Paul's Letter to Believers in Rome

by David M Pearce

Romans Chapter 9

Paul Mourns Over His People

Having dealt exhaustively with the theology of salvation by faith, the apostle now spends three chapters on the position of Israel in the purpose of God. Chapter nine looks at Israel in the past, chapter ten at Israel in the present and chapter eleven at Israel in the future.

v1-3) You might suppose by now that Paul was so preoccupied with his calling to preach to Gentiles that he had no time for his fellow Jews. Here he swears that is not true. Daily he grieved over their hard heartedness in rejecting his gospel. He even rhetorically wishes he could sacrifice his own place in the Kingdom if it would somehow bring more Jews to believe in Jesus. This mirrors the plea of Moses when he appeals to God to forgive Israel in Exodus 32:31,32

v4,5) The apostle lists all the advantages the Jews had. As his chosen people, God had carefully prepared them for the coming of Christ the saviour, who sprang from their midst, and for whose appearing God deserves eternal praise.

Was God Wrong To Chose Israel?

v6,7) It might appear that God’s plan for Israel has dismally failed. But he never expected all Israel to be saved. Just being a Jew, a descendant of Abraham, does not save you. Paul gives an obvious example. Abraham had two sons. Both were descended from Abraham. But only Isaac was counted by God as his seed, and Ishmael was rejected. So, God has been choosing out of Israel a minority who would believe in him.

v8,9) Ishmael was born ‘of the flesh’ when Abraham went to bed with Hagar, Sarah’s servant. The birth of Isaac was different. He was a child of promise. He only came into existence when, as the angel foretold a year before his birth, God rejuvenated his elderly parents to conceive and bear a child. It is God’s grace, not human descent, which saves us.

v10-12) Paul produces another example of God selecting who should be the seed of Abraham. Rebekah, after years of fruitless marriage to Isaac, became pregnant with twins. When she enquired of the Lord, she was told the older one would serve the younger (Genesis 25:23). God had already decided that Jacob, not Esau, would inherit the promises to Abraham. Paul says that God’s choice did not reflect the good or bad deeds of the two boys, because they were not yet born. Salvation does not depend on being good, but on the mercy of God.

v13) Another quotation, this time from Malachi 1:2,3. God chose Jacob’s descendants, not Esau’s, as his people, and already by the time of Malachi the land of Edom was in irrecoverable decline.

Is God Being Fair?

v14) in our world of ‘human rights’ it could be argued that God is not fair to choose some people and not others. Should we not all have the chance of the Kingdom? No, says, Paul, God cannot be unjust.

v15,16) As the Creator, God has the prerogative to decide who he wishes to work with. In the revelation of his Name to Moses, God insisted we are all sinners and worthy to die, but he chooses to have mercy on some, on those who show humility and repentance. Even then, we do not deserve his kindness. We cannot earn it. ‘It does not depend on human desire or exertion, but on God who shows mercy’ (NET).

v17,18) In contrast, Pharaoh king of Egypt defied God. His pride drove him to refuse freedom to God’s people. He had the opportunity to let the people go at Moses’ request, but he hardened his heart (Exodus 7:13, 8:15). In the end, God directly hardened Pharaoh’s heart, so that he was no longer free to decide until God had demonstrated to the world what happens when you defy him (Exodus 10:1).

v19) It might appear that God is quite arbitrary in his dealings with us - adopting some as his sons and daughters, and leaving others to perish in the grave. <

The apostle has exhausted his analogy of slaves and their masters in chapter six. He now turns to another figure of speech to show we must leave the Law of Moses behind when we become Christians.

He reminds his readers that a when a woman marries, she vows to be faithful to her husband until death. But if her husband dies, that obligation ends, and she is free to marry another man.

If her husband is alive and she lives with another man she becomes an adulteress. But if after he dies, she decides to marry again, that is fine.

