Summary of Romans 9:1-18

Paul exclaims in anguish that he is telling the truth, that his conscience bears witness in the Holy Spirit: He has a great grief and pain that does not let up. He could wish to be cursed and to lose Christ for the sake of his racial kinsmen!

They are the Israelites, to whom belong the adoption as sons, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the cult, the promises, and the patriarchs. From them Christ came, as far as the flesh is concerned. May God who is over all be blessed forever!

But the word of God calling them to be His people has not fallen out. For not all who are descended from Israel are the real Israel. Nor are all who descend from Abraham His children, for Scripture says: "Your seed descends through Isaac, not through Ishmael." For it is not just the children of the flesh who are children of God, but it is the children of the promise [Isaac came by God's promise] who will be counted as Abraham's descendants.

God promised that at the right time He would return, and by then Sara would have a son, Isaac. Further, when Rebecca by our father Isaac had conceived twins, and before they were born or had done anything, good or evil, God told her: "The elder shall serve the younger." So the choice depends not on works, but on God's will. Hence also God said: "I love Jacob more than Esau."

This does not mean there is any injustice with God. Heavens no! For God told Moses He would have mercy where He willed, and pity where He willed. It does not depend on the will of the human, but on the decision of God to show mercy. Scripture said to Pharaoh: "For this very purpose I put you on the throne, to show my power in you, and so that my name might be known in all the earth." So God has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills, He hardens.

Comments on 9:1-18

Paul opens with an emotional scream that he would even be willing to be cursed, and away from Christ, to get his racial kinsmen into the Messianic kingdom. Of course this is emotion. Paul has just said in chapter 8 that nothing at all could separate him from Christ. But it does show real feeling. It shows how wrong are the charges that Paul was anti-Semitic!

He speaks with pride of the privileges of the Jews. Among them, the giving of the law. This is a factual picture -- the same sort we saw early in chapter 3. He usually speaks darkly of the law, in a focused picture.

The translation we gave of verse 5 is more likely what Paul intended. However it is grammatically possible also to render it: ". . . from whom is Christ (as far as the flesh is concerned) the one who is over all, God, blessed for ever." Then Paul would be using the word God for Christ. Normally he uses Lord, in the same sense.

Paul cannot bring himself to giving right away the real reason why they are not in the people of God -- that they rejected and killed Jesus. So instead he goes off onto a related question, namely: On what principles does God choose peoples to be part of His people? To determine this, he goes back to the start of the chosen people, to Abraham. Abraham had two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, by a free wife, and by a slave woman. Paul says there is a fork in the road now: through which side will the line of descent of the people of God go? It goes, he says, through Isaac. Then another fork: Isaac has twin sons, Esau and Jacob. It will go through Jacob. Before the twins were born or had done good or evil God made His decision. He said the elder would serve the younger. This merely refers to the fact that Jacob, rather meanly, obtained the birthright from Esau. But then God says, in Malachi 1:3: "I have loved Jacob and hated Esau." The explanation lies in the fact that Hebrew and Aramaic both lacked the degrees of comparison, such as good, better, best, or clear, clearer, clearest. Without these, they found other ways to talk. We see one here, love and hate. It really means what we saw in our summary: He loves one more, the other less. God does not hate anyone. Similarly, in Luke 14:26 Jesus says we must hate our parents. Of course He did not really mean hate -- it was the same Semitic problem: He meant love them less, and Him more.

Paul also quotes God saying in Exodus 33:19, that He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy. But we need to note that word mercy. Often it means that when someone has done wrong, he gets off with little or nothing. But here mercy means the special favor of being a member of the people of God. Similarly, Paul uses the word mercy in 1 Corinthians 7:25 to mean the grace of being celibate.

Here Paul says that whether or not one obtains the mercy of membership in the people of God depends not on whether the human wants it, but on God's decision to grant it. We need to keep in mind that full membership in the Church is not needed for salvation, even though it is a very great help. (Let us recall what we said above, on 8:29-30, about the checkerboard).

Next Paul speaks of the Pharaoh of the Exodus -- he does not name him, nor are we certain. Paul quotes Exodus 9:16 according to one MS of the Septuagint. God is saying that since Pharaoh by his own free will was wicked, God could use Him as a foil to show His power in the Exodus. Paul adds that God shows mercy on whom He wills, and hardens whom He wills. The language is taken from the picture of Pharaoh given several times in the account of the plagues in the Exodus, when Pharaoh was on the point of releasing the Jews, but then changed. Exodus sometimes says God hardened him, at other times says Pharaoh hardened his own heart. Behind it is the fact that as we explained before in connection with Philippians 2:13, the Hebrews often spoke of God as positively doing something when really He only permits it.

Obviously, the message of the whole above passage is this: God gives full membership in the people of God without regard to merits. At the end of chapter 1 of 1 Corinthians we had gathered that He considers need in assigning the special advantages.

Summary of Romans 9:19-33

[After contemplating these truths of God's power and His decisions] St. Paul, in awe, asks: How can people be blamed, when God is so powerful? [The answer]: Just as a potter has the right to make one vessel of honor, another of dishonor, so also God can decide freely. But if God, even though He wanted to show His anger and His power, endured for a long time people who deserve wrath and who have made themselves ready for destruction, and also, to show the riches of His glory for those who receive mercy, prepared for glory, us whom He also called into the Church, not only from among the Jews, but also from among the gentiles. . . . [who can object?]. As He says in Hosea: "I will call those who were not my people, my people, and those who were not beloved, I will call beloved. And this will happen: In the place where they heard, 'You are not my people', there they shall be called sons of the living God."

