Bible Commentaries
Romans 9

Verses 1-21

XVIII

THE HARMONY OF THE PROBLEM OF JEWISH UNBELIEF WITH THE PLAN OF SALVATION

Romans 9:1-10:21.

Paul’s statement of the plan of salvation closes with Romans 8, so we now take up the problem of Jewish unbelief, its effect on Paul, and the occasion and extent of his concern: So far as this letter goes we find the discussion in Romans 9:1-5, and in Romans 10:1-2, but this concern is equally evident in Luke’s history of his labors, addresses and sermons in Acts, and in several other letters written by Paul. One of the deepest passions of his soul was excited and stirred by this problem of Jewish unbelief. The grounds of his concern are the following:

1. These people were his kindred according to the flesh.

2. It was his nation and country, and he had an intense patriotism.

3. They were God’s adopted people.

4. They had all of the marvelous privileges of that adoption, and these privileges are thus enumerated by him in Romans 9, first paragraph:

(1) "Whose is the adoption and the glory." This glory was the cloud, symbolizing the Divine Presence.

(2) They had the covenants, the covenant of grace with Abraham in Genesis 12, and the covenant of circumcision as expressed in Genesis 17.

(3) Then they had the giving of the law on Mount Sinai – such a law as cannot be paralleled in the later world. The circumstances under which it was given were more imposing and impressive than the giving of any other code in the annals of time. They had that.

(4) Then they had the promises – the promise to Abraham, the promise to Isaac, the promise to Jacob, the promise to the nation, the promise to Moses, and so on. They had all the promises.

(5) Then they had the fathers, the patriarchs. It was an illustrious heritage. No other nation had such a list of fathers – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the twelve patriarchs, the great leaders all through their history.

(6) Then they had the services, that is, the imposing ritual of worship set forth in the book of Exodus from Exodus 38 to the end, and in all of the book of Leviticus, and a great part of the book of Numbers. That service showed the place to meet God, the time to meet God, the sacrificial means of hearings before God, the mediator through whom they could approach God. They had that service. No other nation has ever had anything like it. All the churches of the present time have not improved that ritual, including the Romans, the Greeks, the Catholics, the Epicureans, and some Baptists who wear robes in the pulpit and intone their services.

(7) The last and greatest of the privileges was, that of them came Christ according to the flesh, the line running through Seth, Heber, Peleg, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, David, and on down until we come to Christ himself. They had Christ according to the flesh. That was the ground and the occasion of his interest. So the problem is, that Christ was rejected by his own people. More than once an infidel has said to me, "If the proof and the merits of Christ be so obvious, why is it that his own people did not take him?"

We now come to the extent of Paul’s concern for this rejection of Christ. (1) He says in Romans 10, which is a part of this section, "I bear my people witness that they have a zeal toward God, but not according to knowledge. (2) I sincerely desire the salvation of my people. (3) Their rejection of Christ gives me continual sorrow and pain of heart. (4) Finally, I could wish myself accursed from Christ for my brethren’s sake." There is only one similar expression in the history of men, and that is where Moses, when all Israel had sinned and God said, "I will blot them out," stood in the breach and said, "If thou wilt not forgive these people, blot my name out of thy book." That disposition on the part of Moses and Paul not merely to suffer temporal death but severance from Christ if it would save the nation, approaches the feeling that was in the heart of the redeemer when he came to die the spiritual death for the salvation of men. Two others had the experience that is here illustrated, for instance, when Abraham offered up his only begotten son, and passed through the anguish of a father’s heart in giving up his son. He is the only man in the world whose experience approximated the experience of God the Father, when he gave up his only begotten Son. And Isaac, in consenting to be so sacrificed, approximated the experience of the Son in voluntarily coming at the Father’s bidding to die for the world. Higher than all the mountain peaks of time, stands these four names: Abraham, representing the sacrifice of the Father; Isaac, representing the sacrifice of the Son; Moses and Paul, representing the Spirit that prompted Jesus to be forsaken of God in order to the salvation of men.

