Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
Romans 9:13

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

God chooses according to his will (9:6-29)

Paul’s first assertion is that the promise of God has not failed. He reminds his readers of what he said earlier, namely, that people who are Israelites physically are not necessarily Israelites spiritually. In other words, not all who are physically descended from Jacob (Israel) are the true people of God in the spiritual sense (6; cf. 2:28-29; 4:11-12).
To illustrate that not all descendants of a chosen person are truly God’s people, Paul refers to the fathers of the nation. Abraham, for example, had several sons and many descendants, but the only descendants who were God’s covenant people were those who came through Isaac. People belonged to God because of his promise, not because of their physical descent (7-9). Isaac, in turn, had two sons, Esau and Jacob, but God chose Jacob to be the father of his people and rejected Esau (10-13).
God’s choice of one and rejection of the other does not mean that God is unjust. All people are sinners and none deserves his favour, but because he is God he may choose to have mercy on some (14-16). He may also choose to harden some, such as people like Pharaoh who persistently rebel against him. But always he does what is right, according to his perfect will (17-18).
The opponents of God may argue that God is unjust to save some and harden others. Paul replies sharply by asking who do people imagine themselves to be if they think they can argue with God? God is not answerable to the human beings he created. A potter does not have to tell a lump of clay why he decides to make it into either a beautiful bowl or a common pot (19-21). So it is with God. He is always patient and longsuffering towards sinners, but when he chooses to show his judgment and power in some and his mercy and glory in others, no one can question his right to exercise his power (22-23). In choosing his people, therefore, God may decide to call Gentiles as well as Jews (24).
Even the Old Testament records the principle that God may call those who were previously not his people and make them his people. This is what he has now done in building his new people, the church, largely from Gentiles (25-26). He has included in this people only a minority from Israel, since most of the Israelites, as in Old Testament times, have been stubbornly rebellious (27-29).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

And not only so; but Rebecca also having conceived by one, even our father Isaac — for the, children being not yet born, neither having done anything good or bad that the purpose of God according to the election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth, it was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. Even as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.

This passage details another restriction upon the identification of who are, or are not, children of Abraham, all of the posterity of Esau being cut off, despite the fact that they were not merely children of Abraham, but of Isaac as well; and their being cut off did not derive from some visible reason for it, such as a rebellion, or refusal to honor Isaac; they were totally excluded even before the birth of Jacob and Esau. The proposition Paul was establishing by presenting these facts is that it was not by natural descent alone that the Jews themselves were reckoned to be children of Abraham, because the group identified as Jews were far from being his only natural descendants. There was a separation in the immediate family of Abraham when Ishmael was cut off, and there was another separation in Isaac's immediate family when the Edomites (children of Esau) were cut off.

But a dramatic new factor was involved in the separation of Esau and his descendants from the recognized posterity of Abraham. The Jews could have justified the exclusion of the Ishmaelites, etc., and the preference for Isaac; upon the premise that Isaac was the only legitimate son, the only son of his true wife, the only son of a free woman, or such; but, in the exclusion of part of Isaac's posterity, no such distinctions were visible, Esau being not merely the son of Isaac's lawful wife, but his firstborn at that! This shows that the choice of Jacob was altogether a sovereign act of God, not dependent upon anything that either Jacob or Esau had either done or left undone, the election coming before either of them was born.

Before discussing the doctrine of election, as it is called, which surfaces in these verses, it is important to note exactly what the Lord said with reference to the election of Jacob in preference to Esau.

And the Lord said unto her (Rebekah), Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger (Genesis 25:23).

There is no problem whatever regarding what God did. The problem lies in the reasons people suppose God had for doing it. God's sovereign act of choice between Rebekah's twins took place before their birth; but God's decision was absolutely not capricious. Paul had already pointed out that God "foreknew" all people; and that foreknowledge on the part of God is revealed in the above citation from Genesis to have been the reasonable and righteous basis of God's election of Jacob. God foreknew everything concerning the unborn twins, but he chose to tell Rebekah a part of what was foreknown. First, two DIFFERENT kinds of people were about to be launched into the stream of history, one weak, the other STRONGER. In the light of such knowledge, could God have chosen the weaker? And what is meant by "two manner of people"? Esau's life quickly followed the pattern God had foreseen. He was a profane person and a fornicator (Hebrews 12:16). Thus, Esau was rejected and Jacob chosen because of God's foreknowledge of what would take place in the lives of both of them.

When Isaac blessed his sons, the scriptures relate that he did so "by faith concerning things to come" (Hebrews 11:20); and it is arbitrary and contrary to reason for anyone to suppose that God made choice between those brothers without taking into account the "things to come." Nothing in the election of Jacob and the exclusion of his brother had any bearing at all upon the eternal destiny of either, each individual having still been left free to choose the direction of his life; but it was concerned primarily, if not indeed totally, with the building of the nation of the covenant people.

It appears impossible to view Paul's words here as teaching that God determines the destinies of people before they are born, as taught by some, For example, Murray stated:

We are compelled, therefore, to find in this word a declaration of the sovereign counsel of God as it is concerned with the ultimate destinies of men. John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1968), ii, p. 25.

It should be remembered that Paul's entire argument here is to the effect that other factors besides fleshly descent had always been involved in determining the seed of Abraham. God's election was a factor in it; but that factor entered into the determination as a consequence of other factors. Esau was rejected because of what God knew he would become and of what Esau's character would produce in the lives of his posterity.

Not of works … means "not of fleshly descent," as noted by Murray:

"Not of works" and "not of natural descent" are correlative and point to the same principle. Thus the apostle can adduce the one in an argument that is mainly concerned with the other without any sense of incongruity. Ibid., p. 14.

This expression is just another way of saying that God's election of Jacob came without regard to deeds of the unborn twins, there having been none at the time of the election. It cannot mean that the election was decided without any regard to deeds they would perform in the future, which deeds were truly foreknown of God and plainly formed the righteous basis of the election. If the election was "not of works," what was it of? It was of the sovereignty and foreknowledge of God. David Lipscomb has this further thought on the meaning of "not of works":

It was not on account of works of their own that either might do, but Jacob would trust God and obey him. Those who do this God always selects as his beloved. David Lipscomb, op. cit., p. 172.

Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated … was not written of Isaac's sons before they were born, but centuries afterward, this being a quotation, not from Genesis, but from Malachi 1:2 f. God's foreknowledge of what the Edomites would become was proved to be accurate by the sins and excesses of that people who came, in time, to deserve the denunciation recorded by Malachi.

Jacob and Esau, as individuals, were not the principal concern of the election, but the nations which they would produce. Despite that, the election had to begin with individuals. As Whiteside noted,

The selection of Jacob was the selection of a people rather than an individual. R.L. Whiteside, A New Commentary on Paul's Epistles to Saints in Rome (Denton, Texas: Miss Inys Whiteside, 1945). p. 199.

This harmonizes with Genesis 25:23, where the "manner of people" looms as God's great consideration. If Esau had been made the patriarch instead of Jacob, Israel would never have continued long enough to deliver the Messiah to mankind; but the overruling providence of the all-wise God interposed to prevent such a thing from taking place. God's choice did not determine the eternal destiny of either twin, their subsequent lives determining that; but God's choice did determine which would be the patriarch of Israel. The idea is here rejected that God ever chose any man to eternal life or death before he was born.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

As it is written - Malachi 1:2-3. That is, the distribution of favors is on the principle advanced by the prophet, and is in accordance with the declaration that God had in fact loved the one and hated the other.

Jacob - This refers, doubtless, to the posterity of Jacob.

Have I loved - I have shown affection for that people; I have bestowed on them great privileges and blessings, as proofs of attachment. I have preferred Jacob to Esau.

Esau - The descendants of Esau, the Edomites; see Malachi 1:4.

Have I hated - This does not mean any positive hatred; but that he had preferred Jacob, and had withheld from Esau those privileges and blessings which he had conferred on the posterity of Jacob. This is explained in Malachi 1:3,” And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness;” compare Jeremiah 49:17-18; Ezekiel 35:6. It was common among the Hebrews to use the terms “love” and “hatred” in this comparative sense, where the former implied strong positive attachment, and the latter, not positive hatred, but merely a less love, or the withholding of the expressions of affection; compare Genesis 29:30-31; Proverbs 13:24, “He that spareth his rod hateth his son; but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes;” Matthew 6:24, “No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other,” etc.; Luke 14:26, “if any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother, etc.”

Living By Faith: Commentary on Romans & 1st Corinthians

9:10-13: And not only so; but Rebecca also having conceived by one, (even) by our father Isaac - 11 for (the children) being not yet born, neither having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth, 12 it was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. 13 Even as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.

The opening words in verse 10 (“And not only so”) show that Paul continued to press his point. He quickly continued to make his case from the Old Testament by appealing to “Rebecca.” This woman also had children, but her children were in a different category. She had twins. In the preceding verses, Paul showed that God chose one mother (and her child) over another. Here he narrowed his example (illustration). Instead of two mothers, this example has only one. Paul argued that even though this mother bore twins, God was able to use one and not the other and still be perfectly just.

God could not use both boys to bring Jesus into the world. Only one of the sons could be used in the Lord’s genealogy and God chose Jacob. Esau was left out of the seed line. As Lanier pointed out, this choice did not involve the “eternal salvation” of the two boys or their descendents (p. 67).

The information in verse 11 shows that God knew about these two boys before they were born. It is also stated that these boys did not do anything “good or bad” before birth. The two children were in a state that was innocent and morally neutral. Even though this was true, God knew which son would best suit His plan to bring Jesus into the world. Because God “declares the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10), He knew which of the boys would best fit into heaven’s plan for redeeming man, and this gives a good sense of “election” (ekloge). God took the initiative concerning the creation and implementation of a plan, and in this plan He chose the right persons so His plan would “stand” (verse11). To get the job done, God selected Jacob to be the one through whom the saviour would come. This selection did not affect Jacob’s free will. This also did not interfere with either boy’s ability to choose good or evil. God allowed both boys to choose where they wanted to spend eternity. Paul simply meant God selected Jacob because His foreknowledge allowed Him to know which son would best fit in with heaven’s plan to save mankind.

The final thought in verse 11 (11b) shows that the selection of Jacob was not based upon “works.” This is related to 11a-the selection was not because Jacob was super righteous. God selected Jacob because He “called him.” God picked Jacob because He knew this son was the best one for the job.

In verse 12 we have information that is also found in Genesis 25:23. Rebecca was warned that the “older would serve the younger.” This promise found its fulfillment in the descendents of Jacob and Esau (see 2 Samuel 8:14; 1 Kings 11:15-16; 1 Kings 22:47; 2 Kings 14:7).

The Jews would have looked at the first example (verses 7-9) and concluded, “Ishmael was rejected because Hagar was a bondwoman. If Ishmael had come from a different mother, things would have been different.” Paul argued that a different mother would not have made any difference. This is clear because Jacob and Esau were both born of a freewoman. Both boys were twins. Yet, God still chose one over the other, and He chose the youngest son. Man’s view of things is often very different from God’s. Paul’s examples are a lasting reminder of this fact (compare Isaiah 55:8-9).

The information in verse 13 has troubled many people. McClintock and Strong (4:96) offer this helpful explanation: “When the Hebrews compared a stronger affection with a weaker one, they called the first love and the other hatred, meaning to love in a less degree-‘Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated’ (Romans 9:13); i.e. on Jacob have I bestowed privileges and blessings such as are the proofs of affection; I have treated him as one treats a friend whom he loves; but from Esau have I withheld these privileges and blessings, and therefore treated him as one is wont to treat those whom he dislikes. That this refers to the bestowment of temporal blessings, and the withholding of them, is clear, not only from this passage, but from comparing Malachi 1:2-4; Genesis 25:23; Genesis 27:27-29; Genesis 37:1-36; Genesis 38:1-30; Genesis 39:1-23; Genesis 40:1-23. Indeed, as to hatred, its meaning here is rather privative than positive. So, ‘If a man have two wives, one beloved and another hated’ (Deuteronomy 21:15); i.e. less beloved. When our Savior says that he who would follow him must hate father and mother, he means that even these dearest earthly friends must be loved in a subordinate degree; so, in the same sense, the follower of Christ is to hate his own life, or be willing to sacrifice it for the love and service of the Redeemer (Genesis 29:30; Deuteronomy 21:16; Proverbs 13:24; Matthew 6:24; Matthew 10:37; Luke 14:26; Luke 16:13; John 12:25).”

Another important reference to show that Esau was not hated as we usually use the word is Hebrews 11:20. The Hebrew writer’s statement is indeed strange if Esau were a damned man, someone eternally sentenced to hell. Paul’s wording was designed to show that one man (Jacob) was used and another (Esau) was not. The strength of the wording can best be understood and appreciated in light of Hebrew culture. It is also interesting to note that hated (miseo) was used by Jesus when referring to loving parents less than God (Luke 14:26). While the term can mean to love less, or to hate, here it has the sense of rejection. “Rejection by God is described as being hated by God” (Kittle, abridged edition, p. 599).

Calvin's Commentary on the Bible

13.As it is written, Jacob I loved, etc. He confirms, by a still stronger testimony, how much the heavenly answer, given to Rebecca, availed to his present purpose, that is, that the spiritual condition of both was intimated by the dominion of Jacob and servitude of Esau, and also that Jacob obtained this favor through the kindness of God, and not through his own merit. Then this testimony of the prophet shows the reason why the Lord conferred on Jacob the primogeniture: and it is taken from the first chapter of Malachi, where the Lord, reproaching the Jews for their ingratitude, mentions his former kindness to them, — “I have loved you,” he says; and then he refers to the origin of his love, — “Was not Esau the brother of Jacob?” as though he said, — “What privilege had he, that I should prefer him to his brother? None whatever. It was indeed an equal right, except that by the law of nature the younger ought to have served the elder; I yet chose the one, and rejected the other; and I was thus led by my mercy alone, and by no worthiness as to works. I therefore chose you for my people, that I might show the same kindness to the seed of Jacob; but I rejected the Edomites, the progeny of Esau. Ye are then so much the worse, inasmuch as the remembrance of so great a favor cannot stimulate you to adore my majesty.” ⁽²⁹⁵⁾ Now, though earthly blessings are there recorded, which God had conferred on the Israelites, it is not yet right to view them but as symbols of his benevolence: for where the wrath of God is, there death follows; but where his love is, there is life.

(295) The meaning of the words “loving” and “hating” is here rightly explained. It is usual in Scripture to state a preference in terms like these. See Genesis 29:31; Luke 14:26; John 12:25 — Ed.

Smith's Bible Commentary

Paul has just closed the eighth chapter of Romans in which he has taken us into the very peaks of the spiritual experiences that are ours in Christ Jesus. Showing us that we have this glorious place in the Lord where nothing can separate us from the love of God, neither tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or peril, nor nakedness, nor sword, for he is persuaded and in all these things we are more than conquerors. And that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor any other creature shall be able to separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Oh, what a glorious, beautiful place. Now as Paul sees what God has done for the Gentiles in bringing them into this glorious relationship with God, and as he considers these blessings that God has poured out upon the Gentile believers, his heart now turns toward his brethren according to the flesh, the Jews. Paul is going to show how that God in His sovereignty for the time being has set aside the Jew as a nation of divine favor. That the Jew today is no different than the Gentile as far as God is concerned. That they do not have, at this point, a favorite nation status with God. But that if they are going to enter into the richness and the fullness of God's love they must come as the Gentile through Jesus Christ.

