The tough parts of Scripture often turn out the most worthwhile. Or, as C S Lewis puts it: the foxhunter should concentrate on the thicket – ten to one that’s where the fox is hiding. At least, that’s what I found recently with Romans 9.
Maybe this chapter has left some of us troubled. Personally, I’d always felt a bit unenthusiastic about Romans 9, 10 and 11, Paul’s comments about God’s sovereign dealings with Israel. The reason dated back to my student days; when I ended up arguing a lot with friends who were somewhat hyper-calvinistic. They saw these chapters as showing that salvation or damnation depended, willy-nilly, on whether God chose us for the one or the other. Our freewill was not the point – which had some fairly drastic implications for both apologetics and the urgency of evangelism. I’d never felt that squared very easily with the rest of Scripture; with the God who chose to express Himself most completely in the Son of Man coming to seek and save that which was lost, not to condemn it to lostness; with Stephen criticising his hearers for their (apparently all too effective) resistance to the (supposedly ever-irresistible) promptings of the Spirit (Acts 7:51, NIV as usual); with what the epistles say about God `who wants all people to be saved` (1 Tim 2:4), `not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance` (2 Peter 3:9), since Christ is `the ransom for all men` (1 Tim 2:6), having `tasted death for everyone` (Heb 2:9) as `the Saviour of all people, and especially of those who believe` (1 Tim 4:10); above all with Christ weeping passionately over Jerusalem because, when He wanted to gather them, they would not (not, could not) come (Matt 23:37, Luke 7:30, 19:41, John 5:40).
Now, I really don’t want to lose my calvinistic reader at this point, particularly since I know when we all get to heaven it may turn out that their interpretation was right and mine was wrong… So I’d better hasten to say that that’s not the subject of this post! I’m just explaining how Romans 9-11 came to have, for me, connotations of extended, unhelpful battles: not places I particularly wanted to revisit.
Recently, though, I began to feel uneasy. After all, if Romans really is (as it seems to be) Paul’s glorious attempt at an overall exposition of his gospel, then… chapters 9-11 can’t be ignored. Maybe ignoring them wasn’t exactly what I was doing; but it was close. I was saying, Well, after the marvellous affirmation that `Nothing shall separate us from the love of Christ’ at the end of Rom 8, the imaginary heckler is back in view who has troubled Paul earlier in Romans, asking this time, So what’s gone wrong with the Jews getting separated from God’s love, then? What price God’s promises to them?; and so Paul steps aside to spend three chapters answering that, before he gets back to his main themes at the start of chapter 12. And I think that’s a fair enough reading. Nevertheless, I was running the risk of seeing these three chapters as an untidy digression, not really integral to the overall flow of the letter. That flow is what I want to pick up here.
What got me thinking was a remark by a writer in IFES’ theological magazine Themelios. He remarked how he’d tried to get a grip on the much-debated seventh chapter of Romans. What happened was that he came to a deeper understanding of chapters 1-4 and chapters 9-11; and they, he said, acted like a `pincer movement’ on his understanding of 5-8, in a way that linked in with the concerns of 9-11, which are very much about the situation of the Jews.
Recently Romans came up in my personal schedule for speed-reading the Bible. Having just read that, I began with this thought in mind. What came across to me, as never before, was how much of Romans speaks directly to the concerns and situation of the Jews. There’s the `they’ used when Paul talks of the Gentiles in 1:19ff, compared to the `you’ who `call yourself a Jew’ in 2:17ff. There’s the question about what is the advantage of being Jewish in 3:1; there’s the reference to `Abraham our forefather’ in 4:1. There’s the `I am speaking to men who know the law’ of 7:1, and the `Brothers’ of 10:1. Of course there are exceptions: Gentile readers are very clearly in view in 1:13-15 and 11:13-31. But the extent to which Paul had Jewish readers in his mind as he wrote his classic exposition of salvation seemed very clear. Further, I knew it was all leading, somehow or other, into Romans 14, urging the more- and less-Law-minded sections of the Roman church to live out in practice the unity of the Spirit; which, presumably, was to get the Jewish and Gentile believers to live at peace with each other. Later he goes on (15:25-27) to speak of his cherished collection among the Gentile churches to alleviate the poverty of the Jewish believers – a very practical sealing of precisely that oneness.
