Friday DIVE – April 11, 2025 – Romans 9:1-18

 

 

WELCOME . . . and THANKS for joining us for another dive into the Bible.

 

TONIGHT’S TEXT

Romans 9:1-18  NKJV   

 

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GOING DEEPER

1.  The CONTEXT … A summary, as per The Enduring Word Commentary … 

A.  In Romans 7, we saw that it is futile to try to please God by living in the flesh

B.  In Romans 8, we saw some of the the benefits and blessings of living life in the Spirit contrasted with living life in the flesh.  Among the blessings we noted are …

1. 1. 1.  no condemnation for us (who are in Christ) …
      2.  the Spirit helps us  in our weakness …
      3.  all things work together for good for us (who love God …) … 
      4.  those of us whom he justified will be glorified … 
      5.  nothing can (or will ever) separate us from the love of God.  

C.  In Romans 9, Paul shifts the focus … from us as believers to Israelites who did not believe.

 

Back to our text for tonight …    

Romans 9:1-18  NKJV   

 

 

What, in that passage, stands out for you?

• For me … it’s the frequency of the word “will” or “wills” and its link with purpose … and the apparent link between “will” and “purpose”  and “election” and “purpose”
• For William Barclay … there are 8 steps (points) that summarize the passage …

(i) Israel is the chosen people.

(ii) 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.

(iii) This selection by God is not unfair, for he has the right to do what he likes.

(iv) God did harden the hearts of the Jews, but only to open the door to the Gentiles.

(v) 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 glory is in the end of Paul’s argument. He began by saying that some were elected to reception and some to rejection.  In the end he comes to say that it is God’s will that all men should be saved.  

 

 

Before we dive in …

 

THE PROBLEM OF THE JEWS

In Romans 9-11, Paul tries to deal with one of the most bewildering problems that the Church has to solve — the problem of the Jews.  They were God’s chosen people; they had 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 begin to study them in detail, it will be well to set out the broad lines of the solution which Paul presented.

One thing we must note before we begin to disentangle Paul’s thought — the chapters were written not in anger but in heartbreak.  He could never forget that he was a Jew and he would gladly have laid down his own life if, by so doing, he could have brought his brethren 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 economy of salvation Paul accepts as an axiom and as the starting-point of the whole problem.

The first point which he makes is this — it is true that the Jews as a nation rejected and crucified Jesus,  but it is also true, that not all the Jews rejected Him; some received him and believed in him, for all the early followers of Jesus were Jews.  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 — whereby some of those who were racial descendants of Abraham were chosen and some rejected.  In the case of Abraham, Isaac, the son born according to the promise of God, was chosen, but Ishmael, the son born of purely natural desire, was not.   In the case of Isaac, his son Jacob was chosen, but Esau, Jacob’s twin, was not.  This selection had nothing to do with merit; it was the work entirely of God’s electing wisdom and power.

Further, 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 others denied him.

• It was so in the days of Elijah, when seven thousand remained faithful to God after the rest of the nation had gone after Baal.
• It was an essential part of the teaching of Isaiah, who said: “Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant Of them will be saved” (Isa. 10:22; Rom. 9:27).

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 men 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 at which the mind staggers, and from which we quite properly recoil.  Bluntly, it is that God can do what he likes and that man has no right whatever to question his decisions, however inscrutable they may be.  The clay cannot talk back to the potter.  A craftsman may make two vessels, one for an honourable purpose and another for a menial purpose; the vessels have nothing whatever to do with it.  That, said Paul, is what God has a right to do with men.  He quotes the instance of Pharaoh (Rom. 9:17) and says that he was brought on to the stage of history simply to be the instrument through which God’s avenging power was demonstrated.  In any event, the people of Israel had been forewarned of the election of the Gentiles and of their own rejection, for, did not the prophet Hosea write: “Those who were not my people I will call `my people’, and her who was not beloved I will call `my beloved’” (Hos.1:10;  Rom.9:25).

