Romans 9.1-27

What about Israel?

(Romans 9.1-27)

Jason Procopio

Welcome back to Romans!

Let me give you a bit of a warning before we go forward. Today’s text is an extremely difficult one, and a potentially dangerous one, particularly in our setting. We are, unapologetically, what might be called a “Reformed Baptist” church, which means that we hold to certain doctrines that came out of the Protestant Reformation, often called the “Doctrines of Grace” or “Calvinism.” If you’re not comfortable with that label, that’s fine, but all our cards are on the table: that’s where we land.

And Romans 9 is probably the most common text that people pull out when they’re trying to defend Calvinist doctrine; it’s one of a few that I myself pull out the most often, and with good reason.

However, this text is not primarily a manifesto on Calvinism; it’s not even primarily a manifesto on the doctrine of unconditional election, as it’s called. We’ll talk about that doctrine in more detail next week, because I know it’s going to be on your minds after reading this chapter; but that’s not primarily what this chapter is about. (So some of you are going to be frustrated today, as I’ll quickly through your favorite verses. Be patient; we’ll get there.) We have a lot to see today, it’s going to be a bit long, and this is a hard chapter, so we’ll need to think really hard as we move forward. I hope you’re all caffeinated.

To see what this chapter is about, we have to remember what we’ve seen in the book so far. And since it’s been about two months since our last dip in the book of Romans, let me very quickly summarize what Paul has said up to this point. (I’m borrowing from Mike Bird’s summary for the first six chapters: brevity has never been my strength.)

If you remember, Paul is writing to the church in Rome in order to motivate them to support him in his upcoming mission to preach the gospel in Spain. But he’s also writing to address a few specific issues this church was having. All the Jews had been expelled from Rome for several years and have now returned. And now, the Jewish Christians have been thrown back into the mix with the Gentile Christians who have been running the church without them. In this letter, Paul is trying to help them get on the same page in terms of their understanding of the gospel and of one another.

So he talks about his credentials and his gospel in chapter 1 (Paul has never met this church, so he wants it to be clear from the start): the gospel of Jesus Christ is the revelation of the righteousness of God (that is, his saving righteousness). Paul follows this by showing how both Jews and Gentiles are in the same situation when it comes to sin—they’re all guilty before God. The Gentiles are guilty because of their ignorance and flagrant immorality; the Jews are guilty of those things as well, and on top of that, they’re guilty of their inability to keep the Covenant God has established with them.

But God has revealed his saving power, both to Jews and Gentiles, through faith in Jesus Christ, whom God sent as a sacrifice for our rebellion against him (which we call sin). Paul says we all need to be like Abraham, the forefather of our faith—no matter whether you’re Jew or Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, you inherit salvation the same way Abraham did: through faith.

Then in chapter 5, he zooms out a bit and speaks about all of humanity, throughout all of history: how we are all either “in Adam” or “in Christ.” All human beings are naturally born “in Adam”—that is, we inherit the sin of our first father, Adam. But if we have faith in Christ, we are no longer “in Adam,” but “in Christ”: we are united to him in his death, and we are united to him in his resurrection.

In addition, if we are in Christ, we are not only saved, but we are empowered by the Holy Spirit for moral renewal and transformation—which we couldn’t find in the law, or in our own morality. That’s chapters 1 through 6.

Then in chapter 7, Paul says that when God saved us, he gave us new hearts to love him, a new spirit to understand his will, and new desires that line up with his desires. What God didn’t do when he saved us is give us new bodies; we still have the same bodies we did before. Our human natures are still “sold under sin,” he says in 7.14: our bodies have gotten used to sinning, and they like it. So when the Spirit comes in and transforms our hearts, it starts a battle inside of us: between the Spirit who pulls us in God’s direction, and our bodies, our human natures, which pull us in the direction of sin.

I know a lot of you feel this very acutely: you feel like you should be obeying God’s commands, and even that you want to obey God’s commands, but something else in you pulls you in the opposite direction. I know many of you feel guilty about this reality, but Paul says that struggle is actually a good thing: it is a sign that the Spirit is at work in us. (If we don’t struggle…that’s when we should be worried.)