In a difficult interpretation of the analogy, Paul argues that his readers, especially his Jewish brothers (‘my brothers’), were once ‘married’ to the Law of Moses. When Christ died on the cross, they died, too. At that point they were no longer bound to the Law. When Jesus rose from the dead, they rose to a new life with him. Now they are ‘married’ to him, as to a new husband. This new marriage will bear as children, ‘fruit for God’.

Before our conversion, we were living ‘in the flesh’. The choices we made were prompted by our human nature. The fruit of those passions was death.

In contrast, having no commitments now to the Law of Moses, we are driven, not by the flesh (human nature), but by the Spirit, the way of God.

Sin and the Law

Another question. Does Paul believe that the Law is bad, because breaking it produces sin? Another denial. No, he says. All the Law does is to tell me when I am sinning. It did not make me sin.

The potter and the Clay

v20,21) But we are not in a position to argue with our Creator. Job tried, but had to admit defeat. Paul pulls out another quotation, from Isaiah, possibly Isaiah 29:16 or Isaiah 45:9. We are all clay in the hands of the divine Potter, he says, and God has the right to decide what he makes from each lump. He can work it up into a beautiful ornamental vase. Or he may turn it into a kitchen jug. Both have their place in God’s great house. Interestingly, the procedure of moulding clay is dynamic. If the clay is resistant to the touch of God’s fingers, as Pharaoh was, the collapsed vessel will end on the scrap heap. If we allow God to mould us through the circumstances of life, accepting his discipline, we will find a place in his Kingdom.

v22) Here we have an illustration of the mercy of God. Perhaps the majority of human ‘vessels’ are worthy of destruction when they refuse to listen to God. But he does not cut them off instantly. He allows them to continue. He is patient, always hoping they might repent. That is why, as Jesus says, he sends his rain on the unjust as well as the just (Matthew 5:45).

v23) The continued presence of the wicked is also essential for the preparation of the ‘vessels of mercy’. Their characters are being developed in a world of evil and suffering.

‘Not My People’

v24) These ‘called out’ people come from not only the Jews but the Gentiles, too.

v25,26) The master advocate now produces three powerful quotations to support his argument. The first is from Hosea 2:23. Here God is speaking of the Kingdom, when his chosen people, once scattered for their rebellious hearts, will be reconciled to him – an illustration of his mercy. But Paul gives it an added meaning – the call of the Gentiles who were by birth ‘not my people’.

The second is from Hosea 1:10. God promised Abraham his descendants would be as numerous as the sand by the seashore. Paul implies this is because many Gentiles will be found in Abraham’s family, their presence there being justified by their faith in God.

v27,28) Conversely, though Abraham was promised a huge family, Isaiah 10:20-23 warns that only a relatively small number of his descendants will repent (return), or as Paul puts it, ‘be saved’. Isaiah here uses a play upon the name of his own son, Shear Jashub, which means ‘a remnant shall return’ (Isaiah 7:3).

v29) to emphasise the comparative few from Israel who will be saved, Paul quotes Isaiah 1:9. Abraham bargained with the angel of God to try to prevent Sodom being destroyed, but there were not even ten righteous people left in that city. But God has ensured a remnant of Israel has survived to continue the future of their race.

Where Israel Went Wrong

v30) It is time to summarise. The Gentiles were called from a background where righteousness was unknown, but once shown the way to it, by faith, they seized it.

v31) The Jews were convinced they could earn righteousness by keeping the Law of Moses, but they failed, because they always broke it, one way or another.

v32,33) They tried to put God in their debt, bargaining that their sacrifices and days of fasting built up a positive balance in some imaginary account with God. But God offers salvation free of charge. All we have to do is to believe in the sacrifice of his Son. The Jews sadly rejected that concept. In Isaiah’s word picture, walking proudly along with their noses in the air, they tripped over Jesus, the stone that God had put in their way. Thanks be to God, we have been given the same opportunity to believe in him, and have found his salvation. For this we must ever give God thanks, that he chose us as suitable material for his Kingdom, and set before us the hope of eternal life.

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