Romans 9

The Apostle Paul cared deeply about the Israelites, the Jews; this despite the fact that many of those who had caused the most trouble for his ministry were not Gentiles but Jews. Of all people, Paul understood where they were coming from. He had been a Pharisaic Jew, and a persecutor of the church. He surely still considered himself to be a Jew when he wrote this important letter to the Christian church in Rome. He was, in fact, a Christian Jew, as so many were in the first century. He was a Jew who had come to see Jesus, the cross, the resurrection, and the Christian preaching of the kingdom of God and the resurrection age as the fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Those Hebrew Scriptures were also quite clear on God's relationship with Israel as His chosen people. The question had to be asked: "What went wrong? What happened to the Jews, since so many seemed to reject Jesus as the Messiah?" They had so many advantages, especially the Scriptures themselves, and, of course, it was from the Jews that the Messiah Jesus came, the One who Paul calls here "God over all." In answering this important question, Paul says, "It is not as though the Word of God has failed." Many people come to the conclusion that God has let them down, or that He has done something wrong. A loved one may have died tragically, despite earnest prayers. Has God's promise failed? To answer that question we have to be very careful on the matter of what God actually promised. There is no promise in the Bible that the people we pray for will continue to live this mortal life forever. We cannot rightly evaluate whether the promise of God has failed unless we look carefully at the content of the promise itself.

God did not promise that each and every individual descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would be a part of His eternal people Israel. God made many promises concerning Israel, but not everyone who was a part of natural Israel was also a part of the spiritual elect Israel. God never promised to save all of the former, only all of the latter. Just because Abraham is in a person's list of ancestors does not mean that that person is a son of Abraham in every sense of the word. Ishmael had Abraham as a father, but God announce in the Hebrew Scriptures that the promise was through Isaac, the child of Abraham and Sarah. In the next generation, the same point was lived out. Rebecca, the wife of Isaac, was carrying twins, of which only one was the chosen child, Jacob. The other, Esau, the father of the Edomites, was not elect.

This sovereignty of God in salvation is ultimately necessary if grace is to be fully grace. If the key turning point and power of salvation springs first from the wisdom, power, and goodness of man, then salvation must in some sense be by the works of man and for the glory of man. But this is not what the Scriptures teach. Concerning faith, Jesus is the Author and Finisher of it, and we are explicitly told that it is the gift of God. If we have works to do, it is only because God prepared these things in advance that we should walk in them. There is simply no ground for human boasting on the matter of our salvation. Though so many people resist the plain teaching of the Bible on this, the One that we call Almighty is Almighty, even in the matters of faith, obedience, and eternal life. This is not even a close call when it comes to the evidence in the Bible. Salvation is of God, not of man. All mankind are by nature objects of God's hate, His wrath, and not His love. It is not surprising that God would say, "Esau I hated," as He does in Malachi. What is surprising is that He would be able to say in the same place, "Jacob I loved." This could only be done at the cost of His Son.

The enemies of the clear Biblical teaching of election commonly bring up certain objections. It is part of the proof that Romans 9 teaches sovereign election that Paul anticipates these very objections that are so often raised against those who teach that God chose some to everlasting life, and that others He created for a different purpose. What are these objections? 1. "Is there injustice on God's part?" 2. "Why does He still find fault? For who can resist his will?" 3. Anticipating the plea of those who have not been saved trying to blame God for their just condemnation, "Why have you made me like this?"

Paul's answers to these presumptuous and arrogant questions affirm the greatness and glory of God, and reject the notion that any of us have the right to set ourselves above the Lord as His judge, an act of intolerable pride on the part of any creature. He is the potter, and we are the clay. He has apparently set up this world in the only way that would be right, the way that brings the greatest glory to the greatest Being, Him, the only wise God. That way involves not only the most supreme display of His mercy, but also the most supreme display of His justice. Both of these require not only blessing, but also curse. You cannot have mercy without just moral guilt and curse from which to be rescued. You also cannot have justice without responsible moral guilt and a just penalty for that guilt. If that makes us wonder, and figure that this just can't be the true story of God, we are referred back again to the fact that God is far greater than we are.

God is not unjust. He has determined to have mercy upon whom He will have mercy, and it was His eternal choice to form the full Israel of God not only from the Jews, but also from the Gentiles. This plan was according to His purpose of election, and it was amply testified to in the Hebrew Scriptures. This He has done through the provision of a righteousness that has come to us through faith in a Substitute who died for our sins. This Substitute is the Stone of stumbling and the Rock of offense to some. But those who have been granted the gift of faith boast not in themselves or their own understanding of the deep mysteries of God that are beyond our understanding. We do boast in something. We boast in the God who chose us from before the foundation of the world, and in Christ, who is God over all become man to perform the necessary activities of dying love for the beloved of God, and in the Spirit of God by which we have been made alive from the dead. And we most joyfully confess the truth: that our salvation "depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy."