Potters are responsible for hand-crafting and designing beautiful pieces of art, but where does it all start? If you have ever watched someone make pottery or have participated in a pottery class yourself, you know that before pottery becomes a beautiful, ornate piece of decoration, it begins as an ugly clump of gray clay. As you watch the potter throw the clay onto the wheel, they begin to shape and form the ball of clay into whatever shape they desire. Eventually, it becomes solid after being fired, allowing the potter to decorate it and send it off to Hobby Lobby for us to buy.
One interesting thing I discovered while reading Romans 9:19–23 is that God describes Himself as a potter who has the ability to shape and form the clay according to His purposes. Upon studying this further, we see that this imagery also appears in the prophet Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 18, God sends the prophet to observe a potter as he crafts a vessel from raw clay. God makes this assertion to Jeremiah in verse 6: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the LORD. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.”
When examining this claim by God, what should we learn from it? In the context of Romans, Paul discusses how God can make vessels for honorable use or vessels for dishonorable use. In the context of Jeremiah, God asserts His authority over His people, just as a potter has authority over the clay. An interesting idea for us to consider is how God describes His response to the actions of His people, whom He compares to clay. In Jeremiah 18:7–10, God explains that if a nation turns from its evil, He will relent from the disaster He intended to bring against it, similar to what we see with Nineveh in the book of Jonah. However, God also has the right to bring judgment upon those who turn from obedience to evil. So, when examining ourselves, we should ask: What kind of clay are we?
A few chapters later, in Romans 12, we see Paul explain that Christians are not to be conformed to this world but are to be transformed by the renewal of our minds. When we present ourselves as living sacrifices to God, we become like clay willing to be molded by the Potter and used faithfully in His kingdom.
Throughout Scripture, we find warnings about the consequences of unfaithfulness toward God (Jeremiah 18:15–17). Therefore, we must make sure that our allegiance is placed in the right hands. We must allow ourselves to be molded according to the will of God rather than being conformed to the will of the world.
Christian Cherry
Dalraida church of Christ is a congregation of Christians that meet in the mid-town area of Montgomery, Alabama. Our goal and purpose is to seek and follow God and His Word in everything that we do in life.