Sermon Tone Analysis

As we concluded our study of Romans 8, we were encouraged by the reality of the gospel for our daily lives.

Because of the gospel promise, Christians have the assurance of the love of God, the assurance they need to be able to face any day and any circumstance with the confidence that God is for us, that he has given to us not only his Son, but with him, everything.

Christians, like all human beings, need hope.

But we need real and solid hope, a firm foundation on which to stand.

When it comes to the Christian faith and the hope it gives us, we need to consider whether this hope is solid.

Are we hoping in what is true?

Are we hoping in the true God? Do we really know who he is and do we know why we can trust him and his promises?

Paul’s letter to the Romans has this as its thesis statement: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom 1:16).

Now what does that last phrase mean?

What does it mean that the gospel is “to the Jew first”?

Paul takes the next three chapters in this letter to address this part of this thesis statement in detail, and the reason he does this is because Christian assurance and hope depends upon seeing how God has kept his promise to Israel, to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

So has he?

Are you sure?

There is reason to doubt this.

And Paul knows that if his gospel is going to explode into the world then we’re going to have to confront the question.

So let’s see here the problem of Israel, then join Paul in his sadness for Israel so that we might grasp the hope that remains for Israel.

Seeing the Problem of Israel

Let’s begin our study with a bit of a wide-angle lens on these chapters.

If you’re reading along in Romans and you move from chapter 8 to chapter 9, you will notice the dramatic shift in tone that takes place in the transition.

From the celebratory words of chapter 8, we come to the sad and melancholy words—to the jarring words—of chapter 9.

And it has the effect of making us wonder what is going on here, why this chapter, and the next two after it, occur right here in this letter.

Romans 9-11 are a clear unit, but what are these chapters about and why is this subject important?

We need to see the problem that Paul is dealing with.

And we need to see why it is a problem for the gospel he preaches.

What About the Promise?

You see, the problem of the unbelief of so many of his fellow Jews has raised a bigger question.

Has the issue of Jewish rejection of the Messiah meant that God’s word, his promise, has failed?

Paul’s answer throughout is to prove that it has not, but we need to feel the weight of the question for a moment.

Paul has already touched on this question earlier, back in Romans 3:1-8.

But he did so ever so briefly, and he now must take up the question more fully.

The word of God, here taken to mean the promise of God in the Old Testament, specifically the promise God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was a promise to bless their descendants and then, through them, to bring God’s blessing to the entire world (Gen 12:2-3).

This is the great biblical story, all pointing to and climaxing in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

So far, so good.

But the problem is that most of Israel, most of the descendants of the patriarchs, had, at this point, rejected Jesus as the Messiah.

Even if God had demonstrated his own faithfulness in Jesus, the promise seems to be on the verge of failing because Israel had, by and large, remained unfaithful to God by rejecting the Messiah.

It will not do to say, “Well, God tried to fulfill his promise, but Israel wouldn’t let him do it.

The problem is theirs.

God is off the hook.”

No, because God’s promise to Abraham was not conditional.

It is up to God to bring it to fruition, whatever the obstacles.

So again, the greater problem here is the question of whether God can—or will—fulfill his promise.

Accursed and Cut Off from Christ

It takes a few verses to find out what it is that has saddened Paul, and even then we have to read somewhat between the lines.

In verse 3 he says, somewhat strangely, “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.”

We’ll look more closely at Paul’s wish a bit later, but we simply note here that what he says he could wish for himself is what has saddened him about his fellow Jews, at least he must mean a great many of them, probably the vast majority of them.

They are cut off from the Messiah.

They are accursed.

Now what does that mean?

The word accursed is the Greek word anathema.

It is used five other times in the New Testament, but in the Greek translation of the Old Testament it shows up 20 times, translating a Hebrew word which refers to something that has been banned from ordinary use and is marked for destruction.

You’ll remember that when Israel conquered Jericho, God said that there was a ban on everything in the city; all of it was to “be devoted to the LORD for destruction” (Josh 6:17).

Paul is using the word this way.

