Rom 9: God selects individuals from out of groups

Romans 9 is especially controversial, so I'll be constructing this exegesis around quotations from the text of the NET Bible, in something of the form of a commentary. The focus of my examination is on the question of whether the text addresses the election of individuals; my brother in Christ asserts that it does not.
This post has taken me a long time to compose, and I apologize; but in order to claim any kind of adherence to the text I had to reread, research, and analyse a good part of Romans.

9:1 I am telling the truth in Christ (I am not lying!), for my conscience assures me in the Holy Spirit – 9:2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 9:3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed – cut off from Christ – for the sake of my people, my fellow countrymen, 9:4 who are Israelites. To them belong the adoption as sons, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the temple worship, and the promises. 9:5 To them belong the patriarchs, and from them, by human descent, came the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever! Amen.

This passage has no obvious connection to the immediate controversy, but let's use this to bring in the larger context of Romans. The previous chapter just finished explaining how God's election is sure, and nothing could separate "us" from God's love. I think we'll have to exegete that in the future, since it's a passage very commonly cited by Calvinists and appears to make very personal and even individual claims. For now, let us note the obvious connection that Paul has just said that nothing could cut us off from God's love in Christ, and now he says that he almost wishes he could be personally cut off, if only it would save his people the Israelites. Here Paul ties things back into one of the central arguments of Romans, the question of the status of Jews and Gentiles in the plan of salvation and how that impacts the claim that God is just (I'll make that claim without exegesis, because I know it's not disputed by either of us).

Paul's concern here is clearly that some Jews are not recipients of salvation, a topic touched on as far back as Romans 3. And his response to that clearly echoes his praise of the benefits given to the Jews in Romans 3:1.

9:6 It is not as though the word of God had failed. For not all those who are descended from Israel are truly Israel,  9:7 nor are all the children Abraham’s true descendants; rather “through Isaac will your descendants be counted.”

But now Paul considers the specifics of the promises made to Abram/Abraham. The promise was made to Abram before Isaac or Ishmael were conceived; yet only Isaac inherited the covenantal promises. And here we hit a passage which, in context, directly addresses the controversy. What does Paul mean when he says that "not all who descended from Israel are truly Israel"? Clearly, he's proven (and he mourns) that not all of the descendants of Abraham receive salvation; but now he takes it further, to Abraham's grandson, Israel (aka Jacob). It makes sense that, because one of Abraham's sons was not the child of promise, not all of his descendants would be saved; but all of Israel's sons are part of the promise, none of them explicitly excluded by the terms God gave Abraham.

We therefore see that the exclusions from God's redemptive plans are not predictable based on which group they fall into. So how are they chosen?

9:8 This means it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God; rather, the children of promise are counted as descendants.

Isaac and Jacob were both children of promise, so Paul here defends God's righteousness in rejecting Ishmael and Esau; but he also makes a deeper point which he will expand through the rest of this, that God selects His children apart from the flesh. We will see that when God declares that a group will be blessed, God can provide members of that group naturally or miraculously; and God can make natural members of that group receive none of the benefits.

9:9 For this is what the promise declared: “About a year from now I will return and Sarah will have a son.” 9:10 Not only that, but when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our ancestor Isaac – 9:11 even before they were born or had done anything good or bad (so that God’s purpose in election would stand, not by works but by his calling) – 9:12 it was said to her, “The older will serve the younger,” 9:13 just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

 Here Paul's argument first proves that not every child of the flesh fulfills the promise (Ishmael was a child of the flesh, but wasn't the promised son, because he was born at the wrong time and of the wrong mother); next, he shows that even where two children are identical in all humanly knowable ways (and equally innocent), God was able to choose one of them and reject the other. Now, is this a corporate rejection? When Malachi said that God rejected Esau and accepted Jacob, he was explaining a corporate rejection of Esau's national descendants; but when Paul quotes him here, Paul is explaining an individual rejection and acceptance, because Paul identifies the selection by circumstances that do not apply to nations, that is presence within a mother's womb.
In addition, the argument that Paul has already made clearly shows that "not all from Israel are of Israel", so the mere fact that Jacob/Israel was accepted says nothing about the children of his flesh, except that the promise of God would somehow be carried through at least some of them. Some of them would be accepted, according to the promise. Others, unmentioned in the promise, would be rejected. And the example of Esau (unlike the example of Ishmael) shows that the rejection need not be based on good or bad works or anything about the heritage of the person.

9:14 What shall we say then? Is there injustice with God? Absolutely not!

 The injustice that Paul is speaking of -- or rather, the injustice that he's picturing other people asking about -- is the injustice of promising a covenant with an entire group, but then selecting individuals inside that group for salvation. Not all of the children of Abraham were covenantal, and this was entirely vindicated because Ishmael fell outside of the terms of the promise. Not all of the children of Isaac were covenantal, and this was vindicated because when God chooses to show special favor, it is indeed both special and voluntary to God. I have to suspect (and this is just my idea) that God planned Jacob and Esau to be twins for just this argument: nobody can claim that either one deserves more either according to the flesh or according to some hard rule. If God wanted the flesh to determine salvation, He could have made both brothers stand or fall together, or He could have made one evil and one good; but instead, if any is good, it's the hardworking but slightly foolish Esau -- and he loses the inheritance by God's determination even before his birth. And then, to drive home the point, at the very next generation all of Jacob's children are given the covenant, showing that God could have given the covenant to both Jacob and Esau.

