A look at 2 Timothy 1:8-11 where Paul talks about the fact that we are saved and called with a holy calling.

2Pe 1:5 But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge,
2Pe 1:6 to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness,
2Pe 1:7 to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.
2Pe 1:8 For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
2Pe 1:9 For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.

Romans 9 is perhaps the passage which most lends itself to interpretations which portray God as a capricious, arbitrary tyrant. This passage had long troubled me, because if “Love” has any meaning that relates to desiring the good of others, then it was hard to reconcile these interpretations with the Scripture that “God is Love”.

I have found a commentary which to me is very helpful in interpreting correctly this difficult passage.

I was brought up in a church which taught many good things from the Word of God, for which I thank God. But as we grow and seek God, we may discover that many of the things that we were taught are systems of INTERPRETATION of the Word of God, and not the Word of God itself. There is a difference, and the difference is important. What is at stake here is nothing less than the knowledge of the character of God.