This Week's Devo

When We Cannot Trace His Hand

Trusting God’s character when His ways exceed our understanding

Romans 9:20–21

“No, don’t say that. Who are you, a mere human being, to argue with God? Should the thing that was created say to the one who created it, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ When a potter makes jars out of clay, doesn’t he have a right to use the same lump of clay to make one jar for decoration and another to throw garbage into?”

“That’s not fair!”

Few phrases come more naturally to us.

We learn to say it as children when someone receives a larger piece of cake, stays awake later, or gets a privilege we wanted for ourselves. We may become more sophisticated as adults, but the protest never completely disappears. We still carry an internal scale, constantly measuring whether life—and sometimes God—is distributing things fairly.

Romans 9 places that scale under tremendous pressure.

In Part One of our Romans 9 focus, Paul reminded us that God’s mercy cannot be inherited, demanded, or earned. Jacob did nothing to deserve the covenant position God gave him. Neither can we point to our heritage, goodness, or effort as the reason we have received salvation.

But Paul knows where our minds will go next.

If God chooses where He shows mercy, how can He hold anyone responsible for resisting Him?

“Well then, you might say, ‘Why does God blame people for not responding? Haven’t they simply done what he makes them do?’”

It is a difficult question—and Paul does not answer by shrinking God’s sovereignty until it fits comfortably within our understanding.

Instead, he changes our position in the conversation:

“Who are you, a mere human being, to argue with God?”

Paul is not saying that God is threatened by honest questions. Scripture is filled with faithful people bringing their confusion, grief, and doubt before Him.

He is confronting something deeper than a question. He is confronting the assumption that God must answer to us—that the created thing has the wisdom and authority to place the Creator on trial.

The clay does not possess the potter’s perspective.

It cannot see the design in his mind, understand the purpose behind his pressure, or imagine the final form taking shape beneath his hands.

But the Potter does.

To illustrate this, Paul points to Pharaoh:

“For the Scriptures say that God told Pharaoh, ‘I have appointed you for the very purpose of displaying my power in you and to spread my fame throughout the earth.’”

Pharaoh’s hardened heart became the backdrop against which God revealed His power and delivered His people.

But God did not take an innocent man who longed to obey Him and force that man to become evil. Before Exodus tells us that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, it repeatedly shows Pharaoh resisting God and hardening his own heart.

Pharaoh enslaved God’s people, ordered the deaths of their sons, dismissed God’s commands, and refused repeated opportunities to humble himself. His heart was already set against God.

God’s hardening did not create evil in an innocent heart. In judgment, God confirmed Pharaoh in the rebellious direction he had chosen—and then used even that rebellion to accomplish His purpose.

Pharaoh acted willingly.

God ruled sovereignly.

Both truths remain standing.

Pharaoh could resist God’s command, but he could not overthrow God’s plan. What he intended to use to preserve his own power, God used to display His glory to an entire nation.

This is where we encounter the mystery of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. Scripture does not ask us to choose one truth and discard the other.

God is sovereign over the unfolding of history.

Human beings are responsible for how they respond to the truth He reveals.

We may not understand exactly how those truths fit together, but our inability to explain God does not make Him inconsistent.

Still, how do we square this with the rest of Scripture?

Second Peter tells us that God does not want anyone to perish but desires everyone to repent. First Timothy says that God wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth. Ezekiel tells us that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked but desires that they turn from their ways and live.

These passages reveal the compassionate heart of God.

He does not delight in destruction. He patiently calls sinners to repentance. His invitation is genuine, and His love was displayed for the entire world when He gave His Son.

John 3:16 does not say that only those with the correct family history or an impressive spiritual résumé may come.

It says:

“Everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

Whosoever believes.

Romans 9 does not erase that invitation. In fact, the chapter ends by showing that Israel stumbled because they tried to become right with God through their works rather than by trusting in Christ.

Their unbelief mattered.

Their response mattered.

God’s sovereignty did not excuse their refusal to believe.

The next chapter will make the invitation even clearer:

“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Anyone who comes to Jesus in faith will receive mercy. No one will stand before Him and hear, “You trusted in Christ, but I refused to save you.”

Jesus promised:

“Those the Father has given me will come to me, and I will never reject them.”

The door is open.

The invitation is real.

The responsibility to respond remains.

And the salvation waiting on the other side is entirely the work of God.

We often want Scripture to give us a formula explaining exactly how divine sovereignty and human choice interact. Instead, it gives us something better: the unchanging character of the One who holds them both.

God is just.

God is merciful.

God is patient.

God is loving.

God is sovereign.

None of these attributes competes with another. He does not stop being loving when He exercises authority. He does not stop being just when He gives mercy. He does not become cruel simply because His purposes reach beyond what we can understand.

He is not like us—limited by time, knowledge, emotion, or perspective. He sees the beginning, the end, and every thread woven between them.

Isaiah reminds us:

“‘My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,’ says the Lord. ‘And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.’”

There will be moments when we cannot trace what God is doing.

We may pray for someone whose heart appears to become harder rather than softer. We may watch evil continue and wonder why God has not stopped it. We may see one person respond to the gospel while another walks away. We may look at our own circumstances and struggle to reconcile what God has allowed with what we know about His love.

In those moments, we face a choice.

Will we judge God’s character by the small portion of the story we can see?

Or will we interpret what we cannot understand through what He has already revealed about Himself?

The cross is our clearest evidence.

At Calvary, it appeared that evil had won. Religious leaders conspired, political authorities surrendered to injustice, and an innocent Savior was crucified. Human beings acted willingly and wickedly.

Yet God was sovereignly accomplishing the rescue of the world.

The darkest act in human history became the means through which God displayed His greatest mercy.

The disciples could not trace His hand on Friday.

But the character of God had not changed.

Sunday was already coming.

The Potter’s hands can be trusted even when we do not understand what He is forming. His authority is never separated from His goodness, and His sovereignty is never detached from His love.

This does not mean we will be able to explain every hardened heart, every painful circumstance, or every mystery of salvation.

It means we know the One holding them.

And when His ways exceed our understanding, we can return to what His Word has made certain:

He takes no pleasure in destruction.

He patiently calls sinners to repentance.

He gave His Son so that whoever believes may have eternal life.

He will never reject the one who comes to Him.

He is perfectly just, endlessly merciful, and completely sovereign.

We are the clay.

He is the Potter.

And when we cannot trace His hand, we can still trust His heart.