Commentary on the Gospel of John

                                 Chapter Two

                                                                                                                                      Verses 24-25 continued

All of this put together raises the question: How does God create each individual human? Obviously, God creates every living human with his or her individual personality and characteristics. Every human is unique which makes them very valuable.

In Romans 9:14-24, God describes exactly the reasons why He creates every individual human. God creates the living souls and spirits of every human in His image by putting His own good ideas into His makeup of each of their systems. God observes them as they emerge into the world being subject to evil and eternal death. Their good systems become influenced by their inherited evil, spiritual deaths. As they commit sins, some of these living souls become hardened; that is, they let the sin of pride cause them to ignore their good natures, and they give their lives over to practice evil and even rebellion against God. Others adhere to the good part of their natures which causes some of them to repent and believe when they hear or read the gospel so that they become saved by grace. Most humans saved by grace were already good persons, but the Holy Spirit made them realize that they were also sinners who could only be saved by Christ. However, most good persons do not become saved by grace, but some evil persons do.

Somewhere in between these two extremes, God creates every individual human. Nevertheless, God uses every individual human for His own purposes; that is, to effect His Will whether they become extremely evil, as was Pharaoh, or extremely good, as was Moses. But God also provides His mercy for every living human that He uses to effect His Will. The phrase "the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction" of verse 22 means all living humans whom God must confine to the regions of death because of their unrepentant sins and evil. The word "destruction" does not mean that God will throw their living souls and spirits into an eternal lake of fire. This word means that God will use His fiery wrath to dissolve their systems in order to separate their repentant, living souls and spirits for Him to recreate to live on His recreated earth from their dead and evil natures that He will cast into the lake of fire. II Peter 3:9-13; I Corinthians 3:11-15; Revelation 5:11-14; Psalm 75:3; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 20:11-15; Revelation 21:1-5.

The phrase "vessels of mercy" of verse 23 can only mean every living human that God ever creates because He creates them all as a "vessel" for His image with His goodness and faith that He puts into every system. God can never lose anything He has ever created. Ecclesiastes 3:14; Romans 11:36. God knows exactly how to cause every living human that He ever creates to repent and believe in Christ of their own free will whether by His grace or by His appearance to them as the Lamb of God. John 5:24; Revelation 5:11-14. Only a good and living nature can do something good like repent and believe in Christ. Spiritual death, which is totally evil, can never repent because it can only do evil. Matthew 12:31-32.

All of this put together illustrates the meaning of John 2:25 which states, "He knew what was in man."