We come now to the key-sentence of these three chapters, in verse Romans 9:6: "But it is not as though the word of God hath come to naught." The object of the plan of salvation as presented in Romans 8 has this objection against it: Since the Jewish people did not believe it, how can we harmonize with that plan the problem of the unbelief of the Jews themselves? He starts off to argue that question by the affirmation that this Jewish rejection of Christ does not militate against the plan of salvation as set forth. That is his proposition, and the first argument that he makes is that all of Abraham’s children – all of Abraham’s lineal descendants – were never included in that national adoption. Abraham had two sons Isaac and Ishmael. Ishmael and his descendants, the Ishmaelites, are not included. Keturah, Abraham’s second wife, had a pretty large family, and these Midianites, descendants of Keturah, were not included. Then the next one after Abraham, Isaac, had two children, Jacob and Esau. Esau and the Edomites descended from him, though lineal descendants, were not included. He then presents a case of divine sovereignty concerning these two children of Isaac. He says that the selection of the one to be the people of God in the adopted sense and the rejection of the other, was not based upon any work, and good to be done by the one or evil to be done by the other. It was not according to the wish of the parents of those children. The selection was made before the children were born – before either one of them knew good from evil. So that it was not of Isaac that willed Esau to be the heir, nor of Esau that ran to get the venison in order that he might obtain the blessing of the heir, nor of the plotting of Rebekah and Jacob. Their plotting did not have anything to do with it. It was not of him that runneth, nor him that plotteth; it was the act of divine sovereignty.

Whatever is meant by this adoption of a nation, it was not based upon any merit in that nation, or in the particular individuals through whom this adoption came. Jerusalem when it was first established was no better than any other city; it was of God’s sovereignty just as the raising up of Pharaoh. "For this purpose did I raise thee up, that I might show in thee my power." Right on the reels of that comes the question from the objector, "Why doth he still find fault? For who withstandeth his will?" Paul is not disposed to answer that question in this connection. We will find the answer before we get through with these three chapters, but here he waives it aside with a counter question: "Hath not the potter power over his clay to take one part of the lump and make a beautiful vessel for the parlor, and to take another part and make a very inferior vessel for the kitchen? And shall either one of the vessels object to the potter?" He waives it for the time being by merely denying the power of the Christian to intrude into the power of the divine sovereignty. His purpose is to show that the word of God touching salvation has not come to be ineffectual because the Jews rejected it.

That is the argument he is on now, and he then advances in it, and says, "Not even all the lineal descendants of Abraham in the select line according to the plan of salvation were to be saved; not all of them could see these two covenants side by side; one was a national covenant, with its seal of circumcision, and promising the earthly Canaan, and the other was the grace covenant that looked to a spiritual seed." Or, as he puts it in another place, "He is not a Jew (in the spiritual sense) who is just one outwardly, but he is a Jew who is one inwardly. The circumcision is not the circumcision of the flesh, but the circumcision of the heart – regeneration." In the exercise of the sovereign purpose of God, there is nothing that the finite man can do concerning him. It is an ocean too deep for our line to fathom. We would have to be infinite to understand it, but we do know that in all human history, without any explanation to us, God’s purpose is working. God bad a purpose in having this continent discovered just when it was. He had a purpose in the success of the American Revolution. He had a purpose in the redemption of Texas in the battle of San Jacinto.

High above human thought, beyond the scope of human sight, of the human mind, the Omnipotence and Omniscience is ruling, and his rule is supreme, and yet nobody is taken by the hair and dragged into hell, and nobody is taken by the hair and dragged into heaven, as he will show more particularly later.