However, this rejection of Israel was not callous and haphazard.  The door was shut to the Jews 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.  Here is a strange and terrible argument.  Stripped of all its non-essentials, it is that God can do what he likes with any man 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?  This may seem a curious question to ask in view of what we have just said.  But, paradoxically, Paul holds that though the rejection of the Jews was the work of God, it need never have happened.  He cannot get rid of the eternal paradox — nor does he desire to — that at one and the same time all is of God and man has 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; whereas 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.  Did not Isaiah say: “No one who believes in him will be put to shame”? (Isa.28:16; Rom.10:11.)  Did not Joel say: “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved”? (Joel2:32; Rom.10:13.)  True, no man can have faith until he hears the offer of God; 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.

Once again it is to be stressed that all this was God’s arrangement; and that it was  so arranged  to allow the Gentiles  to come in.  Paul therefore turns to the Gentiles.  He orders 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; in point of fact they are dependent on the Jews; they are only engrafted branches; the root and the stem are still the chosen people.  The fact of their own election  and the fact of the rejection of the Jews are not  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 at the relationship of the Gentiles to him and that they will ask to be admitted to it themselves.  Did not Moses say: “I make you jealous of those who are not a nation; with a foolish nation I will make you angry”? (Deut.32:21; Rom.10:19.)   In the end the Gentiles will be the very instrument by which the Jews will be saved. “And so all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:26).

So Paul comes to the end of the argument.  We may summarily set out its steps.

(i)  Israel is the chosen people.

(ii)  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.

(iii)  This selection by God is not unfair, for he has the right to do what he likes.

(iv)  God did harden the hearts of the Jews, but only to open the door to the Gentiles.

(v)  Israel’s mistake was dependence on human achievement founded on the law; the necessary approach to God is that of the totally trusting heart.

(vi)  The Gentiles must have no pride for they are only wild olives grafted into the true olive stock.  They must remember that.

(vii)  This is not 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.

(viii)  So in the very end all, Jew and Gentile, will be saved.

The glory is in the end of Paul’s argument. He began by saying that some were elected to reception and some to rejection. In the end he comes to say that it is God’s will that all men should be saved.

 

 

 

Let’s dive in …

Romans 9:1-2

 

Romans 9:14-15

 

 

 

Conclusion

WHAT CAN WE TAKE AWAY?

• For William Barclay … there are 4 points that one can take away …
• (i) Israel is the chosen people.
• (ii) 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.
• (iii) This selection by God is not unfair, for he has the right to do what he likes.
• (iv) God did harden the hearts of the Jews, but only to open the door to the Gentiles.
• For me … it’s
  • 1. the frequency of the word “will” or “wills” and the apparent link between “will” and “purpose”  and
    2. the link between “election” and “purpose”
    3. God chose/elected/selected us … because He had a purpose for our lives.
    4. God chose us (made us part of the “elect”) without our permission.

 

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Editor’s NOTE:  This passage is one that Calvinists use to support their doctrine of Unconditional Election (the U in the TULIP acronym for the five pillars of Calvinism) in their arguments against the Arminian view of Conditional Election.

What that means is that the calling a person receives is monergistic — one way only — by God alone … without any help from the person.

That view becomes problematic for some because “calling” is linked with “predestination” (as per Romans 8:29-30),  If that is the case, then IF one’s “calling” is monergistic, THEN God decided to call some and others and, by extension, God predestined some to be saved and some to be lost.

The resolution to the problem, I believe, lies in understanding what one is “elected” for.  IF one is elected for salvation, THEN one is predestined for salvation.  However, IF one is elected to be among the firstfruits, THEN one is predestined to be among the firstfruits (as per 1 Corinthians 15:22-23).

 

CLOSING SONG

 

CLOSING PRAYER

 

 

 

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THE PROBLEM OF THE JEWS

In Rom.9-11, Paul tries to deal with one of the most bewildering problems that the Church has to solve — the problem of the Jews.  They were God’s chosen people; they had 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 begin to study them in detail, it will be well to set out the broad lines of the solution which Paul presented.

One thing we must note before we begin to disentangle Paul’s thought — the chapters were written not in anger but in heartbreak.  He could never forget that he was a Jew and he would gladly have laid down his own life if, by so doing, he could have brought his brethren 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 economy of salvation Paul accepts as an axiom and as the starting-point of the whole problem.