But there was more. Rereading it, I noticed for the first time how the epistle seems to come to summation in 15:7-13. And Paul’s summation is a call to accept one another because they are so truly in this together – `for I tell you’, as he says rather firmly, `that Christ has become a servant of the Jews… to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs, so that the Gentiles may glorify God for His mercy.’ That unity in the fulfilment of God’s promises is the heart of Paul’s summary of his letter: `Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people!‘ And having said that, Paul clearly feels he has said what he set out to say: the past tense that follows is very noticeable – `I have written to you quite boldly on some points’ (15:15). And turning to the very last verses of the book, we find the same point made clear: `Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel… according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed… so that all nations might believe’ (16:25-26). That word `mystery’ should turn our minds to Ephesians, where Paul speaks of the ‘mystery’ given him by revelation, `which was not made known to men in other generations… This mystery is – that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus’ (cf Eph 3:2-12)
Now – for me at least – all that put a new light on Romans 9-11. (My apologies to readers for whom this is blindingly obvious. This post is written for anyone to whom, like me, it wasn’t.) In the first part of Romans, Paul explains to his readers how new birth is, and isn’t, to be obtained (faith, not religious works or rituals). He goes on, in chapter 6, to draw out the implications of this new birth and faith-life for discipleship, which we’ve explored in some detail in recent posts; and in chapter 8 he comes to a glorious crescendo with the announcement that salvation has cosmic significance – that the revelation of the sons of God means nothing less than the liberation from decay of the entire creation! One of the most incredible, mindboggling, horizon-expanding passages in the new testament… and the question it must have left for the Jewish reader he has had in mind is obvious: And what about my people? Are we now going to be left out of all this glory? If so, what price the promises and faithfulness of God?
And these, of course, are exactly the issues Paul sets out to tackle in 9-11. 9:6 sets out his response: `It is not as though God’s Word has failed!’ And he provides a several-sided answer as to how Israel are still sharing in the purposes of God. Firstly, `Israel’ is a complex entity; not everyone who might seem to be Israel is in fact Israel; that’s 9:6 again. Secondly, Israel have got themselves into trouble by their rebelliousness, by their refusal to submit to the righteousness of God, read 10:3; but there is still a remnant in the plan (11:1-5). Thirdly, the apparent `cutting off’ of Israel is itself something God is turning to good, since through it the Gentiles have been brought in to share His mercy – this is 11:11; but finally, God has not rejected His people – the time will come when Israel will be brought back into the plan, and as a result will, exults Paul, be the means of colossal regeneration, nothing less than `life from the dead’ to the world (11:11-15 – see PS about this extraordinary verse)… bringing us back, surely, towards the incredible final cosmic transfiguration of Romans 8:18ff. And clearly all of us, Gentiles too, are heirs (cf 8:17) to that incredible glory – but heirs together!
So God’s promises are not unreliable. `God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable'(11:29). What Romans 9 demonstrates is that, whatever happens, whatever human beings do, God’s sovereign Word and calling, so far from failing, are what shapes the unfolding of history. It seems that salvation from hell is not really the issue here. The issue seems to be primarily who belongs to the Israel that inherits the promises (vv4-6); and the citation of Ishmael and Esau is to demonstrate the sovereignty of God’s Word in that development. (Ishmael wasn’t `reprobated’, consigned to damnation; in fact, as Genesis 17:20 and 21:17-20 make clear, God had a loving purpose for Ishmael too. But it was not to be part of the specific destiny of Israel.) And to my mind at least, the nature of the interaction between that Word and human freewill is not the concern in Paul’s mind here, except to say in passing that God’s mercy takes precedence over any human `desire or effort’ (v16). (`By grace are we saved’ first, as Paul says elsewhere, and only then `through faith’; if it were not for God’s merciful, preceding, revelatory grace, all the faith in the world would not save us – indeed, we would not even have the option of receiving or rejecting that faith unless God revealed and offered it first.)
