Bible Commentaries
Romans 9

Verses 1-36

THE PROBLEM OF GOD’S OWN PEOPLE- THE JEWS

Romans 9:1 to Romans 11:36

The three chapters 9-11 are notoriously the most difficult in Romans, and among the most difficult in the New Testament. It is a different case from the difficulties in earlier chapters, say 1-4. The trouble there was in accepting what Paul plainly says, as for instance that all men have sinned, and that God’s grace is free; and in some later chapters, as in chapter 6, the problem is how to understand a statement which is obviously not literally true, as, for instance, that we have been crucified with Christ. The difficulty with the chapters now before us is that it is hard to put together what Paul says in one consistent straightforward line of thought; in short, it is hard to know what he meant to say. Some commentators will take one verse or passage and build everything around it, making everything else fit; other commentators will do the same with other verses. The con­clusion presented here is not new but seems to lessen the difficul­ties considerably. Again we wish we had the writer of Romans with us to answer all our questions!

Let us suppose, then, that Paul is faced by a very severe problem; but that instead of giving a flat, clear, happy answer to it, or even one profound and troubling answer, he wrestles with the problem, thinking out loud as it were, letting his readers share his thoughts. In this way he arrives at not less than eight different answers to his problem, all possible, but perhaps none of them final unless it is the last one—though even that does not answer all the questions.

A Problem with Different Solutions

For the modern reader, these three chapters make a kind of parenthesis. If they were not here, few would miss them. One can skip from the end of chapter 8 to the beginning of chapter 12 and feel no particular break. For Paul, however, these chap­ters are no parenthesis. Fond as he was of parentheses and side remarks, he would not have spent nearly a third of his available space on a parenthesis.

The problem, for him, and for the people about whom he is thinking all through these chapters, is an acute one. Has God failed with the Jews? Has he cast them off? What is wrong with them? Are they going to be finally lost? Paul takes it for granted that his readers are well aware of a fact which galled him to the bone: the Jews as a whole had not responded to the gospel. It was not that they were unresponsive; they were actively hostile. They had thrown him out of their synagogues, slandered him, browbeaten his converts, plotted against his life—and the end was not yet. Why was this? They were God’s Chosen People (9:4-5 shows how Paul felt about that), and yet they could not accept God’s Son. They were God’s people, yet they had turned against God’s mercy. How to account for this almost incredible state of things, and what to think about the future of the Jews, constitute the problem for Paul. The four questions raised above are all mixed together, and make up the one big question: What about the Jews? (Paul uses the old sentimental name "Israel.")

Paul begins with the implied fact of the Jews’ rejection of Christ, and comes out. at the end with the conclusion that "all Israel will be saved" (11:26). But on the way he comes up with a number of other answers. Let us see what they are.

1. Not all "Israelites" are the true Israel (9 : 6-8; 11 :5-6) . Paul falls back on an old doctrine of the prophets, the Remnant. Most of Israel were a bad lot. Isaiah and Amos and the rest of the prophets had no illusions about that. But there was always a remnant of true God-fearers. For Paul, the "remnant" are those who lived by faith, who knew, without the Letter to the Romans to help them, that the way to God’s acceptance is simply to accept his grace as a gift. These are the true Israelites, and they are being saved; they have found the same way of faith that all Christians have found. So there is no problem; for all of the real Israel are being saved.

God can do what he pleases, with and to whom he pleases (9:10-21, 25-29). Man is no more than a piece of clay in a pot­ter’s hands. No clay has a right to question what the potter makes of it. God saves some. It is his will to do so. He rejects others. It’s not a matter of justice or injustice, only a matter of divine, infinite Power which no human being has any right to question.

God has stood a good deal, and has been patient. When finally his wrath destroys the "vessels of wrath" (the wicked Jews and Gentiles), his mercy on some will shine all the brighter (9:22-24). This is tied in with the second answer above. There the emphasis is on God’s power; here the emphasis is on his mercy. The fact that he is merciful to anyone offsets the destruc­tion which, in this view, is visited on those who well deserve it.

The Jews went their own way; they simply suffer the con­sequences (9:30-33). Paul has not forgotten what he said earlier in this letter: to use his own imagery, pursuing the righteousness which is based on Law never succeeds in fulfilling the Law. Most of the Jews persisted in building ladders to heaven made of their own good deeds. Such ladders, so to speak, always break. In other words, the moral laws of the universe have destroyed those who thought that by them they could win the favor of God. As Paul puts it elsewhere (Romans 14:23), whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

The Jews have not had their chance yet (10:1-17). Ro­mans 10:14-15 has been used as a text for missionary sermons time out of mind; but it is often overlooked that the thought here is of missions to the Jews, first of all. The point is that while no one can be saved outside of Christ, one cannot say that the Jews as a whole have rejected him; they have not yet heard of him. (Can Paul here be wishing that God will raise up a more successful evangelist to the Jews than he had been?)

The elect "obtained" salvation; the others (non-elect) "were hardened" (11:7). This may well be another form of the second answer, without the figure of the potter and the clay. Some are elect—that is to say, chosen—and some are not. It is as simple as that. On this view, if any Israelite is lost, that is a sign that Clod had no intention of saving him. The elect, those whom God does intend to be saved, will be saved.

The hostility and stubbornness of Israel is a good thing in the long run, for it is producing and will produce the salvation of the Gentiles (11:13-24). It is clear that Paul does not wish this answer to be taken alone but in connection with the eighth Answer below. At any rate, this thought may have occurred to him through reflecting on his own experience. Suppose he had been as successful among the Jews, his own people, as he had tried to be? He could have had a busy life as a missionary to Israelites, but in that case who would or could have done what he had done among the Gentiles? Paul had no false modesty. He knew what he meant to the Church; he knew what his gifts were. So he could honestly say that being thrown out of the synagogues and blockaded away from his own people was really a blessing In disguise.

All Israel will be saved (11:1, 2, 26). God has not rejected them. There is no problem, really, because we are seeing only what has taken place so far. God’s final intention is to do what we have hastily wished he would do right now, that is, save all his people Israel. Indeed, it is better this way; for the delay in the salvation of Israel is just what is opening the way for the gospel among the Gentiles. This does not solve the problem for us in the twentieth century, for it raises this further question: Does "all Israel" mean all there will be of Israel at some future date known only to God? Or does it include the millions of Israelites who have lived and died since A.D. 30? If the former, then not all Israel will have been saved; if the latter, then how are these now-dead Israelites to hear the gospel?

Paul’s next-to-last word on this problem is on a note of uni­versal hope: "God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all." But his last word is, characteristi­cally, an outburst of praise to the inscrutable God: "0 the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! . . . who has known the mind of the Lord …?...To him be glory forever" (11:33-36).

Notes on Particular Points

Does Paul call Jesus God? (9:5). The Greek of this verse can be translated either as the Revised Standard Version has it in the text, or as it has it in the margin. If the first translation is correct, then he does not, but if the second is correct, then he does identify Christ as the high God. All that can be said is that while the translation given in the margin is quite possible, if it is what Paul means it is quite out of line with his regular way of speaking about Christ. Paul many times has excellent chances to say that Christ is God, but he avoids saying it (see for instance 1 Corinthians 3:23, where instead of saying Christ is God, he says "Christ is God’s"—he belongs to God).

In 9:22 Paul says that vessels of wrath are "made for destruc­tion." The potter makes one vessel for beauty and another for menial use. Much later in life Paul uses the same figure of speech but with a different meaning (2 Timothy 2:20-21). In Romans 9:22 the vessel of dishonor is not to be changed; in II Timothy a vessel made for "ignoble" use may by purifying himself become a "vessel . . . consecrated and useful."

Paul was a theologian of high rank; the Church has never placed anyone beside him. But he had no theological conceit. He did not confuse theology with faith. God does not think most highly of the people who can pass theological examinations with the highest marks. Paul never says: In order to be saved you must believe every word I have written. He does not say: Either believe as I do or you are no true Christian. In one sentence (10:9) he makes it quite plain that there are two essentials. One is to acknowledge Jesus as Lord; the other is to believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. Paul does not say that this is all there is to Christian belief. He does say that this much is saving faith. (There is much food for thought here.)

Paul was a city man, and his illustration in 11:17-24 suggests a procedure just backwards from what is actually done in or­chards. Wild shoots are not grafted in to cultivated trees, but the other way around. The kind of fruit depends not on the stock but on the grafted-in branches. However, his readers were city people too, and so probably most of them, like most readers of Romans to this day, never noticed this point. Taken not as in­formation about horticulture but as a made-up illustration, it carries Paul’s point.

One verse (11:32) has disturbed some people, because it does not seem to be "orthodox." The orthodox view (among all churches that make a point of orthodoxy) is that some people are not saved and never will be. The view expressed by this verse is belled "universalism" and is widely though not officially held in Many churches. Paul himself in other places expresses a different view from universalism, as for instance in 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9 and Philippians 3:19. It is not of much use to claim that "have mercy" here does not mean "save," for not only does the expression "have mercy" (referring to God) imply salvation, but if it meant anything less here it would spoil the point of the sentence. All this is one reason for supposing that Paul in these chap­ters is not laying down final answers, but only debating the possi­bilities.

Many people have understood Romans 9:19-21, indeed all of chapter 9, to teach "double predestination." Many others cannot Bee that doctrine here. Double predestination is the doctrine, found in a few creeds of Christendom, that God "foreordained" certain persons to everlasting life and others to everlasting death. To foreordain is to render the occurrence of a future event cer­tain. Calvin put it this way: God creates some men for the pur­pose of salvation, others for the purpose of damnation. Now, not all those who believe in "double predestination" agree with Calvin that God decides even before he creates a human being whether or not he will ever save the person he creates. A more usual sup­position is that after mankind had fallen into sin, God decided once for all that he would save certain ones ("election is selec­tion," as one man put it), and in the same act of decision decided not to save all or any of the rest, but to pass them by. This is sometimes called the doctrine of "preterition" or "passing-by." At any rate, both Calvin’s doctrine and the doctrine of preterition teach "double predestination"; for in both views not only does Clod know beforehand who are to be saved, but he knows because he himself has fixed in advance, made absolutely certain and defi­nite, not only the salvation of each saved person but the damna­tion of every lost one—and this long before they were born.

There is no room to argue the pros and cons of the argument whether double predestination is true. The point is, those who take it in either Calvin’s or the other form, believe they find Bible support for their belief in Romans 9. The reader may think they are right, or he may not; he will have company either way. In any case, this commentator would advise caution. For the simple and obvious fact, often overlooked by argumentative theo­logians, is that Paul in these chapters 9-11 is not discussing in­dividual salvation at all, but the salvation of Israel. It is a little risky to use these chapters alone to support any theory about in­dividual salvation.