The first point which he makes is this–it is true that the Jews as a nation rejected and crucified Jesus, but it is also true, that not all the Jews rejected him; some received him and believed in him, for all the early followers of Jesus were Jews. 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–whereby some of those who were racial descendants of Abraham were chosen and some rejected. In the case of Abraham, Isaac, the son born according to the promise of God, was chosen, but Ishmael, the son born of purely natural desire, was not. In the case of Isaac, his son Jacob was chosen, but Esau, Jacob’s twin, was not. This selection had nothing to do with merit; it was the work entirely of God’s electing wisdom and power.

Further, 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 others denied him. It was so in the days of Elijah, when seven thousand remained faithful to God after the rest of the nation had gone after Baal. It was an essential part of the teaching of Isaiah, who said: “Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant Of them will be saved” (Isa. 10:22; Rom. 9:27). 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 men 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 at which the mind staggers, and from which we quite properly recoil. Bluntly, it is that God can do what he likes and that man has no right whatever to question his decisions, however inscrutable they may be. The clay cannot talk back to the potter. A craftsman may make two vessels, one for an honourable purpose and another for a menial purpose; the vessels have nothing whatever to do with it. That, said Paul, is what God has a right to do with men. He quotes the instance of Pharaoh (Rom. 9:17) and says that he was brought on to the stage of history simply to be the instrument through which God’s avenging power was demonstrated. In any event, the people of Israel had been forewarned of the election of the Gentiles and of their own rejection, for, did not the prophet Hosea write: “Those who were not my people I will call `my people’, and her who was not beloved I will call `my beloved'” (Hos. 1:10; Rom. 9:25).

However, this rejection of Israel was not callous and haphazard. The door was shut to the Jews 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. Here is a strange and terrible argument. Stripped of all its non-essentials, it is that God can do what he likes with any man 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? This may seem a curious question to ask in view of what we have just said. But, paradoxically, Paul holds that though the rejection of the Jews was the work of God, it need never have happened. He cannot get rid of the eternal paradox–nor does he desire to–that at one and the same time all is of God and man has 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; whereas 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. Did not Isaiah say: “No one who believes in him will be put to shame”? (Isa. 28:16; Rom. 10:11.) Did not Joel say: “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved”? (Joel 2:32; Rom. 10:13.) True, no man can have faith until he hears the offer of God; 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.

Once again it is to be stressed that all this was God’s arrangement; and that it was so arranged to allow the Gentiles to come in. Paul therefore turns to the Gentiles. He orders 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; in point of fact they are dependent on the Jews; they are only engrafted branches; the root and the stem are still the chosen people. The fact of their own election and the fact of the rejection of the Jews are not 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 at the relationship of the Gentiles to him and that they will ask to be admitted to it themselves. Did not Moses say: “I make you jealous of those who are not a nation; with a foolish nation I will make you angry”? (Deut. 32:21; Rom. 10:19.)  In the end the Gentiles will be the very instrument by which the Jews will be saved. “And so all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:26).

So Paul comes to the end of the argument.  We may summarily set out its steps.

(i) Israel is the chosen people.

(ii) 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.

(iii) This selection by God is not unfair, for he has the right to do what he likes.

(iv) God did harden the hearts of the Jews, but only to open the door to the Gentiles.

(v) Israel’s mistake was dependence on human achievement founded on the law; the necessary approach to God is that of the totally trusting heart.

(vi) The Gentiles must have no pride for they are only wild olives grafted into the true olive stock. They must remember that.

(vii) This is not 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.

(viii) So in the very end all, Jew and Gentile, will be saved.

The glory is in the end of Paul’s argument. He began by saying that some were elected to reception and some to rejection. In the end he comes to say that it is God’s will that all men should be saved.

 

THE TRAGIC FAILURE

Romans 9:1-6

I tell you the truth as one who is united to Christ is bound to do. I do not lie. My conscience bears witness with me in the Holy Spirit when I say that my grief is great and there is unceasing anguish in my heart. I could pray that I myself might be accursed so that I was completely separated from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen as far as human relationship goes. For my kinsmen are the Israelites, and theirs is the special sonship of God, and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the worship of the Temple and the promises. To them the fathers belong. And from them, on his human side, came the Anointed One of God. Blessed for ever be the God who is over all! Amen.