9:15 For he says to Moses: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 9:16 So then, it does not depend on human desire or exertion, but on God who shows mercy.

 Human desire and exertion are unambiguously not attributes of groups. These verses can only be talking about how God shows mercy on individuals as part of His plans.

 9:17 For the scripture says to Pharaoh: “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may demonstrate my power in you, and that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.” 9:18 So then, God has mercy on whom he chooses to have mercy, and he hardens whom he chooses to harden.

And here, if Paul's argument has any continuity at all, we must see an argument about an individual's redemption or damnation. God's plan of redemption clearly called for Pharaoh to be hardened; and indeed so he was. This isn't an argument about the people of Egypt, but about Pharaoh himself. And here Paul explains himself more fully; God can not only have mercy, but He can also harden.

9:19 You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who has ever resisted his will?”

Paul here is addressing an objection to his argument. The form of this objection gives a clear clue as to the argument that Paul is attempting to convey. Clearly, the reader is expected to see that Pharaoh is made in such a way that he cannot do anything but oppose God; and clearly, the reader is expected to react in at least wonder that God would hold anyone responsible for an action that they could not control.

9:20 But who indeed are you – a mere human being – to talk back to God? Does what is molded say to the molder, “Why have you made me like this?” 9:21 Has the potter no right to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for special use and another for ordinary use?

Paul has two responses. The first one is to point out that anyone asking that question has reversed their priorities. Why should we protest when we find that God made us to act as we actually are? To go outside of Paul's text and express my own argument, I'd say that it would be more protestable if we found that God made us one way, and then caused us to act another way instead -- but this is what God says He does as part of salvation, taking our stone hearts and replacing them with hearts of flesh.

9:22 But what if God, willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath prepared for destruction?

Now, the immediate context of this verse is Pharaoh's opposition to God's commands, and the resulting carrying out of God's plan. So we see Paul's second response to the question: that God's plan is at least sometimes carried out by hardening hearts so that they will oppose Him; and furthermore, that the hearts so hardened were (in at least this one case, but Paul gives us no reason to take this as a special case) prepared for that hardening as part of God's purpose for their existence.
Some people believe that God elects people to condemnation, just as He elects His people to salvation. I believe this verse doesn't show anything about that; Pharaoh was an unbeliever, and already condemned as such. God's special provision for wrath didn't mean that God was going to send him to "an extra hot spot in hell"; his spot in hell was already earned. Pharaoh, like all of his subjects and all of us, was already planning to spend his life performing obstinate rebellion against the God he should obey; God simply made sure, as part of "raising him up" that the rebellion he would perform would fall along the lines God needed for His plan.

9:23 And what if he is willing to make known the wealth of his glory on the objects of mercy that he has prepared beforehand for glory – 9:24 even us, whom he has called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? 9:25

 Paul here does two things. First, he turns the argument around, asking why we should protest that God makes some people out of a rebellious clay when we don't protest that God remakes some rebellious clay into vessels of glory; both are equally within His rights as the Maker. Second, he ties this argument into the broader argument, to look back at the question of how the election of individuals to salvation fits into the election of groups (both Jews and Gentiles) to covenantal membership.
And here the verse turns on a single word; God has called us from the Jews and the Gentiles. Paul is not saying that God has saved the Gentiles, or displaced the Jews; Paul is saying that we are a new people who are taken from all of the existing ones ("Jew" and "Gentile" completely cover the possibilities). What forms the people of God? Not physical descent; not adherence to some rule of membership; not human choice or effort (verse 16); but rather the freely given mercy of God, given not to a previously existing group, but given to the individuals that God has freely chosen for His mercy.

As he also says in Hosea: “I will call those who were not my people, ‘My people,’ and I will call her who was unloved, ‘My beloved.’” 9:26 “And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’”

First Paul cites God's promise, given through the Jewish prophets, for some of the Gentiles to form a new people who belong to God...

9:27 And Isaiah cries out on behalf of Israel, “Though the number of the children of Israel are as the sand of the sea, only the remnant will be saved, 9:28 for the Lord will execute his sentence on the earth completely and quickly.” 9:29 Just as Isaiah predicted, “If the Lord of armies had not left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, and we would have resembled Gomorrah.”

...and next Paul shows that the prophets promised that the Jews, the promise-bearers, would only fulfill that promise through a remnant.

9:30 What shall we say then? – that the Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness obtained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith, 9:31 but Israel even though pursuing a law of righteousness did not attain it. 9:32 Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but (as if it were possible) by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone, 9:33 just as it is written, “Look, I am laying in Zion a stone that will cause people to stumble and a rock that will make them fall, yet the one who believes in him will not be put to shame.”

What indeed will we say? Although Romans, in the large view, is an explanation of how God is entirely just and justified in His plan of salvation; Romans many times, including chapter 9, examines God's election of individuals in order to vindicate it.