Isaiah cries out about Israel: "Even if the sons of Israel be as numerous as the sands of the sea, only a remnant will be saved." The Lord will carry out His word decisively and quickly on the earth. And as Isaiah predicted: "If the Lord of hosts had not left us some offspring, we would be like Sodom and like Gomorrah."

What then shall we say? We say that the gentiles who did not knowingly try for justification, reached it, the justification that is on the basis of faith. But Israel, trying for justification through the law, did not reach justification.

Why? They stumbled on the stone of stumbling, and the rock of scandal, as Scripture says: "Behold, I am placing in Sion a stone on which people will stumble, and the one who believes in Him will not be ashamed."

Comments on 9:19-33

After speaking of the power and the decisions of God, to give or not to give the special mercy of full membership in the people of God without considering merits, Paul asks: Can people be blamed? We would explain: This special mercy of full membership is not owed to anyone, and people can be saved without it, as we saw in 2:14-16. Yet it is a great advantage to have it. God does give it rationally, as we saw in explaining the checkerboard image in our comments on 8:29-30.

But Paul prefers a different approach. He speaks of the sovereign majesty and rights of God. To illustrate this he uses a comparison of a potter, familiar from the Old Testament. The potter sits in front of his potter's wheel. Aside him is a table with a large gob of clay. He takes one handful, makes out of it a vessel of honor, perhaps a graceful vase for olive oil or wine. He takes another handful, makes a vessel of dishonor, perhaps an under-the-bed pot where there is no indoor plumbing. Clearly the potter can make what he wants. The bedpot cannot complain. Similarly, God can give or not give this special favor of full membership in the people of God as He wills.

Within this framework of giving or not giving that favor, Paul thinks again of people like Pharaoh and others like him and so adds: God showed long patience with those who deserved His anger, who prepared themselves for wrath. Pharaoh not only did not get into the people of God, but was very wicked in addition. God did not strike them soon but in His long patience let them "fill up the measure of their sins," on which we commented in 1 Thessalonians, chapter 2. He also prepared glory for those who are in the path to salvation and follow it. Here Paul is thinking of the fail-safe system of chapter 8. It would be fail-safe only in a focused picture, which Paul did present in chapter 8 but even there Paul brought in the need of their cooperation by breaking his focused picture a few times, as we saw, when he said they will have this benefit only if they have and follow the Spirit of Christ, and if they suffer with Him, so they may be glorified with Him. So now Paul asks: If God acts this way, can anyone object? Of course not. He has given each what each deserved. (Paul leaves his sentence unfinished as we have seen him doing elsewhere).

To illustrate, Paul quotes Hosea 2:23 and 1:10 loosely. Rabbis often conflated two texts, and so does Paul here. In the original setting, Hosea referred to Israel, which ceased being God's people by their sins before the exile. (We recall Jeremiah 31:31 where God said: "I will make a new covenant . . . they broke my covenant, and I had to show myself their master [instead of acting like a Father].") God would restore a remnant of them. The remnant would be "saved." (The word save can mean rescue from temporal evils, entry into the people of God, or reaching heaven. It is the second meaning that the context calls for here, which means becoming part of the people of God again after the exile. If saved here meant entering into heaven finally, Paul knows, as we saw in Romans 2:14-16, that people can reach that without formally entering into the people of God). Really, only a remnant returned from the exile. Ten tribes did not come back at all. Paul says God will act decisively and quickly. Paul is citing in abridged form Isaiah 10:22-23. Paul is using a sort of multiple fulfillment pattern.³² He reapplies the remnant theme to refer to the minority of the Jews who accepted Christ. Without this remnant, Paul says the Jews would be wiped out like Sodom and Gomorrah (citing Isaiah 1:9, which spoke of the punishment of faithless Israel).

He adds that the gentiles who had never heard of justification, yet reached it. He means those who followed what the Spirit writes on hearts, as in Romans 2:14-16. In contrast, Israel tried for justification by law. They stumbled on the stone of stumbling, Christ, of which Isaiah 28:16 and 8:14 (conflated) spoke.

St. Augustine made a sad mistake in reading 8:29 and especially chapter 9. First, he thought the whole passage referred to predestination to heaven and reprobation to hell. The context shows, as we have seen, that it refers to predestination to full membership in the Church, not to heaven or hell. Further, he thought God really hated Esau. God does not hate anyone. Augustine did not know about the Hebrew way of speech we described in which hate means love less. He also used allegory (a purely arbitrary way of working in which one makes one thing stand for another) on the image of the potter, and said the mass of clay was the whole human race which became a "damned and damnable mass" as a result of original sin. He thought God could throw the whole mass into hell without waiting for anyone to sin personally. But to show mercy He would pick blindly a small percent and rescue them; the others, He would desert the great majority (to show everyone should have been damned). In such a picture God would not love even those He would rescue, since He would not be willing them good for their sake but for His -- to let Him make a point of "mercy." This idea of Augustine of course has no support at all in the text or context. It is pure and sad imagination. The Church never endorsed it. Even St. Prosper of Aquitaine, commonly considered Augustine's chief defender -- for there was much opposition in Augustine's own time -- contradicted it. For in Augustine's view, God first deserts a man, then the man, left without strength, deserts God. But St. Prosper wrote (Responsa ad capitula obiectionum Gallorum 3): "They were not deserted by God so that they deserted God; but they deserted and were deserted, and they were changed from good to evil by their own will, and as a result . . . they were not predestined . . . by Him who foresaw them as going to be such."³³

Every reputable Scripture scholar today understands the context, which Augustine and many others ignored, in a period of time when most scholars ignored Scriptural contexts regularly. Yet his view underlies the errors of Bañez and his school which we saw in commenting on Romans 5:8.