The gospel of God and the nation of Israel
9
📚I am speaking the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience 📖 also is bearing witness for me in the Holy Spirit, 2 📚that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart; 3 📚for I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, 4 📚who are Israelites. To them belongs the adoption 📖, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the Law, and the service of God, and the promises. 5 📚Theirs are the fathers, and from them, as concerning the body, came Christ, Who is over all, God, forever blessed 📖. Amen.9:4-5 Here Paul more fully answers the question in Rom 3:1. As a nation, he says, Israel still has certain advantages. These advantages have not been lost because Israel rejected Christ. In these verses Paul indicates that the things he mentions still belong to that nation.⚜
God is absolutely sovereign
6 📚It is not as though the Word of God had failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel.
9:6 Israel as a people with all its advantages failed to receive Christ and His gospel. And God’s kingdom was taken from them and given to others (John 1:11; Matt 21:42-43). Does this mean that God’s Word had failed and His promises were broken? Paul says no. He then draws a distinction between two different kinds of Jews – those who were natural descendants of Israel and those individuals from among them God chose and called to Himself. The latter are the true Israel. See also Rom 2:28-29; Matt 3:9; John 8:39-41.⚜
7 📚Nor are they all the children of Abraham because they are the offspring of Abraham; but, “through Isaac your offspring will be called”. 8 📚That is, those who are the children of the flesh are not the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. 9 📚For this is the word of promise: “At this time I will come, and Sarah will have a son”.
9:7-9 See Gen 21:12. Abraham had other children (Gen 16:15; 25:1-2). But God chose only Isaac to be Abraham’s heir and spiritual descendant. He was the child of “promise” – Rom 4:18-21; Gen 15:4; 17:15-16; 18:10; 21:1-3. In other words, the covenant and promises God made with Abraham did not include all his natural descendants, but only the ones God chose.⚜
10 📚And not only this, but also when Rebecca had conceived by one man, by our father Isaac 11 📚(the children being not yet born, never having done any good or evil, so that the purpose of God according to his choice might stand, not by works, but by him who calls), 12 📚it was said to her, “The older will serve the younger”. 13 📚As it is written, “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated”.
9:10-13 The same truth applied to Isaac’s descendants. God chose only one of them, Jacob, to be the heir of Isaac and the leader of His people, the one in Abraham’s line to inherit God’s promises. The reason God chose Jacob and rejected Esau had nothing to do with the works they might do later. In His wisdom and grace God chose one and not the other, and God’s Word was fulfilled in the one He chose.
Observe that God did not say “the older will go to hell, the younger to heaven”, but “the older will serve the younger”. The subject of chapters 9–11 is not individual salvation, but God’s dealings with peoples and nations.⚜
9:13 Mal 1:2-3. On God’s hatred see notes at Ps 5:5; Mal 1:3; Luke 14:26. God had a special love for Jacob which He showed in history. The history of Esau’s descendants shows God did not have that same love for them. Paul quotes Malachi to prove the fulfillment of v 12 in history.⚜
14 📚📚What, then, shall we say? Is there injustice with God? Absolutely not! 15 📚For he says to Moses,
“I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom
I will have compassion”.
16 📚So then mercy is not of him who wills it, or of him who runs for it, but of God who shows mercy.
9:16 God alone knows to whom He should show mercy and whom He should punish. And His mercy is free – He is not obligated to show it to anyone. Men cannot earn it by their efforts or force God to show it because they desire it. We should not get the idea from this that God is hardhearted and reluctant to show mercy. It is certain that if anyone will forsake his sins and turn to God He will have mercy on him (Rom 11:32; Isa 55:7). God does not have a severe will which is contrary to His merciful, compassionate, loving will. He shows mercy when He can, punishes when He must (see such notes and references at Rom 10:20-21; Gen 6:7; Jer 48:30-39; Ezek 18:30-32; Luke 19:41-44). We can be sure that God’s sovereignty will never work against His love, or cause Him to do a single unjust act toward anyone.⚜
17 📚For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very same purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be declared through all the earth”.
18 📚Therefore he has mercy on whom he chooses to have mercy, and hardens whom he chooses to harden.
9:18 See note on the hardening of Pharaoh at Ex 4:21. Pharaoh wanted God to be merciful and remove the plagues He sent on the country, but he did not want to repent and serve God. God punished his sin by abandoning him to further sin and hardness of heart. Compare Rom 1:21-26, 28. We can be sure that God will harden no one who does not fully deserve such punishment. And God is free to act as He thinks best in all cases.⚜
19 📚You will, then, say to me, “Why does he still find fault? For who has resisted his will?” 20 📚But who are you, O man, that you reply against God? Shall the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this”? 21 📚Does not the potter have power over the clay, of the same lump 📖 to make one vessel for honour, and another for dishonour?
9:19-21 Paul knew that men will try to blame God for their sinful condition and hardness of heart, though actually they are the ones who are responsible for them. Compare Gen 3:12-13. Paul also knew that man the creature has no right to say anything against God the Creator. Even among men a potter can make the kind of pots he wants, and the pots have no say in the matter, and should have no say. Compare Isa 29:16; 45:9; 64:8; Jer 18:4-6.
We know from the account of creation in Genesis that God as a divine Potter made no bad vessels (Gen 1:31). A good, wise, and loving potter will not make ugly, depraved pots, and God is a good, wise, and loving Potter. If any pots are bad we can trace the source of their badness to man and to Satan, not to God.
