PAUL’S LETTER TO THE CHRISTIANS IN ROME

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No one can really explain tnis chapter unless they feel as Paul did. And only a Jew who is a Christian could feel what Paul felt. More, it was really only at that time that even a Christian Jew could feel what Paul did.

Chapters 9, 10 and 11 are the second of the three main parts of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Here Paul faces a new question. Someone might say to him: ‘Paul, you are a Jew, but you do not seem to care much about the Jews’. There is a problem. God chose the Jewish nation, but now it is not the Jews that He calls. Instead, He mostly calls people from every other nation to be followers of Jesus.

Paul uses very strong words at the start of this chapter. He tells his readers that he does care very much about the Jewish people. Now we think that the Romans killed Paul before the Jewish war began. In AD70, the Romans destroyed the city and temple of Jerusalem. Even before this, great numbers of Jews died in other cities. Paul did not know about this when he wrote this letter. His sorrow for the Jews is because most of them do not believe in Jesus. It is not because of their great sufferings in later years. This means that Paul begins to talk about how he feels for the Jews. Yet very soon he talks about God’s choice and how He works with the Jews. Verses 4 and 5 tell us what God did for the Jews in the past. The rest of these three chapters can then be split up like this:-

1. God is free (Chapter 9:6-29).
2. Israel did not have faith (Chapter 9:30-10:21).
3. The ‘remnant’ of Israel (Chapter 11:1-10).
4. Israel’s loss is gain to other nations (Chapter 11:11-24).
5. All Israel will be saved. (Chapter 11:25-36).

Verses 1-5: Paul’s feelings

So in verses 1-3, Paul says how strongly he feels about the Jews. He has preached the Good News to many of them. Sadly, most of them did not believe. See Acts 13:46 and 18:6. Acts 28:24-28 comes after Paul wrote this letter. Of course (verse 3) Paul knows that it would do other Jews no good if he were ‘cut off’. In verses 4 and 5 Paul gives a list of good things that God had done for the Jewish people down the ages. They were made God’s sons: see Exodus 4:22. This is probably what Paul means by ‘the divine glory’. God made an agreement or ‘covenant’ with them. They were to be His people, and He gave them His law. He told them how they were to worship Him. This was first in the great Tent, and then later in the Temple in Jerusalem. God gave many promises. Many of these God gave through the prophets. Many, too, told how Christ would come. Then in verse 5, Paul goes further back and speaks about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We call them the ‘Patriarchs’ or fathers of the Jewish people. The greatest of all the things which God did for them was to make the Lord Jesus Christ a member of their race.

Your Bible may show that there are two ways to look at the end of verse 5. One way is this:- ‘Christ........he who rules as God over all things. May he be blessed for ever. Amen’. [9.1] You will find that the RSV puts in a full stop after Christ. Then it has:- ’God who is over all be blessed for ever. Amen’.

When Paul wrote this letter, there were no full stops or commas. Here, there is no doubt about the words and what they mean. The question is:- ’Should we put in a full stop?’ The people who want to put it in do not have a very strong case. Yet we should not use this verse as a text to prove that Christ is God. There are better verses than this one. And if you use this verse the person you argue with may come back and say: ‘That is not what my Bible says!’

Verses 6-29: God is free

We like to think that we are free. Yet if we really are free, it is because someone greater than us has made us free. That can only be God. In John 10:36, Jesus tells us that if He makes us free, we really shall be free. In Genesis 2:16, God made Adam free, but then Adam sinned. He was no longer free after that. If we are free, it is because God has made us free. God is always far more free than we are.

This makes it very hard for us to think about God. Yet God has spoken to us in His Word, the Bible. He tells us a little about the way He will use His freedom. In verse 6, Paul tells us that what God has said cannot come to nothing. See Isaiah 55:11. God made all things by His word. He made the people of Israel by His word. So we cannot say that God’s word will go back to Him empty. Somehow, God will fill His Word full with new meaning. So we start to talk about Abraham in verse 7. Not all Abraham’s children share to the full in the promise and the blessing. Isaac has a special call from God. He is not even the oldest son of Abraham. As you read his story in Genesis you may feel that he is a strange, quiet man. In verse 9, Paul gives us the words from Genesis 18:10 and 14. This was God’s promise to Abraham that Isaac would be born. Abraham’s two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, did not have the same mother.

Now verses 10-13 tell us about the birth of Isaac’s two sons. Esau and Jacob were twins they did have the same mother. The story is in Genesis 25:21-26. Esau was the first of the twins to be born. God’s purpose and choice was to call Jacob. Jacob was full of bad tricks which he played on other people. As he grew older, his own family often tricked him. He was not a man that we would look up to. We might even feel that his brother Esau was a better man in some ways. Yet God chose not Esau but Jacob.

Many people find verse 13 very hard. Paul takes these words from Malachi 1:2 and 3. Some people say that they mean that God loved Jacob more and Esau less. This idea may not help us very much. It may help us more to look at what Malachi wrote. When Malachi lived, the Jews had come back from Babylon. They wanted to build their lives again in their own land. Edom was the nation which came from Esau. An Arab nation had driven Edom out of their own land into the desert in the south of Palestine. So Malachi could see how good God was to the Jews in his own day. God had been hard to Edom. It was not easy for Paul. He does not make it easy for us. We know God’s choice and purpose when we see who it is that He calls. This is at the end of verse 11. For God’s call to us in this letter see 1:1; 1:6 and 7; 4:17; 8:28; 8:30; 9:24-26 and 11:29. In 10:12-14 it is the other way round. We call out to God.

We must remember that God is not only free. He is good. His goodness is far greater than ours. