EXPOSITORY THOUGHTS ON ROMANS CHAPTER 9

(Quotes from Scripture are taken from the NAV)

 1I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit— 2I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, 4the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. 5Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.

Paul now turns his thoughts to the Jews.  They are his kinsmen in the flesh.  He knows that they have rejected Christ by crucifying Him, but he still has great sorrow for them.  After all the centuries of being the guardians of the truth of God, the recorded voice of God, the Scriptures and the promises of God, it brings great sadness to Paul that so few by comparison are being saved through Christ.

Paul has a genuine love for the people of his own race.  He is a Jew, and he feels deeply for his own people, in the same way that we would feel for our own countrymen in the same situation.   He knows the promises of God that were given to the Jews, and how they were so privileged at one time.  He feels deeply that they lost their privileges with God through their disobedience.  He also knows that in Christ, the Jew can receive a double blessing:   he can be in Christ, and take advantage of the wonderful heritage of the Jewish people.  When a Jew becomes a Christian, then all the meaning of the Law and the Prophets take shape for him.  He then sees the whole plan and purpose of God like no other person can.    Therefore Paul has a deep yearning for the Jewish people, that they might enter into the wonderful blessing of being right with God and covered with the Righteousness of Christ.

Even though the Jews were his worst persecutors, Paul is prepared to step aside from his place in Christ if it means that the Jews could come into the blessing of what God has for them in Christ.   The Jews were more than countrymen living in the same nation.   There was a prestige, something special about being a Roman citizen, and Paul knew this because he was a Roman citizen as well as a Jew.  What's more, he was a citizen by birth.   But he saw his Jewish heritage as something much more personal.  He sees his fellow Jews as brothers.  There is a much tighter bond among Jews than among any other race or country in the world.   A fellow Jew is not just a fellow citizen, or a fellow member, but is a brother.

Paul lists the heritage of the Jews.  The human ancestry of Christ came through the Jewish nation.  He could never have come from any other nation, because the Jews would never have accepted Him at all.   They would never have accepted a Gentile messiah in a million years!   There is something important about Jesus being a Jew, because the foundation of the early church was made up of Jews, who knew the heritage and the history of God working with them through the ages before Christ.   This is one of the reasons that we have an Old Testament as well as a New Testament.  If the Jewish nation was not so important, the Old Testament would have disappeared into obscurity, read only by the Jewish priests in Israel.    We would not know anything about how God worked among His chosen people for all those hundreds of years before Christ came.

Paul sees that the Jewish history culminates in the coming of Christ, and his dying on the Cross for our salvation.   This was planned in the mind of God even before the Jewish nation was formed out of the sons of Jacob.  The Father had the plan of salvation in His mind all along.  He was always the God of love, although this was not clearly seen during Old Testament times.  But Paul now sees the love of God working right through the history of Israel, as he realises more and more how Christ has revealed the love of the Father to the Jews.

6It is not as though God's word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. 7Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children. On the contrary, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." 8In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring. 9For this was how the promise was stated: "At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son."

Just because the Jews failed to maintain their faith in God, it does not mean that the Word of God has failed.   The integrity of God's word does not depend on our success or failure to bring it to pass.   It has integrity in itself.  This is because God has integrity in Himself and that does not depend on whether we are successful or not in taking full advantage of the leading of the Holy Spirit.   If we make mistakes, it is not because the Holy Spirit has made an error.  For example, we might be led to another country in a grand missionary enterprise and know that we are led by the Holy Spirit to do that.  Perhaps some of the team lose the vision and the whole enterprise fails.  This does not mean that the Holy Spirit was mistaken in leading the team out there in the first place.   The grace of God can be frustrated by those who lose the vision and try to go their own way instead of listening to the voice of the Spirit.

Paul makes a distinction between those who are descended from Israel (Jacob) in the natural, and those who are part of the spiritual Israel.   He is saying this because it is an error to depend on natural genealogy for being spiritually right with God and part of the true Israel.   Paul is hinting at different definition of what is the true "Israel".   He uses another example.  He says that just because someone is a descendant of Abraham, it does not mean that they are Abraham's children in the true, godly sense.   Paul uses Isaac, the child of promise, as the starting point of the true Israel.   Paul puts it another way.  He says that it is not the natural children who are actually God's children, but it is the children of promise who are regarded as Abraham's true offspring.  Paul quotes the actual promise.

10Not only that, but Rebekah's children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. 11Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God's purpose in election might stand: 12not by works but by him who calls—she was told, "The older will serve the younger." 13Just as it is written: "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."

Paul is delving into the history to extend his argument.  He points out that it was not necessarily the natural first born who is going to inherit the promise.  God had decided that Jacob, the second born was the one who was going to receive the blessing.  He had decided that before the twins were born.  Therefore it was not anything that they could have done that could have decided their future.  It was all the plan and purpose of God.   Paul uses this to show that things take place because God determines them out of His own will.  It has nothing to do with what any other person does.   What we do does not determine what the will of God is for us.   God calls and we obey.   This is what He did to Rebekah.  He told her that the older will serve the younger.   Paul quotes the actual Scripture.

 14What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15For he says to Moses,
   "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
      and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." 16It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. 17For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." 18Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.

So, is God unjust because He decides to use one person to carry on the line of his plans and purposes, and to leave another person by the wayside?   Is He unjust because He does not prefer one person over another?   Paul is quite definite about it.   God is not being unjust.   He decides on whom He will have mercy, and on whom He will have compassion.   God makes the decision base on what He decides is most appropriate.  We know that God has the highest motives for doing anything, and we have to continually trust that even though things might happen that we do not understand.

Paul is saying that the outworking of God's plans and purposes do not depend on man's desire, or effort.  There is nothing that anyone can do to influence God when He is deciding how He wants to do things, and who He wants to use to accomplish it.   We are all dependant on God's mercy.  Paul quotes the reference to why He raised up Pharaoh, a Gentile king.  He was not concerned about how Pharaoh might have felt about things personally.  Pharaoh was an instrument of God to be used for His purpose.  Once God had used him to show His might and power, Pharaoh passed off the stage of Jewish history.

This is a great lesson for us to learn when we are aspiring to ministry and to be used of God.  If we fit into God's plans and purposes, then we will be used.  If not, we will be put aside.  We have no say in that.  It is not according to our desire or effort to gain a ministry for God that will determine whether we have one or not.   Even in the area of who is going to be saved and who is going to be lost is a decision that God has reserved for himself and no other.  This is a problem for those who believe that a person can be saved just by deciding to accept Jesus into their life.   If God has not initiated the transaction, then nothing can happen, and the person is merely engaging in an empty and godless religiosity which will get him nowhere.   This is a real challenge for those who go for easy believerism - that a person can be saved today, and then lost tomorrow.

For us to receive mercy from God, He has to firstly give it.  If He does not give it, we will never receive it.  He is completely free to have mercy on the person He decides to have mercy, and He is quite free to harden the heart of the person He decides to harden, and no person in heaven or in earth can question His decision or his reasons for doing so.  This is what makes God sovereign and not dependent on the judgment of any other person.   This has to be an important lesson for us to learn about the nature and character of God.

 19One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?" 20But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?' " 21Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?

There is the problem that someone who is disadvantaged by the sovereignty of God in the way He deals with people will question why God blames them for what has happened.   This might come especially from the Jews who believe that they have faithfully kept the Law and the teaching of the Prophets, and yet they are numbered among those who suffered because of the downfall of the nation of Israel.   They say it is okay for those who have consciously and knowingly resisted the will of God, but in reality, who can resist the will of God, because He is almighty and it is impossible to resist the will of God when God, in His power, can make things happen anyway.   Therefore, if we are helpless under the mighty hand of God, why blame us if they cannot make the grade?

Paul does not try to defend God at all.  This is the big mistake that many Christians make.  They try to defend Christianity to the world when people criticise what goes on in the church.   We are commissioned to preach the gospel and to tell people the good news of what Jesus has done for us.  We have not been given the role of defending God, or trying to justify anything that He does, or does not do in the world.   People ask about why is there so much suffering in the world, and why doesn't God do anything about it?   A wise pastor once answered such a question with this:  "These things are irrelevant.  What is relevant is your attitude to Christ."   He did not try to defend God.   He put it right back on the person who was criticising.

Paul gets right to the root of the issue when he asks who is it that has the right to talk back to the God who created him.  Notice that in the book of Job, after everyone else has had their say, God comes upon the scene.  He does not defend or explain His actions.  He puts the same question as Paul does to Job's friends.   He asks the question: "Who is he who tries to give counsel without knowledge?"  We don't have the right to say to the Person who created us, "Why did you make me this way?"   God has the right and freedom to create what He wants and how He wants.  Paul uses the potter and the clay to make his point.  Of course, we have never heard a clay pot answer back to the potter.   Some pots are used to decorate the throne rooms of kings, and other pots are made to hold waste.  Do the pots that are made to hold waste have the right to criticise the maker for making them for that use?   No.  They silently and obediently perform the function to which they are designed.

22What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? 23What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— 24even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? 25As he says in Hosea:
   "I will call them 'my people' who are not my people;
      and I will call her 'my loved one' who is not my loved one," 26and,
   "It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them,
      'You are not my people,'
   they will be called 'sons of the living God.' "

Paul then turns to the positive side of what God is doing.   He says that if God wants to show patience and forbearance to those who richly deserve His wrath and eternal punishment, then He has the right to do so.  Sometimes when someone commits a crime, especially against us, we want that person thrown into prison and the key thrown away.   We become disappointed when the judge imposes a community sentence.  We are tempted to think that the criminal has got away with just having his wrist slapped with a wet bus ticket.   But what silences us is the knowledge that the court judge has the right to impose whatever sentence is appropriate within the law.  He does not have to impose the maximum sentence.  If he thinks that the person deserves a second chance, then he will give it, and there is no one who is able to criticise him for it.