Be that all as it may, the primary thrust of these chapters is surely that God’s Word has not failed: rather His promises (given to Israel) shape history; and – here is the crunch – the end to which they lead is precisely that glorious `mystery’ again (11:25). Paul defines the `mystery’ here as that, rather than being definitively excluded, `Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved’ (11:25-26). `They are loved on account of the patriarchs’ (to whom the promises were made); `they… have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you’ (v28,31). We realise how far this `mystery’ of Jews and Gentiles sharing together in the promises and mercy of God lies at the heart of Romans when we see how these verses’ themes reappear, somewhat rephrased, as Paul summarizes the epistle in chapter 15: `For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews… to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs, so that the Gentiles may glorify God for His mercy’ (vv8-9). That the crucial term `mystery’ resurfaces at the end of chs 9-11 demonstrates how integral to Paul’s overall concerns these three chapters are.
But what the earlier chapters of Romans has taught us is that this `mercy’ we Gentiles have been brought into is glory beyond our imagination: certainly far beyond what we deserve. (Again Ephesians comes to mind, in the same context of making `one new man’ of the Jews and Gentiles: once we were `foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world’ (2:12); now we are `heirs together with Israel… sharers together in the promise’ (3:6).) It’s not without reason, then, that as he moves on into Romans 12 Paul cites again this `mercy’, going one logical step further: `Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices!’ Here the themes of 6:13,19 reappear in the symphony that is Romans: if God has given so much to me, nothing is more reasonable than that I should give everything to Him. But there are implications for our relationships with each other too. The concern he voices in 11:25, that the Gentile believers should not be conceited over what might appear their takeover of God’s promises to Israel, reappears in 12:3 and 12:16. Paul wants real unity in real community, transcending all ethnic barriers. The practicalities of chapters 13 and 14 are the essential outworking of the glorious mystery of unity that is summarized in chapter 15, and is the theme of the whole epistle: together, Jews and Gentiles, God has brought us to live in glory we could never deserve. It all fits together in a sequence of dazzling revelation.
And yet… at this point I suddenly paused. I remember, years ago, hearing someone preach a similar understanding of Romans. That Paul had a particular first-century problem on his mind as he wrote Romans: the relationships between Jews and Gentiles, the breaking down of the agelong division and bringing them together in one body, in the Church. And I remember my uninformed reaction: it made Romans seem remote, arcane, abstruse. Suddenly, instead of a classic exposition of the eternal gospel, Romans seemed a tract for a temporary, transient problem.
It is true (and I think this applies to what are called the `New Perspectives` on Romans) that to overemphasise Paul’s challenge to his contemporaries’ reliance on their Jewishness for salvation (rather than seeing that as one example of the false `religious` confidence in works or rituals for salvation, which has always been seen as a target of Romans’ early chapters) – is to make Romans something considerably less than the permanent, classically nutritious embodiment of the gospel that the Church has always taken it to be. Nevertheless, the way God works in Scripture is to set out his eternal mysteries to us in the context of local, messy, transient problems. They are the arena in which faith and glory are revealed. The deep, eternal truths of Corinthians and Galatians are shown us for all time, but were originally given in Paul’s attempt to put straight the particular tomfooleries of the local churches in Corinth and Galatia.
But this is why our first act in feeding on the Bible must always be careful interpretation, paying full attention to just what the passage means, especially its priorities – let’s get it right: what is God saying here? It’s after this that there comes application to ourselves. (It’s often a temptation to jump straight into, What is this saying to my particular concerns, rather than, What does God want to draw my attention to, which I may be down-prioritizing, or even evading?) And naturally there can sometimes be a difference between a passage’s initial application – what were the issues causing the Spirit to say these things at that time (Jew/Gentile unity in this case) – and application now – what are the issues (and behaviour changes) that this passage raises especially for us today? Of course, first, insofar as the original issues still exist now (as is most usually the case with the new testament), the initial application is still very much God’s Word to us for our worshipping obedience; and second, because the `application now` is not given us, that’s where the possibility of subjective distortion comes in – if our own situation is our starting point, if we don’t first really pause to absorb the text, then we may simply use Scripture as an illustration to endorse priorities or concerns we have for other reasons; rather than allowing God through Scripture to challenge and redirect us. This happens! And as Nigel Lee’s said, one thing God wants to do in His engagement with people is move us from what we think are our needs to grasp our real needs as God declares them to be. But for this, our starting point must be slow, careful absorption of the text; attending carefully to the permanent voice of God!