Paul begins his attempt to explain the Jewish rejection of Jesus Christ. He begins, not in anger, but in sorrow.  Here is no tempest of anger and no outbreak of enraged condemnation; here is the poignant sorrow of the broken heart.  Paul was like the God whom he loved and served — he hated the sin. but he loved the sinner.  No man will ever even begin to try to save men unless he first loves them.  Paul sees the Jews, not as people to be lashed with anger, but as people to be yearned over with longing love.

Willingly Paul would have laid down his life if he could have won the Jews for Christ.  It may be that his thoughts were going back to one of the greatest episodes in Jewish history.  When Moses went up the mountain to receive the law from the hands of God, the people who had been left below sinned by making the golden calf and worshipping it.  God was wreath with them; and then Moses prayed the great prayer: “Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin–and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written” (Exo.32:32).

Paul says that for the sake of his brethren he would consent to be accursed if it would do any good. The word he uses is anathema and it is a terrible word. A thing which was anathema was under the ban; it was devoted to God for utter destruction. When a heathen city was taken, everything in it was devoted to utter destruction, for it was polluted (Deut. 3:6; Deut. 2:34; Josh. 6:17; Josh. 7:1-26). If a man tried to lure Israel away from the worship of the true God, he was pitilessly condemned to utter destruction (Deut. 13:8-11). The dearest thing in all Paul’s life was the fact that nothing could separate him from the love of God in Christ Jesus; but, if it would do anything to save his brethren, he would even accept banishment from God.

Here again is the great truth that the man who would save the sinner must love him. When a son or a daughter has done something wrong and incurred punishment, many a father and a mother would gladly bear that punishment if only they could. As Myers makes Paul say in his poem Saint Paul:

“Then with a thrill the intolerable craving, Shivers throughout me like a trumpet call; O to save these, to perish for their saving– Die for their life, be offered for them all.”

That is what God felt; that is what Paul felt; and that is what we must feel.

Paul did not for a moment deny the place of the Jews in the economy of God. He enumerates their privileges.

(i) In a special sense they were children of God, specially chosen, specially adopted into the family of God. “You are the sons of the Lord your God” (Deut. 14:1). “Is not he your father, who created you?” (Deut. 32:6). “Israel is my firstborn son” (Exo. 4:22). “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt called my son” (Hos. 11:1). The Bible is full of this idea of the special sonship of Israel and of Israel’s refusal to accept it in the fullest sense.

Boreham somewhere tells how he was visiting in a friend’s house when he was a boy. There was one room into which it was forbidden to go. One day he was opposite the room when the door opened and inside he saw a boy of his own age, but in a dreadful state of animal idiocy. He saw the boy’s mother go to his side. She must have seen young Boreham in all his health and sanity and then looked at her own son; and the comparison must have pierced her heart. He saw her kneel by the idiot boy’s bedside and heard her cry out in a kind of anguish: “I’ve fed you and clothed you and loved you–and you’ve never known me.” That was what God might have said to Israel–only in this case it was worse, for Israel’s rejection was deliberate and open-eyed. It is a terrible thing to break the heart of God.

(ii) Israel had the glory. The shekinah or kaboth occurs again and again in Israel’s history. It was the divine splendour of light which descended when God was visiting his people (Exo.16:10; Exo.24:16-17; Exo.29:43; Exo.33:18-22). Israel had seen the glory of God and yet had rejected him. To us it has been given to see the glory of God’s love and mercy in the face of Jesus Christ; it is a terrible thing if we then choose the ways of earth.

(iii) Israel had the covenants. A covenant is a relationship entered into between two people, a bargain for mutual profit, an engagement for mutual friendship. Again and again God had approached the people of Israel and entered into a special relationship with them. He did so with Abraham, with Isaac, with Jacob and upon Mount Sinai when he gave the law.

Irenaeus distinguishes four great occasions when God entered into agreement with men. The first was the covenant with Noah after the flood, and the sign was the rainbow in the heavens which stood for God’s promise that the floods would not come again. The second was the covenant with Abraham and its sign was the sign of circumcision. The third was the covenant with the nation entered into on Mount Sinai and its basis was the law. The fourth is the new covenant in Jesus Christ.

It is an amazing thing to think of God approaching men and entering into a pledged relationship with them. It is the simple truth that God has never left men alone. He did not make one approach and then abandon them. He has made approach after approach; and he still makes approach after approach to the individual human soul. He stands at the door and knocks; and it is the awful responsibility of human will that man can refuse to open.

(iv) They had the law. Israel could never plead ignorance of God’s will; God had told them what he desired them to do. If they sinned, they sinned in knowledge and not in ignorance, and the sin of knowledge is the sin against the light which is worst of all.

(v) They had the worship of the Temple. Worship is in essence the approach of the soul to God; and God in the Temple worship had given to the Jews a special road of approach to himself. If the door to God was shut, they had shut it on themselves.

(vi) They had the promises. Israel could never say that it did not know its destiny. God had told them of the task and the privilege which were in store for them in his purpose. They knew that they were destined for great things in the economy of God.

(vii) They had the fathers. They had a tradition and a history; and it is a poor man who can dare to be false to his traditions and to shame the heritage into which he has entered.

(viii) Then comes the culmination. From them there came the Anointed One of God. All else had been a preparation for this; and yet when he came they rejected him. The biggest grief a man can have is to give his child every chance of success, to sacrifice and save and toil to give him the opportunity, and then to find that the child, through his disobedience or rebelliousness or self-indulgence, has failed to grasp it. Therein lies tragedy, for therein is the waste of love’s labour and the defeat of love’s dream. The tragedy of Israel was that God had prepared her for the day of the coming of his Son–and all the preparation was frustrated. It was not that God’s law had been broken; it was that God’s love had been spurned. It is not the anger, but the broken heart of God, which lies behind Paul’s words.

 

THE CHOICE OF GOD

Romans 9:7-13

But it is not as though the word of God had been completely frustrated. For not all who belong to the race of Israel are really Israel; nor are all really children because they can claim physical descent from Abraham. On the contrary, it is written: “In Isaac will your descendants be called.” That is to say, it is not the children who can claim merely physical descent who are really the children of God. No! It is the children of the promise who are reckoned as the true descendants of Abraham, for the word of the promise runs like this: “I will come at this time and Sarah will have a son.” Not only this, but when Rebecca, too, was brought to bed with child by one, I mean Isaac, our father–and note that the children were not yet born, and had done nothing either good or bad, so that God’s purpose in choice should stand, not in consequence of any deeds, but simply because he called them–it was said to her: “The elder will be the servant of the younger.” As it stands written: “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.”

If the Jews have rejected and crucified Jesus, the Son of God, is that to say that God’s purposes were frustrated and his plan defeated? Paul produces a strange argument to prove that it is not so. In point of fact not all the Jews did reject Jesus; some of them accepted him, for, of course, all the early followers were Jews, as was Paul himself. Now, he says, if we go back through the history of Israel, we will see again and again a process of selection at work. Again and again we see that it was not all Jews who were within the design of God. Some were and some were not. The line of the nation through which God worked, and in which he carried out his plan, was not at any time composed of all those who could claim physical descent from Abraham. At the back of the whole plan there is not merely physical descent; there is the selection, the election of God.

To prove his case, Paul cites two instances from Jewish history and buttresses them with proof texts. Abraham had two sons. There was Ishmael, who was the son of the bondwoman Hagar, and there was Isaac, who was the son of his wife Sarah. Both were true blood descendants of Abraham. It was late in life when Sarah had a son, so late that it was, humanly speaking, an impossibility. As he grew up, there came a day when Ishmael mocked at Isaac. Sarah resented it, and demanded that Hagar and Ishmael should be ejected and that Isaac alone should inherit. Abraham was very unwilling to eject them, but God told him to do so, for it was in Isaac that his descendants would preserve his name (Gen. 21:12). Now Ishmael had been the son of natural human desire; but Isaac had been the son of God’s promise (Gen. 18:10-14). It was to the child of the promise that the real descent was given. Here is the first proof that not all physical descendants of Abraham are to be ranked as the chosen ones. Within the nation, God’s selection and election have gone on.

