In Romans 9, Paul is explaining a doctrine that inevitably makes natural man protest: loudly and vociferously. No natural man reads this and says, “Hey, I like this doctrine. This makes perfect sense to me.” The native, fallen instinct is to grumble and argue and talk back to God. Last week, in verses 14-18, Paul had dealt with one objection: if God elects Jacob and doesn’t elect Esau – before they were born and apart from them having done anything good or bad – well that’s not fair. The assumption is that God owes all men equally the opportunity to be saved. And Paul responds by saying, “No, He doesn’t.” God has the perfect, sovereign, freedom to give mercy to some and justice to others – and there is no injustice in it. God is free to act as God.“