Now because this is considered treason as far as the Jew is concerned, and because Paul knows that he is going to be accused, no doubt, by the Jew, of bitterness, because of his rejection, he seeks to point out to them that he is not bitter against the Jew. And as he is going to talk to them about these issues of God's grace being poured out upon all and any who will believe Jew or Gentile, he seeks to show from the scripture that this was prophetically declared and also seeks to declare from his own heart there is no animosity or bitterness against his brother. And he makes that plain in the strongest of statements beginning with chapter 9.

I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also is bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit ( Romans 9:1 ),

So how much can you affirm that what you are about to say is in reality the truth of your own heart? I say the truth in Christ, my conscience also bears me witness in the Holy Spirit.

That I have a great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh ( Romans 9:2-3 ):

That is an extremely strong statement that I do not believe that I could honestly make, and yet Paul affirmed that it is true. In his own case his conscience bears him record in the Holy Spirit. That he has such a great heaviness, such a great burden for his brothers, the Jewish people, that he could even, if possible, wish himself to be accursed from Christ for their sake if it would bring them all salvation.

This causes us to recall a statement by Moses in Exodus 32 , after Israel had utterly failed God. God said to Moses, "Stand back, Moses. I am going to wipe them all out." Moses interceded for the nation and he asked God to show mercy. Then Moses said, "If not, then I pray that you will blot my name out of the book of remembrances." Now lest we exalt man and make God the villain and man the hero of the story, it is important that we recognize that these men could not have this great burden for Israel unless they had received it directly from the heart of God. It was God who put in Moses' heart this intercession, because God was looking for an excuse to show mercy. And so when Moses made this great declaration, "And if not then, God, blot my name out of Your book of remembrances." God then said, "I will show mercy upon whom I will show mercy." God retreated into His sovereignty so He could forgive them and show His mercy to them. But it was God who prompted the heart of Moses.

It was God who prompted the heart of Paul for this great burden for the people. Yet, that which Paul was expressing is not possible nor necessary, for there is one who has already been accursed by God in order that the Jews might be saved.

For Christ became a curse for us. For it is written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs upon the tree." And Jesus already took the curse of God for man's sin and provided for Israel's salvation. So Paul's declaration, as noble as it is, is really . . . When my mother had incurable cancer and was staying at our home and we were taking care of her during in those final days, she had experienced a lot of pain. And yet, the angel that she was never once did I hear her complain about the suffering or pain, yet we knew that she was going through it. And when we would slip into her room, we would find her hands raised as she would lie there in the bed just praising the Lord and worshipping Him. She spent her last days just praising the Lord and worshipping Him, not able to sleep, really, because of the pain and all.

So one morning I slipped into the room and I was heavy of heart because of her condition. My mother and I were always very close. I feel that one of the greatest blessings of life are those women that God has placed around my life: my mother and my wife, my sister, and my beautiful daughters; all of them godly women. How blessed I am. But I knelt down at the foot of her bed and I was softly praying and I said, "Lord, I am no hero, but I wish that You would take my mother's pain and just lay it on me for awhile. Let me bear it just a few days that she might have some relief from this suffering."

Never in my life have I experienced the presence of Jesus Christ or had Him speak to me so plainly as He did that morning. For Jesus came and He stood right beside me and He spoke to me and He said, "Chuck, that is a foolish request, for I have already borne her pain for her." I said, "Oh, Lord, I thank you." I realized that was a foolish request. "Forgive me, Father, for my foolishness." And immediately my mother was healed. The Lord had taken the pain and from that moment on she did not experience any more pain. The Lord took it and it was just a glorious experience of God's touch and the presence and the power of Jesus Christ demonstrated there.

I'm sure that after Paul made this kind of statement the Lord probably said, "Paul, that is a foolish statement." Noble? Yes. Expressing a deep burden and heart? Yes. But yet, to wish yourself accursed for their sake is not necessary, nor would it do anything for them, as Paul realized. But he just expressed the depth of his burden for those people. We are standing, really, before a giant. It is hard for us to understand this kind of a statement. Paul goes on to speak of his kinsman, his brothers according to the flesh. He said,

Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption ( Romans 9:4 ),

That is, they were God's chosen race of people. God had said to them, "You will be My people and I will be your God." God adopted them as His family. And then belonged to them the glory, that Shekinah presence of God. When the tabernacle was completed and all set up and they began the service, the glory of God, or the Shekinah came down in the temple and the presence of God's glory was so great that the priest could not even stand to minister there in the temple. It was just the presence of God's glory, the Shekinah. Unto them belong the Shekinah which dwelt in the Holy of Holies. Unto them were the covenants made.

God established His covenant with Abraham, "In blessing I will bless thee," and then He repeated the covenant to Isaac, and later to Jacob, and then later to David, and to them belong the covenants. Unto them God gave the law, and unto them God showed them how they were to worship Him in the temple worship. And finally, unto them were the promises that God had made throughout the Old Testament to this people and to these nations, and especially the promise of the Messiah. They have the patriarchs,

the fathers [Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob], and of whom as concerning the flesh the Messiah came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen ( Romans 9:5 ).

That is an unfortunate translation. If you translate that literally, this is the strongest statement made by Paul the apostle concerning the deity of Jesus Christ. For this particular verse, translated literally from the Greek, declares, "and of whom as of concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is God over all, blessed forever." So the declaration that Jesus is indeed God over all, blessed forever.

Now they had received the Word of God, they had received the covenant, they had received the promises, they had received the law, and so Paul said,

Not as though the word of God did not take effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel ( Romans 9:6 ):

Now, that is using Israel in a spiritual sense. The word literally means "governed by God," and it was the name that was given to Jacob after he had wrestled with the Lord all night long. And in the morning when the light began to break and Jacob was a broken man. In a little while he is going to be meeting his brother Esau with 200 men, and the last time he saw Esau he was threatening to kill him. He is a broken man. The angel of the Lord finally touched his thigh and made him a cripple. And in this crippled, broken state, defeated, the angel said, "Let me go, the day is breaking," and he said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." Really, that isn't quite as it sounds, because Hosea tells us that he said that with weeping and tears. He wasn't now coming from a position of advantage, but from a position of desperation and defeat and really should probably be, "Please don't go without blessing me," as he was weeping and crying, a broken man. And the angel said unto him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Heel catcher." And the angel said unto him, "Your name will not longer be Heel catcher, but Israel, Governed by God."

Now, just because a man says, "Well, I am an Israelite," does not necessarily mean that he is governed by God. So not all who are Israel are really Israel.

Not all who say, "I am a Christian," are really Christ-like, which the name is supposed to imply. Christ-like, "Well, I am a Christian." You are more like the devil. So it's not the name. And so there were those that were boasting. They thought because we are Israel, we are of Israel. We are descendants of Israel. Well, not all are Israel who are of Israel; not all of them are governed by God who descended from this man.

Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they necessarily the children of God: [for God said,] In Isaac shall thy seed by called ( Romans 9:7 ).

Just being a physical descendant of Abraham did not entitle you to the promises and the covenants and blessings of Abraham.

For God was developing not a physical fleshly seed, but a spiritual seed, and Ishmael was the son after the flesh and God would not recognize Ishmael. Isaac was the son of promise, the one after the Spirit, and God recognized Isaac. And later on God said to Abraham, "Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac," as He refused to recognize the works of the flesh. Isn't it interesting that we so often are seeking to offer to God works of our flesh, hoping that God might recognize them? He won't. I am really sort of grateful that He doesn't recognize the works of the flesh. Because I have some works that I just as soon He not make note of. He only recognizes that work of the Spirit. He only recognized Isaac, so God said, "In Isaac shall thy seed be called."

That is, They which are the children of the flesh, are not necessarily the children of God: but the children of the promise are the ones who are counted the seed ( Romans 9:8 ).

So Ishmael and his descendants, the children of the flesh, are not the children of God, but those who are of the promise Isaac.

For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sarah shall have a son. And not only this; but when Rebecca [now just taking it one step further,] also had conceived by our father Isaac; (and the children not yet born, and thus they had not done any good or evil up to this point, in order that the purposes of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him who calls;) it was said unto her, [while she was still pregnant] The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I loved less ( Romans 9:9-13 ).

Immediately we might say, "Well, that isn't fair." And Paul does anticipate that reaction. In verse Romans 9:14 , he says,

What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? [God not fair?] God forbid ( Romans 9:14 ).

How can God make that statement of children before they are ever born? Declaring I love one and hate the other, and I have chosen the one over the other. That does seem unfair, doesn't it? Don't look so sanctimonious, of course it does.

However, what we must take into consideration, and we don't always take into consideration in these things, is that God knows all things from the beginning. And God knew the entire life history of Jacob and Esau before they were ever born, even as He knew your life history before you were ever born. And because He knew that Esau would be a man of the flesh, and Jacob would be more a man of the Spirit, though he was a deceiver, a conniver and everything else, God knowing all of these things, and it is through the foreknowledge that God made that decision and that choice, the elder shall serve the younger. So we can't really fault God and say, "Well, they didn't do anything and God made the choice." No, God already knew what they were going to do, even as God already knows what you are going to do. That is why we are told in Ephesians that one of the blessings we have is that we were chosen in Him before the foundations of the world. How is it that God could choose me before He ever created the world? Because He knew me then. He knew all about me then, because God is omniscient. He knows all things, and known unto Him from the beginning are all things. And so on the basis of that foreknowledge, God made His election or His choice. Thus, that we are standing not by our works, but by the fact that God has elected us, even as Jesus said to His disciples, "You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you and ordained that you should be My disciples, that you should bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain" ( John 15:16 ).

So the Lord can say to every one of us tonight who are in Christ, "You have not chosen Me, but I chose you." Now when the evangelists have you raise your hand and choose Christ, I thought that I was choosing the Lord. But in reality, He had called me. He had elected me and had chosen me already, and I was only responding as He knew from the beginning that I would respond to His love. It didn't surprise God and he didn't say, "Wow, look at that. Can you believe that? He is going to join with us." No surprise to God. He knew all the while and that is why He elected me and chose me, because of His foreknowledge.

So is there unrighteousness with God? No, God forbid. Perish the thought. For God said to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion" ( Exodus 33:19 ). And remember, God said this when in righteousness He should have wiped them all out. They had rebelled against God and the authority of God, and God should have at this point wiped them all out and was even saying to Moses, "Stand back so that I can." And God was looking for the excuse to show mercy, and so He placed it upon Moses' heart to intercede and God responded and said,

I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and compassion on whom I will have compassion ( Romans 9:15 ).

And God had compassion upon Israel and showed mercy.

So then it is not of him that wills, [it is not by our resolves,] nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy ( Romans 9:16 ).

The sovereignty of God, in His divine election, in His predestination, in His choosing. It isn't that I made my great resolve, that I have willed, nor is it my works that I have run, but that it might stand by election God chose me.

Thus, I can't really boast in what I am or what I have done, or even what I hope to do. All I can do is boast in the grace and mercy of God that chose a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I am found. I was blind, but now I see. Oh, that amazing grace of God.

For the scripture says concerning Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore he has mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth ( Romans 9:17-18 ).

Now that doesn't sound fair. However, using Pharaoh as the example as God declares, "I will harden whom I will harden." As we go back to the story of Pharaoh, we read, "And Pharaoh hardened his heart against the Lord . . . and Pharaoh hardened his heart against the Lord." And we read that ten different times that Pharaoh hardened his heart against the Lord. And after declaring ten times that Pharaoh hardened his heart against the Lord, it said, "The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh."

Now it is interesting that two different Hebrew words are employed here. The one that says, "Pharaoh hardened his heart against the Lord" is just as it is translated. But where it said, "The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh," the Hebrew word literally is "the Lord made firm or stiffened the heart of Pharaoh." So that here is Pharaoh hardening his heart, hardening his heart, hardening his heart, and finally God moves in and He firms Pharaoh in . . . and He sets him really in that hardened condition.

Now I do believe that if a man hardens his heart over and over and over against God that is a possibility that God will then go ahead and make firm that person's choice and decision. He will stiffen him in it and that, of course, is a tragic day, because I believe that constitutes, really, the unpardonable sin. When a man has gone so far in hardening his heart against God that God then makes firm his heart. In Joh 12:39 we read, "Therefore they could not believe," not, "they would not," "they could not." They had hardened their heart against Jesus. They had seen miracle after miracle, demonstration after demonstration. He said, "If you don't believe Me, believe the works that I do because they testify to you."

Thus, every miracle that Christ did was a testimony to them that He was indeed the Messiah, but they hardened their hearts and they hardened their hearts and they hardened their hearts, until finally John tells us, "Therefore they could not believe." Be careful if you are hardening your heart against God, lest you come to that place where God will make firm your heart. Thus, God declared, "Those I will I will harden and those who I will have mercy upon, I will show mercy."

Then you say, [Paul said,] Well then how can God find fault with me? ( Romans 9:19 )

If it was God who hardened my heart, then how can He find fault with me for having a hard heart? Because if it is God's will that I live like I do and am opposed to Him.

How can I resist God's will? ( Romans 9:19 )

He said,

Oh come on O man, who are you to reply against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why have you made me thus? ( Romans 9:20 )

There are a lot of people who do not want to take responsibility for what they are or what they do. Thus, they seek to blame God. They say, "Well, God just made me this way," and they seek to blame God. Adam sought to blame God from the beginning when God said, "Adam, what have you done?" He said, "It is that woman that You gave to me." Your fault! And man, it seems, seeks to blame God for what he is. "Who can resist His will? If God made me this way I can't resist His will."

Has not the potter the power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor? ( Romans 9:21 )

Paul now introduces the figure of the potter and the clay to express to us God's relationship with man in demonstrating that awesome sovereignty of God over man. As the potter has the power over a lump of clay from the same lump to make a beautiful, honorable vessel or to make a vessel of dishonor fit to be thrown away.

God can create all kinds and so,

What if God, willing to show forth his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath that were fitted for destruction ( Romans 9:22 ):

Now God is long-suffering. He was long-suffering to Pharaoh. He let Pharaoh get by with so much before He finally struck with power. There are people, unfortunately, who misinterpret the long-suffering of God. Some of them interpret it as weakness, because God let's you get by with so much evil and He hasn't already smitten you. You think, "Well, He isn't able to, you know." Or even worse, there are some people who misinterpret the long-suffering of God as approval. "Well, if God didn't like the way I am living, why didn't He wipe me out? You know, He could have. He had every opportunity, and thus, because He hadn't wiped me out, it must mean that God approves the things that I am doing." That is a tragic mistake when a person misinterprets the long-suffering of God. God is longsuffering even with the evil those that are prepared for destruction. He let's them live their span of life so often. Even though they are destined for destruction. He is patient. He is long-suffering with them. He puts up with an awful lot.

