NOTES for Рим 9:16
In his letters Paul often says that salvation depends not on the human person but on God. Human efforts change nothing here and therefore are worth nothing. What does he mean? And does this mean that human activity in the matter of one's own salvation is useless? The question is not simple. In what sense does the apostle say that salvation depends only on God? Obviously in the same sense in which we might say that everything depends on Him. God in the world He created is absolute sovereign. Without His participation nothing good happens in the world at all.
That in which God does not participate directly automatically becomes evil, although this is not always visible at once. But Paul is speaking about the Kingdom. About God's Kingdom, where not only God's presence, not only His breath, but also His will are revealed in all fullness. By definition the human person is incapable not only of creating the Kingdom, but even of changing it by one iota if this change does not involve God's direct participation, the direct action of His will. Here the apostle is absolutely right: salvation is only from God. If He Himself does not open the doors of His Kingdom to a person, the person cannot open them by any efforts of his own.
And one can live in the Kingdom only with God's direct participation, in His immediate presence. But there is another side as well. Entering the Kingdom, becoming part of it, a person brings himself into its fullness. His own life. And the fullness of this human life depends not only on God but also on the person. And sometimes on the person more than on God. God is ready to open the fullness of the life of the Kingdom to everyone who seeks, but how much of this fullness a person can contain depends first of all on the person himself. God determines the measure of the fullness of the life of the Kingdom; we ourselves determine the measure of the fullness of our own life. The matter will not be delayed by God. It rests with us.