Let us explain and give the application of the vessels of wrath and mercy. In Romans 9 is a passage, from Romans 9:22 to the end of the chapter, about the vessels of wrath and the vessels of mercy. Those that were vessels of wrath, those who voluntarily stand against God, God patiently endured a long time, and his forbearance signified that he was giving them opportunity for repentance. Those vessels of mercy, they also had opportunity for salvation, whether they were Jews or Greeks. He shows that God is no respecter of persona in selecting the Jewish nation. But why did he select that nation? If he had selected the Jewish nation, every one of them to be saved in heaven, and rejected every other nation, then the objection would have been sustained, but it had a different purpose. The election of the Jewish nation looked to the salvation of the Jews and Gentiles that received the message of God, also the covenants, and the coming of Christ from them according to the flesh. That election looked through them to others and, so far as salvation in heaven is concerned, the Jews that believed were saved, and so far as other nations were concerned he quotes certain parts in Hosea and the Old Testament, the paragraph referring to the ingathering of the Gentiles: "I will call them my people which were not my people."

In objecting to God’s selecting one nation and calling that nation "my people" he says, "I will call them my people which were not my people," and in a place where it is said, "They are not my people, there shall they be called sons of the living God," if they believe on Jesus Christ. He then quotes from Isaiah who distinguishes between the holy stock of Israel and the natural stock of Israel as if he had said, "If the number of Israel had been as abundant as the sands of the sea, it is only the remnant that are saved" – those that by faith accept Christ. We see he is laying the predicate for that olive tree illustration that he will introduce later in the discussion. Isaiah then goes on to say that if the grace of God had not been revealed, and the Lord God of hosts had not left a seed, the whole of them would have been as Sodom and Gomorrah. Nothing but divine grace saves those that were saved – not their ritual, not their law. He then reaches this conclusion, "What shall we say then?" The Gentiles who followed not after righteousness, that is, the Jewish way, attained to righteousness because they sought it in a different way. The Jew following the law had not arrived at righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but by works; they stumbled at that stumbling stone.

Next he shows that the rejection of the Jews was not total, He commences Romans 10 by slating that as far as he is personally concerned his heart’s desire and prayer for Israel is that they would be saved, and he is willing to acknowledge that they had a zeal, but not the zeal of knowledge. They busied themselves to establish their own plan of righteousness, and he puts it in such a way that we can’t mistake the law righteousness and leave the faith righteousness as they did. We must not forget that the law says, "Do to live," but faith says "Live to do." In other words, doing the will of God comes out of having been made alive to God. Life must come first; make the tree good, and then the fruit will be good. One of them makes doing the means of life, and the other puts life as a means of doing. Then he shows that while Moses had handed down this law and set before them its requirements that if one would have kept its requirements in strict obedience he would have been saved, but the law required him to start right in his nature and then to continue to do everything that is contained in the law. He goes on to quote from Moses. Paul quotes from the Hebrew and not from the Septuagint which runs thus: "The righteousness which is of faith saith thus, Say not in thy heart, Who shall ascend unto heaven (that is, to bring the Saviour down, or to bring salvation down) or, Who shall descend from heaven (that is, to bring Christ up from the grave.)" This is the Septuagint idea. The Hebrew idea is not that a man tries to go to heaven as the ancient Titan tried to do – by piling Pela on Ossa to make a stairway. Nor that he tries to go directly into the depths, down into the abyss, and wrench salvation from the depths. The Hebrew represents him, not as going down, but as going across, saying that man does not go to the other side of the sea to find salvation to bring it back. Paul changes this a little and makes it correspond better than does Moses. Instead of going across the sea, he has the man going down into the depths of the sea, and he goes on, still quoting Moses, that the real salvation does not come from afar. Paul puts this explanation on it, that it was the word that he preached: "It is the word of faith which we preach."

The plan of salvation is not making tedious pilgrimages; it is not wearing a hairy undershirt to irritate; it is not wearing bracelets that have thorns on them, and to keep on doing penance; it is the word of faith.