So Paul presents us with the reality of our struggle, then in chapter 8, he says that if we want to be victorious in this fight against our sin, there are a few things we need to know above all others:

Firstly, we need to know that if we are in Christ, there is no condemnation for us. No matter the sins of our past, no matter the sins of our present, or even the sins we’ll commit in the future—there is no condemnation for us, because Christ was condemned in our place for that sin.

Secondly, we need to know that the Holy Spirit who raised Christ from the dead will give life to our mortal bodies—the same bodies which are still used to sinning and which fight against the Spirit. In a fight between the Spirit of God and our sin, our sin has no chance of winning. The Spirit will help us put our sin to death.

And he’ll do this by keeping my eyes firmly fixed on our future: on the glory that awaits us at Christ’s return. And until then, we have this absolute certainty that because we are in Christ, absolutely nothing—not even our sin—can separate us from his love.

So you see what he’s doing. Everyone knows it’s risky to do weight training alone at home, because if you’re doing bench presses and the weight is too much, the bar can fall on you and injure you. When you’re weight training, it’s best to do it in a safe environment, where all the right people and security measures are in place to make sure you can do it safely.

Romans 8 is that safe environment: we can only put our sin to death by the Spirit if we know without a single doubt that we are safe: that our salvation is secure, and nothing can separate us from God’s love—even when we overestimate our strength and put too much weight on the barbell.

Honestly, Paul could have ended his letter there, and we’d be satisfied. But the amazing thing is, we’re only halfway through.

So when we start reading chapter 9, we can feel a little disoriented, because it seems like over the last few chapters Paul has left his initial subject of the tension between Jewish and Gentile Christians…and then suddenly, in chapter 9, he comes back to that subject. It bothers some of us that he does this—we’d have preferred Paul skip Romans 9 to 11 and just hop from Romans 8 to Romans 12.

But Paul knows that if he does that, it might cause some confusion, and it might cause some particular temptations. Because everything he’s said from chapters 6 to 8 sounds great…but what about Israel? God made promises to Israel, promises that were accomplished in Christ…and a great number of Israel’s members don’t believe in him. So what does that mean for them?

You see, in coming back to this subject, Paul is being very pastoral. He remembers he’s speaking to a mix of Jewish and Gentile Christians, and he knows that these two groups might have very different reactions to what he’s just said.

The Gentile Christians might be tempted toward antisemitism (which was the predominant attitude in Rome at the time). If many Jews have rejected their Messiah—well, too bad for them! They’re idiots! Let’s get on with celebrating the grace we have in Christ and leave the Jews to their fate.

The Jewish Christian, on the other hand, might tend toward despair. They surely have family members—brothers or sisters or parents—who haven’t accepted Christ, so they’re naturally torn in two different directions: does God’s grace toward all peoples mean that he’s abandoned his promises to Israel?

You see, in this chapter (as well as chapters 10 and 11), Paul is addressing these people where they are. Thomas Tobin puts it this way: Romans 9 talks about Israel’s past, Romans 10 talks about Israel’s present, and Romans 11 talks about Israel’s future. So these three chapters should always be taken together.

But today we’re in chapter 9, and this chapter seeks to answer two very simple and important questions for Paul’s readers: First: Is God faithful? and second: Is God righteous?

Is God Faithful? (v. 1-13, 24-29)

So after this incredible celebration of God’s perfect love for those who are in Christ, Paul makes an about-face that seems very jarring. Let’s begin reading, in v. 1-13 (and we’ll take this bit by bit):

I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— 2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.

This is a massive shift in tone from Romans 8—nothing, nothing, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord! … I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.

Why does he do this?

Because he knows what many of his Jewish readers must be thinking after reading chapter 8: Yes, that’s all wonderful…but WHAT ABOUT ISRAEL? God made promises to the people of Israel! We know those promises are fulfilled in Christ, but we know so many Jews who don’t believe Christ is the Messiah!

Paul agrees with them, and he goes even further:

3 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.

Now of course this can’t actually happen; Paul didn’t earn his union with Christ, so he can’t give it to someone else. But he loves them so much that if he could, he would. Why does Paul love them so much? Because he’s a Jew himself! These are his people! And it’s true that if we look at their history, there is good reason to say that it is a great thing to be a Jew. He says in v. 4-5:

4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. 5 To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

What a blessing, to be a member of the people of Israel, to have all of this family history behind you—the covenants, the law, the patriarchs, and an actual blood relationship with Christ—and to have accepted that Jesus Christ is the Messiah!

