02.15. Third Main Division: The Vindication of God’s Ways

Third Main Division: The Vindication of God’s Ways
(Rom 9:1-33, Rom 10:1-21, Rom 11:1-36)

We now come to a new section of our epistle, consisting of Rom 9:1-33, Rom 10:1-21 and Rom 11:1-36, and containing the theodicy, or the vindication of the ways of God in His dealings with Israel. In Rom 9:1-33, Rom 10:1-21, Rom 11:1-36, says Dwight, the second main objection to the doctrine of justification by faith is considered—namely, that, by reason of the rejection of all unbelieving Jews which it involves, it contradicts the promises of God and His covenant with His chosen people.

Paul could not do otherwise, says H. A. W. Meyer; he must settle this great problem; this is inevitably demanded by all that had gone before. For if the whole previous treatise had as its result, that only believers were the recipients of the promised salvation, and if nevertheless the Messianic promise and destination to salvation had their reference in the first place (compare Rom 1:16) to the Israelites, concerning whom, however, experience showed that they were for the most part unbelieving (compare John 1:11), this contradictory relation thus furnished an enigma, which Paul, with his warm love for his people, could least of all evade, but in the solution of which he had on the contrary to employ all the boldness and depth of his clear insight into the divine plan of redemption (Eph 3:4, ff.) The defence of the efficacy of his Gentile apostleship (Th. Schott, and in another way Mangold and Sabatier) is not the object of the section—that object Paul would have known how to meet directly—but such a defence results indirectly from it, since we see from the section how fully the apostle had recognized and comprehended his place in. connection with the divine plan of salvation. The problem itself, the solution of which is now taken in hand by the apostle, was sufficiently serious and momentous to be treated with so much detail in this great and instructive letter to the important mixed community of the world’s capital, which, however, does not thereby appear to have been a Jewish-Christian one.

Dr. Scofield remarks that this great passage is really a parenthesis. Rom 12:1-21, which begins, ‘I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies,’ etc., is the resumption of the line of thought and revelation abruptly interrupted at the end of chapter 8. But, as Professor Stifler has pointed out with a clearness and force unequalled by any other commentator on Romans, logic required the apostle to insert this section at this precise point. It is convenient for us to forget the Jew. It is easy, too, for usually Christians know almost nothing of distinctive Jewish covenant and promise. Furthermore, there still lingers in some minds the old and often disproved notion that Christians are now the true Israel. But to the apostolic church the question of the relation of Judaism to the new institution, the church, was the most living and burning of questions. Having, therefore, brought the entire race into one common condemnation as sinners, and opened the one and only salvation in the gospel, the question inevitably emerges, What, then, becomes of the Davidic covenant, confirmed by the oath of God and renewed to the mother of Jesus by the angel Gabriel? What becomes of the repeated, specific, and absolutely unconditional promises of the restoration of all Israel to the land of their fathers, and the establishment again of the monarchy in the person of a Messiah, Who should be Son and Heir of David? This section is the apostle’s answer. Just as James, in the Jerusalem council, showed that the acceptance of the Gentiles by faith without circumcision not only did not contradict the prophets, but ‘agreed’ with them, since they had predicted the restoration as occurring after the return of the Lord (Acts 15:14-17); so Paul, only more at length, explains that this gospel age is an interregnum fully foreseen by the prophets, and that, so far from having done with national Israel, the Deliverer shall yet come out of Zion, and ‘all Israel (not ‘every Israelite’) shall be saved’ (Scofield Correspondence Course). In introducing this section, Mr. Darby says that there remained one important question to be considered, namely, how this salvation, common to Jew and Gentile, both alienated from God—this doctrine that there was no difference—was to be reconciled with the special promises made to the Jews. The proof of their guilt and ruin under the law did not touch the promises of a faithful God. Was the apostle going to do away with these to place the Gentiles on the same footing? They did not fail also to accuse the apostle of having despised his nation and its privileges. Rom 9:1-33, Rom 10:1-21 and Rom 11:1-36 reply to this question; and, with rare and admirable perfection, set forth the position of Israel with respect to God and to the gospel. This reply opens, in itself, a wide door to intelligence in the ways of God (Synopsis). The grace of the gospel has now been carried to its issue in glory, says Mr. Grant (Numerical Bible). The doctrine of the epistle is so far concluded; but we have yet to see the bearing of all this upon Israel, and special promises given to her of God. The sin of man at large and of Israel, we may say especially, has been fully proved. ‘There is no difference; for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;’ but that does not affect at all the question of the faithfulness of God to His own Word. Let man be what he may; if God has spoken, He will surely fulfil what He has promised, and here we have to remember that the promise to Abraham was indeed not directly to the nation at all, and therefore the standing or fall of the nation could not affect it. It was absolute grace in its nature, and as we see in Gen 15:1-21, if trial and suffering, if the furnace were needed as well as the lamp, the covenant included both, in order to work out the purpose of God. When the law came in, it was exceptional entirely, as the apostle says, ‘it came in by the way,’ and for the purpose, not of putting Israel’s title to the inheritance upon a new foundation, but really in order to show that nothing but absolute grace could be the foundation of such promises as hers. The law was the ministration of death and condemnation, as we have fully seen, and if the inheritance were of law, as the apostle tells us afterwards, it were no more of promise. Law and promise are in absolute contrast, in contradiction, one may say, to one another. Israel chose the law, and so far, therefore, as she could do it, gave up the grace in which God in fact had been hitherto dealing with her, to accept the recompense of her own desert. She found this in result; and it was seen from the beginning that it would be terribly against her. The new covenant, which still remains to be fulfilled, provides for the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant, but to a people who have sinned, and expressly in view of their sins; but it is absolute grace once more. It is all God’s ‘I will,’ not the legal, ‘Thou shalt.’ Thus, these unconditional promises must be fulfilled. The prophets fill them out and show us Israel on their conversion as a nation not lost in the midst of the Gentiles, but, on the contrary, the centre of the divine rule for the earth and in special nearness to the divine King. The promises of the Old Testament have nothing to do with heaven, no thought of any one going there. They concern the earth; and here the blessing for the earth of necessity implies the blessing for Israel. Isaiah affirms the eternal perpetuity of their seed and name, not merely for the millennium, but ‘as the new heavens and the new earth, says God, ‘which I will make, shall remain before Me, so shall her seed and her name remain.’ Thus Israel’s distinct existence, and as it is implied, distinct privilege, remains eternal. There is no escape from this, except into the utter confusion in which so many are, between the earthly people and the heavenly, Israel and the church. If we will only read Scripture with the simplicity which belongs to it, if we will only allow that God means exactly what he says, there will be no difficulty at all in discerning that Israel’s promises abide in spite of all that has come in apparently to set them aside, and (for a time) in fact has done so.

Before proceeding to the study of the section, let us heed this word of caution from Dean Alford: In no part of the epistles of St. Paul, is it more requisite than in this portion to bear in mind his habit of insulating the one view of the subject under consideration with which he is at the time dealing. The divine side of the history of Israel and the world is in the greater part of this portion thus insulated: the facts of the divine dealings and the divine decrees insisted on, and the mundane or human side of that history kept for the most part out of sight, and only so much shown as to make it manifest that the Jews, on their part, failed of attaining God’s righteousness, and so lost their share in the gospel. It must also be remembered that, whatever inferences, with regard to God’s disposal of individuals, may justly lie from the apostle’s arguments, the assertions here made by him are universally spoken with a national reference. Of the eternal salvation or rejection of any individual Jew there is here no question: and however logically true of any individual the same conclusion may be shown to be, we know as a matter of fact that in such cases not the divine but the human side is that ever held up by the apostle—the universality of free grace for all—the riches of God’s mercy to all who call on Him, and consequent exhortations to all to look to Him and be saved. The apparent inconsistencies of the apostle, at one time speaking of absolute decrees of God, and at another of culpability in man,—at one time of the election of some, at another of a hope of the conversion of all,—resolve themselves into the necessary conditions of thought under which we all are placed, being compelled to acknowledge the divine sovereignty on the one hand, and human free will on the other, and alternately appearing to lose sight of one of these, as often as for the time we confine our view to the other.

Proceeding now to the consideration of the section in detail, we find it yielding itself readily to simple analysis, in keeping with the chapter divisions:

(1) Israel’s failure and rejection acknowledged (Rom 9:1-33);

(2) Israel’s rejection is the result of Israel’s failure (Rom 10:1-21);

(3) Israel’s rejection is neither complete nor final (Rom 11:1-36). The object of the Spirit of truth in the whole section is to show that the ways of the Lord are right ways.