Thus he says, "You may be sure that if from the heart you believe in Jesus Christ, and if with your lips you make confession of that faith, you shall be saved." It is not an intellectual faith – it is heart faith. But a good many people misunderstand the import of confession. It doesn’t mean to confess sins to your brother, nor to a priest, nor even to God – that is not the confession he is talking about, but it is a public confession of Christ as Saviour. If we have not faith enough to confess the Christ that we say we believe in, we have not faith enough to be saved. Confession implies that whoever makes it must have a great deal of courage. In this time of peace it doesn’t cost much to confess Christ, and even now sometimes shame prevents confession by young people. The young lady going into a city is told not to join a church because that will deprive her of all social functions. "Whoever shall be ashamed of me before this generation, of him shall I be ashamed before my father and the holy angels. And whosoever shall deny me, him will I deny." And if we are afraid or ashamed to come out in public, and say, "I take Christ as my Saviour," then the Father will be ashamed of us.

This law has no distinction as to nationality; there was only one door to Noah’s ark. The elephant went in at the same door as the snail, and the eagle sweeped down through the same door that a little wren hopped in at. And there is not a side door for a woman to go in. We all go to Christ through the same door. While it is true that God called Israel out of Egypt, the same Bible says that he called the Philistines out of Caphtor, and he is the Lord of all nations, and the universality of the plan of salvation is expressed in "Whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." Then comes up the question, How can any one call on God who has not believed in God, and how can be believe in a God of whom he has never heard? How can he hear unless somebody tells him – unless there be a preacher – and how can there be a preacher except he be sent? The sending there means God sent. What a marvelous theme for a missionary sermon!

Having stated that, he raises another question, "Have they not heard? Didn’t they have preachers?" Has not the word gone to them? From Genesis we learn that the antediluvians had light enough to be saved, and Paul is here quoting a psalm: "Their sound went out through all the earth." Jesus Christ is the true light that lights every man that comes into the world. There has been light enough if the people had been willing to walk in the light.

I once heard a Methodist preacher state to a congregation that the heathen that did the best they could would be saved.

But he didn’t produce any heathen who had done their best. And where is the man that has done his best?

The plan by which men are to be saved is the plan to make the promise sure to all. It is as quick as lightning in its application. It is a fine thing for a man to quit his meanness; it is a fine thing for a man to do the best he can, but certainly it is not the way of salvation; we don’t secure salvation by that. "With a nation void of understanding will I anger you." In other words, "If you will have no God, you adopted people, I will provoke you to jealousy by them that are no people," as Isaiah said, "I was found of them that sought me not; I was made manifest unto them. But to Israel he said, I have stretched out my hands unto this disobedient and gainsaying people." Their whole record is no matter who called, who was sent, who preached, they rejected. Having shown them that God was not unjust in rejecting them, and that he did not violate the gospel plan of salvation, Paul says, "I am one of them; not all the Jews were lost; I am one of them." Neither in its totality nor in its perpetuity were the Jews rejected. Elijah supposed once that he stood by himself, and that he was the only one left. God says, "I have preserved 7000 that have not bowed the knee to Baal." Having shown from Romans 9-10 that the rejection of the Jews was not total, we will show from chapter II that it was not perpetual.

QUESTIONS

1. What the problem of Romans 9:1-11:36?

2. How did it affect Paul?

3. What is the grounds of his concern?

4. What is the marvelous privileges of the Jews’ adoption?

5. What is the infidel argument on this point?

6. What the items which indicate the extent of Paul’s concern for his people?

7. What is Paul’s meaning here, and what Old Testament examples of this experience and spirit?

8. What is the key sentence of Romans 9-11, and what its meaning?

9. What is Paul’s first argument on this point?

10. What is the case of divine sovereignty concerning Jacob and Esau?

11. How is this principle illustrated in the selection of Jerusalem?

12. What illustration of this point from the history of Pharaoh?

13. What question from the objector here introduced, and how does Paul dispose of it?

14. What is Paul’s purpose in thus disposing of this question?

15. What advance did he then make in his argument, and how does he illustrate it elsewhere?

16. What illustrations of the sovereign purpose of God cited by the author?

17. What is the explanation of the vessels of wrath and the vessels of mercy in Romans 9:22 ff?

18. How does Paul show that God was no respecter of persons in selecting the Jewish nation?

19. How does he prove this from the prophets?

20. What is the conclusion of all this, then, as stated in the closing part of Romans 9?

21. What is the argument of Romans 10?

22. What concession, does he make in favor of the Jews in the first part of Romans 10, and what his objection raised?

23. What is the difference between the law righteousness and the faith righteousness?

24. Why could not any one be saved by the law righteousness?

25. What is the difference in the idea expressed in the Hebrew and that of the Septuagint?

26. What construction does Paul put on it, and what the application?

27. What is the meaning of the confession mentioned in this connection, and what its relation to salvation?

28. How does Paul show here that God makes no distinction between peoples of different nationalities, and what the author’s illustration?

29. What is the great missionary text in this connection?

30. What is Paul’s answer to the question, "Have they not heard?" and what the necessity of missionary operations?

31. With what reproof of the Jewish people does Paul close Romans 10?

XIX

THE LIMITATIONS AND MERCIFUL PURPOSE OF GOD’S REJECTION OF ISRAEL Romans 11:1-36.

Israel’s rejection was neither total nor perpetual. The elect, or spiritual Israel, were never cast off. From Abraham to Paul every Israelite who looked through the types and by faith laid hold of the Antitype, was saved. In this sense there were no lost tribes, but out of every tribe the elect, manifested in the circumcision of the heart, not of the flesh, were saved. For example:

1. The apostle cites his own case. That he himself was an Israelite is abundantly shown here, and even more particularly elsewhere, (Philippians 3:4-6; Acts 22:3-15) and yet he was saved after Israel according to the flesh was cast off and the kingdom transferred to the Gentiles, as were all the Jews from Pentecost to Paul. The number of elect Jews thus saved was always greater than appeared to human sight, as evidenced in Elijah’s time.

2. Elijah in his panic supposed himself to be alone, but Jehovah showed him that through grace there were seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal.

3. So it continued to be in Paul’s time; there was a remnant spared according to grace.

But the apostle is careful to show that this elect remnant, never cast off, every one of them, was saved by grace, and not one of them by the works of law. Then he explains this finding of salvation by the elect Jews, and the casting off of the non-elect Jews by the two essentially different methods of seeking salvation. The elect sought it by faith and obtained it; the rest because they persistently sought righteousness by works of the law, rejecting God’s righteousness, were judicially blinded as shown: (1) By the law itself (Deuteronomy 29:4); (2) by the prophets (Isaiah 29:10); (3) by the Psalms (Psalms 69:22).

Having shown the casting off was never total, and why, he then shows that it was not intended to be perpetual by proving the ultimate restoration of all Israel as a nation, whenever it should turn to the grace method of salvation, -the scriptural proof of which is as follows:

1. In the law itself, which denounces their casting off, is the promise of an expiation through grace (Deuteronomy 32:43).

2. In the prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the temple it is suggested (1 Kings 8:46-53).

3. In the prophets it is clearly foretold, and all the method of it (Isaiah 66:8; Ezek. 36:22-37:28; Zech. 12:9-13:1). The element of mercy dominant in the election of Israel as a nation is that they were chosen that through them all the nations might be blessed. The element of mercy in their rejection is that through their downfall life might come to other nations. The element of mercy toward the Jews in the call of the Gentiles was that cast-off Israel might be provoked to return to God. In saving Gentiles there was an aim at the salvation of his cast-off people. This is proved in his argument thus: "By their fall salvation is come to the Gentiles to provoke them to jealousy," and then he magnified his own office as an apostle to the Gentiles to provoke the jealousy of his own people in order that he might save some. He foresees a wonderful effect on the Gentiles in the restoration of the Jews. It will be even more beneficial than their downfall: "Now if their fall is the riches of the world, and their loss the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness? . . . For if the casting away of them is the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the-dead?" (Romans 11:12; Romans 11:15). Then our concern, prayer, and labor for that great future event – the restoration of God’s ancient people – is a concern for other nations who never will be thoroughly aroused until moved by redeemed Israel.

A passage from Peter shows the relation of the conversion of the Jews to our Lord’s final advent, and a declaration of our Lord shows the time of this general salvation of the Jews. Peter says, "Repent ye therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that so there may come seasons of refreshing from the presence of the Lord; and that he may send the Christ who hath been appointed for you, even Jesus: whom the heavens must receive until the times of restoration of all things, whereof God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets that have been from of old" (Acts 3:19-21). Our Lord says, "And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led captive unto all the nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled" (Luke 21:24). Then according to Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah, the means and methods of this great salvation of the Jews are as follows:

1. It will be preceded by a gathering together of Israel out of all nations.

2. Christ whom they pierced will be lifted up in Gentile preaching.

3. The Holy Spirit in convicting and converting power will be poured out on them, whereby they shall mourn and pray and see the Lord as their Saviour.

4. The nation shall be born of God in a day. The apostle bases this marvelous work of God upon the principle that "if the first fruit is holy, so is the lump: and if the root is holy, so are the branches. . . . And this is my covenant unto them, When I shall take away their sins . . . For the gifts and the calling of God are not repented of" (Romans 11:16; Romans 11:27; Romans 11:29). Then follows his illustration of the olive tree, the explanation of which is as follows:

1. Christ is the root.

2. The holy stock is the spiritual elect, Israel.

3. The branches broken off are the unbelieving Jews.

4. The branches grafted in are the believing Gentiles.

5. The principle is vital and spiritual connection with Christ, through faith, without respect to Jew or Gentile.

6. The unbelieving children of Abraham are like branches merely tied on the stock externally; there is no communication of the fatness of the sap into the veins of the branches tied on externally.

7. So a Gentile tied on externally, without this vital connection, will be broken off.

The divine purpose in shutting up both Gentile and Jew unto disobedience as shown in the argument (Romans 3:9-20) is expressed thus: "For God hath shut up all unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all" (Romans 11:32). We will conclude this discussion with an analysis of the doxology which is the climax of his argument:

1. An exclamation of the profundity of the riches of both God’s wisdom and knowledge.

2. The incomprehensibility to the finite mind of his judgments and ways.

3. No finite being knew his mind or advised his actions.

4. No beneficiary of his goodness ever first gave to God as a meritorious ground of the benefaction.

5. Because he is the source of all good, and the medium of salvation from its initiation to its consummation, all the glory belongs to God.

QUESTIONS

1. What the limits of Israel’s rejection?

2. Wherein was it not total? Illustrate.

3. What is the apostle careful to show about this elect remnant never cast off?

4 How does he explain this finding of salvation by the elect Jews, and the casting off of the non-elect Jews?

5. How is the judicial blindness of the non-elect Jews shown?

6. How does he next show that the casting off was not intended to be perpetual?

7. What the scriptural proof of this ultimate restoration of Israel?

8. What element of mercy was dominant in the election of Israel as a nation?

9. What element of mercy in their rejection?

10. What element of mercy toward Jews in the call of the Gentiles? 11. How is this proved in his argument?

12. What effect on the Gentiles does Paul foresee in the restoration of the Jews?

13. What then our concern, prayer, and labor for that great future event, the restoration of God’s ancient people?

14. Quote a passage from Peter showing the relation of the conversion of the Jews to our Lord’s final advent.

15. Quote a passage from our Lord showing the time of this general salvation of the Jews.

16. According to Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah, what the means and methods of this great salvation of the Jews?

17. Upon what principle does the apostle base this marvelous work of God?

18. In the olive tree illustration what the root, the holy stock, the branches broken off, the branches grafted in, the principle, the condition of the unbelieving children of Abraham, and what of the Gentile tied on externally?

19. What then the divine purpose in shutting up both Gentile and Jew unto disobedience?

20. Give an analysis of the doxology.