Two Kinds of Israelite

Introduction

Paul’s Heart for Ethnic Israelites

Paul’s Burden for Israel’s Salvation

Paul begins this next part of the next section of Romans is that he is speaking the truth in Christ, and is not lying. Paul wants his audience to know that what he is saying is not only completely true, but also strongly emphasized. Gill points out that Paul brings forth three witnesses to substantiate what he is about to say: Christ, his own conscience, and the Holy Spirit that dwells within in and indeed inspires his writings as an Apostle.

This opening part on his section here in chapter 9 on predestination begins with Paul’s deep feelings towards his Jewish brothers and sisters according to the flesh.

The words of Paul mirror the prayer of Moses:

Exodus 32:32 ESV

But now, if you will forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.”

Paul’s sorrow and heaviness of heart is due to the separation that the majourity of his Jewish countrymen that are cut off from Christ due to unbelief. As we will see in following chapters, Jesus indeed came as a Jewish Saviour for the promised children of Abraham, who were Jews. This is why Jesus sent his disciples in Matt 10 to the house of Israel only and why Paul says that this Gospel he preaches is for the Jew first and also for the Gentile.

The unbelief of the Jews is a strict warning to us who have believed on Christ, lest we should walk carelessly or without fear.

Hebrews 4:1 ESV

Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.

Paul’s wish to be accursed and cut off from Christ is puzzling, and we must emphasize that Paul does not wish to be separated from Christ because he loves his fellow Jews more than Christ, which would be idolatry, but because he wishes to emulate the love of Christ towards God’s elect people. Just as Christ became accursed for us, Paul wishes he could be accursed for the sake of his unbelieving Jewish brethren.

The purpose of this is given to us in verse 4. The people of Israel, not as individuals but as a nation descended from Abraham, were the elect as well as the means through whom Christ came into the world.

They are Israelites: those who struggle with God.

Adoption: God’s calling of Abraham and the promises God gave him bring about the imagery of adoption in Paul’s mind.

The glory: They received the glory of God through the dwelling of the presence of God among them.

The covenants.

The giving of the law.

The worship: referring to the Levitical priesthood and the worship rituals done through them.

The promises.

The patriarchs: from them comes salvation history.

From their race…is Christ, who is God.

In short, it is to and through the nation of Israel that God revealed himself and the way that man may know God.

A Different Kind of Israelite

Now Paul addresses an obvious question that may have been brewing in the minds of his Jewish readers: was God unfaithful to his promises? Or did the promises given to Abraham come to no effect because of human unbelief? All those promises and prophecies in the OT concerning Israel, are they all gone because of human unfaithfulness? Paul’s clear answer in verse 6 is no.

The answer to this is that not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. That is, not all those who are physical descendants of the Patriarchs are true Israelites.

There was always an idea in the law that one could be cut off from their people through breaking the law. Now, since Paul has shown all Jews (and all people) to be lawbreakers, it is only those who believe God and in his Son, who is the true Israel, that are the people of God.

Paul takes the phrase “through Isaac shall your offspring be named” to mean that through those who believe the promises of God shall the children of Abraham be named. Although it first referred to Ishmael rather than Isaac in Genesis 17, we see that Ishmael is a type of those who are children of Abraham not by promise but by the flesh only.

Galatians 4:22–26 ESV

For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.

Romans 9:8 ESV

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.

Paul now begins introducing the doctrine of personal, individual election by introducing this idea that it is not being a child of the flesh, that is a literal descendant of Abraham, that makes one an inheritor of the promises of God. That cannot be the case since Ishmael was a child of Abraham and he did not receive those promises. Rather it is the children of the promise, signified in the birth of Isaac, that inherit God’s promises.

So why are the children of Isaac discounted from this promise? Because of unbelief, they show themselves to spiritually be children of Ishmael, not of Isaac. They do not rely on God’s promises, fulfilled in the coming of Christ, but rather reject them and so are cut off from the house of Israel as far as God is concerned.

To be a true Israelite is the same as to be a true Christian: it means to believe, as Abraham believed, in the promises of God. In this age of history, those promises are all found in Christ. Apart from him, there is no way to be truly of Abrahamic descent in the way that God counts.

Conclusion