He is sad because he sees so many of his fellow Jews as under the ban and marked for the judicial wrath of God.[1]

But the reason this is so is because they are currently “cut off from Christ,” that is, from the Messiah.

They are severed and separated from the Savior and that is why they are doomed for destruction.

In the next chapter, Paul tells us his “heart’s desire and prayer to God for [Israel] is that they may be saved” (Rom 10:1).

So Paul does not think the situation is beyond hope.

He does not think the story of Israel is over just yet.

Indeed, he will go on to demonstrate in what way “all Israel will be saved,” according to Romans 11:26, and he will end again with a celebratory tone and doxology (Rom 11:33-36).

But there will be much ground to cover in-between 9:1 and 11:33-36, and there’s a reason why we need to sit with Paul in this problem for a bit.

A Firm Foundation

You can see why, then, the problem here is one that must be solved for anyone who looks to the Bible to find any real hope.

The promise of God in the Bible depends upon the salvation of Israel.

So if, in fact, God has not kept his promise to Israel, then how, pray tell, can you be sure God will keep his promise to you, Christian?

How can you be sure that nothing will separate you from the love of God in Christ—as Romans 8:39 says—if this is a God who has not been faithful to the very people he first entered into covenant with?[2]

Hope is powerful, or perhaps we should say it the other way: the lack of hope is dreadful—and deadly.

And while false hope might suffice for a while, real hope needs a firm foundation to rest on.

And that’s why Paul has to address this problem right here in his letter to the Romans.

Feeling the Problem of Israel

Ok, so now, if you can see the problem that Paul is dealing with in these chapters, then we who believe the Bible and are looking for real hope in the biblical story cannot just hold the problem at arms’ length.

This problem is one you can’t just see if you’re a Christian.

It is one you have to feel.

This is a problem that hits us in the heart.

Again, we note the emotional way Paul writes here.

Verses 1-3 are the kinds of words that, coming from someone’s mouth, would make us all uncomfortable.

Paul is not giving lip-service to the sad state of Israel.

He has been in agony about it all.

He has laid awake at night, undoubtedly weeping.

And his tears are the tears, not just of someone who is sad, but of someone who is confused.

He is not just mourning over the situation.

He is troubled by it.

“Great sorrow and unceasing anguish.”

Why does he feel this way, and how might we enter into the sadness with him?

Love of Countrymen

It would be easy to suppose that Paul’s grief is explained by the fact that he shares ethnicity with the unbelieving Jews.

When Paul speaks in verse 3 of his “brothers,” his “kinsmen according to the flesh,” and then says in verse 4, “They are Israelites,” it is clear that he means ethnic Jews.

The issue throughout these chapters is, “What about the unbelief of, by and large, God’s own elect people, the Jewish people?”

For Paul, these are “his people,” we might say, and so, naturally, Paul is concerned for them.

I am sure there is a truth to this, and we would not begrudge Paul for feeling this way.

But for us who are not Jews—and Paul’s original audience for Romans were probably mostly Gentiles, by the way—we are going to miss the point if we stop right there and try to make that the point of application.

If we see Romans 9–11 as primarily meaning we, as Americans, should be heartbroken like this for the state of the United States, like Paul, as an Israelite, was heartbroken for the state of Israel.

If you’re looking for biblical warrant for a sense of “God and country,” you’ve come to the wrong text.

God has not promised the United States what he has promised to Israel.

Love of the Lost

We make a similar mistake in the opposite direction when we take these chapters to mean essentially that this is how we ought to feel about the general lostness of the world, both in our homeland as well as in any other place.

That is also true, of course; Paul cannot be accused of being a universalist when we see here that he believes that anyone who rejects the gospel he preaches has no hope of finding some other way into the eternal kingdom of God.[3]

But Paul’s concern is not so much for any unbelieving person as for an entire race of unbelieving people.

He calls them his “brothers” because he shares their ethnicity, but he calls them his “kinsmen according to the flesh” to distinguish them from his Jewish and Gentile siblings in Christ.[4]

He is not speaking of all unbelieving people, but of unbelieving Jews.

It is their unbelief that is causing Paul so much agony.