Willing, Running, and Mercy

Next let us look at the words, “So then it does not depend on the one who wills, or on the one who runs, but on God who shows mercy.” For those who seize on this say: if it does not depend on the one who wills, or on the one who runs, but on God who shows mercy, then being saved is not up to us. It rests on the way we were put together by the one who made us the sort of things we are, or on the choice of the one who shows mercy when he pleases. [a]

These people should be asked the following. Is wanting good things a good thing or a bad one? And is running, in the wish to reach the goal in the pursuit of what is good, praiseworthy or blameworthy? If they say it is blameworthy, their answer runs against what is plainly in front of them, since the saints do want and do run, and clearly do nothing blameworthy in doing so. If they say it is good to want good things and to run after what is good, we will ask them how a nature that is perishing wants better things — for that is an evil tree bearing good fruit, if wanting better things is a good thing. They may make a third answer: that wanting what is good and running after what is good is one of the things in between, neither fine nor bad. To this we must say that if wanting what is good and running after what is good is a thing in between, then its opposite is also a thing in between — that is, wanting what is evil and running after it. But wanting what is evil and running after it is not a thing in between. So neither is wanting what is good and running after it.

That, then, is the defense I think we can offer for the words, “So then it does not depend on the one who wills, or on the one who runs, but on God who shows mercy.” Solomon says in the book of Psalms — for the Song of Ascents is his, and we will quote its words: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain; unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman keeps watch in vain.” He is not turning us away from building, or teaching us not to keep watch to guard the city in our soul. He is showing that what is built without God, and gets no guard from him, is built for nothing and watched to no purpose — since God may rightly be entered as the Lord of the building, and the Master of all things as the commander of the city’s guard.

Suppose, then, we were to say that a particular building is not the work of the builder but of God, and that this city’s suffering no harm from its enemies was not the achievement of the man who guarded it but of the God who is over all. We would not be wrong. It is understood that something was done by human means as well, while the credit for the brave work is gratefully carried back to God, who brings it to completion. In the same way, since human willing is not enough to reach the goal, and the running of men who are like athletes is not enough to lay hold of the prize of God’s upward call in Christ Jesus — for these things are finished with God standing by to help — it is well said that “it does not depend on the one who wills, or on the one who runs, but on God who shows mercy.”

It is as if the same thing were said about farming, as in fact it is written: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants is anything, nor the one who waters, but God who gives the growth.” We could not say with any reverence that the crops coming in full is the work of the farmer, or the work of the man who watered; it is the work of God. So too our own completeness does not come about with us doing nothing, and yet it is not finished off by us: God works the greater part of it.

And so that this may be more clearly believed to be what is meant, we will take our illustration from the art of steering a ship. Set the blowing of the winds, the mildness of the air, and the brightness of the stars — all of them working together for the safety of those aboard — beside the steersman’s art: what share could that art be said to have in bringing the ship home to harbor? Even the steersmen themselves, out of reverence, seldom dare to admit that they saved the ship. They refer the whole of it to God — not because they did nothing, but because what came from providence was beyond all measure greater than what came from their art. And in the matter of our own salvation, what comes from God is beyond all measure greater than what comes from what is up to us. That, I think, is why it is said, “it does not depend on the one who wills, or on the one who runs, but on God who shows mercy.”

For if we have to take the words, “So then it does not depend on the one who wills, or on the one who runs, but on God who shows mercy,” the way those people suppose, the commands are pointless; and Paul himself blames some for having fallen away, and approves of others for having stood upright, and lays down rules for the churches, all for nothing. It is for nothing too that we give ourselves to wanting better things, and for nothing that we run. But Paul does not give this advice for nothing, censuring some and approving others; nor do we give ourselves for nothing to wanting better things and to pressing on toward the things that matter more. So they have not understood the passage rightly.

Besides these there was the saying, “Both the willing and the working are from God.” And some say: if the willing is from God and the working is from God, then even when we will something evil and work something evil, these have come to us from God; and if that is so, we are not free to choose for ourselves. Then again, when we will better things and do the things that matter more — since willing and working are from God — it is not we who have done the better things. We only seemed to, and God made a gift of them. So on that side too we are not free to choose for ourselves. [k]

To this we have to say that the apostle’s words do not claim that willing evil is from God, or that willing good is from God — and the same for working the better things and the worse — but that willing in general and running in general are from him. For just as we have from God our being living creatures and our being human, so also we have willing in general and, so to speak, moving in general. And just as, having motion because we are living creatures, and having, say, the moving of these limbs, hands or feet, we could not reasonably say that we have from God this particular motion — moving to strike, or to kill, or to take what belongs to someone else — but that we received from him the general thing, motion itself, which we then use for better or for worse: so we have received from God the power to work, in that we are living creatures, and we received willing from the Maker, while it is we who use willing, and working as well, either on the finest objects or on their opposites.

