Romans 9-11 overview
- In chapters 9-11, Paul tries to deal with one of the most difficult problems that the Church has to solve—the problem of the Jews
- They were God’s chosen people; they had a unique place in God’s purposes; and yet, when God’s Son had come into the world, they had rejected Him and crucified Him.
- How is this tragic paradox to be explained? That is the problem with which Paul seeks to deal in these chapters
- They are complicated and difficult; and before we go into detail with them, it will be helpful to get a general idea of his argument
- One thing that’s important to note here; these chapters were not written in anger, but in heartbreak
- Paul was a Jew, and he could never forget his roots. He would have gladly laid down his own life, if by doing so, he could have brought other Jews to Jesus Christ
- Paul never denies that the Jews were the chosen people. God adopted them as His own; He gave them the covenants and the service of the Temple and the law; He gave them the presence of His own glory; He gave them the patriarchs
- Above all, Jesus was a Jew. The special place of the Jews in God’s plan of salvation Paul accepts as fundamental and as the starting point of the whole problem
- The first point he makes is this
- It is true that the Jews, as a nation, rejected and crucified Jesus
- But it wis also true that not all the Jews rejected Him; some received Him and believed in Him
- Paul then looks back on history and insists that racial descent from Abraham does not make a Jew
- Over and over again in Jewish history, there was in God’s ways a process of selection—Paul calls it election—some of those who were racial descendants of Abraham were chosen and some rejected
- Isaac was chosen but Ishmael was not. Issac’s son Jacob was chosen, but Esau was not; This selection had nothing to do with merit; it was the work entirely of God’s electing wisdom and power
- The real chosen people never lay in the whole nation; it always lay in the righteous remnant, the few who were true to God when all other denied Him
- In the days of Elijah, it was the 7,000 that had remained true to God and had not bowed the knee to Baal with the rest of the nation;
- it was an essential part of the teaching of Isaiah
- Isaiah 10:22 Israel, even if your people were as numerous as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return. Destruction has been decreed; justice overflows.
- Paul’s first point is that at no time were the whole people the chosen people. There was always selection, election, on the part of God
- Is it fair of God to elect some and to reject others?
- And if some are elected and others are rejected through no virtue or fault of their own, how can you blame them if they reject Christ, and how can you praise them if they accept Him
- Here, Paul uses an argument that we often recoil from. He basically says that God can do what He likes and that we have no right whatsoever to questions His decisions, however difficult to understand they may be
- The clay cannot talk back to the potter. Two objects could be made, one for a special purpose and another for an ordinary purpose; the objects themselves have nothing whatsoever to do with it
- That is what God has a right to do with us; Paul uses the example of Pharaoh and says that he was brought on to the stage history simply to be the instrument through which God’s avenging power was demonstrated
- In any event, the people of Israel had been warned in advance of the election of the Gentiles and of their own rejection
- Hosea 1:10 Yet the number of the Israelites will be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or counted. And in the place where they were told: You are not my people, they will be called: Sons of the living God.
- However, this rejection of Israel was not callous and haphazard. The door was shut to the Jews so that it might be opened to the Gentiles
- God hardened the hearts of the Jews and blinded their eyes with the ultimate purpose of opening a way for the Gentiles into the faith
- Stripped of all its non-essentials, the argument is that God can do what He likes with any individual or nation, and that He deliberately darkened the minds and shut the eyes of the Jews in order that the Gentiles might come in.
- What was the fundamental mistake of the Jews?
- Paul holds that thought the rejection of the Jews was the work of God, it didn’t have to happen. There is an eternal paradox here—at one and the same time all is of God and human beings have free will
- The fundamental mistake of the Jews was that they tried to get into a right relationship with God through their own efforts
- They tried to earn salvation, where the Gentiles simply accepted the offer of God in perfect trust
- The Jews should have known that the only way to God was the way of faith, and that human achievement led nowhere
- Isaiah 28:16 Therefore the Lord God said: “Look, I have laid a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation; the one who believes will be unshakable.
- Joel 2:32 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, for there will be an escape for those on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, as the Lord promised, among the survivors the Lord calls.
- No one can have faith until the offer of God has been heard; but to the Jews, that offer was made. They clung to the way of human achievement through obedience to the law; they staked everything on works; but they should have known that the way to God was the way of faith, for the prophets had told them so
- Here, Paul uses an argument that we often recoil from. He basically says that God can do what He likes and that we have no right whatsoever to questions His decisions, however difficult to understand they may be
- Again, it is to be stressed that all this was God’s arrangement and that it was arranged in this way to allow the Gentiles to come in. So Paul turns his attention to the Gentiles
- He tells them to have no pride. They are in the position of wild olive shoots which have been grafted into a garden olive tree
- They did not achieve their own salvation any more than the Jews did; they are actually dependent on the Jews; they are only branches that have been grafted on to the main stem; the root and the stem are still the chosen people
- The knowledge of their own election and of the rejection of the Jews is not something to produce pride in Gentile hearts. If that happens, rejection can and will happen to them
- Is this the end? Far from it. It is God’s purpose that the Jews will be moved to envy the relationship of the Gentiles to Him and that they will ask to be admitted t it themselves
- Deuteronomy 32:21 They have provoked my jealousy with what is not a god; they have enraged me with their worthless idols. So I will provoke their jealousy with what is not a people; I will enrage them with a foolish nation.
- In the end, the Gentiles will be the very interment by which the Jews will be saved
- Paul’s argument summarized
- Israel is the chosen people
- To be a member of Israel means more than racial descent
- There has always been election within the nation and the best of the nation has always been the remnant who were faithful
- This selection by God is not unfair, for He has the right to do what He likes
- God did harden the hearts of the Jews, but only to open the door to the Gentiles
- Israel’s mistake was dependence on human achievement founded on the law; the necessary approach to God is that of the totally trusting heart
- The Gentiles must have no pride, for they are only wild olives grafted into the true olive tree. They must remember that
- This is no the end
- The Jews will be so moved to wondering envy at the privilege that the Gentiles have received that in the end they will be brought in by them
- So, in the end, all will be saved (that trust in God)
- The glory is in the end of Paul’s argument. He began by saying that some were elected to repletion and some to rejection. In the end, he comes to say that it is God’s will that all should be saved
Thoughts from a Crosseyed Jesus Freak 