Privilege And Perplexity

The Unbelief of God’s People
(Romans 9:1-5)

Many people, reading Paul’s letter to the Romans, view chapters 9-11 as an irrelevant digression from Paul’s main argument. By contrast, Rob Yule argues that these chapters, which deal with the relationship of Jews and Gentiles in God’s purposes, are central to Paul’s argument and extraordinarily relevant to our understanding of what God is doing in the world. In this message, preached at Greyfriars’ Classical Service on 29 July 2007, Rob shows that Christianity is Jewish, and that God’s promises to Christians rest on his prior promises to the Jews.

With Romans chapter 9 Paul begins an extended treatment (chapters 9-11) on the relationship of Jews and Gentiles in God’s purposes for the world. Many Christians, many preachers, many scholars even, have treated these three chapters as a digression from the main argument of Romans, of little relevance for Christians today.

In fact, events of recent history show that what these chapters discuss are extraordinarily relevant. The appalling tragedy of the Holocaust, the dramatic re-establishment and survival of the state of Israel, and the emergence of Messianic Judaism on a scale unprecedented since the days of the New Testament, have catapulted Paul’s discussion of Jewish-Gentile relations from obscurity into a place of prominence in contemporary theological debate.

Paul’s argument (9:1-5)

There are two reasons why Paul’s discussion of God’s plan for Jew and Gentile in Romans 9-11 are not a digression, but an essential part of his argument in the letter to the Romans:

1. The argument of the letter

In the preceding and following chapters Paul relates his argument to both Jews and Gentiles. Like two legs Jew and Gentile ‘walk’ together through Paul’s letter to the Romans:

• In his introductory statement (1:16), Paul affirms his central thesis that the gospel ‘is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.’

• Paul’s opening section seeks to demonstrate the universality of sin, chapter 1 dealing with the sins of Gentiles or irreligious people, chapters 2-3 the sins of Jews or religious people. He concludes by stating that ‘Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin.’ (3:9).

• Paul clinches his argument about justification by faith by affirming that God is the God of both Jews and Gentiles: ‘There is only one God, who will justify the circumcised [the Jews] by faith and the uncircumcised [the Gentiles] through that same faith.’ (3:29-30).

• Later, in chapter 14, Paul goes on to deal with ‘the strong’ and ‘the weak’: the strong being the Gentiles, who have no scruples about the food they eat, and the weak or scrupulous being Jewish believers, who observe Jewish food and dietary laws.

• Finally, in chapter 15 Paul speaks of his spiritual mission as a Jew to bring Gentiles to faith, and in return of the Gentiles’ responsibility to care for the physical needs of Jewish believers in Jerusalem.

Throughout the entire letter Paul is dealing with the relationship of Gentiles and Jews, and chapters 9-11 are no different.

2. The argument of chapter 8

Romans 8 ends with Paul’s triumphant conclusion that nothing ‘will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Jesus Christ our Lord.’ (8:38-39).

The obvious and most damaging objection is: ‘What about the Jews?’ The majority of Jews have rejected — and are still rejecting — Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, and don’t believe in him. Are they cut off? Are they separated from God’s love in Christ? Have God’s purposes for them failed? Has God not kept his promises to them?

This is a crucial issue for Paul to deal with. What grounds for confidence do we have as Gentile Christians that God will keep his promises to us, if he hasn’t kept them for his chosen people, the Jews? God’s faithfulness to us rests on his faithfulness to the Jews.

Markus Barth rightly says, ‘Only because God is faithful to Israel do the Gentile Christians have good reason to rely on him. A God who was unreliable in his relation to Israel could not be trusted to be faithful to any nation or person.’ (The People of God [Sheffield, 1983], p. 30).

Paul’s anguish (9:1-3)

Israel’s unbelief or salvation was an intensely personal and painful matter for Paul, because Paul was a Jew. It caused him ‘great sorrow and unceasing anguish’ (9:2). The Jews were his own flesh and blood: ‘my people, those of my own race’ (9:3). Even as a believer in Jesus, Paul was still a Jew. He was what used to be called a ‘Hebrew Christian’, and we today refer to as a ‘Messianic Jew’.