There is still the apostle’s saying, which will seem to pull us toward not being free to choose for ourselves, where he raises an objection against himself and says: “So then he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens. You will say to me then: why does he still find fault? For who has resisted his purpose? On the contrary — who are you, man, to answer God back? Will the thing molded say to the one who molded it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ Or does the potter not have the right over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?” For someone will say: if the potter makes from the same lump some vessels for honor and some for dishonor, and God in the same way makes some for salvation and some for destruction, then being saved or being destroyed does not come about through us, and we are not free to choose for ourselves. [o]

We must ask the man who handles these passages that way whether it is possible to think of the apostle as saying things that fight with each other. I do not suppose anyone will dare to say so. But if the apostle does not utter contradictions, then how — on the reading of the man who takes him this way — can he reasonably find fault, blaming the man in Corinth who had committed sexual immorality, or those who had fallen away and had not repented of the indecency and the lack of self-control they had practiced? And how can he bless as men who have done well the ones he praises, as he does the household of Onesiphorus, saying: “May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chain; but when he was in Rome he searched for me eagerly and found me. May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day”? It cannot belong to one and the same apostle to blame the sinner as deserving blame, and to accept the man who has done well as deserving praise, and then to say, as though nothing were up to us, that it is through the Maker’s responsibility that one vessel is for honor and another for dishonor.

And how is this sound: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive back the things done through the body, according to what he did, whether good or bad” — if those who have done bad things came to that pitch of action because they were created vessels of dishonor, while those who lived by virtue did what was good because from the beginning they were made ready for this and had become vessels of honor? And again, how does what is said elsewhere not clash with the view these people draw from the words we have quoted — that one vessel is in honor and another in dishonor through the Maker’s responsibility? Elsewhere it says: “In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; and some for honor, some for dishonor. So if anyone cleanses himself, he will be a vessel for honor, set apart, useful to the Master, made ready for every good work.” For if the man who has cleansed himself becomes a vessel for honor, and the man who has left himself uncleansed becomes a vessel for dishonor, then as far as these words go the Maker is not to blame at all.

For the Maker makes vessels of honor and vessels of dishonor — not from the beginning, according to his foreknowledge, since he does not on that basis condemn beforehand or count righteous beforehand, but he makes vessels of honor of those who cleansed themselves, and vessels of dishonor of those who left themselves uncleansed. So it is out of older causes at work in the fashioning of the vessels for honor and for dishonor that the one came to be for honor and the other for dishonor.

But once we grant that there were certain older causes for the vessel of honor and the vessel of dishonor, what is out of place in going up to the subject of the soul and thinking that older causes for Jacob’s being loved and Esau’s being hated came about — for Jacob before he entered a body, and for Esau before he came to be in Rebecca’s womb?

At the same time it is plainly shown that, so far as the underlying nature goes — just as there is one clay lying under the potter’s hands, out of which lump vessels for honor and for dishonor are made — so, with the one nature of every soul lying under God’s hands, and, so to speak, with the reasoning beings being one lump, certain causes of older date made some of them to be for honor and others for dishonor. [v]

But if the apostle’s words carry a rebuke when he says, “On the contrary — who are you, man, to answer God back?”, perhaps they teach us that the man who has freedom to speak before God, being faithful and having lived well, would not hear, “Who are you to answer God back?” Moses was such a man: “For Moses spoke, and God answered him with a voice.” And as God answers Moses, so a holy man also answers God. But the man who has not gained this freedom of speech — plainly either because he has lost it, or because he is looking into these things not out of love of learning but out of love of a quarrel, and therefore says, “Why does he still find fault? For who has resisted his purpose?” — that man would deserve the rebuke that says, “On the contrary — who are you, man, to answer God back?”

To those who bring in different natures, and who use this text to support their view, our answer must be this. Suppose they hold on to their point that those who are being destroyed and those who are being saved come from one lump, and that the Maker of those who are saved is also the Maker of those who are lost; and suppose he is good who makes not only spiritual beings but also beings made of dust, since this follows from their view. Even so, it is possible that a man who, out of certain earlier right conduct, had now become a vessel of honor, but then did not act in keeping with it or do the things that go with a vessel of honor, should become in another age a vessel of dishonor. And it is possible, on the other side, that a man who was here a vessel of dishonor because of causes older than this life should, after being set right, become in the new creation “a vessel for honor, set apart, useful to the Master, made ready for every good work.”

And perhaps those who are Israelites now, not having lived worthily of their noble descent, will fall out of the family, changing, as it were, from vessels of honor into a vessel of dishonor; while many of the Egyptians and Idumeans of the present day who have come near to Israel, once they bear fruit more fully, will enter the assembly of the Lord, no longer counted Egyptians and Idumeans but Israelites. So on this view it is because of their choices that some go forward from worse things to better, while others fall from better things to worse; and others again are kept in what is good, or climb up from good to better; and others stay on in what is evil, or from evil become worse as their wickedness pours on.

In one place the apostle does not claim that becoming a vessel for honor or for dishonor rests with God, but carries the whole thing back to us, saying, “So if anyone cleanses himself, he will be a vessel for honor, set apart, useful to the Master, made ready for every good work.” In another place he does not claim that it is up to us, but seems to carry the whole thing back to God, saying, “The potter has the right over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor.” And since what he says is not contradictory, we have to bring the two together and give one complete account out of both. [ab]

Neither what is up to us apart from God’s knowledge, nor God’s knowledge by itself, forces us forward, unless we too bring in something of our own toward the good. Nor does what is up to us, apart from God’s knowledge and apart from the use we make of the power that is properly ours, make anyone turn out for honor or for dishonor. Nor does what rests with God, all by itself, fashion anyone for honor or for dishonor, unless he has our own choice as a kind of material that can go either way, leaning toward the better or toward the worse. Let this much stand as enough for what we have set out on the subject of our freedom to choose.