04.29. LESSON 29

LESSON 29

Paul bases the teaching in Romans 9:1-33 on these truths: (1) God never acts arbitrarily, (2) God never violates man’s will, (3) and what God does is always morally right. He does not feel the need of asking (much less of proving) with Abraham, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" Moreover, he has nothing but stern denunciation for those who quarrel with these truths. Instead of attempting to answer all questions and solve all problems pertaining to divine government, he unequivocally warns men, that on the human level, these truths must be the stopping place; because men have not the right or the knowledge or the goodness or the power to dig deeper and to judge God. To make Paul’s figure of the potter mean that God makes men either good or bad against their will contradicts all that he, or any other inspired man ever wrote on the subject. The point Paul makes is that, as a potter in sovereign, but not capricious, power over clay selects and molds it into pottery which it is best fitted to make, so the sovereign, merciful God for good reasons of his own, inscrutable perhaps to men, selects and uses men, Abraham and Pharaoh for example, where they are best fitted to serve in his complicated, benevolent, over-all government of the world. His discussion does not delve deeper into the profound problem of temptation, sin, and suffering, which in turn involves the mighty mystery of man himself, since man is the only earthly creature that can sin. When a man says that, if he does not know God’s reasons and understand his ways, he is not responsible, and fatalism follows, Paul brings him up short: "Stop, man, Stop! God is God! Is it necessary that you know? How dare you, a sinful, condemned creature, so irreverently and presumptuously mistrust your maker, and pry into his secrets?" Paul found great satisfaction and hope, no doubt, in leaving all the insoluble mysteries (humanly speaking) to him who made and runs the universe—to him who assumes all the responsibility unto all eternity. The Hardening of the Jews

Inasmuch as God’s word and modal nature require that his wrath be revealed against all unrighteousness, unless Pharaoh be punished, his character will be compromised. And certainly Pharaoh cannot complain, if, while his life is running its inevitable course to destruction, God in long-suffering lets him live on and reign, and uses him as an unconscious instrument to publish his name abroad.

Paul now applies this method of divine government to the Jews, who, as Pharaoh hardened himself, have hardened themselves into "vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction." But immediately he announces the good news that God is delaying their destruction and making "known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he afore prepared unto glory, even unto us, whom he called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles." These "vessels of mercy" are the Christians, for they only have answered God’s merciful call to come unto him for pardon and reconciliation. God prepared all this before he created the world. This is the first time in the chapter Paul has mentioned the Gentiles. At the time however, they composed by far the greater part of the church, and the masses of the Jews were its bitter enemies. He quotes from Hosea to show that God foreknew the Gentiles would become his people; and from Isaiah to show that he also foreknew only a "remnant" of the Jews would be saved. Hence, God is not taken by surprise, for things are developing as he foreknew they would develop. Had the Jews not been blinded by prejudice and arrogance, this abuse of their prophets would have convinced them they were separating themselves from the covenant of the fathers, as Peter told them they were doing (Acts 3:1-26), were resisting the Holy Spirit, as Stephen told them they were doing (Acts 7:1-60), and were no longer God’s people. As Jonah, a bigoted Jew, thought God wronged him when he spared heathen Nineveh, so a nation of bigoted Jews, who have overwhelming evidence denied Jonah, think God wrongs them when he saves heathen Rome. They forget it is always the pure mercy and goodness of God that saves any man—that leaves them a "seed," which saves them from the doom of Sodom and Gomorrah. Penitent, pious, holy men never accuse God, but ever themselves, of wrongdoing.

Willing and Running in Vain

Paul has spent Romans 9:1-33 establishing God’s sovereign rights and moral integrity. God’s selection or rejection, and corresponding use, of individuals and nations are not even to be questioned, but taken on absolute faith and trust.

Now at the end of the chapter, he begins the delicate task of showing the Jews that they are responsible for their exclusion from the Mosaic covenant. In stubborn self-will they yet refuse to see that covenant as a provisional, carnal covenant designed by God to prepare them for his succeeding, spiritual covenant. They are so enamored of the types, stately ritual, and Jewish advantages of Judaism that they think nothing can be better, and obstinately refuse to go on with God in his invincible progress into universal Christianity. With fanatical zeal they cling to the man-centered first covenant in preference to the God-centered second covenant. Since they refuse to make this shift in center, which is the very essence of the distinction of superiority of Christianity over Judaism, what can God do but brush them aside and select others who will trust and cooperate with him? "Wherefore? because they sought it (righteousness) not by faith, but as it were by works. They stumbled at the stone of stumbling (Christ)." They strangely persist in willing and running in vain, whereas they might, by God’s mercy, will to run successfully on his race track. As Paul knows only too well how this truth enrages the Jews against him, he, in his burning, Christ-like love for them, is tender and soothing. Hoping to prepare them for an honest, healing study of their misdirected zeal, he assures them that the desire of his heart and his prayer to God is that they may be saved (Romans 10:1). As Christ wept over, prayed for, but preached against the Jews, so Paul weeps over, prays for, but preaches against them. He faithfully and firmly tells them that their zeal in seeking spiritual life by means of law-keeping is an ignorant zeal that may be for God, but is not of God; and that it can do nothing but minister to their fleshly pride. He tells them that Christ is the end of the covenant of law, both temporally and religiously (Romans 10:4), and that only by faith in him can they ever will and run in step with God, and go on with God unto everlasting life.

Questions