There is an incredible contrast between the end of chapter 8 and the beginning of chapter 9. In Romans 8 Paul is happy, rejoicing, confident in the triumph of God’s purposes. In Romans 9 Paul is sad, grieving, concerned over the tragedy of God’s people.

In Paul’s day, and through his missionary endeavours, many Gentiles were accepting Jesus. By contrast, the most painful experience of his missionary activity was that the majority of his fellow-Jews were rejecting Jesus.

Yet Paul grieves for them, yearns for them. In 10:1 he says, ‘My heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.’ Here in 9:3 (like Moses in Exodus 32:32) he says he’d prefer to be accursed if his fellow-Jews could be accepted, he’d rather be dammed if they could be saved, he’d be willing to go to hell if that would enable them to go to heaven.

Do we have a passion like this for the lost? Do we ache for our nearest and dearest to believe? Do we have a deep sorrow and heartfelt burden for their salvation? David Brainerd prayed like this for the North American Indians. So did Henry Drummond for the students of Edinburgh University.

Israel’s privileges (9:4-5)

Paul’s pain and anguish was aggravated by Israel’s privileges and advantages. Theirs were….

• ‘The adoption’ as God’s children — a unique relationship to God.

• ‘The divine glory’ — the cloud or splendour of God’s revealed presence.

• ‘The covenants’ — including covenant promises of numberless descendants, of the land of Canaan as an everlasting possession, and of the everlasting kingdom of the house of David.

• ‘The receiving of the law’ — the Torah — the unique revelation of the moral law, not granted to any other nation, the fountainhead of Western civilisation.

• ‘The temple worship’ — the only place on earth where God dwelt, where the sacrifices and feasts took place, so rich in prophetic symbolism.

• ‘The promises’ — our Christian promise boxes are worthless if God doesn’t keep his promises to the Jews!

• ‘The patriarchs’ — God is ‘the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’ — all pioneers of the life of faith.

• ‘The human ancestry of the Messiah’ — Jesus was a Jew, born of Miriam, a young Jewish woman.

‘Christianity is Jewish’, Edith Schaeffer was fond of saying. Our whole inheritance of faith, morality, revelation, knowledge of God, family life, and indeed Western civilisation is Jewish — as Marvin Wilson explains in his wonderful book, Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1989).

History’s paradox

Here is an incredible irony: that the Jewish nation who had been prepared for and had been longing for their Messiah for centuries, missed him; but Gentile nations who had been steeped in idolatry and immorality and weren’t looking for him, found him. This is a painful and perplexing paradox. The Bible is a Jewish book, yet it is read and esteemed by many more Gentiles than Jews. It is extraordinary that the Jewish faith is not believed in by most Jews, yet is believed in by millions of Gentiles!

Twelve centuries after Paul the great medieval Jewish scholar and philosopher, Maimonides, pondered this paradox. He came to the conclusion that that the God of Israel had used the Christian church to take the knowledge of himself to the Gentile nations:

‘All these matters which refer to Jesus of Nazareth,’ he said, ‘served to make the way free for the King Messiah and to prepare the whole world for the worship of God with a united heart.... In this way the messianic hope, the Torah, and the commandments have become a widespread heritage of faith — among the inhabitants of the far islands and among many nations, uncircumcised in heart and flesh.’ (Quoted by Pinchas Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective [London, SPCK, 1984], pp. 142-143).

How did this strange situation happen? Who was responsible for it? Paul gives two complimentary answers:

• In chapter 9 he says it was the mystery of divine providence. It was God’s choice: God was responsible.

• In chapter 10 he says it was the mystery of human preference. It was people’s choice: human beings were responsible.

Before you rush to condemn the Jews for missing their Messiah, check your own heart for complacency. If they missed the Messiah despite all their privileges, what about us, in this favoured land and with our rich inheritance of faith which we are so wantonly squandering?

What happened to the Jews could just as easily happen to us. As Paul says in another of his letters: ‘If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall.’ (1 Corinthians 10:12).

Rob Yule, 29 July 2007
© 2007, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church