The fact that God has put this or any other passage into Scripture means there are issues or revelations there that He will speak to us about. And so the permanent centrality of Romans to our evangelism and our gospel today stands where it always has. But in fact the very act of grasping Romans 9’s initial application has, for me at least, brought out the glory of the eternal gospel in a new way. Because it is as I grasp the glory of what it teaches me that I learn a little more of the incredible mystery: as a Gentile, I have been brought into glory beyond my deserving, beyond my wildest dreams…
And isn’t that what grace is about? Isn’t it what salvation by faith, rather than by works, is about? Isn’t that what the gospel is about? Infinite glory, utterly undeserved?
PS: I’m not doing a separate post about Romans 11, but there’s something really fascinating here in 11:11-15 prophesying the ethnic Jews being one day the means of colossal regeneration, `riches for the world`, nothing less indeed than `life from the dead’… In context (see 11:25) this certainly seems to refer to the end of history, and to be about the ethnically Jewish followers of Jesus (11:15); and Paul’s telling us (look at 11:12) that this will amount (amazingly and almost inconceivably) to something bigger, blessing greater, even than salvation extending to the Gentiles in his lifetime!! (What can this be? Are we looking at the returned King Christ empowering his Jewish followers to bring ‘life from the dead’ back across a world hugely damaged in the end-time judgments recorded in Revelation? To me that seems a real possibility, and might well fit OT passages like Isaiah 11:6-12 or 65:17-25. For more thoughts on all this please see https://petelowmanresources.com/our-future3-so-how-does-ethnic-israel-fit-in/ and https://petelowmanresources.com/our-future4-what-happens-after-jesus-returns-whats-this-about-the-millennium/ )
PPS: I do need to be humble regarding what I’ve said above about calvinism, because I know there are so many calvinistic sisters and brothers who are godlier than me; and as I said I know too that (who knows!) one day in heaven their theology may possibly turn out to be right!! But for now, besides what I’ve mentioned in this post — we notice in Romans 9 that Esau as an individual never served Jacob, so in quoting them Romans is talking about the destinies of their respective nations, not individuals. And even when Paul is illustrating his argument (of the priority, in His strategy, of God’s mercy over our human decisions) with reference to the individual Pharoah: in Exodus Pharoah makes choices to resist God’s purposes well before God `hardens` (or another translation would be `strengthens`) him – which then is the point where God takes Pharoah’s choice as final and sets him up for a particular place in the drama. That’s reading Romans 9:17 in the light of 8:29: God foreknows what we will freely choose; that being so, He predestines where our crucial choice will lead, including where He will put us in the drama; and in Pharoah’s case, God, knowing what Pharoah will choose (and has chosen), `raises him up’ to power so that the Exodus events (and revelation) can happen. And of course Romans 9:21 about the potter and the clay makes the point that God has the absolute right to do this – but readers familiar with the OT would remember what Jeremiah 18:1-12 emphasises about potters: the potter is indeed preparing pots for particular purposes, but you don’t have to be the pot for destruction if you don’t want to. (BTW that’s almost quoting Paul’s own words about household vessels in 2 Timothy 2:19-21, although his point is slightly different there.) So it seems to me that the whole issue in Romans 9 isn’t individual salvation, but the question of how the Jews as a nation, God’s chosen nation, have (apparently) been displaced from the strategy of God, and how God’s all-wise strategy loves them still and brings them spectacularly (11:15) back in. (For a superb treatment of these chapters see John Lennox, Determined to Believe.)
