19; "Therefore you will say to me, Why does he still find fault? For who resists his purpose?" Paul is predicting what his opposition will say in their response to him in this verse.
Last time we noted that the basis for Paul's position is that every attribute of God is perfect, incorruptible, not subject to sin, human good or evil, is not contaminated by arrogance or jealousy or pettiness and is not subject to human power and human authority.
That means that God's integrity is perfect so He never makes bad or unfair decisions in His dealings with mankind even though men often accuse God of being unfair.
God's perfect righteousness is always the key to understanding God's perfect justice. God's righteousness is maintained at all times and nothing can compromise God's integrity.
God's perfect judicial righteousness is imputed to humans at salvation through faith in Christ, and that imputation is incorruptible even though we still have a sin nature infused biological body. Rom 4:5;
The possession of God's judicial righteousness makes it possible for God to deal in grace with believers and eventually to bless believers on the basis of their capacity from His Word of Truth. God's justice can impute blessing without compromising God's essence where God's judicial righteousness is imputed.
The only way for the believer to miss out on blessing from God is to try to reinvent the wheel by trying to use self-righteousness and legalism instead of God's judicial righteousness as the basis for their relationship with God.
The wheel is God's plan of grace that operates on the perfect axle of God's imputed judicial righteousness and when the believer attempts to use his own self-righteousness as the axle he reinvents the wheel by substituting his own legalistic ideas for God's grace plan that results in failing to exploit the imputation of God's judicial righteousness. 1Tim 4:1-5;
The first half of the book of Romans tells us how God's judicial righteousness is imputed. The last half of the book of Romans tells us how to exploit the imputation of God's judicial righteousness.
The parenthesis or the transition becomes the motivation and, the encouragement, from understanding, getting back to reality by facing the facts of God's Word of Truth. 2Cor 13:8; John 17:17-21;
Rom 9:20,21contain Paul's first response to the questions he predicted in verse 19. Rom 9:20: starts out with a word that is the combination of a series of three particles run together "men-ou-nge" (on the contrary).
This word is used to emphasize the right idea rather than the wrong idea in his answer to the questions. Paul is using a debater's statement here that means "You think what I have just said is wrong; but its actually what you are thinking that is actually wrong."
Following it we have an interjection and when an interjection follows a triple compound Pauline conjunction we know that we are in for something. It is an interjection with a circumflex accent. Normally we would simply transliterate it by the English "O" but of course that is insufficient.
This interjection in the Koine Greek is used before a vocative following a Semitic usage but this is not Koine Greek it is Attic Greek. So we have Paul taking an Attic Greek word and coining new words, and then adding them as an interjectory vocative before a vocative.
In addition the interjection is never used when addressing someone who is perfect, or who thinks he is perfect, or who is right. It is an interjection that is only used to address people who are wrong.
In the English language we have nothing comparable to this so we simply say "wrong" or "not" or make a buzzing sound.
Next is the interrogative "tis" (who) with the present active indicative of "eimi" (are). What he means by this is "You are wrong stupid. Who are you?"
The static present tense describes a fact, that some people are stupid and when people are stupid someone must have the courage to straighten them out and in this case it is Paul is doing the correcting.
The active voice: people produce the action of acting like a stupid irrational, imbecilic people. The indicative mood is the interrogative indicative that is implied as being something that he has been asked about.
With this is the predicate nominative from the personal pronoun "su" (you) that is proleptic so it means "You" or "Hey, you." A proleptic personal pronoun is similar to a vocative.
So we have " On the contrary who are you stupid who answers back to the God?" Paul is bringing out the fact that people who are impudent to the Lord God are stupid.
This is the present middle participle from the compound "antapokrinomai" (to answer back against, to contradict, sometimes it means to make an unjustifiable accusation against someone because you are impudent). At a minimum it means "who answers back" or "who contradicts."
The descriptive present tense describes what is going on when Paul is writing this. Arrogant people do not know what they are so they do not know what God is and because they do not know who and what they are they contradict the Lord God.
They are blasphemous Because they contradict and are impudent to the Lord God The indirect middle emphasizes the agent who is producing the action of the verb that in this case is the unbelieving Jews who are both arrogant and legalistic.
They overestimate themselves while at the same time underestimating God because anyone who underestimates God always overestimates himself.
This is a circumstantial participle with the dative singular indirect object from "Theos" (God) with the definite article "ho" (the) that is used in the generic sense to describe God's uniqueness by making it monadic. So the phrase is "he contradicts, he answers back, and he is impudent to the eternal God.
"You on the contrary O man, who are you who answers back to (contradicts) the God." The creature has no more right to challenge the eternal God as the creator than a pot has to challenge the potter who makes it. This concept is stated in Isa 45:8-12;
Isa 45:8; "Cause to trickle down, you heavens above, and let the blue skies rain down righteousness" (they were having a drought, and in this drought there was a shortage of righteousness) (God's imputed judicial righteousness); "let the earth open, and let salvation bear fruit" God's judicial righteousness imputed causes salvation to bear fruit, "and righteousness, to sprout together; I, Jehovah, have created it."
Isa 45:9: "Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker!" There it is, impudence toward God that is blasphemy, contradiction, arguing against God. It is inevitable that when there is arrogance there is no respect for legitimate authority.
"A pot among the pots of earthenware." The person who quarrels with God, the person who contradicts God, is a pot among the pots. "Will the clay say to the potter, What are you making? Or the thing you are making say, He has no hands?" This describes maximum impudence.