But on the other hand,

that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had before prepared for glory ( Romans 9:23 ),

So God has prepared us for glory that we might experience the riches of His glory, vessels of mercy.

Even us, whom he has called, not just Jews, but also Gentiles. And as God said in the prophecy of Hosea, I will call them my people, which were not my people; and I will call her beloved, who was not beloved ( Romans 9:24-25 ).

As God speaks through Hosea, the fact that the door of His mercy and grace will be open to the Gentiles and He will call them His people who are really not His people, who are not the nation of Israel. And He will call them beloved who were not beloved.

And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, You were not my people; there shall you be called the children of the living God. Now Isaiah also cried concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant will be saved ( Romans 9:26-27 ):

So not all are Israel who are descendants of Israel, though the number as God promised Abraham would be as the sands of the sea, innumerable. Yet, Isaiah said, "Only a remnant and only a part of them are going to experience salvation."

For he will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth. And as Isaiah said before, Except the Lord of Sabbath had left us a seed, we had been destroyed like Sodom, and Gomorrah. What shall we say then? The Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith. But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Why? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone; [which was Jesus Christ] As it is written, Behold I lay in Zion a stumblingstone and rock of offense: and whosoever believeth on him will not be ashamed ( Romans 9:28-33 ).

So if Christ became a stumbling stone for Israel and continues to be such today, and thus, Israel who sought righteousness through the law never did attain it. However, the Gentiles who did not seek righteousness through the law, but sought that righteousness through faith have attained the righteousness of God. Jesus said to His disciples in Matthew 5 , "Except your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees you shall not enter into the kingdom of God." That is a very alarming, shocking, statement and I am sure that the disciples just were really taken back by that, because no one, but no one followed the righteousness of the law more circumspectly than the Pharisees.

And yet, Jesus said, "Unless you are more righteous than those fellows you can't make it in." And I would imagine that the immediate effect of that would be, "Well, forget it. There is no way I can do it." That would indeed be so if you were seeking righteousness by the law. You might as well forget it, because you will never be able to exceed what these fellows were doing. But the Gentiles who were not seeking after this righteousness through the law did attain to that righteousness. Why? Because they sought it by faith. Now Paul the apostle who had attained the righteousness through the law, in his own eyes but not in God's eyes, as he spoke of his past in his Philippian epistle said, "If any man thinks he has wherein to boast, I can boast more than all of you, for I was born of the tribe of Benjamin. I was a Hebrew of Hebrew. I was circumcised the eighth day. Concerning zeal I was a Pharisee and I persecuted the church. And concerning the righteousness which came by the law, I was the blameless. But those things which were gain to me I counted loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, for whom I suffered the loss of all things. I count it as refuse that I may know Him and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness which is of the law, but the righteousness which is of Christ through faith" ( Philippians 3:4-8 ). I would gladly chuck the past, count it as nothing, that I may know Him and be found in Him, not having that righteousness which is of the law which I once had. But now this righteousness which is of Christ through faith.

I heard this illustrated once in a very interesting way. They said that there was this girl who was extremely poor but had gone to a fashionable college, but had to work her way through the college. As it came time for the graduation ceremony, she was to graduate that year, she wanted to have a new dress for the graduation ceremony, as all the girls were getting new clothes, decked out in new clothes. Because she was very poor and didn't have . . . only that which she was able to provide the meager wages that she had. She went down to the five and dime and bought one of these patterns, and then bought some material at $2.95 per yard on special. And though she was inexperienced at sewing, she went home and carefully followed the instructions. Laid out the patterns, cut out the dress, and begin to sew it together. Due to her lack of experience the seams weren't that straight. But by and by and after removing a lot of seams and resewing, she was able to assemble the thing together. So she went out into the dorm where the other girls were and she said, "Look, this is my new dress. I am going to wear it to the graduation party." They all looked at her finest efforts and smiled politely and told her it looked nice. But about that moment, Lady Bountiful came into the room and said to her, "Young lady, I would like you to go with me." So she went with this lady outside where there was a chauffeur-driven car and they drove down to Saks Fifth Avenue. And the valet parked the car as they walked in, and as they sat in the comfort of those plush lounges, the models came by wearing these beautiful, gorgeous, original creations. Finally, a model came in with a dress that was so stunning and so spectacular that just as a reflex action she just gasped at its beauty.

Lady Bountiful noticed her reaction and called the model to come over closer that they might inspect the dress more carefully. As the model was turning around and showing the various facets of the dress, she saw the little tag flipping, and it was four thousand dollars. And she thought, "Oh, my. I didn't know that there was that much money in the world." Lady Bountiful could see that the dress pleased her, and so she ordered the clerk to wrap it up and deliver it to the car. When they came back to the dormitory, as she was let out of the car, Lady Bountiful handed her the dress and said, "I hope you will have a wonderful time at the graduation ball." She now went into her room and took the dress out and put it on and it fit perfectly. And she walked out into the dormitory now to all the girls that were there, and as they gasped over the beauty of the dress she was wearing, she said, "Look at my graduation dress. No longer the works of my own hands, but something that I could have never done for myself." A gift of grace.

So we patch our rags together and say, "God, aren't I beautiful? How do you like it, Lord?" Crooked seams, cheap material, uneven hems, and God clothes us in His righteousness. Something that we could never earn for ourselves, something we could never do for ourselves, but comes to us as the gift of God's grace.

So the Gentiles achieved that which the Jews could not achieve, because they were seeking to find it by the law, but the Gentiles accepting by faith attained to the righteousness of God through faith. As the Jews stumbled over Jesus Christ we have accepted Him. We have received Him, and because of our faith in Jesus Christ, God imputes our faith for righteousness and He accounts us righteous even as He is righteous. For the righteousness of Christ is imparted to me through my faith in Jesus Christ. So I am now clothed, not in my own righteousness which is of the law, but the righteousness which is of Christ through faith. Paul is saying, "How do you like it? I could have never done this myself, though I was a Pharisee of the Pharisees and zealous and all, I could have never done this for myself. But look what God has given to me. Look how God has clothed me. And the rest of it is just junk as far as I am concerned, the past glories and credits. Nothing that I may know Him."

"

Contending for the Faith

And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

And not only this: Paul quickly reveals that the example he has just cited concerning the birth of Isaac to Abraham and Sarah is not the only example that proves the descent of Christ was the result of God’s choice and not man’s will. He does so, for some might misconstrue God’s choice of Isaac over Ishmael as the bearer of the promised seed. They might argue that God chose Isaac over Ishmael because Isaac was the son of the freewoman whereas Ishmael was the son of the bondwoman (Galatians 4:22-31). To prove that such was not the basis of God’s choice, Paul introduces the following example concerning Jacob and Esau, the twin sons of Isaac’s wife Rebecca.

but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac: This example for Paul’s purpose is even clearer than the previous one. In this one, both children have the same mother. They have the same father. They were even conceived at the same moment. Cranfield notes the Greek implies that Jacob and Esau were conceived as identical twins and not simply that Rebecca had intercourse with only one man (230).

(For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil: This parenthesis emphasizes the fact that God’s choice of Jacob as the third representative bearer of the Seed did not depend in any degree upon man. Jacob and Esau were not born when God elected Jacob to continue the line of physical descent to the "Seed," Jesus Christ. Furthermore, God’s choice was not based upon any behavior of either of the twins—or of the boys had done any evil nor any good. The choice of physical descent was independent of all human merit.

In the previous case (that of Isaac and Ishmael), it could be legitimately argued that Isaac was the son of Abraham’s real wife while Ishmael was only the son of Abraham’s wife’s handmaid. This was not the basis of God’s selection of Isaac, but one could be excused for thinking it might have been. In the second example, God could as readily have selected Esau as He did Jacob. Yet He chose Jacob. Human merit had no place in His decision.

that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;): The declaration in verse 12 was made to Rebecca in answer to her query about the struggle being waged in her womb (Genesis 25:23). The point, God says, was that His purpose, accomplished by "election," might stand. God’s election, however, is not based on human works. Instead it is rooted in Him who calls, that is, God. Cranfield remarks:

The divine distinguishing between Jacob and Esau preceded their birth, so that God’s electing purpose might be fulfilled in its complete independence of human merit and dependence on God alone, whose call, by which He gives effect to His election, is altogether His free act (230).

One should keep in mind that the election under consideration has nothing whatever to do with salvation. In Paul’s explanation to Israel that God has not reneged on His promise, even though most of Israel stands rejected before God, two arguments run side by side like two ribbons. The first concerns God’s election of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the nation of Israel as the line of physical descent through whom the Seed, Jesus Christ, should come. This argument is easily recognized because it is about physical descent. The other argument running alongside concerns those whom God elects to salvation. Paul’s purpose is to demonstrate that just as the line of descent was independent of human merit—a point all Israel recognized—so also the election of God to salvation is independent of human merit. That is not to say that election for salvation has no conditions, for it does. Neither is it to say that election for salvation sets aside man’s freewill, for it does not. It is to say that the process of election, together with the conditions under which it will be applied, depends upon God alone. It comes by virtue of God’s choice and not on the basis of human merit. The first argument concerning the physical line of descent through which Christ came as a result of God’s election and not men’s work is illustrative of the second argument: that is, that salvation comes only to those who accept the conditions upon which God elects men to salvation. The election discussed here in verse 11, however, has nothing directly to do with salvation but rather with the birth of Jesus.

It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger: The passage cited is Genesis 25:23, which in its entirety says:

And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.

The context clearly indicates an ellipsis in the last clause, which should be understood as "the elder nation shall serve the younger nation." Not only does the immediate context of Genesis 25 demand such an understanding but also the following quotation in Romans 9 insists on it. Cranfield notes:

The interest of this Genesis verse as a whole is clearly in Jacob and Esau not just as individuals but also, and particularly, as the ancestors of two nations…It is important to stress that neither as they occur in Genesis nor as they are used by Paul do these words refer to the eternal destinies either of the two persons or of the individual members of the nations sprung from them; the reference is rather to the mutual relations of the two nations in history (231).

Corroborating this view is the fact that in the Old Testament history Esau did not serve Jacob at any time. If anything, the reverse was true; however, the nation of Edom, which descended from Esau, did serve Israel and was finally assimilated by Israel (2 Samuel 8:14; 1 Kings 22:47).

In quoting this passage from Genesis, Paul establishes that the line of Jesus’ physical descent came through the nation descended from Jacob purely as a result of God’s election or choice. In accord with that line of descent, the elder nation deriving from Esau was made subject to and finally absorbed by Israel.

As it is written: It is important always to note passages that say, "it is written." A casual reading of Romans 9 might lead one to conclude that this prophecy was also said to Rebecca. That would be a grievous error, however, for this was not written until some twelve hundred years later. This prophecy was written in the time of Malachi, the last Old Testament prophet.

Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated: Again, as in Paul’s earlier reference, the entire context is helpful to understanding:

The burden of the word of the LORD to Israel by Malachi. I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob, And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the LORD hath indignation for ever. And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The LORD will be magnified from the border of Israel (Malachi 1:1-5).

Obviously, Paul references nations in both of these quotations and not individuals. The point in the Malachi passage is the same as that in Genesis, but it expresses it even more clearly. God loved Jacob in the sense that He chose Jacob and his descendants to be the nation through whom Christ would come. He hated Esau in the sense that He rejected Esau: He left him outside of His relationship with Israel. We must recognize, however, that this selection had nothing to do with the salvation or condemnation of either Jacob or Esau as individuals or the representatives of their descendant nations. As in the case of Ishmael, Esau still was an object of God’s merciful care (Genesis 27:39; Genesis 36; 1 Chronicles 1:35-54; Deuteronomy 23:7; Amos 2:1-3). Barmby says:

The strong expression, "Esau I hated" (applicable as shown above, not to the individual Esau, but to the race of Edom) is capable of being explained as meaning, "I excluded him from the love I showed Israel." The evidence of such alleged hatred the prophet expressed thus: "and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness;" whereas Israel, it is implied, had been protected from such desolation (265).

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

2. God’s election of Israel 9:6-13

Paul’s train of thought unfolds as follows in these verses. Because God’s election of Israel did not depend on natural descent (Romans 9:6-10) or human merit (Romans 9:11-14), Israel’s disobedience cannot nullify God’s determined purpose for the nation.

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

By quoting Malachi 1:2-3 Paul raised his discussion from the level of personal election to national election. Malachi was speaking of nations, as the context of this Malachi quotation shows. Paul’s point was that God does not wait until He sees how individuals or nations develop and what choices they make before He elects them. God chose Jacob and the nation of Israel for reasons that lay within Himself, not because they merited election (cf. Deuteronomy 7:6-8). This is a powerful refutation of the claim that election results from prior knowledge, that God chooses a person for salvation having foreseen that he or she will believe the gospel.

"The connection of this quotation with Romans 9:12 suggests that God’s love is the same as his election: God chose Jacob to inherit the blessings promised first to Abraham. . . . If God’s love of Jacob consists in his choosing Jacob to be the ’seed’ who would inherit the blessings promised to Abraham, then God’s hatred of Esau is best understood to refer to God’s decision not to bestow this privilege on Esau. It might best be translated ’reject.’ "Love’ and ’hate’ are not here, then, emotions that God feels but actions that he carries out." [Note: Ibid., p. 587. Cf. Cranfield, 2:480. See also Matthew 6:24; Luke 14:26; and John 12:25.]

"The strong contrast is a Semitic idiom that heightens the comparison by stating it in absolute terms." [Note: Mounce, p. 199.]

"As to ’Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated,’ a woman once said to Mr. Spurgeon, ’I cannot understand why God should say that He hated Esau.’ ’That,’ Spurgeon replied, ’is not my difficulty, madam. My trouble is to understand how God could love Jacob!" [Note: Newell, p. 364.]

In Romans 9:6-13 Paul established that Israel was the object of God’s choice for special blessing because of His own gracious will. He did not choose Israel because of the Israelites’ natural descent from Abraham or because of their superior qualities.

Barclay's Daily Study Bible

Chapter 9

THE PROBLEM OF THE JEWS ( Romans 9:1-6 )

In Romans 9:1-33; Romans 10:1-21; Romans 11:1-36 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" ( Isaiah 10:22; Romans 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 ( Romans 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'" ( Hosea 1:10; Romans 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"? ( Isaiah 28:16; Romans 10:11.) Did not Joel say: "Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved"? ( Joel 2:32; Romans 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"? ( Deuteronomy 32:21; Romans 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" ( Romans 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 )

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" ( Exodus 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 ( G331) and it is a terrible word. A thing which was anathema ( G331) 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 ( Deuteronomy 3:6; Deuteronomy 2:34; Joshua 6:17; Joshua 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 ( Deuteronomy 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" ( Deuteronomy 14:1). "Is not he your father, who created you?" ( Deuteronomy 32:6). "Israel is my firstborn son" ( Exodus 4:22). "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt called my son" ( Hosea 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 ( Exodus 16:10; Exodus 24:16-17; Exodus 29:43; Exodus 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 )

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 ( Genesis 21:12). Now Ishmael had been the son of natural human desire; but Isaac had been the son of God's promise ( Genesis 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 ( Genesis 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 Malachi 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 )

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 Exodus 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 ( Exodus 9:1-35; Exodus 10:1-29; Exodus 11:1-10; Exodus 12:1-51; Exodus 13:1-22; Exodus 14:1-31; Exodus 15:1-27; Exodus 16:1-36).