That is the case for the Jewish Christians in Rome. But it is not the case for many other Jews. And that’s confusing, because the promises of the Messiah, the promises made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were for the people of Israel…and a vast number of this people aren’t benefitting from those promises.

So the logical question, given their situation, is simple: Is God faithful? He made promises to his people, and it seems those promises are only being fulfilled for some of them. Does that mean that God is unfaithful toward all these other Jews who don’t believe Jesus is the Messiah?

And Paul’s answer to that question is an emphatic NO. V. 6:

6 But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, 7 and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” 8 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.

We need to take a minute here, because this is a bit complicated. (And Paul will defend what he’s saying in a minute, but for now we need to just understand the concept.)

Paul is clear here that just belonging to the ethnic people of Israel—being physically descended from Abraham—is not enough to save them. He’s already said as much in the first four chapters of this book, but here he frames it differently.

He speaks of Israel in two different ways. He speaks about them first in the wider sense of those who are ethnically, physically descended from Abraham; in v. 8 he calls them “the children of the flesh.”

But then he describes a kind of subset within the people of Israel, whom he calls “the children of the promise.”

And he clearly says that it is not the children of the flesh—ethnic Israel—who "belong to Israel”, but rather “the children of the promise”.

The natural reaction to this, from any Jewish person who might read this letter would be, “WHOA! Hold on! You’re saying that the people of Israel aren’t really God’s people? Weren’t they—ethnic Israel—called God’s people throughout the entire Old Testament?”

And the answer is, no. They weren’t. Paul says in v. 9:

9 For this is what the promise said: “About this time next year I will return, and Sarah shall have a son.” 10 And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, 11 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 him who calls— 12 she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” 13 As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

So you see, Paul goes back to the Old Testament, and he lays it out for them.

God had a plan, and he came to Abraham and told him what that plan was—v. 9 (quoting Genesis 18.10): “About this time next year I will return, and Sarah shall have a son.” Okay, great. What happened? Sarah was really old, didn’t see how this could be possible, so she and Abraham concocted a plan to make a son, by letting him sleep with her servant Hagar. Abraham had a son by Hagar, Ishmael, and God said, “No, that’s not how I said it would work. I said I’ll return, and Sarah will have a son.” And she did: she had Isaac, even though she was old. And Isaac, not Ishmael, was the child of the promise.

Same thing later on. Isaac married Rebekah; she became pregnant with twins. And God said, before they were born, “The older will serve the younger.” (Which wasn’t the way it usually happened back then: the first baby to come out of the womb received the birthright.) Then Paul says it even more explicitly, quoting from the prophet Malachi, through whom God said, “Jacob (the second-born) I loved, but Esau (the first-born) I hated.”

That’s hyperbole—God didn’t literally hate Esau, not in the way we mean the word. God says it that way to make it clear clear that he has a plan. His plan is to accomplish his promises through specific people, in specific ways. Both Ishmael and Esau were physical descendants of Abraham; but God’s promise to Abraham was not meant to go through them.

So you see, from the very beginning, it’s not because someone is physically descended from Abraham, ethnically belonging to the people of Israel, that they are recipients of the promise. God has clear plans for his people, and he gets to decide how those plans will come to pass.

And that includes bringing Gentiles into the mix. Paul spoke a lot (in chapter 8, v. 12-17, most recently) about how God adopts us as his children, calls us his sons and daughters through faith in Christ—even if we’re Gentiles, pagans who have no blood relation at all to Abraham! This is a shocking idea too—so Paul, again, goes back to the Old Testament to show that this, too, was always God’s plan.

Skip down to v. 24. Paul speaks here of those people whom God has prepared beforehand for glory,   

24 even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles[.] 25 As indeed he says in Hosea, [this is Hosea 1 and 2]

“Those who were not my people [Gentiles] I will call ‘my people,’

and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’ ”

26  “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.’ ”

27 And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: [this is Isaiah 10 and 11] “Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved, 28 for the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay.” 29 And as Isaiah predicted [in Isaiah 1],

“If the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring,

we would have been like Sodom

and become like Gomorrah.”

