Romans 9:1-5
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OK, this week we return to Romans and to Romans 9. You may have noticed that I seem a bit tense regarding this passage, and it is because Romans 9 is one of the harder passages to dissect in Scripture, because of how it deals with God’s sovereignty and ideas of predestination.
I want to take this one slowly and carefully, so we will look at the first 5 verses tonight.
1 I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— 2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. 4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. 5 To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.
Paul has just given us a master class on encouragement even in suffering. If we look back to chapter 8, we see that we have victory in Jesus:
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So, why does he start his very next paragraph in anguish?
Again, let’s make sure we are aware of our setting, context, and everything going on.
Remember, this is a letter to the church at Rome. This isn’t like a novel, where lots of stuff can happen between one chapter and the next. This is a document that was written in long-form prose, and read aloud in the various churches in the area. Only later did scribes and scholars add chapter and verse to give better readability and ability to reference certain points of the text.
When Paul wrote this, chapter 8 flowed directly into chapter 9. So, his thought process goes something like this:
“We - all believers, Jew and Gentile alike - have great victory through Christ. Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ!
But, conversely, those who reject Christ as the true Messiah are doomed, and those are my people, my kindred. I am saddened by this.”
So, let’s break down what he is actually saying, and why.
1 I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— 2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.
Paul starts out by reassuring the readers that he is telling the truth here. It isn’t so much that he is in danger of telling untruths, as much as it is a Jewish literary device, in which a positive affirmation would be followed by a negative one. In this case, because it is first, the positive should hold more weight: I’m speaking truth. Then the negative: I’m anguished in my heart.
Also, when he makes this declaration of truth here, he is not indicating divine revelation, as if this particular point is directly from God. In point of fact, all of scripture is divine revelation, this is no more or less so. Rather, this is Paul drawing emphasis to the fact that he is grieved. Basically, he is letting the audience know that he isn’t speaking in hyperbole or in an over-exaggerated manner.
And that means a great deal as we continue through what Paul says.
Because Paul basically is saying, “God as my witness, I am intensely heart-broken.”
Now to us, that doesn’t seem too emphatic. How many times have we heard less-than-truthful characters call on God as their witness for something?
But Paul understands the gravity of what he is saying here. He is holding the Holy Spirit as a witness to his conscience about what he is saying. That means something coming from Paul, and it should mean something for us.
If we are believers, we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us, directing our conscience. If we claim that the Holy Spirit could speak to our veracity on something, we better be telling the truth, because God won’t be played with like that for long.
If you need further proof of Paul’s seriousness here, look at the next verse:
3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.
Paul basically is swearing an oath here. He calls on the Holy Spirit to act as witness, and wishes himself accursed for the sake of his Jewish brethren.
What does Scripture say about oaths?
5 It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay.
What does Jesus say about oaths?
33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ 34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.
Jesus tells sinful people not to take an oath “On God,” as the kids like to say. So why would Paul do that? He is reminding the readers that his “yes” is “yes” and his “no” is “no,” so why the need for the oath?
Because the Christians in Rome needed to understand the heart of the man who was writing to them.
We have Jewish and Gentile believers in Rome. We have a fight over who is better, Jews or Gentiles. Who is the truer Christian?
Paul says, neither. Or both. There is no distinction.
But he carries a weight that he can’t fully describe.
He tells the people to rejoice in the Lord, but he is struggling. Why?
Because his people - God’s people - have rejected God.
Now, the Jews would retort and say, “We haven’t rejected God at all!”
But Paul has been arguing for a long time that they were rejecting God because they rejected Jesus. The Jews didn’t see Jesus as the Christ, and they were continuing in tradition and legacy, but not in God’s design and God’s freedom.
They missed it so much, they chose to have the savior of the world executed and a murderer freed.
Now, this is where it will get complicated, as it relates to the rest of the chapter. So we will just take a brief excursus here this week:
Did Jesus need to die for our sins? (Yes)
Was Jesus innocent of all wrongdoing (and sin)? (Yes)
So, someone had to be willing to send an innocent man to his death, correct? (Yes)
OK, so, if God is sovereign over all, and in control of all things, did God set the right people in the right place so that Jesus would be sentenced to death by the Roman government at the behest of the Jewish leaders?
Yes.
So, God caused the Jews to condemn Jesus so that through Jesus the whole world had a way for salvation.
I think we can grasp that ok.
But where a lot of folks get tangled up is in the idea of free will and the inability to comprehend how God could cause evil (death of an innocent man) and still be without sin.
And there are a lot of ways to talk about this.
I will say in the main, this is how I see it:
God, who is all powerful, sovereign over all, and all knowing, put the people in place whose own sinful desires for power and greed would lead them to naturally seek to destroy Christ.
I also know (and we will see this later in the chapter) that God raises kings up for destruction.
So we have to understand that our limited view of personal autonomy and freedom are not at all how God views the world.
God sees it all. Our lives are but the blink of an eye.
Our freedom and autonomy are, quite honestly, irrelevant to God.
Because He is God. He is holy - he is set apart. He is good. He does not need our limited opinions on anything.
Now, when I begin to understand that, I begin to trust that, even if I don’t understand what is going on, I know that God does and He is good, and He has it taken care of.