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.

THE POTTER AND THE CLAY ( Romans 9:19-29 )

9:19-29 But, then, you may ask, "If this is so how can God go on blaming men if they do not take his way? Who can withstand God's purpose?" Fellow! Who are you to be arguing with God? Surely the thing that is molded into shape cannot say to the man who molds it, "Why did you make me like this?" Has not the potter complete authority over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for an honourable use and another for a menial service? What if God, although it was his will to demonstrate his wrath and to make known his power, did nonetheless treat with long patience the objects of his wrath, although they were ripe and ready for destruction? Yes, and what if he did it because it is his will to make known the wealth of his glory to the objects of his mercy, which he had prepared beforehand for glory--I mean us whom he called not only from among the Jews but also from among the Gentiles? Just as he says in Hosea: "A people which was not mine I will call my people; and her who was not beloved I will call beloved." And as he says in that same place where it was said to them: "You are not my people; there they shall be called the sons of the living God." And Isaiah cries about Israel: "Even though the number of the sons of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, only the remnant will be saved, for the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth completely and summarily." And even as Isaiah foretold: "Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us some descendants, we would have become as Sodom, and we would have been like Gomorrah."

In the previous passage Paul had been showing that all through the history of Israel there had been going on a process of election and selection by God. A very natural objection arises--if at the back of the whole process there is the selection and rejection of God, how can God possibly blame the men who have rejected him? Surely the fault is not theirs at all, but God's. Paul's answer is blunt almost to the point of crudity. He says that no man has any right to argue with God. When a potter makes a vessel, it cannot talk back to him; he has absolute power over it; out of the one lump of clay he can make one vessel for an honourable purpose and another for a menial purpose, and the clay has nothing to do with it and has no right whatever to protest. In point of fact Paul took this picture from Jeremiah ( Jeremiah 18:1-6). There are two things to be said about it.

(i) It is a bad analogy. One great New Testament commentator has said that this is one of the very few passages which we wish Paul had not written. There is a difference between a human being and a lump of clay. A human being is a person and a lump of clay is a thing. Maybe you can do what you like with a thing, but you cannot do what you like with a person. Clay does not desire to answer back; does not desire to question; cannot think and feel; cannot be bewildered and tortured. If someone has inexplicably suffered some tremendous sorrow, it will not help much to tell him that he has no right to complain, because God can do what he likes. That is the mark of a tyrant and not of a loving Father. It is the basic fact of the gospel that God does not treat men as a potter treats a lump of clay; he treats them as a loving father treats his child.

(ii) But when we have said that we must remember one thing--it was out of anguish of heart that Paul wrote this passage. He was faced with the bewildering fact that God's own people, his own kinsmen, had rejected and crucified God's own Son. It was not that Paul wished to say this; he was driven to say it. The only possible explanation he could see was that, for his own purposes, God had somehow blinded his people.

In any event, Paul does not leave the argument there. He goes on to say that this rejection by the Jews had happened in order that the door might be opened to the Gentiles. His argument is not good. It is one thing to say that God used an evil situation to bring good out of it; it is quite another thing to say that he created it to produce good in the end. Paul is saying that God deliberately darkened the minds and blinded the eyes and hardened the hearts of the mass of the Jewish people in order that the way might open for the Gentiles to come in. We must remember that this is not the argument of a theologian sitting quietly in a study thinking things out; it is the argument of a man whose heart was in despair to find some reason for a completely incomprehensible situation. In the end the only answer Paul can find is that God did it.

Now Paul was arguing with Jews, and he knew that the only way he could buttress his argument was with quotations from their own scriptures. So he goes on to cite texts to prove that this rejection of the Jews and acceptance of the Gentiles had actually been foretold in the prophets. Hosea had said that God would make a people his people who were not his people ( Hosea 2:23). He said that a people who were not God's people would be called the sons of God ( Hosea 1:10). He showed how Isaiah had foreseen a situation when Israel would have been obliterated had not a remnant been left ( Isaiah 10:22-23; Isaiah 37:32). It is his argument that Israel could have foreseen her doom had she only understood.

It is easy in this passage to criticize him, but the one thing that must be remembered is that Paul, in his despairing anguish for his own people, clung to the fact that somehow everything was God's work. For him there was nothing left to say but that.

THE JEWISH MISTAKE ( Romans 9:30-33 )

9:30-33 What shall we then say? The Gentiles who were not looking for a right relationship with God received such a relationship, but it was a relationship which was the result of faith, while Israel which was looking for a law which would produce a right relationship with God never succeeded in finding such a law. Why? Because they tried to get into a right relationship with God, not by trusting God, but by depending on their own human achievements. They stumbled over the stone which makes men stumble, even as it stands written: "I have set in Zion a stone which makes men stumble, and a rock which makes them trip. And he who believes in him will not be put to shame."

Here Paul draws a contrast between two ways of feeling towards God. There was the Jewish way. The aim of the Jew was to set himself right with God and he regarded a right relationship with God as something which could be earned. There is another way to put that which will show really what it means. Fundamentally, the Jewish idea was that a man, by strict obedience to the law, could pile up a credit balance. The result would be that God was in his debt and owed him salvation. But it was obviously a losing battle, because man's imperfection could never satisfy God's perfection; nothing that man could do could even begin to repay what God has done for him.

That is precisely what Paul found. As he said, the Jew spent his life searching for a law, obedience to which would put him right with God, and he never found it because there was no such law to be found. The Gentile had never engaged upon this search; but when he suddenly was confronted with the incredible love of God in Jesus Christ, he simply cast himself upon that love in total trust. It was as if the Gentile saw the Cross and said, "If God loves me like that I can trust him with my life and with my soul."

The Jew sought to put God in his debt; the Gentile was content to be in God's debt. The Jew believed he could win salvation by doing things for God; the Gentile was lost in amazement at what God had done for him. The Jew sought to find the way to God by works; the Gentile came by the way of trust.

"Not the labours of my hands

Can fulfil thy law's demands;

Could my zeal no respite know,

Could my tears for ever flow,

All for sin could not atone:

Thou must save, and thou alone."

Paul would have said "Amen" to that.

The stone is one of the characteristic references of the early Christian writers. In the Old Testament there is a series of rather mysterious references to the stone. In Isaiah 8:14 it is said that God shall be for a stone of offence and a rock of stumbling to the houses of Israel. In Isaiah 28:16 God says that he will lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation. In Daniel 2:34-35, Daniel 2:44-45, there is a reference to a mysterious stone. In Psalms 118:22 the Psalmist writes: "The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner."

When the Christians began to search the Old Testament for forecasts of Christ they came across these references to this wonderful stone; and they identified Jesus with it. Their warrant was that the gospel story shows Jesus himself making that identification and taking the verse in Psalms 118:22 and applying it to himself ( Matthew 21:42). The Christians thought of the stone which was the sure foundation, the stone which was the corner stone binding the whole building together, the stone which had been rejected and had then become the chief of all the stones, as pictures of Christ himself.

The actual quotation which Paul uses here is a combination of Isaiah 8:14 and Isaiah 28:16. The Christians, including Paul, took it to mean this--God had intended his Son to be the foundation of every man's life, but when he came the Jews rejected him, and because they rejected him that gift of God which had been meant for their salvation became the reason for their condemnation. This picture of the stone fascinated the Christians. We get it again and again in the New Testament ( Acts 4:11; Ephesians 2:20; 1 Peter 2:4-6).

The eternal truth behind this thought is this. Jesus was sent into this world to be the Saviour of men; but he is also the touch-stone by which all men are judged. If a man's heart goes out in love and submission to him, Jesus is for him salvation. If a man's heart is entirely unmoved or angrily rebellious, Jesus is for him condemnation. Jesus came into the world for our salvation, but by his attitude to him a man can either gain salvation or merit condemnation.

-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)

Gann's Commentary on the Bible

Romans 9:13

As it is written -- Malachi 1:2-3. The language of Malachi in ist context shows that this is spoken of the two nations, Israel and Edom.

    This was not true of Esau as a person, but true of his descendants. It is not about individuals, but that God blessed one nations more than another.

There is not the slightest hint of electing some persons to eternal salvation and others to damnation.

Esau -- The Edomites were descendants of Esau, Malachi 1:4.

have I hated -- This does not mean any positive hatred; but that he had preferred Jacob, and had withheld from Esau those privileges and blessings which he had conferred on the descendants of Jacob.

This is explained in Malachi 1:3,” And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness;” compare Jeremiah 49:17-18; Ezekiel 35:6.

    It was common among the Hebrews to use the terms “love” and “hatred” in this comparative sense, where the former implied strong positive attachment, and the latter, not positive hatred, but merely a less love, or the withholding of the expressions of affection; compare Genesis 29:30-31; Proverbs 13:24. See Luke 14:26; John 12:25.

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

As it is written,.... In Malachi 1:2;

Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. These words are explanative of the former; they are of like import, and the one interpret the other; and show, that the former are to be understood in a spiritual, and not in a temporal sense, and of the persons, and not the posterity of Jacob and Esau; for though Malachi prophesied long after Jacob and Esau were personally dead, yet the Lord in that prophecy manifestly directs the murmuring Jews to the personal regard he had had to Jacob and Esau, and which had continued in numberless instances to their respective posterities, in order to stop their mouths, and reprove their ingratitude; and though he speaks of the nation of the Edomites, and to the posterity of Israel, yet it is evident, that he has a respect to the persons of Jacob and Esau, from whence they sprung, when he says, "was not Esau Jacob's brother?" Malachi 1:2, now though an Edomite may be said to be brother to an Israelite, yet Esau is never said, nor can he with any propriety be said to be the brother of Jacob's posterity: it remains, that these words regard their persons, and express the true spring and source of the choice of the one, and the rejection of the other; and which holds true of all the instances of either kind: everlasting and unchangeable love is the true cause and spring of the choice of particular persons to eternal salvation; and hatred is the cause of rejection, by which is meant not positive hatred, which can only have for its object sin and sinners, or persons so considered; but negative hatred, which is God's will, not to give eternal life to some persons; and shows itself by a neglect of them, taking no notice of them, passing them by, when he chose others; so the word "hate" is used for neglect, taking no notice, where positive hatred cannot be thought to take place, in Luke 14:26.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      6 Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel:   7 Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called.   8 That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.   9 For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sara shall have a son.   10 And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac;   11 (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;)   12 It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.   13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

      The apostle, having made his way to that which he had to say, concerning the rejection of the body of his countrymen, with a protestation of his own affection for them and a concession of their undoubted privileges, comes in these verses, and the following part of the chapter, to prove that the rejection of the Jews, by the establishment of the gospel dispensation, did not at all invalidate the word of God's promise to the patriarchs: Not as though the word of God hath taken no effect (Romans 9:6; Romans 9:6), which, considering the present state of the Jews, which created to Paul so much heaviness and continual sorrow (Romans 9:2; Romans 9:2), might be suspected. We are not to ascribe inefficacy to any word of God: nothing that he has spoken does or can fall to the ground; see Isaiah 55:10; Isaiah 55:11. The promises and threatenings shall have their accomplishment; and, one way or other, he will magnify the law and make it honourable. This is to be understood especially of the promise of God, which by subsequent providences may be to a wavering faith very doubtful; but it is not, it cannot be, made of no effect; at the end it will speak and not lie.

      Now the difficulty is to reconcile the rejection of the unbelieving Jews with the word of God's promise, and the external tokens of the divine favour, which had been conferred upon them. This he does in four ways:-- 1. By explaining the true meaning and intention of the promise, Romans 9:6-13; Romans 9:6-13. 2. By asserting and proving the absolute sovereignty of God, in disposing of the children of men, Romans 9:14-24; Romans 9:14-24. 3. By showing how this rejection of the Jews, and the taking in of the Gentiles, were foretold in the Old Testament, Romans 9:25-29; Romans 9:25-29. 4. By fixing the true reason of the Jews' rejection, Romans 9:30; Romans 9:30, to the end.

      In this paragraph the apostle explains the true meaning and intention of the promise. When we mistake the word, and misunderstand the promise, no marvel if we are ready to quarrel with God about the accomplishment; and therefore the sense of this must first be duly stated. Now he here makes it out that, when God said he would be a God to Abraham, and to his seed (which was the famous promise made unto the fathers), he did not mean it of all his seed according to the flesh, as if it were a necessary concomitant of the blood of Abraham; but that he intended it with a limitation only to such and such. And as from the beginning it was appropriated to Isaac and not to Ishmael, to Jacob and not to Esau, and yet for all this the word of God was not made of no effect; so now the same promise is appropriated to believing Jews that embrace Christ and Christianity, and, though it throws off multitudes that refuse Christ, yet the promise is not therefore defeated and invalidated, any more than it was by the typical rejection of Ishmael and Esau.

      I. He lays down this proposition--that they are not all Israel who are of Israel (Romans 9:6; Romans 9:6), neither because they are, c., Romans 9:7; Romans 9:7. Many that descended from the loins of Abraham and Jacob, and were of that people who were surnamed by the name of Israel, yet were very far from being Israelites indeed, interested in the saving benefits of the new covenant. They are not all really Israel that are so in name and profession. It does not follow that, because they are the seed of Abraham, therefore they must needs be the children of God, though they themselves fancied so, boasted much of, and built much upon, their relation to Abraham, Matthew 3:9; John 8:38; John 8:39. But it does not follow. Grace does not run in the blood; nor are saving benefits inseparably annexed to external church privileges, though it is common for people thus to stretch the meaning of God's promise, to bolster themselves up in a vain hope.

      II. He proves this by instances; and therein shows not only that some of Abraham's seed were chosen, and others not, but that God therein wrought according to the counsel of his own will; and not with regard to that law of commandments to which the present unbelieving Jews were so strangely wedded.