Here is the point Paul is trying to make—and it’s actually a point he already started developing in chapter 4. He’s saying that if you want to call yourself a child of God, it’s not enough to belong to a people group. We’ve said it often in church: it’s not because your parents are Christians that you’re a Christian. Not all who are (physically) descended from Israel belong to Israel. Not all who are physically descended from the people who received the Covenant benefit from that Covenant.

Paul said in chapter 4 that we belong to God’s people, not because of our ethnic heritage, but through faith—that’s how Abraham came to belong to God. It wasn’t through rites or rituals, and it wasn’t through ethnicity either, but through faith.

We’re going to take a break, but I want to say something really quickly before we do. It might seem as if Paul is saying, “If it’s through faith that we belong to God’s people, then being a Jew means nothing at all. There’s no value there; there’s no distinction to be made. The Jews rejected Christ? Too bad for them—let the Gentiles move on without them.”

Paul does not go that far. He’s just said at the top of this chapter how painful it is for him to see his Jewish brothers and sisters reject Christ. And if you keep reading, you’ll see that Paul begins chapter 10 with a prayer that all the Jews will be saved, and ends chapter 11 with a very tender word hoping that the Gentiles’ inclusion in the people of God will end in the Jews receiving the same mercy from God. So we need to be careful not to just discard our thoughts and prayers for those Jews who have rejected their Messiah, but rather to pray for them, because that’s what Paul does.

Is God righteous? (v. 14-23)

We belong to God’s people if we have faith in God’s Savior. God promised this Savior, this Messiah, to the Jews centuries before—and now Jesus Christ has come, and many of them in Rome have rejected him.

Now Paul adds another layer to this reality, and it’s a really difficult pill to swallow. He says that we—Jews and Gentiles alike—belong to God through faith in Christ alone, and that that’s the promise he made to Abraham.

But why do some have faith? Why did some Jews accept the Messiah, while others rejected him?

Paul’s answer is that God has a plan, and his plan includes deciding to whom he will give that faith. As he ended off in v. 13: As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

The natural response to this—our natural response to this—is: “That is horribly unfair.” So that’s the next question we need answered: “Is God unfair? Is God unrighteous in choosing whom he will save through faith?”

V. 14:

14 What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! 15 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16 So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. 17 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.” 18 So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

Don’t get lost in the details yet (we’re coming back to this next week); look at what he’s actually saying.

In v. 15, Paul quotes Exodus 33.19; in v. 17, he quotes Exodus 9.16.

He’s been using all of these quotes from the Old Testament to show that none of this should be a surprise. The Jewish Christians in particular knew the Old Testament well; they would have recognized the passages he’s quoting. Paul is slowly but surely dismantling this objection of injustice on God’s part by taking them back to Scripture, and showing them that what he, Paul, is saying, is what God himself has been saying since the beginning.

15 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16 So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.

Abraham didn’t do anything to deserve God’s promise to him; he was a pagan just like all the others, and we clearly see in the Bible that he was not perfect. God just plucked him out of Ur and told him he would make him a great nation. It wasn’t because of anything he did, but only because God decided to have mercy on him.

We see the other side of that coin in v. 17.

17 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.” 18 So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

God clearly told his purpose to Pharaoh—you are in power now, so that I might show my power in you. God hardened Pharaoh’s heart in order to show his power, by delivering the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt.

Here’s the point behind all these quotes from the Old Testament: if the rules of the game are clearly laid out, no one can fault the referee for calling a foul. God has made it clear from the beginning that simply belonging to a particular family does not automatically make someone a beneficiary of his promise. He showed it again and again: in his choosing Abraham, in his choosing Jacob, in the prophets who spoke of God’s choosing Gentiles to be brought into his people.

God is not unrighteous in doing this, because he has been clear from the beginning that this is what he intended to do.

But that’s not even the biggest question, is it? Most of us, when we think of the term “unrighteous,” or “unjust,” we’re not thinking in terms of God doing what he said he would do. Our question is different: Is God’s plan GOOD? Is he a righteous God?