So in the same way, when God has the absolute right to give the ultimate punishment to rebellious sinners who richly deserve divine wrath and hell, He decides to show His glory and demonstrate His mercy by providing a way where they can stand before God, completely forgiven and covered with Righteousness.   Paul implies that this plan of redemption was set in place in advance;  even before sin entered into the world.

Paul then reveals that this applies to "us", that is you and me.   He says that we were called of God.  Those called of God to be redeemed and to become children of the Father, are called from the Jews and also from the Gentiles.  This was quite unacceptable to the Jews because they saw the Gentiles as being people who were totally rejected by God, and that they the Jews were God's special chosen people.  What really upset them was the prospect that Gentiles were going to be treated on the same level as the Jews;  that Gentiles would be able to stand before God without fear, shame, or any sense of inferiority, alongside Jewish people.

Paul uses Scripture to show the foundation of his teaching.  He quotes from Hosea 2:23.   "I will all them My People who are not my people".   This is a direct prophetic reference to Gentiles being redeemed and fully justified before God and having equal standing as the Jews with God.    Therefore, those whom God refers to as "sons of the living God" will be both Jew and Gentile.

27Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:
   "Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea,
      only the remnant will be saved.
 28For the Lord will carry out
      his sentence on earth with speed and finality."

Paul uses Isaiah 10:22,23 to show that although Israel are in a strong place now, the nation will be totally decimated and only a remnant of the original mass of people will be saved.  He also says that the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality.     The Lord will wait a very long time with much patience before He finally decides to act against rebellious sinners.  But when He decides to act, then it is with speed and a definiteness that gives no further chance for anyone to escape.  This specially applies to the second coming of Christ.  God has extended the day of grace with exceptional patience, but the day will come like a thief in the night, and once it happens, people will suddenly find themselves facing the judgment throne of God;  and there is no going back from there.

29It is just as Isaiah said previously:
   "Unless the Lord Almighty
      had left us descendants,
   we would have become like Sodom,
      we would have been like Gomorrah."

Paul again quotes from Isaiah (1:9) to show the mercy of God to Israel in that if God had decided to exercise His right to deal with them as they deserved, then they would have had no descendants and the Jewish people would have become extinct, just like the whole community of people who lived in Sodom and Gomorrah.   When God exercised His judgment on those cities, they were completely wiped out and not even a trace of the cities themselves has ever been found.  Paul says that Israel could quite easily have become like that if God had not acted on the basis of His mercy.

 30What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; 31but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it. 32Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the "stumbling stone." 33As it is written:
   "See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble
      and a rock that makes them fall,
   and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame."

Paul then summarises.   He says that salvation has come to the Gentiles who did not originally pursue it.  When he took the gospel to the Gentile nations, they were not expecting it.   They were just not interested in what God was doing with Israel.  When Jesus conducted His earthly ministry, it was the Jewish people who came to listen to Him.   Any Gentiles there were present by accident.  The earthly ministry of Jesus was not directed at the Gentiles.   He had to be persuaded to heal the Syrophoenician woman's daughter, who appealed to Him.  He did not have to heal her, but He did because of His compassionate and merciful character.

The Gentiles who heard the Gospel, accepted it by faith, and quickly came to the place of trusting in and relying on the Word of God for their salvation.   They entered right into the promise of Abraham even though they were not officially the sons of Abraham.   But Israel, who had all the background of God's dealing with them, and His Law, did not attain it.   Paul says they did not attain it because they did not pursue it by faith as the Gentile did.  The Jews tried to obtain redemption and salvation by works - that is, by trying to keep the Law.

The stumbling stone was Jesus.   He brought a different view of God.  He presented God as their Father.  He showed them a different way to become right with God than what was expected.  Many Jews, especially the religious leaders, could not bring themselves to believe that what Jesus was telling them was the truth.  They could not accept that He was referring to Himself as the Son of God.   This fulfilled the prophecy in Isaiah 8:14 and 28:16.

The ending thought of the chapter is that the person who trusts in Jesus for his redemption and salvation will never be put to shame.  That is the person who will be able to stand before God in the day of judgment without any fear of condemnation, because he trusts in the faithfulness of God that He is true to His promises, that the person who confesses the Lord Jesus and believes in his heart that God has raised Him from the dead, will be saved.    The full reality of that salvation will be there for him on that great day when Jesus comes again.

[End of Chapter 9]