      1. He specifies the case of Isaac and Ishmael, both of them the seed of Abraham; and yet Isaac only taken into covenant with God, and Ishmael rejected and cast out. For this he quotes Genesis 21:12, In Isaac shall thy seed be called, which comes in there as a reason why Abraham must be willing to cast out the bond-woman and her son, because the covenant was to be established with Isaac, Genesis 17:19. And yet the word which God had spoken, that he would be a God to Abraham and to his seed, did not therefore fall to the ground; for the blessings wrapt up in that great word, being communicated by God as a benefactor, he was free to determine on what head they should rest, and accordingly entailed them upon Isaac, and rejected Ishmael. This he explains further (Romans 9:8; Romans 9:9), and shows what God intended to teach us by this dispensation. (1.) That the children of the flesh, as such, by virtue of their relation to Abraham according to the flesh, are not therefore the children of God, for then Ishmael had put in a good claim. This remark comes home to the unbelieving Jews, who boasted of their relation to Abraham according to the flesh, and looked for justification in a fleshly way, by those carnal ordinances which Christ had abolished. They had confidence in the flesh, and looked for justification in a fleshly way, by those carnal ordinances which Christ had abolished. They had confidence in the flesh, Philippians 3:3. Ishmael was a child of the flesh, conceived by Hagar, who was young and fresh, and likely enough to have children. There was nothing extraordinary or supernatural in his conception, as there was in Isaac's; he was born after the flesh (Galatians 4:29), representing those that expect justification and salvation by their own strength and righteousness. (2.) That the children of the promise are counted for the seed. Those that have the honour and happiness of being counted for the seed have it not for the sake of any merit or desert of their own, but purely by virtue of the promise, in which God hath obliged himself of his own good pleasure to grant the promised favour. Isaac was a child of promise; this his proves, Romans 9:9; Romans 9:9, quoted from Genesis 18:10. He was a child promised (so were many others), and he was also conceived and born by force and virtue of the promise, and so a proper type and figure of those who are now counted for the seed, even true believers, who are born, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God--of the incorruptible seed, even the word of promise, by virtue of the special promise of a new heart: see Galatians 4:28. It was through faith that Isaac was conceived, Hebrews 11:11. Thus were the great mysteries of salvation taught under the Old Testament, not in express words, but by significant types and dispensations of providence, which to them then were not so clear as they are to us now, when the veil is taken away, and the types are expounded by the antitypes.

      2. The case of Jacob and Esau (Romans 9:10-13; Romans 9:10-13), which is much stronger, to show that the carnal seed of Abraham were not, as such, interested in the promise, but only such of them as God in sovereignty had appointed. There was a previous difference between Ishmael and Isaac, before Ishmael was cast out: Ishmael was the son of the bond-woman, born long before Isaac, was of a fierce and rugged disposition, and had mocked or persecuted Isaac, to all which it might be supposed God had regard when he appointed Abraham to cast him out. But, in the case of Jacob and Esau, it was neither so nor so, they were both the sons of Isaac by one mother; they were conceived hex henos--by one conception; hex henos koitou, so some copies read it. The difference was made between them by the divine counsel before they were born, or had done any good or evil. Both lay struggling alike in their mother's womb, when it was said, The elder shall serve the younger, without respect to good or bad works done or foreseen, that the purpose of God according to election might stand--that this great truth may be established, that God chooses some and refuses others as a free agent, by his own absolute and sovereign will, dispensing his favours or withholding them as he pleases. This difference that was put between Jacob and Esau he further illustrates by a quotation from Malachi 1:2; Malachi 1:3, where it is said, not of Jacob and Esau the person, but the Edomites and Israelites their posterity, Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated. The people of Israel were taken into the covenant of peculiarity, had the land of Canaan given them, were blessed with the more signal appearances of God for them in special protections, supplies, and deliverances, while the Edomites were rejected, had no temple, altar, priests, nor prophets--no such particular care taken of them nor kindness shown to them. Such a difference did God put between those two nations, that both descended from the loins of Abraham and Isaac, as at first there was a difference put between Jacob and Esau, the distinguishing heads of those two nations. So that all this choosing and refusing was typical, and intended to shadow forth some other election and rejection. (1.) Some understand it of the election and rejection of conditions or qualifications. As God chose Isaac and Jacob, and rejected Ishmael and Esau, so he might and did choose faith to be the condition of salvation and reject the works of the law. Thus Arminius understands it, De rejectis et assumptis talibus, certa qualitate notatis--Concerning such as are rejected and such as are chosen, being distinguished by appropriate qualities; so John Goodwin. But this very much strains the scripture; for the apostle speaks all along of persons, he has mercy on whom (he does not say on what kind of people) he will have mercy, besides that against this sense those two objections (Romans 9:14; Romans 9:19) do not at all arise, and his answer to them concerning God's absolute sovereignty over the children of men is not at all pertinent if no more be meant than his appointing the conditions of salvation. (2.) Others understand it of the election and rejection of particular person--some loved, and others hated, from eternity. But the apostle speaks of Jacob and Esau, not in their own persons, but as ancestors--Jacob the people, and Esau the people; nor does God condemn any, or decree so to do, merely because he will do it, without any reason taken from their own deserts. (3.) Others therefore understand it of the election and rejection of people considered complexly. His design is to justify God, and his mercy and truth, in calling the Gentiles, and taking them into the church, and into covenant with himself, while he suffered the obstinate part of the Jews to persist in unbelief, and so to un-church themselves--thus hiding from their eyes the things that belonged to their peace. The apostle's reasoning for the explication and proof of this is, however, very applicable to, and, no doubt (as is usual in scripture) was intended for the clearing of the methods of God's grace towards particular person, for the communication of saving benefits bears some analogy to the communication of church-privileges. The choosing of Jacob the younger, and preferring him before Esau the elder (so crossing hands), were to intimate that the Jews, though the natural seed of Abraham, and the first-born of the church, should be laid aside; and the Gentiles, who were as the younger brother, should be taken in in their stead, and have the birthright and blessing. The Jews, considered as a body politic, a nation and people, knit together by the bond and cement of the ceremonial law, the temple and priesthood, the centre of their unity, had for many ages been the darlings and favourites of heaven, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, dignified and distinguished by God's miraculous appearances among them and for them. Now that the gospel was preached, and Christian churches were planted, this national body was thereby abandoned, their church-polity dissolved; and Christian churches (and in process of time Christian nations), embodied in like manner, become their successors in the divine favour, and those special privileges and protections which were the products of that favour. To clear up the justice of God in this great dispensation is the scope of the apostle here.

Kelly Commentary on Books of the Bible

The circumstances under which the epistle to the Romans was written gave occasion to the most thorough and comprehensive unfolding, not of the church, but of Christianity. No apostle had ever yet visited Rome. There was somewhat as yet lacking to the saints there; but even this was ordered of God to call forth from the Holy Ghost an epistle which more than any other approaches a complete treatise on the fundamentals of Christian doctrine, and especially as to righteousness.

Would we follow up the heights of heavenly truth, would we sound the depths of Christian experience, would we survey the workings of the Spirit of God in the Church, would we bow before the glories of the person of Christ, or learn His manifold offices, we must look elsewhere in the writings of the New Testament no doubt, but elsewhere rather than here.

The condition of the Roman saints called for a setting forth of the gospel of God; but this object, in order to be rightly understood and appreciated, leads the apostle into a display of the condition of man. We have God and man in presence, so to speak. Nothing can be more simple and essential. Although there is undoubtedly that profoundness which must accompany every revelation of God, and especially in connection with Christ as now manifested, still we have God adapting Himself to the very first wants of a renewed soul nay, even to the wretchedness of souls without God, without any real knowledge either of themselves or of Him. Not, of course, that the Roman saints were in this condition; but that God, writing by the apostle to them, seizes the opportunity to lay bare man's state as well as His own grace.

Romans 1:1-32. From the very first we have these characteristics of the epistle disclosing themselves. The apostle writes with the full assertion of his own apostolic dignity, but as a servant also. "Paul, a bondman of Jesus Christ" an apostle "called," not born, still less as educated or appointed of man, but an apostle "called," as he says "separated unto the gospel of God, which he had promised afore by his prophets." The connection is fully owned with that which had been from God of old. No fresh revelations from God can nullify those which preceded them; but as the prophets looked onward to what was coming, so is the gospel already come, supported by the past. There is mutual confirmation. Nevertheless, what is in nowise the same as what was or what will be. The past prepared the way, as it is said here, "which God had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures, concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, [here we have the great central object of God's gospel, even the person of Christ, God's Son,] which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh" (ver. 3). This last relation was the direct subject of the prophetic testimony, and Jesus had come accordingly. He was the promised Messiah, born King of the Jews.

But there was far more in Jesus. He was "declared," says the apostle, "to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead" ( ἐξ ἀναστάσεως νεκρῶν , ver. 4). It was the Son of God not merely as dealing with the powers of the earth, Jehovah's King on the holy hill of Zion, but after a far deeper manner. For, essentially associated as He is with the glory of God the Father, the full deliverance of souls from the realm of death was His also. In this too we have the blessed connection of the Spirit (here peculiarly designated, for special reasons, "the Spirit of holiness"). That same energy of the Holy Ghost which had displayed itself in Jesus, when He walked in holiness here below, was demonstrated in resurrection; and not merely in His own rising from the dead, but in raising such at any time no doubt, though most signally and triumphantly displayed in His own resurrection.

The bearing of this on the contents and main doctrine of the epistle will appear abundantly by-and-by. Let me refer in passing to a few points more in the introduction, in order to link them together with that which the Spirit was furnishing to the Roman saints, as well as to show the admirable perfectness of every word that inspiration has given us. I do not mean by this its truth merely, but its exquisite suitability; so that the opening address commences the theme in hand, and insinuates that particular line of truth which the Holy Spirit sees fit to pursue throughout. To this then the apostle comes, after having spoken of the divine favour shown himself, both when a sinner, and now in his own special place of serving the Lord Jesus. "By whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith." This was no question of legal obedience, although the law came from Jehovah. Paul's joy and boast were in the gospel of God. So therefore it addressed itself to the obedience of faith; not by this meaning practice, still less according to the measure of a man's duty, but that which is at the root of all practice faith-obedience obedience of heart and will, renewed by divine grace, which accepts the truth of God. To man this is the hardest of all obedience; but when once secured, it leads peacefully into the obedience of every day. If slurred over, as it too often is in souls, it invariably leaves practical obedience lame, and halt, and blind.

It was for this then that Paul describes himself as apostle. And as it is for obedience of faith, it was not in anywise restricted to the Jewish people "among all nations, for his (Christ's) name: among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ" (verses 5, 6). He loved even here at the threshold to show the breadth of God's grace. If he was called, so were they he an apostle, they not apostles but saints; but still, for them as for him, all flowed out of the same mighty love, of God. "To all that be at Rome, beloved of God, called saints" (ver. 7). To these then he wishes, as was his wont, the fresh flow of that source and stream of divine blessing which Christ has made to be household bread to us: "Grace and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ" (ver. 7). Then, from ver. 8, after thanking God through Jesus for their faith spoken of everywhere, and telling them of his prayers for them, he briefly discloses the desire of his heart about them his long-cherished hope according to the grace of the gospel to reach Rome his confidence in the love of God that through him some spiritual gift would be imparted to them, that they might be established, and, according to the spirit of grace which filled his own heart, that he too might be comforted together with them "by the mutual faith both of you and me" (vv. 11, 12). There is nothing like the grace of God for producing the truest humility, the humility that not only descends to the lowest level of sinners to do them good, but which is itself the fruit of deliverance from that self-love which puffs itself or lowers others. Witness the common joy that grace gives an apostle with saints be had never seen, so that even he should be comforted as well as they by their mutual faith. He would not therefore have them ignorant how they had lain on his heart for a visit (ver. 13). He was debtor both to the Greeks and the barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise; he was ready, as far as he was concerned, to preach the gospel to those that were at Rome also (ver. 14, 15). Even the saints there would have been all the better for the gospel. It was not merely "to those at Rome," but "to you that be at Rome." Thus it is a mistake to suppose that saints may not be benefited by a better understanding of the gospel, at least as Paul preached it. Accordingly he tells them now what reason he had to speak thus strongly, not of the more advanced truths, but of the good news. "For I am not ashamed of the gospel: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (ver. 16).

Observe, the gospel is not simply remission of sins, nor is it only peace with God, but "the power of God unto salvation." Now I take this opportunity of pressing on all that are here to beware of contracted views of "salvation." Beware that you do not confound it with souls being quickened, or even brought into joy. Salvation supposes not this only, but a great deal more. There is hardly any phraseology that tends to more injury of souls in these matters than a loose way of talking of salvation. "At any rate he is a saved soul," we hear. "The man has not got anything like settled peace with God; perhaps he hardly knows his sins forgiven; but at least he is a saved soul." Here is an instance of what is so reprehensible. This is precisely what salvation does not mean; and I would strongly press it on all that hear me, more particularly on those that have to do with the work of the Lord, and of course ardently desire to labour intelligently; and this not alone for the conversion, but for the establishment and deliverance of souls. Nothing less, I am persuaded, than this full blessing is the line that God has given to those who have followed Christ without the camp, and who, having been set free from the contracted ways of men, desire to enter into the largeness and at the same time the profound wisdom of every word of God. Let us not stumble at the starting-point, but leave room for the due extent and depth of "salvation" in the gospel.

There is no need of dwelling now on "salvation" as employed in the Old Testament, and in some parts of the New, as the gospels and Revelation particularly, where it is used for deliverance in power or even providence and present things. I confine myself to its doctrinal import, and the full Christian sense of the word; and I maintain that salvation signifies that deliverance for the believer which is the full consequence of the mighty work of Christ, apprehended not, of course, necessarily according to all its depth in God's eyes, but at any rate applied to the soul in the power of the Holy Ghost. It is not the awakening of conscience, however real; neither is it the attraction of heart by the grace of Christ, however blessed this may be. We ought therefore to bear in mind, that if a soul be not brought into conscious deliverance as the fruit of divine teaching, and founded on the work of Christ, we are very far from presenting the gospel as the apostle Paul glories in it, and delights that it should go forth. "I am not ashamed," etc.

And he gives his reason: "For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, The just shall live by faith." That is, it is the power of God unto salvation, not because it is victory (which at the beginning of the soul's career would only give importance to man even if possible, which it is not), but because it is "the righteousness of God." It is not God seeking, or man bringing righteousness. In the gospel there is revealed God's righteousness. Thus the introduction opened with Christ's person, and closes with God's righteousness. The law demanded, but could never receive righteousness from man. Christ is come, and has changed all. God is revealing a righteousness of His own in the gospel. It is God who now makes known a righteousness to man, instead of looking for any from man. Undoubtedly there are fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, and God values them I will not say from man, but from His saints; but here it is what, according to the apostle, God has for man. It is for the saints to learn, of course; but it is that which goes out in its own force and necessary aim to the need of man a divine righteousness, which justifies instead of condemning him who believes. It is "the power of God unto salvation." It is for the lost, therefore; for they it is who need salvation; and it is to save not merely to quicken, but to save; and this because in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed.

Hence it is, as he says, herein revealed "from faith," or by faith. It is the same form of expression exactly as in the beginning of Romans 5:1-21 "being justified by faith" ( ἐκ πίστεως ). But besides this he adds "to faith." The first of these phrases, "from faith," excludes the law; the second, "to faith," includes every one that has faith within the scope of God's righteousness. Justification is not from works of law. The righteousness of God is revealed from faith; and consequently, if there be faith in any soul, to this it is revealed, to faith wherever it may be. Hence, therefore, it was in no way limited to any particular nation, such as those that had already been under the law and government of God. It was a message that went out from God to sinners as such. Let man be what he might, or where he might, God's good news was for man. And to this agreed the testimony of the prophet. "The just shall live by faith" (not by law). Even where the law was, not by it but by faith the just lived. Did Gentiles believe? They too should live. Without faith there is neither justice nor life that God owns; where faith is, the rest will surely follow.

