We're back. Thanks for listening to Ask Pastor John. I'm a longtime pastor and author, John Piper. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Today's question is a bit technical, so bear with us, but it's a really important one, too. It's weighty. Here it is. "What active role does God play in both the redemption of sinners and in the perdition of sinners?" Casey asks it.

Here's his question. "Hello, Pastor John. I was studying Romans 9, verses 22 to 23. I see that the Greek word Paul uses for 'prepared' in verse 22, 'katertismina', is different from the word he uses for 'prepared' in verse 23, 'proitoi misin'. The first root is artiso. The second is etymus.

Additionally, the first is passive, the second is active. Can you explain the significance and meaning of why Paul would use different words and tenses here? Specifically, does this imply that the vessels of destruction were prepared differently than the vessels of mercy?" Well, first, for those who feel like this question is just too technical, they're going to click us off here right away, let me ask for just a couple minutes to show otherwise, because it relates to one of the most ultimate, important things you can ever think about.

So what's at stake? What's at stake is how God's power and wisdom and justice and mercy are at work in those who finally perish and how they are at work in those who are finally saved. And few things could be more important than clarifying the relationship between God's sovereignty and the final destiny of human beings.

The text—and I believe this—the text in all the Bible that comes closest to getting at God's ultimate design or purpose in His sovereign work in salvation and in judgment is Romans 9, 21 to 23. So I'm going to read it because this is what is being asked about. "Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another vessel for dishonorable use?

If God, desiring to show His wrath and to make known His power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction in order to make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy which He has prepared beforehand for glory…" And then the sentence breaks off.

And that's why most translations don't start with "if God desiring," they start with "what if God desiring," because they're implying rightly that if He has done it this way, then no legitimate objection can be raised. That's the gist. So here's the essential, amazing, ultimate statement being made by Paul about God's ultimate purposes.

He's saying God aims to show—very important word—to show, especially for you, Tony, who wrote the book, right? Right. The spectacle. Everybody should buy Tony's book. God aims to show His wrath against sin and to show His power as supreme and to manifest His patience and His mercy, that is, all the riches of His glory, He aims to show these.

That's His purpose in verse 22. That's the word used in verse 22, "to show," and this is why He created the world and is governing history and is saving and judging the world. All of these attributes are mentioned as part of God's plan—wrath, power, patience, mercy, glory. In other words, God's ultimate aim in salvation and judgment is to display and communicate to His creatures the entire range, the entire panorama of His attributes or His being.

And I just want to pause here and say, oh, oh, the value, the value of grasping and believing that this is God's ultimate great goal in the universe. It changed my life totally 50 years ago to get a handle on God's God-centeredness in creating the world. No attribute of God that can be revealed for His glory shall be left in obscurity.

His aim in creation and salvation and judgment is to reveal all the fullness of His glory, including the justice of His wrath and the beauty of His mercy. Now what Cayce is drawing our attention to in the question is that this revelation of the fullness of God's glory involves the demonstration of righteous wrath in judgment on one group of people and the demonstration of righteous mercy on another group, and you can see from the word "mercy" and "wrath" that neither deserve salvation.

You wouldn't need mercy if one were good, and wrath means the other's not good. Neither's good. One group gets justice, the other gets mercy. Neither group gets worse than they deserve. And Cayce points out that the different description of the two groups in verses 22 and 23 of Romans 9, one group are vessels of wrath prepared or fitted for destruction, the other group are vessels of mercy which God has prepared beforehand for glory.

And Cayce is pointing out that the Greek words for "prepared" or "fitted" in the first case and "prepared" in the second case are not only different verbs, but the first is passive and the second is active. Let me read it again so you can hear it. Vessels of wrath which are prepared or fitted, passive verb, for destruction, and then vessels of mercy which he prepared, active verb, for glory.

And he asks why? Why different verbs and why active and passive? And my answer might be frustrating because I'm going to say I don't think we can be dogmatic about why, precisely why, Paul chose two different verbs which refer to preparing or fitting two different groups of vessels having similar meaning.

One for destruction, one for glory, one passive, one active. So let me say what I think with a high level of certainty it does not mean, and then make a suggestion with less certainty about what it does mean. It does not mean—so the fact that God has a passive verb in fitting folks for destruction and an active verb in fitting them for vessels of mercy, it does not mean that God is not the ultimate decisive sovereign cause of the existence of the two groups.

And the reason I say that is this. The entire context of Romans 9 points in the other direction. For example, verse 14, "Jacob I loved, Esau I hated," God active in both. Verse 18, "He has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills," God active in both cases.

Verse 21, "The potter makes out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use," God active in both. So I think it's clear that the decisive actor behind the passive verb "prepared for destruction" is God. The point of the verse is not to say, "God, God, prepared vessels of mercy for glory, but some other force prepared vessels of wrath for destruction." Verse 18 is clear.

He has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. God is the decisive actor behind both kinds of vessels. Now that's what I'm high level of certainty, confident, that it does not mean, namely, that God isn't the decisive cause behind both vessels. But my suggestion for why there are two different verbs, one passive, one active, is this, that Paul does indeed believe that the work of God is different in the way vessels are fitted for destruction and the way they are fitted for glory.

God is active and decisive in both, but not in the same way. The very grammar of verses 22 to 23 suggests this. The preparation of vessels for destruction is not God's ultimate goal. Verse 23 begins with, "In order that there are vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order that he might make known the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy," which means that the work of wrath and judgment on the vessels of destruction is serving a greater end, namely, making known the riches of glory for the vessels of mercy.

God's ultimate aim is the revelation of glory for vessels of mercy. So God's ultimate act is not preparation for destruction, but preparation for glory. They are not equally ultimate and, I'm suggesting, not pursued in the same way, and that's what the two different verbs are pointing to. The passive verb in the phrase "vessels of wrath prepared for destruction" does not point to God's inactivity, but to the hiddenness, the mystery of his activity.

God ultimately does the preparing for destruction, but he does it in complete holiness and justice and righteousness and wisdom in ways that we simply cannot fully fathom. That is, he does it without in any way compromising the moral accountability of his creatures, and they remain responsible for loving God over self, and he remains sovereign and holy over all their motives.

God is really God, and man is really responsible. That's what I think is ultimately behind these two different verbs. Thank you, Pastor John. That's very helpful. And thanks for mentioning my new book as well, "Competing Spectacles." As many of you know, I never intended to become a podcast host.

I'm really just a writer. That's my training, my experience. I write books. But we started this little podcast six years ago and just tried it out for a year to cover Pastor John when he lived in Knoxville, and well, here we are, some 1,400 episodes later, and we're still podcasting and still writing books as well.

Well, of those 1,400 episodes, one of the episodes that has really garnered a lot of attention over the past year is episode 1173, "My Midlife Crisis and Counsel for Yours." You may remember it. God has used that episode in a particularly powerful way, which has been evidenced in really a flood of emails from men in their midlife years wanting Pastor John even to talk more about it, and he will.

We return to the midlife crisis theme when we return on Friday. We'll see you then.