Romans redux (ch.9)
Paul now moves on to discuss how God’s New Covenant in the Spirit that freed all humanity–Jew and Gentile alike–from sin’s grip can be reconciled with the fact that most of Paul’s fellow ethnic Jews are rejecting this New Covenant and its Messiah. How can God’s promise to Abraham and the patriarchs still stand if the majority of Abraham’s descendants are rejecting the fulfillment of God’s plan in Jesus?
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9:1 I am speaking the truth in the Messiah (I am not lying, for my conscience is testifying with me in the Holy Spirit), 2 that my grief is great and [there is] unceasing pain in my heart! 3 For I could wish that I myself were anathema—[cut off] from The Messiah on behalf of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh, 4 who are Israelites—to whom belong sonship status, the glory, the covenants, the possession of the law, worship, and promises—5 to whom belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, the Messiah, who is God over all, blessed to the ages! Amen.
6 [However] it is not as though the word of God has fallen away! For not all the ones from Israel are themselves Israel, 7 nor are all the children the seed of Abraham; rather
“through Isaac will your seed be called.” (Gen 21:12)
8 This is, not the children of the flesh who are the children of God; rather, the children of promise are reckoned as seed.
9 For this is the word of promise:
“According to this appointed time I will return and Sarah will have a son.” (Gen 18:10, 14)
10 Not only that, but also [when] Rebekah, having [conceived] by one sexual act [lit. “from one bed”] our ancestor Isaac, 11 even before they had been born or had performed anything good or bad (so that God’s purpose according to election would remain, 12 not from works but from the calling), it was said to her that,
“The older will serve the younger” (Gen 25:23)
13 just as it is written:
“Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” (Mal 1:2-3)
14 What then are we saying? Is there unrighteousness with God?
May it never be! 15 For to Moses he says:
“I will have mercy on whoever I may have mercy, and I will have compassion on whoever I may have compassion.” (Exod 33:19)
16 So then, [it depends] not [on] the one willing, nor the one running, but [on] the one having mercy: God. 17 For the scripture says to Pharaoh that,
“For this itself I have raised you up, so that I might demonstrate my power in you, and so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.” (Exod 9:16)
18 So then, he shows mercy to whom he wishes, and he hardens whom we wishes.
19 You will say to me then, “Why is he still blaming? For who has ever resisted his will?”
20 O human, on the contrary, who are you to be answering back to God?? The thing formed does not say to the one forming it, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Doesn’t the potter have authority over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?
22 And what if God, desiring to show wrath and to make known his power, bore with much patience vessels of wrath having been prepared for destruction 23 in order to make known the wealth of his glory on the vessels of mercy that he prepared beforehand for glory– 24 even us, whom he has called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?
25 As it even says in Hosea:
“I will call the ones who are not my people, ‘My people,’ and the ones not having been loved, ‘Having been loved.’” (Hos 2:23)
26 “And it will be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.'” (Hos 1:10)
27 And Isaiah is crying out on behalf of Israel,
“Though the number of the children of Israel are like the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved, 28 for the Lord will carry out his word on the earth completely and quickly.” (allusion to Isa 10:22-23)
29 Just as Isaiah said beforehand,
“If the Lord of armies had not left us seed, like Sodom we would have become, and to Gomorrah we would have been compared.” (Isa 1:9)
30 What then are we saying? That the Gentiles who were not seeking righteousness obtained righteousness—though a righteousness that is from faith— 31 but Israel, seeking a law of righteousness from law did not reach it.
32 Why not?
Because they [sought it] not from faith but as [if] from works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone, 33 just as it is written,
“Look, I am putting in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock that makes people fall, but the ones believing in him will not be put to shame.” (Isa 28:16; 8:14)
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The new covenant, like the Sinai covenant, is only for Jews.
by WoundedEgo on Sep 2, 2010 at 4:41 pm
No, this couldn’t be more untrue, WoundedEgo. The entire point of the book of Romans, as summed up in 1:16 is that the Gospel/New Covenant is for ALL people, both Jew and Gentile. New Covenant was always forseen as being when God would call people from all nations to Himself and pour out His spirit on all flesh (Isaiah, Joel, Micah, etc. all look forward to this as the result of God’s Covenant people and their renewal). In Jesus, the boundaries of Israel have been redrawn around Jesus Himself as Israel’s Messiah. No longer is there “Jew or Greek” in Him. Ephesians 2 is explicit in teaching that Jesus came to tear down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile through His saving work of redemption.
by jm on Sep 2, 2010 at 6:14 pm