This accordingly leads the apostle into the earlier portion of his great argument, and first of all in a preparatory way. Here we pass out of the introduction of the epistle. "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness" (ver. 18). This is what made the gospel to be so sweet and precious, and, what is more, absolutely necessary, if he would escape certain and eternal ruin. There is no hope for man otherwise; for the gospel is not all that is now made known. Not only is God's righteousness revealed, but also His wrath. It is not said to be revealed in the gospel. The gospel means His glad tidings for man. The wrath of God could not possibly be glad tidings. It is true, it is needful for man to learn; but in nowise is it good news. There is then the solemn truth also of divine wrath. It is not yet executed. It is "revealed," and this too "from heaven." There is no question of a people on earth, and of God's wrath breaking out in one form or another against human evil in this life. The earth, or, at least, the Jewish nation, had been familiar with such dealings of God in times past. But now it is "the wrath of God from heaven;" and consequently it is in view of eternal things, and not of those that touch present life on the earth.

Hence, as God's wrath is revealed from heaven, it is against every form of impiety "against all ungodliness." Besides this, which seems to be a most comprehensive expression for embracing every sort and degree of human iniquity, we have one very specifically named. It is against the "unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness." To hold the truth in unrighteousness would be no security. Alas! we know how this was in Israel, how it might be, and has been, in Christendom. God pronounces against the unrighteousness of such; for if the knowledge, however exact, of God's revealed mind was accompanied by no renewal of the heart, if it was without life towards God, all must be vain. Man is only so much the worse for knowing the truth, if he holds it ever so fast with unrighteousness. There are some that find a difficulty here, because the expression "to hold" means holding firmly. But it is quite possible for the unconverted to be tenacious of the truth, yet unrighteous in their ways; and so much the worse for them. Not thus does God deal with souls. If His grace attract, His truth humbles, and leaves no room for vain boasting and self-confidence. What He does is to pierce and penetrate the man's conscience. If one may so say, He thus holds the man, instead of letting the man presume that he is holding fast the truth. The inner man is dealt with, and searched through and through.

Nothing of this is intended in the class that is here brought before us. They are merely persons who plume themselves on their orthodoxy, but in a wholly unrenewed condition. Such men have never been wanting since the truth has shone on this world; still less are they now. But the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against them pre-eminently. The judgments of God will fall on man as man, but the heaviest blows are reserved for Christendom. There the truth is held, and apparently with firmness too. This, however, will be put to the test by-and-by. But for the time it is held fast, though in unrighteousness. Thus the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against (not only the open ungodliness of men, but) the orthodox unrighteousness of those that hold the truth in unrighteousness.

And this leads the apostle into the moral history of man the proof both of his inexcusable guilt, and of his extreme need of redemption. He begins with the great epoch of the dispensations of God (that is, the ages since the flood). We cannot speak of the state of things before the flood as a dispensation. There was a most important trial of man in the person of Adam; but after this, what dispensation was there? What were the principles of it? No man can tell. The truth is, those are altogether mistaken who call it so. But after the flood man as such was put under certain conditions the whole race. Man became the object, first, of general dealings of God under Noah; next, of His special ways in the calling of Abraham and of his family. And what led to the call of Abraham, of whom we hear much in the epistle to the Romans as elsewhere, was the departure of man into idolatry. Man despised at first the outward testimony of God, His eternal power and Godhead, in the creation above and around him (verses 19, 20). Moreover, He gave up the knowledge of God that had been handed down from father to son (ver. 21). The downfall of man, when he thus abandoned God, was most rapid and profound; and the Holy Spirit traces this solemnly to the end ofRomans 1:1-32; Romans 1:1-32 with no needless words, in a few energetic strokes summing up that which is abundantly confirmed (but in how different a manner!) by all that remains of the ancient world. "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man," etc. (verses 22-32.) Thus corruption not only overspread morals, but became an integral part of the religion of men, and had thus a quasi-divine sanction. Hence the depravity of the heathen found little or no cheek from conscience, because it was bound up with all that took the shape of God before their mind. There was no part of heathenism practically viewed now, so corrupting as that which had to do with the objects of its worship. Thus, the true God being lost, all was lost, and man's downward career becomes the most painful and humiliating object, unless it be, indeed, that which we have to feel where men, without renewal of heart, espouse in pride of mind the truth with nothing but unrighteousness.

In the beginning ofRomans 2:1-29; Romans 2:1-29 we have man pretending to righteousness. Still, it is "man" not yet exactly the Jew, but man who had profited, it might be, by whatever the Jew had; at the least, by the workings of natural conscience. But natural conscience, although it may detect evil, never leads one into the inward possession and enjoyment of good never brings the soul to God. Accordingly, in chapter 2 the Holy Spirit shows us man satisfying himself with pronouncing on what is right and wrong moralizing for others, but nothing more. Now God must have reality in the man himself. The gospel, instead of treating this as a light matter, alone vindicates God in these eternal ways of His, in that which must be in him who stands in relationship with God. Hence therefore, the apostle, with divine wisdom, opens this to us before the blessed relief and deliverance which the gospel reveals to us. In the most solemn way he appeals to man with the demand, whether he thinks that God will look complacently on that which barely judges another, but which allows the practice of evil in the man himself (Romans 2:1-3). Such moral judgments will, no doubt, be used to leave man without excuse; they can never suit or satisfy God.

Then the apostle introduces the ground, certainty, and character of God's judgment (verses 4-16). He "will render to every man according to his deeds: to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life: to them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first and also of the Gentile."

It is not here a question of how a man is to be saved, but of God's indispensable moral judgment, which the gospel, instead of weakening asserts according to the holiness and truth of God. It will be observed therefore, that in this connection the apostle shows the place both of conscience and of the law, that God in judging will take into full consideration the circumstances and condition of every soul of man. At the same time he connects, in a singularly interesting manner, this disclosure of the principles of the eternal judgment of God with what he calls "my gospel." This also is a most important truth, my brethren, to bear in mind. The gospel at its height in no wise weakens but maintains the moral manifestation of what God is. The legal institutions were associated with temporal judgment. The gospel, as now revealed in the New Testament, has linked with it, though not contained in it, the revelation of divine wrath from heaven, and this, you will observe, according to Paul's gospel. It is evident, therefore, that dispensational position will not suffice for God, who holds to His own unchangeable estimate of good and evil, and who judges the more stringently according to the measure of advantage possessed.

But thus the way is now clear for bringing the Jew into the discussion. "But if [for so it should be read] thou art named a Jew," etc. (ver. 17.) It was not merely, that he had better light. He had this, of course, in a revelation that was from God; he had law; he had prophets; he had divine institutions. It was not merely better light in the conscience, which might be elsewhere, as is supposed in the early verses of our chapter; but the Jew's position was directly and unquestionably one of divine tests applied to man's estate. Alas! the Jew was none the better for this, unless there were the submission of his conscience to God. Increase of privileges can never avail without the soul's self-judgment before the mercy of God. Rather does it add to his guilt: such is man's evil state and will. Accordingly, in the end of the chapter, he shows that this is most true as applied to the moral judgment of the Jew; that uone so much dishonoured God as wicked Jews, their own Scripture attesting it; that position went for nothing in such, while the lack of it would not annul the Gentile's righteousness, which would indeed condemn the more unfaithful Israel; in short, that one must be a Jew inwardly to avail, and circumcision be of the heart, in spirit, not in letter, whose praise is of God, and not of men.

The question then is raised in the beginning ofRomans 3:1-31; Romans 3:1-31, If this be so, what is the superiority of the Jew? Where lies the value of belonging to the circumcised people of God? The apostle allows this privilege to be great, specially in having the Scriptures, but turns the argument against the boasters. We need not here enter into the details; but on the surface we see how the apostle brings all down to that which is of the deepest interest to every soul. He deals with the Jew from his own Scripture (verses 9-19). Did the Jews take the ground of exclusively having that word of God the law? Granted that it is so, at once and fully. To whom, then, did the law address itself? To those that were under it, to be sure. It pronounced on the Jew then. It was the boast of the Jews that the law spoke about them; that the Gentiles had no right to it, and were but presuming on what belonged to God's chosen people. The apostle applies this according to divine wisdom. Then your principle is your condemnation. What the law says, it speaks to those under it. What, then, is its voice? That there is none righteous, none that doeth good, none that understandeth. Of whom does it declare all this? Of the Jew by his own confession. Every mouth was stopped; the Jew by his own oracles, as the Gentile by their evident abominations, shown already. All the world was guilty before God.

Thus, having shown the Gentile in Romans 1:1-32 manifestly wrong, and hopelessly degraded to the last degree having laid bare the moral dilettantism of the philosophers, not one whit better in the sight of God, but rather the reverse having shown the Jew overwhelmed by the condemnation of the divine oracles in which he chiefly boasted, without real righteousness, and so much the more guilty for his special privileges, all now lies clear for bringing in the proper Christian message, the. gospel of God. "Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets" (verses 20, 21).

Here, again, the apostle takes up what he had but announced in chapter 1 the righteousness of God. Let me call your attention again to its force. It is not the mercy of God., Many have contended that so it is, and to their own great loss, as well as to the weakening of the word of God. "Righteousness" never means mercy, not even the "righteousness of God." The meaning is not what was executed on Christ, but what is in virtue. of it. Undoubtedly divine judgment fell on Him; but this is not "the righteousness of God," as the apostle employs it in any part of his writings any more than here, though we know there could be no such thing as God's righteousness justifying the believer, if Christ had not borne the judgment of God. The expression means that righteousness which God can afford to display because of Christ's atonement. In short, it is what the words say "the righteousness of God," and this "by faith of Jesus Christ."

Hence it is wholly apart from the law, whilst witnessed to by the law and prophets; for the law with its types had looked onward to this new kind of righteousness; and the prophets had borne their testimony that it was at hand, but not then come. Now it was manifested, and not promised or predicted merely. Jesus had come and died; Jesus had been a propitiatory sacrifice; Jesus had borne the judgment of God because of the sins He bore. The righteousness of God, then, could now go forth in virtue of His blood. God was not satisfied alone. There is satisfaction; but the work of Christ goes a great deal farther. Therein God is both vindicated and glorified. By the cross God has a deeper moral glory than ever a glory that He thus acquired, if I may so say. He is, of course, the same absolutely perfect and unchangeable God of goodness; but His perfection has displayed itself in new and more glorious ways in Christ's death, in Him who humbled Himself, and was obedient even to the death of the cross.

God, therefore, having not the least hindrance to the manifestation of what He can be and is in merciful intervention on behalf of the worst of sinners, manifests it is His righteousness "by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe" (ver. 22). The former is the direction, and the latter the application. The direction is "unto all;" the application is, of course, only to "them that believe;" but it is to all them that believe. As far as persons are concerned, there is no hindrance; Jew or Gentile makes no difference, as is expressly said, "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the [passing over or praeter-mission, not] remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus" (verses 23-26). There is no simple mind that can evade the plain force of this last expression. The righteousness of God means that God is just, while at the same time He justifies the believer in Christ Jesus. It is His righteousness, or, in other words, His perfect consistency with Himself, which is always involved in the notion of righteousness. He is consistent with Himself when He is justifying sinners, or, more strictly, all those who believe in Jesus. He can meet the sinner, but He justifies the believer; and in this, instead of trenching on His glory, there is a deeper revelation and maintenance of it than if there never had been sin or a sinner.

Horribly offensive as sin is to God, and inexcusable in the creature, it is sin which has given occasion to the astonishing display of divine righteousness in justifying believers. It is not a question of His mercy merely; for this weakens the truth immensely, and perverts its character wholly. The righteousness of God flows from His mercy, of course; but its character and basis is righteousness. Christ's work of redemption deserves that God should act as He does in the gospel. Observe again, it is not victory here; for that would give place to human pride. It is not a soul's overcoming its difficulties, but a sinner's submission to the righteousness of God. It is God Himself who, infinitely glorified in the Lord that expiated our sins by His one sacrifice, remits them now, not looking for our victory, nor as yet even in leading us on to victory, but by faith in Jesus and His blood. God is proved thus divinely consistent with Himself in Christ Jesus, whom He has set forth a mercy-seat through faith in His blood.

Accordingly the apostle says that boast and works are completely set aside by this principle which affirms faith, apart from deeds of law, to be the means of relationship with God (verses 27, 28). Consequently the door is as open to the Gentile as to the Jew. The ground taken by a Jew for supposing God exclusively for Israel was, that they had the law, which was the measure of what God claimed from man; and this the Gentile had not. But such thoughts altogether vanish now, because, as the Gentile was unquestionably wicked and abominable, so from the law's express denunciation the Jew was universally guilty before God. Consequently all turned, not on what man should be for God, but what God can be and is, as revealed in the gospel, to man. This maintains both the glory and the moral universality of Him who will justify the circumcision by faith, not law, and the uncircumcision through their faith, if they believe the gospel. Nor does this in the slightest degree weaken the principle of law. On the contrary, the doctrine of faith establishes law as nothing else can; and for this simple reason, that if one who is guilty hopes to be saved spite of the broken law, it must be at the expense of the law that condemns his guilt; whereas the gospel shows no sparing of sin, but the most complete condemnation of it all, as charged on Him who shed His blood in atonement. The doctrine of faith therefore, which reposes on the cross, establishes law, instead of making it void, as every other principle must (verses 27-31).

But this is not the full extent of salvation. Accordingly we do not hear of salvation as such in Romans 3:1-31. There is laid down the most essential of all truths as a groundwork of salvation; namely, expiation. There is the vindication of God in His ways with the Old Testament believers. Their sins had been passed by. He could not have remitted heretofore. This would not have been just. And the blessedness of the gospel is, that it is (not merely an exercise of mercy, but also) divinely just. It would not have been righteous in any sense to have remitted the sins, until they were actually borne by One who could and did suffer for them. But now they were; and thus God vindicated Himself perfectly as to the past. But this great work of Christ was not and could not be a mere vindication of God; and we may find it otherwise developed in various parts of Scripture, which I here mention by the way to show the point at which we are arrived. God's righteousness was now manifested as to the past sins He had not brought into judgment through His forbearance, and yet more conspicuously in the present time, when He displayed His justice in justifying the believer.

But this is not all; and the objection of the Jew gives occasion for the apostle to bring out a fuller display of what God is. Did they fall back on Abraham? "What shall we then say that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God." Did the Jew fancy that the gospel makes very light of Abraham, and of the then dealings of God? Not so, says the apostle. Abraham is the proof of the value of faith in justification before God. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. There was no law there or then; for Abraham died long before God spoke from Sinai. He believed God and His word, with special approval on God's part; and his faith was counted as righteousness (ver. 3). And this was powerfully corroborated by the testimony of another great name in Israel (David), in Psalms 32:1-11. "For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him. Thou art my hiding-place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye."

In the same way the apostle disposes of all pretence on the score of ordinances, especially circumcision. Not only was Abraham justified without law, but apart from that great sign of mortification of the flesh. Although circumcision began with Abraham, manifestly it had nothing to do with his righteousness, and at best was but the seal of the righteousness of faith which he had in an uncircumcised state. It could not therefore be the source or means of his righteousness. All then that believe, though uncircumcised, might claim him as father, assured that righteousness will be reckoned to them too. And he is father of circumcision in the best sense, not to Jews, but to believing Gentiles. Thus the discussion of Abraham strengthens the case in behalf of the uncircumcised who believe, to the overthrow of the greatest boast of the Jew. The appeal to their own inspired account of Abraham turned into a proof of the consistency of God's ways in justifying by faith, and hence in justifying the uncircumcised no less than the circumcision.

But there is more than this in Romans 4:1-25 He takes up a third feature of Abraham's case; that is, the connection of the promise with resurrection. Here it is not merely the negation of law and of circumcision, but we have the positive side. Law works wrath because it provokes transgression; grace makes the promise sure to all the seed, not only because faith is open to the Gentile and Jew alike, but because God is looked to as a quickener of the dead. What gives glory to God like this? Abraham believed God when, according to nature, it was impossible for him or for Sarah to have a child. The quickening power of God therefore was here set forth, of course historically in a way connected with this life and a posterity on earth, but nevertheless a very just and true sign of God's power for the believer the quickening energy of God after a still more blessed sort. And this leads us to see not only where there was an analogy with those who believe in a promised Saviour, but also to a weighty difference. And this lies in the fact that Abraham believed God before he had the son, being fully persuaded that what He had promised He was able to perform. and therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness. But we believe on Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. It is done. already. It is not here believing on Jesus, but on God who has proved what He is to us in raisin, from among the dead Him who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification (verses 13-25).

This brings out a most emphatic truth and special side of Christianity. Christianity is not a system of promise, but rather of promise accomplished in Christ. Hence it is essentially founded on the gift not only of a Saviour who would interpose, in the mercy of God, to bear our sins, but of One who is already revealed, and the work done and accepted, and this known in the fact that God Himself has interposed to raise Him from among the dead a bright and momentous thing to press on souls, as indeed we find the apostles insisting on it throughout the Acts. Were it merely Romans 3:1-31 there could not be full peace with God as there is. One might know a most real clinging to Jesus; but this would not set the heart at ease with God. The soul may feel the blood of Jesus to be a yet deeper want; but this alone does not give peace with God. In such a condition what has been found in Jesus is too often misused to make a kind of difference, so to speak, between the Saviour on the one hand, and God on the other ruinous always to the enjoyment of the full blessing of the gospel. Now there is no way in which God could lay a basis for peace with Himself more blessed than as He has done it. No longer does the question exist of requiring an expiation. That is the first necessity for the sinner with God. But we have had it fully in Romans 3:1-31. Now it is the positive power of God in raising up from the dead Him that was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justifying. The whole work is done.

The soul therefore now is represented for the first time as already justified and in possession of peace with God. This is a state of mind, and not the necessary or immediate fruit of Romans 3:1-31, but is based on the truth of Romans 4:1-25 as well as 3. There never can be solid peace with God without both. A soul may as truly, no doubt, be put into relationship with God be made very happy, it may be; but it is not what Scripture calls "peace with God." Therefore it is here for the first time that we find salvation spoken of in the grand results that are now brought before us in Romans 5:1-11. "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." There is entrance into favour, and nothing but favour. The believer is not put under law, you will observe, but under grace, which is the precise reverse of law. The soul is brought into peace with God, as it finds its standing in the grace of God, and, more than that, rejoices in hope of the glory of God. Such is the doctrine and the fact. It is not merely a call then; but as we have by our Lord Jesus Christ our access into the favour wherein we stand, so there is positive boasting in the hope of the glory of God. For it may have been noticed from chapter 3 to chapter 5, that nothing but fitness for the glory of God will do now. It is not a question of creature-standing. This passed away with man when he sinned. Now that God has revealed Himself in the gospel, it is not what will suit man on earth, but what is worthy of the presence of the glory of God. Nevertheless the apostle does not expressly mention heaven here. This was not suitable to the character of the epistle; but the glory of God he does. We all know where it is and must be for the Christian.

The consequences are thus pursued; first, the general place of the believer now, in all respects, in relation to the past, the present, and the future. His pathway follows; and he shows that the very troubles of the road become a distinct matter of boast. This was not a direct and intrinsic effect, of course, but the result of spiritual dealing for the soul. It was the Lord giving us the profit of sorrow, and ourselves bowing to the way and end of God in it, so that the result of tribulation should be rich and fruitful experience.

Then there is another and crowning part of the blessing: "And not only so, but also boasting in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the reconciliation." It is not only a blessing in its own direct character, or in indirect though real effects, but the Giver Himself is our joy, and boast, and glory. The consequences spiritually are blessed to the soul; how much more is it to Teach the source from which all flows! This, accordingly, is the essential spring of worship. The fruits of it are not expanded here; but, in point of fact, to joy in God is necessarily that which makes praise and adoration to be the simple and spontaneous exercise of the heart. In heaven it will fill us perfectly; but there is no more perfect joy there, nor anything. higher, if so high, in this epistle.

At this point we enter upon a most important part of the epistle, on which we must dwell for a little. It is no longer a question of man's guilt, but of his nature. Hence the apostle does not, as in the early chapters of this epistle, take up our sins, except as proofs and symptoms of sin. Accordingly, for the first time, the Spirit of God fromRomans 5:12; Romans 5:12 traces the mature of man to the head of the race. This brings in the contrast with the other Head, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom we have here not as One bearing our sins in His own body on the tree, but as the spring and chief of a new family. Hence, as is shown later in the chapter, Adam is a head characterized by disobedience, who brought in death, the just penalty of sin; as on the other hand we have Him of whom he was the type, Christ, the obedient man, who has brought in righteousness, and this after a singularly blessed sort and style "justification of life." Of it nothing has been heard till now. We have had justification, both by blood and also in virtue of Christ's resurrection. But "justification of life" goes farther, though involved in the latter, than the end of Romans 4:1-25; for now we learn that in the gospel there is not only a dealing with the guilt of those that are addressed in it; there is also a mighty work of God in the presenting the man in a new place before God, and in fact, too, for his faith, clearing him from all the consequences in which he finds himself as a man in the flesh here below.

It is here that you will find a great failure of Christendom as to this. Not that any part of the truth has escaped: it is the fatal brand of that "great house" that even the most elementary truth suffers the deepest injury; but as to this truth, it seems unknown altogether. I hope that brethren in Christ will bear with me if I press on them the importance of taking good heed to it that their souls are thoroughly grounded in this, the proper place of the Christian by Christ's death and resurrection. It must not be, assumed too readily. There is a disposition continually to imagine that what is frequently spoken of must be understood; but experience will soon show that this is not the case. Even those that seek a place of separation to the Lord outside that which is now hurrying on souls to destruction are, nevertheless, deeply affected by the condition of that Christendom in which we find ourselves.

Here, then, it is not a question at all of pardon or remission. First of all the apostle points out that death has come in, and that this was no consequence of law, but before it. Sin was in the world between Adam and Moses, when the law was not. This clearly takes in man, it will be observed; and this is his grand point now. The contrast of Christ with Adam takes in man universally as well as the Christian; and man in sin, alas! was true, accordingly, before the law, right through the law, and ever since the law. The apostle is therefore plainly in presence of the broadest possible grounds of comparison, though we shall find more too.

But the Jew might argue that it was an unjust thing in principle this gospel, these tidings of which the apostle was so full; for why should one man affect many, yea, all? "Not so," replies the apostle. Why should this be so strange and incredible to you? for on your own showing, according to that word to which we all bow, you must admit that one man's sin brought in universal moral ruin and death. Proud as you may be of that which distinguishes you, it is hard to make sin and death peculiar to you, nor can you connect them even with the law particularly: the race of man is in question, and not Israel alone. There is nothing that proves this so convincingly as the book of Genesis; and the apostle, by the Spirit of God, calmly but triumphantly summons the Jewish Scriptures to demonstrate that which the Jews were so strenuously denying. Their own Scriptures maintained, as nothing else could, that all the wretchedness which is now found in the world, and the condemnation which hangs over the race, is the fruit of one man, and indeed of one act.

Now, if it was righteous in God (and who will gainsay it?) to deal with the whole posterity of Adam as involved in death because of one, their common father, who could deny the consistency of one man's saving? who would defraud God of that which He delights in the blessedness of bringing in deliverance by that One man, of whom Adam was the image? Accordingly, then, he confronts the unquestionable truth, admitted by every Israelite, of the universal havoc by one man everywhere with the One man who has brought in (not pardon only, but, as we shall find) eternal life and liberty liberty now in the free gift of life, but a liberty that will never cease for the soul's enjoyment until it has embraced the very body that still groans, and this because of the Holy Ghost who dwells in it.

Here, then, it is a comparison of the two great heads Adam and Christ, and the immeasurable superiority of the second man is shown. That is, it is not merely pardon of past sins, but deliverance from sin, and in due time from all its consequences. The apostle has come now to the nature. This is the essential point. It is the thing which troubles a renewed conscientious soul above all, because of his surprise at finding the deep evil of the flesh and its mind after having proved the great grace of God in the gift of Christ. If I am thus pitied of God, if so truly and completely a justified man, if I am really an object of God's eternal favour, how can I have such a sense of continual evil? why am I still under bondage and misery from the constant evil of my nature, over which I seem to have no power whatever? Has God then no delivering power from this? The answer is found in this portion of our epistle (that is, from the middle of chapter 5).

Having shown first, then, the sources and the character of the blessing in general as far as regards deliverance, the apostle sums up the result in the end of the chapter: "That as sin hath reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life," the point being justification of life now through Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is applied in the two chapters that follow. There are two things that might make insuperable difficulty: the one is the obstacle of sin in the nature to practical holiness; the other is the provocation and condemnation of the law. Now the doctrine which we saw asserted in the latter part ofRomans 5:1-21; Romans 5:1-21 is applied to both. First, as to practical holiness, it is not merely that Christ has died for my sins, but that even in the initiatory act of baptism the truth set forth there is that I am dead. It is not, as in Ephesians 2:1-22, dead in sins, which would be nothing to the purpose. This is all perfectly true true of a Jew as of a pagan true of any unrenewed man that never heard of a Saviour. But what is testified by Christian baptism is Christ's death. "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized unto Jesus Christ were baptized unto his death?" Thereby is identification with His death. "Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." The man who, being baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, or Christian baptism, would assert any license to sin because it is in his nature, as if it were therefore an inevitable necessity, denies the real and evident meaning of his baptism. That act denoted not even the washing away of our sins by the blood of Jesus, which would not apply to the case, nor in any adequate way meet the question of nature. What baptism sets forth is more than that, and is justly found, not in Romans 3:1-31, but inRomans 6:1-23; Romans 6:1-23. There is no inconsistency in Ananias's word to the apostle Paul "wash away thy sins, calling upon the name of the Lord." There is water as well as blood, and to that, not to this, the washing here refers. But there is more, which Paul afterwards insisted on. That was said to Paul, rather than what was taught by Paul. What the apostle had given him in fulness was the great truth, however fundamental it may be, that I am entitled, and even called on in the name of the Lord Jesus, to know that I am dead to sin; not that I must die, but that I am dead that my baptism means nothing less than this, and is shorn of its most emphatic point if limited merely to Christ's dying for my sins. It is not so alone; but in His death, unto which I am baptized, I am dead to sin. And "how shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?" Hence, then, we find that the whole chapter is founded on this truth. "Shall we sin," says he, proceeding yet farther (ver. 15), "because we are not under the law, but under grace?" This were indeed to deny the value of His death, and of that newness of life we have in Him risen, and a return to bondage of the worst description.

In Romans 7:1-25 we have the subject of the law discussed for practice as well as in principle, and there again meet with the same weapon of tried and unfailing temper. It is no longer blood, but death Christ's death and resurrection. The figure of the relationship of husband and wife is introduced in order to make the matter plain. Death, and nothing short of it, rightly dissolves the bond. We accordingly are dead, says he, to the law; not (as no doubt almost all of us know) that the law dies, but that we are dead to the law in the death of Christ. Compare verse 6 (where the margin, not the text, is substantially correct) with verse 4. Such is the principle. The rest of the chapter (7-25) is an instructive episode, in which the impotence and the misery of the renewed mind which attempts practice under law are fully argued out, till deliverance (not pardon) is found in Christ.

Thus the latter portion of the chapter is not doctrine exactly, but the proof of the difficulties of a soul who has not realised death to the law by the body of Christ. Did this seem to treat the law that condemned as an evil thing? Not so, says the apostle; it is because of the evil of the nature, not of the law. The law never delivers; it condemns and kills us. It was meant to make sin exceeding sinful. Hence, what he is here discussing is not remission of sins, but deliverance from sin. No wonder, if souls confound the two things together, that they never know deliverance in practice. Conscious deliverance, to be solid according to God, must be in the line of His truth. In vain will you preach Romans 3:1-31, or even 4 alone, for souls to know themselves consciously and holily set free.

From verse 14 there is an advance. There we find Christian knowledge as to the matter introduced; but still it is the knowledge of one who is not in this state pronouncing on one who is. You must carefully guard against the notion of its being a question of Paul's own experience, because he says, "I had not known," "I was alive," etc. There is no good reason for such an assumption, but much against it. It might be more or less any man's lot to learn. It is not meant that Paul knew nothing of this; but that the ground of inference, and the general theory built up, are alike mistaken. We have Paul informing us that he transfers sometimes in a figure to himself that which was in no wise necessarily his own experience, and perhaps had not been so at any time. But this may be comparatively a light question. The great point is to note the true picture given us of a soul quickened, but labouring and miserable under law, not at all consciously delivered. The last verses of the chapter, however, bring in the deliverance not yet the fulness of it, but the hinge, so to speak. The discovery is made that the source of the internal misery was that the mind, though renewed, was occupied with the law as a means of dealing with, flesh. Hence the very fact of being renewed makes one sensible of a far more intense misery than ever, while there is no power until the soul looks right outside self to Him who is dead and risen, who has anticipated the difficulty, and alone gives the full answer to all wants.

Romans 8:1-39 displays this comforting truth in its fulness. From the first verse we have the application of the dead and risen Christ to the soul, till in verse 11 we see the power of the Holy Ghost, which brings the soul into this liberty now, applied by-and-by to the body, when there will be the complete deliverance. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." A wondrous way, but most blessed! And there (for such was the point) it was the complete condemnation of this evil thing, the nature in its present state, so as, nevertheless, to set the believer as before God's judgment free from itself as well as its consequences. This God has wrought in Christ. It is not in any degree settled as to itself by His blood. The shedding of His blood was absolutely necessary: without that precious expiation all else had been vain and impossible. But there is much more in Christ than that to which too many souls restrict themselves, not less to their own loss than to His dishonour. God has condemned the flesh. And here it may be repeated that it is no question of pardoning the sinner, but of condemning the fallen nature; and this so as to give the soul both power and a righteous immunity from all internal anguish about it. For the truth is that God has in Christ condemned sin, and this for sin definitely; so that He has nothing more to do in condemnation of that root of evil. What a title, then, God gives me now in beholding Christ, no longer dead but risen, to have it settled before my soul that I am in Him as He now is, where all questions are closed in peace and joy! For what remains unsolved by and in Christ? Once it was far otherwise. Before the cross there hung out the gravest question that ever was raised, and it needed settlement in this world; but in Christ sin is for ever abolished for the believer; and this not only in respect of what He has done, but in what He is. Till the cross, well might a converted soul be found groaning in misery at each fresh discovery of evil in himself. But now to faith all this is gone not lightly, but truly in the sight of God; so that he may live on a Saviour that is risen from the dead as his new life.