Paul anticipates that question too, and he answers it. V. 19-23 is the hardest portion of this chapter, and this is where we’ll be spending a good amount of time next week:

19 You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?”

That’s the question we’re all asking, and Paul’s answer to that question is shocking in its simplicity.

20 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?” 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? 22 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, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—24 even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

This is something we have a very hard time accepting. We have a hard time accepting that the rules that apply to us don’t necessarily apply to God. If we somehow created a weapon to wipe out every human being except for one family, that would be called mass murder, because we are human beings, and we would be executing judgment on other human beings. If we decided to make it our goal in life to get everyone on earth to see us and love us, that would be pride, because we are human beings, and none of us is worthy of unanimous, worldwide praise.

But God is not a human being; he is the Creator of human beings. When he makes a judgment, that judgment is perfectly informed, because he is all-knowing; and that judgment is good, because God is good. He is the only being worthy of glory. He is the only being worthy of being feared and exalted and worshiped. When he makes choices in order to display his wrath, or display his power, it is not unrighteous; it is perfectly fitting, because he is the only being deserving of that kind of recognition.

So you see, the question we all ask—the question Paul anticipates in v. 19, “Is God unrighteous?”—is the wrong question; and that’s why Paul doesn’t give us a straight answer, but rather says, We are sinful, imperfect human beings; who are we to even ask that question?

The question on the minds of most of the Jewish and Gentile Christians in Rome is, “Why doesn’t God save all of Israel?” And surely a part of Paul wants to ask that question too, because he loves Israel. But it’s not the right question. The right question is rather, “Why did God save any of us?”

He’s just spend eight chapters showing us how astounding our salvation is, whether we’re Jew or Gentile. Chapter 8 reaches such a crescendo, and we have to keep coming back to it for years after we discover it, because we all have the feeling it shouldn’t be this way. Sinful people do not deserve the mercy of a just God.

But that too is one of the rights that God reserves for himself as the sovereign Creator of all things. He is just, and his wrath against sin burns bright. But because he is the Creator, he can choose to set in motion a plan to show mercy on whom he will. It’s not fair, at least by our standards; but he alone has the authority to make that choice.

The foundation of the promises

Here’s the point we need to leave with today—this is the message of Romans 9. Despite the fact that many members of the people of Israel didn’t accept the Savior whom God promised to send them, God has not rejected his people. He is faithful, and he is righteous, because he alone is God, and at every step he has done exactly what he said he would do, in the way he said he would do it.

The reason Paul is telling all of this to the church in Rome is because he knows they’ll be rubbing shoulders every single day with people they love—relatives and friends and neighbors—who seem so close to salvation, but who are just missing it. He knows it will be easy for them to despair over these people they love.

He wants them to know he feels the same thing. But at the same time, he wants them to rest in this unshakable confidence: that God is absolutely faithful to do what he promised, and that whatever God sets out to do is right. And he’ll spend the next two chapters developing those truths even further.

I know some of this might seem a bit theoretical for many of us today; many of us don’t have Jewish relatives or neighbors, and so we might wonder why we need to know all this.

Here’s the first reason why (we’ll get to more next week). Go back to the promises of Romans 8.

• V. 1: There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

• V. 11: If the Holy Spirit who raised Christ from the dead lives in us, he will also give life to our mortal bodies through his Spirit, to put our sin to death.

• V. 14-15: The Spirit who lives in us is the proof of our adoption as sons; by him we no longer call God simply “Master” or “Lord”; now we can call him “Father.”

• V. 18: The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that is waiting for us.

• V. 37-38: In all of these things—in all of these sufferings—we are more than conquerors through him, because nothing can separate us from his love.

Here’s what we have to understand: the sovereignty of God on display in Romans 9 is the bedrock on which the promises of Romans 8 stand. If God is not God, then we have no assurance that any of these promises are actually trustworthy—Romans 8 might well just be wishful thinking.

But because God is God—because he is the Creator, and is perfectly faithful to do what he promised, and perfectly righteous in his decisions—then those wonderful promises are sure. They are true for us today, and they will be true for us tomorrow—for us, and for all those whom God chooses to save.

The only proper response to this knowledge is humility. It is to place ourselves at his feet, and worship him as Creator and Lord and God, and thank him for his incredible mercy, and pray that he save our friends and families and neighbors, as Paul prayed for his.