When we were working on the roof of the parsonage, I didn’t get on the roof, because roofs are not really made for guys my size. I worked on cleaning up trash, debris, and later making all of the various cuts (both wood and shingle).
There would be times when someone would holler down that they needed a board that was 11.5” wide and needed to be 38” long on one side and 37.5” long on the other side.
Not sure how often you get that kind of measurement, but they don’t sell them like that at Lowe’s or Home Depot.
I had no idea why they needed a board with an angled end, but I knew they needed it. So I cut it that way.
I had to trust that the folks on top of the roof feeding me the measurements knew what they were doing.
It is the same with God. He knows what He is doing. We need to trust Him.
OK, so Paul makes this oath that he wishes he were accursed and cut off from Christ.
That is a big deal.
Paul is saying that he would give up his own eternity if he could so that his fellow Jews would come to know Christ.
Think about that…what does Jesus say about love?
13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
What does Paul say, just a few chapters earlier?
7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Paul has just told them a few chapters back that the likelihood of someone dying for anyone, no matter how good they are, is very slim.
Yet Paul is now saying that he wishes that he could trade his eternal reward for his Jewish brothers and sisters to be saved.
Think about that. Jesus tells us (and demonstrates for us) what love is. Paul loves his brethren so much, he is willing to die for them.
The difference is what?
Paul isn’t Jesus.
Look, if we ever needed scripture evidence that Paul is not Jesus, this is it, ok? Some folks want to argue about Christianity and say that it isn’t even what Christ taught. They would argue that it shouldn’t be called Christianity but Paulanity. They say that Paul is responsible for it.
Paul simple was the one who best articulated the teachings of Christ in a way that could be synthesized by the most people.
Is our Christian doctrine largely based on Pauline theology?
Yes.
But that is exactly why God directed Paul to write the bulk of the New Testament. Because he was the vessel that God had prepared to spread the Good News of Christ throughout the whole world.
So, Paul would make that sacrifice if he could. Why?
4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. 5 To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.
Because his kindred are the children of God. God’s chosen people. Descended from Abraham through Isaac and Jacob. They are the children of promise.
They are the ones that God gave the commandments, the law, the prophets to. They are the ones who experienced the exodus and the true owners and inheritors of the promised land.
God’s people.
And they rejected Him.
They exchanged the truth of God for a lie.
They chose to kill the Lamb of God rather than worship Him.
Yet Paul - who was, more than anyone else besides Christ, beaten and arrested and accosted by the Jews - didn’t hold a grudge against them.
Sproul says this about Paul’s desire to trade places with his Jewish brothers and sisters, which is actually really helpful in light of the anti-Israel rhetoric currently going around the media and the elite college campuses:
The Gospel of God: Romans The Blessings of Israel (9:1–5)
This verse destroys any possibility of the dreadful calumny that some have committed against Christ and against the Spirit of God by trying to ground a spirit of anti-Semitism in Scripture. There is no anti-Semitism with Jesus—he himself was a Jew. Paul also was a Jew and he harboured no ill will or resentment against his own nation. If there was ever a man who would have been justified in being angry with his kinsmen it was Paul. When you consider their bitterness against him, you would think that in normal circumstances a human being might retaliate with an equal sense of bitterness. But that’s not Paul’s attitude; Paul’s attitude is one of compassion.
The Gospel of God: Romans The Blessings of Israel (9:1–5)
How can anyone have an anti-Semitic attitude when we stop and consider the contribution that has come to the world through the nation of Israel. Israel, as a nation, was God’s adopted son. When he called Israel out of Egypt, he adopted the nation in a certain sense, because it was through Israel that his work of redemption was to be carried out.
And, lest we think that, “Oh, Paul says that the Jews got the law and the covenants, and the promises, so I don’t need that stuff...”
That is simply not what Paul is saying at all. In fact, precisely why Paul is anguished is that the Jews rightfully had all of those things, and yet missed the Messiah in Jesus. The Gentiles didn’t have the advantage of the law or the promises, yet they believed and it was counted to them as righteousness.
Again I will lean on Sproul:
The Gospel of God: Romans The Blessings of Israel (9:1–5)
Israel was the fountainhead of world salvation. Salvation is of God, but it comes through Israel.
A Christian cannot think of himself as being cut off from the Old Testament. It records the history of redemption culminating in the appearance of Jesus Christ. Abraham is the father of the faithful; Isaac is a patriarch of the covenant; Jacob is the father of the twelve tribes; Moses is the mediator of the law; David gives us the psalms; Jeremiah speaks of the new covenant; Isaiah prophesies of the coming Messiah. All of these great heroes and heroines of faith (Heb. 11) that are such a rich part of Christian heritage, are Jewish.
The ultimate point Paul is making is that our Lord was a Jew. Touching his human ancestry he came to us from Israel. Paul refers to the glorious dual nature of Jesus. He specifies the fact that Christ came from Israel according to his human ancestry. But he is the same Christ, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen. When Paul says ‘over all’ he doesn’t mean over all Jews, he means over everything. The word is in the neuter form and indicates the sum total of the universe. Jesus Christ is over the entire universe.
Now, that gets us through the first five verses, and we will then see where he is going with this next week.
Let’s pray.