Accordingly Romans 8:1-39 pursues in the most practical manner the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. First of all, the groundwork of it is laid in the first four verses, the last of them leading into every-day walk. And it is well for those ignorant of it to know that here, in verse 4, the apostle speaks first of "walking not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." The latter clause in the first verse of the authorised version mars the sense. In the fourth verse this could not be absent; in the first verse it ought not to be present. Thus the deliverance is not merely for the joy of the soul, but also for strength in our walking after the Spirit, who has given and found a nature in which He delights, communicating withal His own delight in Christ, and making obedience to be the joyful service of the believer. The believer, therefore, unwittingly though really, dishonours the Saviour, if he be content to walk short of this standard and power; he is entitled and called to walk according to his place, and in the confidence of his deliverance in Christ Jesus before God.

Then the domains of flesh and Spirit are brought before us: the one characterized by sin and death practically now; the other by life, righteousness, and peace, which is, as we saw, to be crowned finally by the resurrection of these bodies of ours. The Holy Ghost, who now gives the soul its consciousness of deliverance from its place in Christ, is also the witness that the body too, the mortal body, shall be delivered in its time. "If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by [or because of] his Spirit that dwelleth in you."

Next, he enters upon another branch of the truth the Spirit not as a condition contrasted with flesh (these two, as we know, being always contrasted in Scripture), but as a power, a divine person that dwells in and bears His witness to the believer. His witness to our spirit is this, that we are children of God. But if children, we are His heirs. This accordingly leads, as connected with the deliverance of the body, to the inheritance we are to possess. The extent is what God Himself, so to speak, possesses the universe of God, whatever will be under Christ: and what will not? As He has made all, so He is heir of all. We are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.

Hence the action of the Spirit of God in a double point of view comes before us. As He is the spring of our joy, He is the power of sympathy in our sorrows, and the believer knows both. The faith of Christ has brought divine joy into his soul; but, in point of fact, he is traversing a world of infirmity, suffering, and grief. Wonderful to think the Spirit of God associates Himself with us in it all, deigning to give us divine feelings even in our poor and narrow hearts. This occupies the central part of the chapter, which then closes with the unfailing and faithful power of God for us in all our experiences here below. As He has given us through the blood of Jesus full remission, as we shall be saved by this life, as He has made us know even now nothing short of present conscious deliverance from every whit of evil that belongs to our very nature, as we have the Spirit the earnest of the glory to which we are destined, as we are the vessels of gracious sorrow in the midst of that from which we are not yet delivered but shall be, so now we have the certainty that, whatever betide, God is for us, and that nothing shall separate us from His love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Then, in Romans 9:1-33; Romans 10:1-21; Romans 11:1-36, the apostle handles a difficulty serious to any mind, especially to the Jew, who might readily feel that all this display of grace in Christ to the Gentile as much as to the Jew by the gospel seems to make very cheap the distinctive place of Israel as given of God. If the good news of God goes out to man, entirely blotting out the difference between a Jew and a Gentile, what becomes of His special promises to Abraham and to his seed? What about His word passed and sworn to the fathers? The apostle shows them with astonishing force at the starting-point that he was far from slighting their privileges. He lays down such a summary as no Jew ever gave since they were a nation. He brings out the peculiar glories of Israel according to the depth of the gospel as he knew and preached it; at least, of His person who is the object of faith now revealed. Far from denying or obscuring what they boasted of, he goes beyond them "Who are Israelites," says he, "to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all God blessed for ever." Here was the very truth that every Jew, as such, denied. What blindness! Their crowning glory was precisely what they would not hear of. What glory so rich as that of the Christ Himself duly appreciated? He was God over all blessed for ever, as well as their Messiah. Him who came in humiliation, according to their prophets, they might despise; but it was vain to deny that the same prophets bore witness to His divine glory. He was Emmanuel, yea, the Jehovah, God of Israel. Thus then, if Paul gave his own sense of Jewish privileges, there was no unbelieving Jew that rose up to his estimate of them.

But now, to meet the question that was raised, they pleaded the distinguishing promises to Israel. Upon what ground? Because they were sons of Abraham. But how, argues he, could this stand, seeing that Abraham had another son, just as much his child as Isaac? What did they say to Ishmaelites as joint-heirs? They would not hear of it. No, they cry, it is in Isaac's seed that the Jew was called. Yes, but this is another principle. If in Isaac only, it is a question of the seed, not that was born, but that was called. Consequently the call of God, and not the birth simply makes the real difference. Did they venture to plead that it must be not only the same father, but the same mother? The answer is, that this will not do one whit better; for when we come down to the next generation, it is apparent that the two sons of Isaac were sons of the same mother; nay, they were twins. What could be conceived closer or more even than this? Surely if equal birth-tie could ensure community of blessing if a charter from God depended on being sprung from the same father and mother, there was no case so strong, no claim so evident, as that of Esau to take the same rights as Jacob. Why would they not allow such a pretension? Was it not sure and evident that Israel could not take the promise on the ground of mere connection after the flesh? Birthright from the same father would let in Ishmael on the one hand, as from both parents it would secure the title of Esau on the other. Clearly, then, such ground is untenable. In point of fact, as he had hinted before, their true tenure was the call of God, who was free, if He pleased, to bring in other people. It became simply a question whether, in fact, God did call Gentiles, or whether He had revealed such intentions.

But he meets their proud exclusiveness in another way. He shows that, on the responsible ground of being His nation, they were wholly ruined. If the first book in the Bible showed that it was only the call of God that made Israel what they were, its second book as clearly proved that all was over with the called people, had it not been for the mercy of God. They set up the golden calf, and thus cast off the true God, their God, even in the desert. Did the call of God. then, go out to Gentiles? Has He mercy only for guilty Israel? Is there no call, no mercy, of God for any besides?

Hereupon he enters upon the direct proofs, and first cites Hosea as a witness. That early prophet tells Israel, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God. Jezreel, Lo-ruhamah, and Lo-ammi were of awful import for Israel; but, in presence of circumstances so disastrous, there should be not merely a people but sons of the living God, and then should Judah and Israel be gathered as one people under one head. The application of this was more evident to the Gentile than to the Jew. Compare Peter's use in1 Peter 2:10; 1 Peter 2:10. Finally he brings in Isaiah, showing that, far from retaining their blessing as an unbroken people, a remnant alone would be saved. Thus one could not fail to see these two weighty inferences: the bringing in to be God's sons of those that had not been His people, and the judgment and destruction of the great mass of His undoubted people. Of these only a remnant would be saved. On both sides therefore the apostle is meeting the grand points he had at heart to demonstrate from their own Scriptures.

For all this, as he presses further, there was the weightiest reason possible. God is gracious, but holy; He is faithful, but righteous. The apostle refers to Isaiah to show that God would "lay in Zion a stumbling-stone." It is in Zion that He lays it. It is not among the Gentiles, but in the honoured centre of the polity of Israel. There would be found a stumblingstone there. What was to be the stumbling-stone? Of course, it could hardly be the law: that was the boast of Israel. What was it? There could be but one satisfactory answer. The stumbling-stone was their despised and rejected Messiah. This was the key to their difficulties this alone, and fully explains their coming ruin as well as God's solemn warnings.

In the next chapter (Romans 10:1-21) he carries on the subject, showing in the most touching manner his affection for the people. He at the same time unfolds the essential difference between the righteousness of faith and that of law. He takes their own books, and proves from one of them (Deuteronomy) that in the ruin of Israel the resource is not going into the depths, nor going up to heaven. Christ indeed did both; and so the word was nigh them, in their mouth and in their heart. It is not doing, but believing; therefore it is what is proclaimed to them, and what they receive and believe. Along with this he gathers testimonies from more than one prophet. He quotes from Joel, that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. He quotes also from Isaiah "Whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed." And mark the force of it whosoever." The believer, whosoever he might be, should not be ashamed. Was it possible to limit this to Israel? But more than this "Whosoever shall call." There. is the double prophecy. Whosoever believed should not be ashamed; whosoever called should be saved. In both parts, as it may be observed, the door is opened to the Gentile.

But then again he intimates that the nature of the gospel is involved in the publishing of the glad tidings. It is not God having an earthly centre, and the peoples doming up to worship the Lord in Jerusalem. It is the going forth of His richest blessing. And where? How far? To the limits of the holy land? Far beyond. Psalms 19:1-14 is used in the most beautiful manner to insinuate that the limits are the world. Just as the sun in the heavens is not for one people or land alone, no more is the gospel. There is no language where their voice is not heard. "Yea verily, their sound went forth into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." The gospel goes forth universally. Jewish pretensions were therefore disposed of; not here by new and fuller revelations, but by this divinely skilful employment of their own Old Testament Scriptures.

Finally he comes to two other witnesses; as from the Psalms, so now from the law and the prophets. The first is Moses himself. Moses saith, "I will provoke you to jealousy by them that are no people," etc. How could the Jews say that this meant themselves? On the contrary, it was the Jew provoked by the Gentiles "By them that are no people, and by a foolish nation I will anger you." Did they deny that they were a foolish nation? Be it so then; it was a foolish nation by which Moses declared they should be angered. But this does not content the apostle, or rather the Spirit of God; for he goes on to point out that Isaiah "is very bold" in a similar way; that is, there is no concealing the truth of the matter. Isaiah says: "I was found of them who sought me not; I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me." The Jews were the last in the world to take such ground as this. It was undeniable that the Gentiles did not seek the Lord, nor ask after Him; and the prophet says that Jehovah was found of them that sought Him not, and was made manifest to them that asked not after Him. Nor is there only the manifest call of the Gentiles in this, but with no less clearness there is the rejection, at any rate for a time, of proud Israel. "But unto Israel he saith, All day long have I stretched out my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people."

Thus the proof was complete. The Gentiles the despised heathen were to be brought in; the self-satisfied Jews are left behind, justly and beyond question, if they believed the law and the prophets.

But did this satisfy the apostle? It was undoubtedly enough for present purposes. The past history of Israel was sketched inRomans 9:1-33; Romans 9:1-33; the present more immediately is before us inRomans 10:1-21; Romans 10:1-21. The future must be brought in by the grace of God; and this he accordingly gives us at the close of Romans 11:1-36. First, he raises the question, "Has God cast away his people?" Let it not be! Was he not himself, says Paul, a proof to the contrary? Then he enlarges, and points out that there is a remnant of grace in the worst of times. If God had absolutely cast away His people, would there be such mercy? There would be no remnant if justice took its course. The remnant proves, then, that even under judgment the rejection of Israel is not complete, but rather a pledge of future favour. This is the first ground.

The second plea is not that the rejection of Israel is only partial, however extensive, but that it is also temporary, and not definitive. This is to fall back on a principle he had already used. God was rather provoking Israel to jealousy by the call of the Gentiles. But if it were so, He had not done with them. Thus the first argument shows that the rejection was not total; the second, that it was but for a season.

But there is a third. Following up with the teaching of the olive-tree, he carries out the same thought of a remnant that abides on their own stock, and points to a re-instatement of the nation, And I would just observe by the way, that the Gentile cry that no Jew ever accepts the gospel in truth is a falsehood. Israel is indeed the only people of whom there is always a portion that believe. Time was when none of the English, nor French, nor of any other nation believed in the Saviour. There never was an hour since Israel's existence as a nation that God has not had His remnant of them. Such has been their singular fruit of promise; such even in the midst of all their misery it is at present. And as that little remnant is ever sustained by the grace of God, it is the standing pledge of their final blessedness through His mercy, whereon the apostle breaks out into raptures of thanksgiving to God. The day hastens when the Redeemer shall come to Zion. He shall come, says one Testament, out of Zion. He shall come to Zion, says the other. In both Old and New it is the same substantial testimony. Thither He shall come, and thence, go forth. He shall own that once glorious seat of royalty in Israel. Zion shall yet behold her mighty, divine, but once despised Deliverer; and when He thus comes, there will be a deliverance suited to His glory. All Israel shall be saved. God, therefore, had not cast off His people, but was employing the interval of their slip from their place, in consequence of their rejection of Christ, to call the Gentiles in sovereign mercy, after which Israel as a whole should be saved. "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? or who hath first liven to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever."

The rest of the epistle takes up the practical consequences of the great doctrine of God's righteousness, which had been now shown to be supported by, and in no wise inconsistent with, His promises to Israel. The whole history of Israel, past, present, and future falls in with, although quite distinct from, that which he had been expounding. Here I shall be very brief.

Romans 12:1-21 looks at the mutual duties of the saints. Romans 13:1-14; Romans 13:1-14 urges their duties towards what was outside them, more particularly to the powers that be, but also to men in general. Love is the great debt that we owe, which never can be paid, but which we should always be paying. The chapter closes with the day of the Lord in its practical force on the Christian walk. In Romans 14:1-23 and the beginning ofRomans 15:1-33; Romans 15:1-33 we have the delicate theme of Christian forbearance in its limits and largeness. The weak are not to judge the strong, and the strong are not to despise the weak. These things are matters of conscience, and depend much for their solution on the degree to which souls have attained. The subject terminates with the grand truth which must never be obscured by details that we are to receive, one another, as Christ has received us, to the glory of God. In the rest of chapter 15 the apostle dwells on the extent of his apostleship, renews his expression of the thought and hope of visiting Rome, and at the same time shows how well he remembered the need of the poor at Jerusalem. Romans 16:1-27; Romans 16:1-27 brings before us in the most. instructive and interesting manner the links that grace practically forms and maintains between the saints of God. Though he had never visited Rome, many of them were known personally. It is exquisite the delicate love with which he singles out distinctive features in each of the saints, men and women, that come before him. Would that the Lord would give us hearts to remember, as well as eyes to see, according to His own grace! Then follows a warning against those who bring in stumbling-blocks and offences. There is evil at work, and grace does not close the eye to danger; at the same time it is never under the pressure of the enemy, and there is the fullest confidence that the God of peace will break the power of Satan under the feet of the saints shortly.

Last of all, the apostle links up this fundamental treatise of divine righteousness in its doctrine, its dispensational bearings, and its exhortations to the walk of Christians, with higher truth, which it would not have been suitable then to bring out; for grace considers the state and the need of the saints. True ministry gives out not merely truth, but suited truth to the saints. At the same time the apostle does allude to that mystery which was not yet divulged at least, in this epistle; but he points from the foundations of eternal truth to those heavenly heights that were reserved for other communications in due time.