Man’s place is in the dust before God, confessing his own guilt and inability, and realizing that God is God and that He alone can make us what we ought to be. Instead of speaking against God or trying to blame Him for our condition, we should put ourselves willingly and believingly in His hands. He will then make us vessels for noble and glorious purposes.⚜
22 📚What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? 23 📚And did so that he might make known the riches of his glory to the vessels of mercy, whom he had already prepared for glory, 24 📚even us, whom he has called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles 📖?
9:14-24 The rejection of the bulk of the nation of Israel in this age is perfectly just. The question of God’s justice was bound to come up (v 14). The answer is that God is absolutely sovereign and may do as He pleases with men. All are sinners (Rom 3:9, 23), and God could justly reject all. Instead of that He has chosen some to be His people. And this is perfectly just. No one has any right to reply against God and accuse Him of injustice (vs 20,21). God is God. He is the great King over the universe (Ps 47:1-3; Isa 40:22-23; Dan 4:34-35; Mal 1:14), and can do and does do according to His will.
God’s choosing some and not all people has nothing to do with the doctrine of karma, with the idea of reincarnation, of previous births. (These have no reality. See notes at Job 11:12; John 9:3.)
It also has nothing to do with the arbitrary will of a tyrant or dictator. God is sovereign and can do as He wills in all matters. But we should understand that He is also love (1 John 4:9). And He always acts in accordance with His nature. He delights to show mercy when it is right to do so (Rom 10:12; 11:32; Ex 34:6-7; Micah 7:18). And when it is not right to do so, because of the unrepentant determination of men to go on in their sins, and because His justice demands that such people be punished, His loving heart is grieved (see notes on Jer 48:30-39; Luke 19:41).
We should understand that these verses in Romans do not stand alone, and we must interpret them in the light of the whole Bible. Whatever may be the mysteries of God’s sovereignty, foreknowledge and predestination, of one thing we may be sure – they will never cause Him to act contrary to the revelation He has given of Himself in His Word. God can do no wrong. All He does is based on absolute justice and absolute love. On that mighty rock our hearts can rest.⚜
9:22-24 God has a good purpose in all His dealings with mankind. It was beneficial to the whole world that people understand that God has great anger against sin and that He is a God who can do anything. He chose to display His wrath and power against Pharaoh and the Egyptians (v 17), and others in the history of mankind.
Here Paul distinguishes two groups “the vessels of wrath...prepared for destruction”, and “the vessels of mercy whom he prepared for glory”. In other words, believers and unbelievers, those whom God has chosen for salvation and those He has not chosen. Concerning believers Paul says God has prepared them for glory (compare 8:17-18). Concerning unbelievers he says only that they are prepared for destruction, but he does not say who prepared them. Since he does not say God did so, it is possible to assume that someone else prepared them, or else that they prepared themselves for that punishment.
On the basis of verses like Rom 1:18-32; 2:4-11; Prov 1:24-33; Ezek 18:30-32; Matt 23:37; 1 Tim 2:3-4 we can believe that people prepare themselves for destruction. See also Matt 13:38-39. See notes on God’s wrath at Rom 1:18; Num 25:3; Deut 4:25; Ps 90:7-11; John 3:36.⚜
25 📚As he says also in Hosea,
“I will call them my people,
who were not my people;
and call her ‘loved one’
who was not loved”.
9:25 Hos 2:23. “Not my people” here means those people who were not of God’s people Israel.⚜
26 📚And
it will happen that in the place
where it was said to them,
‘You are not my people’,
there they will be called the children
of the living God.
27 📚Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel:
Though the number of the children of Israel
be like the sand by the sea,
only a remnant will be saved;
28 📚For he will finish the work,
and cut it short in righteousness;
because the Lord will make
a short work on the earth.
29 📚And as Isaiah said before,
Unless the LORD of hosts 📖 had
left us offspring,
9:29 Isa 1:9. The nation had become so corrupt that if God had not chosen a few from among them the whole nation would have been utterly destroyed (Gen 19:23-25).⚜
Israel’s unbelief
we would have been like Sodom,
and become like Gomorrah.
30 📚What, then, shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not follow after righteousness, have laid hold of righteousness, the very righteousness which is by faith. 31 📚But Israel, who followed after the law of righteousness, has not reached the law of righteousness. 32 📚Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as if it were by the works of the Law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone.
9:30-32 The Jews worked at their religion. They had God’s law and set about to become acceptable to God by trying to keep that law. But their attempts to be righteous by their works ended in utter failure (Rom 3:9, 19, 20). The Gentiles did not have God’s law and were not much concerned with righteousness. But when they heard the gospel of Christ they believed and “obtained” righteousness. God counted them righteous by faith (Rom 3:22, 26, 28; 5:1). The Jews, on the other hand, rejected the “stone” God put in Jerusalem, the Lord Jesus Christ (John 1:11; Matt 21:42; Acts 4:11; 1 Pet 2:6-8). Notice that Paul does not say the Jews failed because God predestined them to failure, but because of their own ways.⚜
33 📚As it is written,
Look, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone
and rock of offense,
and whoever believes in him will not be
put to shame.
9:1-3 Paul has concluded his presentation of the salvation God has provided for mankind. Now in chapters 9,10,11 he takes up the question of why God’s nation Israel rejected Christ and His gospel, and what the future of that nation will be.⚜