Paul proceeds to cite another instance. When Rebecca, the wife of Isaac, was with child, she was told by God that in her womb there were two children who would be the fathers of two nations; but that in the days to come the elder would serve and be subject to the younger (Gen. 25:23). So the twins Esau and Jacob were born. Esau was the elder twin, and yet the choice of God fell on Jacob, and it was through the line of Jacob that God’s will was to be done. To clinch the argument Paul cites Mal. 1:2-3, where God is represented as saying to the prophet: “I have loved Jacob but I have hated Esau.”

Paul argues that there is more to Jewishness than descent from Abraham, that the chosen people were not simply the entire sum of all the physical descendants of Abraham, that within that family there was a process of election all through history. A Jew would thoroughly understand and accept the argument so far. The Arabs were the descendants of Ishmael who was a flesh and blood son of Abraham, but the Jews would never have dreamed of saying that the Arabs belonged to the chosen people. The Edomites were the descendants of Esau — that in fact is what Malachi means — and Esau was a true son of Isaac, even the twin brother of Jacob, but no Jew would ever have said that the Edomites had any share in the chosen people.  From the Jewish point of view Paul has made his point; there was election within the family of Abraham’s physical descendants.

He makes the further point that that selection had nothing to do with deeds and merit. The proof is that Jacob was chosen and Esau was rejected, before either of them was born. The choice was made while they were still in their mother’s womb.

Our minds stagger at this argument. It presents us with the picture of a God who apparently quite arbitrarily chooses one and rejects the other. To us it is not a valid argument, because it makes God responsible for an action which does not seem to be ethically justified. But the fact remains that it would strike home to a Jew. And even to us, at the heart of this argument one great truth remains. Everything is of God; behind everything is his action; even the things which seem arbitrary and haphazard go back to him. Nothing in this world moves with aimless feet.

 

THE SOVEREIGN WILL OF GOD

Romans 9:14-18

What shall we then say? Are you going to say that there is injustice with God? God forbid! For, he says to Moses: “I will have mercy on whomsoever I will have mercy and I will have pity on whomsoever I will have pity.” So then the whole matter depends not on man’s will and not on man’s effort, but entirely on the mercy of God. For scripture says to Pharaoh: “For this one thing I assigned you a part in the drama of history–that I might demonstrate my power by what happens to you, and that my name might be broadcast throughout all the world.” So then he has mercy on whom he will, but he hardens whom he will.   

Paul now begins to meet the very arguments and objections which rise in our own minds. He has stated that in all Israel’s history the process of selection and election has gone on; he has stressed the fact that this election was based not on any merit of the person elected but on nothing else than the will of God himself. The objector asks: “Is that fair? Is it just of God to pursue a policy of quite arbitrary selection altogether?” Paul’s answer is that God can do what he chooses to do. In the terrible days of the Roman Empire, when no man’s life was safe and any one might die at the whim of an irresponsible and suspicious Emperor, Galba said, when he became Emperor, that now “he could do what he liked and do it to anyone.” To be honest, that is what Paul is saying about God in this passage.

Again he cites two instances to prove his point and buttresses them with scripture quotations. The first is from Exo. 33:19. Moses is beseeching some real proof that God is really with the people of Israel. God’s answer is that he will have mercy on those on whom he chooses to have mercy. His attitude of loving mercy to the nation depends on himself alone. The other instance is from Israel’s battle for release from Egypt and the power of Pharaoh. When Moses first went to ask for that release, he warned Pharaoh that God had simply brought him on to the stage of history to demonstrate the divine power and to serve to all men as an example of what happens to the man who opposes it (Exo. 9-16).

Once again our mind staggers at this argument. It is, of course, not true to say that God can do anything. He cannot do anything which contradicts his own nature. He cannot be responsible for any act which is unjust and which, in fact, breaks his own laws. We find it hard, and even impossible, to conceive of a God who irresponsibly gives mercy to one and not to another, and who raises up a king to be a mere puppet or lay figure through which his own avenging power may be demonstrated. But the argument would be valid and convincing to a Jew, because again it, in essence, means that God is behind everything.

When we get to the foot of this argument, it does conserve one great truth. It is impossible to think of the relationship between God and man in terms of justice. Man has no claim on God whatever. The created has no claim on the Creator. Whenever justice enters into it, the answer is that from God man deserves nothing and can claim nothing. In God’s dealings with men, the essential things are his will and his mercy.