Romans 9:1-5You can feel Paul’s sorrow here. He has the security of God’s move in his life and he knows that those who God has saved will never fall. However, Paul also realizes that many individual members of a people chosen by God would not respond to the covenants, law, worship, and promises any better than Paul did before God’s intervention. According to the flesh or simple genetics they have the patriarchs and of course Jesus. Notice that Paul praises God for what He did in the lives of his “kinsmen according to the flesh”. Likewise, we need to praise God for His gracious ministry to the Israelites and praise Him for the Grace of His work in our lives. Our attitude toward those who are Israelites according to the flesh should be one of humility since we understand the Grace in which we stand is not based on our brains and skills but rather on the gracious move of God’s Holy Spirit. In the following Scriptures Paul tries to drive home that our position in Christ is one of Grace.
I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.
Romans 9:6-13Paul still experiences anguish and sorrow over those who make up his culture but he realizes that the children that are God’s are the children of promise and not those according to the flesh. To drive home the point Paul points out that it has never been simply that the children of the Patriarchs were the elect. God has always kept the children of promise and allowed those that were not of the promise to continue according to their own will and inclination. Think about Esau and Jacob. Here the doctrine of unconditional election is lived out in the lives of two guys that really were both flakes. Esau and Jacob were both, at least arguably, jerks. You wouldn’t elect either one of them conditionally (based on their natures or works). They were as bad as us and frankly most guys would rather hang out with Esau than Jacob. God had to work and work pouring out Grace in Jacob’s life. God in His mercy and grace chose Jacob before his birth and not because of anything he had done or was going to do that God was going to need. You can’t say that God is unjust because He showed mercy and compassion to Jacob and didn’t show mercy and compassion to Esau. Justice would condemn both of them. Mercy by definition can’t be required of the one showing mercy or it isn’t mercy. I think this is a key point in understanding Grace. An act of mercy can not be required; not now, not ever, never. Mercy can’t be the “fitting” or “just” thing to do. If Mercy is fitting then it is justice and not mercy. We never want to argue with God asking for justice. I want mercy and Grace. In our hearts, “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated” is a hard Scripture to deal with. The “Jacob have I loved” is easy for us to pass over as an acceptable portion. Why? Because we figure our sin natures should be no problem since they are so natural to us. Of course it is OK for God to love Jacob but we stagger at “Esau have I hated”. We are not really amazed by Grace are we? We think God owes us Grace as oxymoronic or maybe just moronic as that is. Esau got justice while Jacob got mercy. Which do you want?
But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. For this is what the promise said: “About this time next year I will return and Sarah shall have a son.” And not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of his call— she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
Romans 9:14-18You can pray for God to have mercy and compassion on others and God may hear; however, you have no leg to stand on if you start to thing that God is unjust in dispensing mercy and compassion. If you do then please stop singing “Amazing Grace, that saved a wretch like me” and start singing “Reasonable Grace, that saved a guy with a few problems but otherwise was a pretty good guy”.
What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.
God will use a wicked man according to his wicked nature to accomplish God’s good will. God knew specifically what would harden Pharaoh’s heart and used him to accomplish His will. Events hardened Pharaoh and God used that. He didn’t need to “do violence” to Pharaoh’s heart to harden it. We need to remember what God previously told us about mankind’s lack of inclination toward God or we’ll make the error or thinking that Pharaoh was some basically nice guy who God had to corrupt. God doesn’t corrupt us we are already radically corrupt or, in other words, corrupt to the core. It is too late for God to do that. We did it to ourselves.
Now Paul is aware that since God is sovereign and it is He that has made us and that we have not made ourselves. So since God has revealed the depth of our sin nature we can just claim that we should not be subject to judgment because we are sinners by nature. Listen to what Paul says about that.
Romans 9:19-29To argue that you are not subject to judgment based on this revelation would be the same as a pedophile arguing that they can’t be found guilty because they are pedophiles by nature. An unsaved person who tries to argue that God can’t find them guilty because they willingly choose to sin is in error. We always choose according to our strongest inclination at the moment. We are liable for our sins because we make bad choices and choose to sin. God has revealed that in His mercy He changes our heart (regenerates) and we choose Him. We make morally valid choices in either case.
You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honored use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? As indeed he says in Hosea,
“Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’ and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’” “And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’ ” And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved, for the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay.” And as Isaiah predicted, “If the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring, we would have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah.”
We are called “my people” and “beloved” because of the will of God. He has made us “Vessels of Mercy” and called us and made us the Body of Christ.
Romans 9:30-33Here is the summary. You guys (who did not pursue righteousness) because of God’s work in your life, have a righteousness attained by faith while most of those who are Israel according to the flesh stumbled on a stone laid by God for stumbling.
What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith; but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, “ Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
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