What does Romans 9:28 mean?
Paul is in the middle of a quote from Isaiah 10:22–23 about the sons of Israel. He is showing that even in the Old Testament era, God was clear that only a remnant of the Israelites would be saved, not the entire offspring of that nation. In verse 24, Paul wrote that God has called out His people from both the Jews and the Gentiles. He has called them to faith in Christ and to receive His mercy.Why do we need mercy from God that is only available in Christ? That is answered here in the quote from Isaiah: judgment is coming. The Lord will carry out his sentence on the earth for the sins of humanity. It will come quickly and without delay, in terms of God's timing. In other words, when the moment for judgment comes, God will not hesitate.
This is a startling thing to some who have grown up Jewish and under the law. As Paul showed in Romans chapter 2, many Jews of his era believed they would not face God's judgment simply because they were born Jewish. Paul, though, makes clear that all who are not in Christ—including those who have not been called out from among the Jewish nation to be a remnant of the Jewish people—will receive God's wrathful justice.
Romans 9:19–29 deals with the issue of whether or not God's sovereign choice to bless some, and not others, is ''fair,'' in the way we often use that term. Paul's essential argument is that God is God, and as the Creator, He has the right to do as He wishes with His own creation. A potter can choose how to use clay, and that clay has no cause to complain that it was chosen for one purpose or another. In the same way, God has the absolute right to choose whom He will save. Quotations from Hosea and Isaiah are used to show that this sovereignty extends to God's plan to include Gentiles in the plan of salvation.
Romans 9 begins with Paul describing his anguish for his people Israel in their rejection of Christ. After describing all the privileges God has given to the Jewish people as a nation, Paul insists that God will keep those promises. However, not every person born to Israel belongs to Israel, he writes. God reserves the right to show mercy to some and not others, as Paul demonstrates from Scripture. God is like a potter who creates some vessels for destruction and others for glory. God has called out His people from both the Gentiles and the Jews to faith in Christ, the stumbling stone.