Isa 45:10; "Woe to him who says to his father, What are you begetting? Or to his mother, To what are you giving birth?" This is insane, but contradicting God is far more insane and people in our country do it all of the time when they contradict God's Word of Truth. John 1:1-3;
Isa 45:11; "This says Jehovah, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker: Ask me about things to come that my sons, or the work of my hands, be committed to me."
Isa 45:12; "It is I who made the earth (I know what I am doing), and I created man upon it" -- When He created man He created man with a free will. "I stretched out the heavens with my hands (God created the entire universe], and I gave orders to all of the stars."
Jer 18:6; O house of Israel, cannot I deal with you as the potter does with the clay? declares the Lord God. Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel."
Jesus Christ who controls history was warning them. When God created man He placed free volition and self-determination in his soul in order to resolve the angelic conflict.
Along with that man has to be aware of his own existence and the meaning of his existence in relation to his life so he has self-consciousness.
The mentality of the soul is contained in the two frontal lobes in the brain. In the Greek Bible the left lobe is called the nous that is the center for processing information. The right lobe that is called the heart is where permanent knowledge resides. It is where any and all wisdom that a person may have has resides. Psa 111:10;
There is also a frame of reference, memory center, vocabulary and categorical storage, along with norms and standards that instruct the conscience, and a launching pad for application.
There is also emotion that the Bible sometimes called "reins" or "kidneys" that is a responder to what a person has in the right lobe of their soul. The volition that is the basis for self-determination has positive and negative poles.
The real you is what you think that is based on the information that is in your soul You have privacy because every attribute of the soul is invisible to other people. Therefore you have perfect privacy to think what you want to think, to decide what you want to decide, and in the normal soul through self-consciousness you can relate it to your life and to your emotions.
In his grace God created everything and provided everything necessary for man's free will to be positive toward God, both at God-consciousness and gospel hearing.
That means that every person has equal opportunity to be positive or negative. There never was a person in the human race that did not have that equal opportunity.
Pharaoh did not instantly develop scar tissue of the soul. Scar tissue is the product of persistent negative volition so it is the opposite of the advance to spiritual maturity that takes time because it is the product of persistent positive volition.
Scar tissue in the soul develops over a period of time so Pharaoh's hardness of heart was created by long series of negative free will choices including God-consciousness, gospel hearing, and the challenge of Moses to release the Jews from slavery in Egypt.
God could have instantly destroyed Pharaoh and his army and released the Jews from Egypt instantly.
But there were other things to consider. There were others who needed to come out of Egypt with the Jews as believers, and therefore a series of disciplinary miracles were deployed to demonstrate that scar tissue of the soul is consistent and never changes. But evil negative volition can also be used by God to reveal himself to the entire Egyptian empire and the entire world.
Pharaoh always hardened himself with a fortification of negative volition as soon as he recovered from the disciplinary miracles. He would give in when the plague was administered and then, when the pressure was off, he would return to saying no.
Therefore God hardened his heart in the true sense of supplying more miracles in the administration of discipline so that Pharaoh could say no more than anyone in history. God kept him alive so that he could say no.
Each no intensified the administration of disciplinary miracles or plagues resulting in greater manifestation of God's power. Each plague was greater than the previous one.
Greater manifestation of God's power resulted in greater evangelism both in Egypt and throughout the world.
While Pharaoh was saying no from the scar tissue of his soul many Egyptians, Ethiopians and Jews who were under his authority of Pharaoh were saying yes to the gospel. But at the same time Pharaoh's hardness of heart produced arrogance, and arrogance produced impudence, and impudence rejected God's authority.
When a person becomes so arrogant from scar tissue of the soul that he is divorced from reality, inevitably being divorced from reality means rejection of legitimate authority. Rejection of legitimate authority is the first indication of national degeneration from fragmentation.
If God chooses to harden Pharaoh's heart He has a just and righteous reason compatible with His own perfect integrity to do it. He has perfect integrity and therefore from His perfect integrity He is fair; He is just; so He always gives everyone a fair shake.
Consequently, no one has a right to make unjust accusations against God but if they do their Impudence may require God to respond as He did in the Pharaoh's case. Pharaoh used his own negative volition to build scar tissue of the soul that the Lord God responding by using it to demonstrate His power and to evangelize the world.
Pharaoh's free will expressed negative volition on six occasions prior to the statement that "God hardened his heart." Pharaoh had individual freedom from his own self-determination. He was not only a free agent but as a king he was a sovereign free agent, therefore he had virtually unlimited self-determination.
Paul finds himself facing similar opposition from the Jews in his own generation. In effect, Paul is comparing the Jews of his generation to the evil Gentile ruler of the Egyptian empire in the 18th dynasty.
The physical or racial seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob erroneously assumed that spiritual heritage was on the basis of physical birth. Their error was in not understanding that spiritual birth was the predicate for spiritual heritage.
Therefore it is the spiritual seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that is comprised of those who believe in Christ, who are the recipients of the unconditional promises and the covenants of God to Israel.
To enjoy the spiritual heritage of Israel requires the imputation of God's judicial righteousness and eternal life. Only those Jews who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, the God of Israel, will have the promised heritage of Israel.
Only the arrogance of the unregenerate Jews would answer back and contradict God's perfect plan so Paul directly challenges the legalistic Jewish unbelievers, the Judaisers who were only Abraham's genetic physical descendants and not his spiritual descendants on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ.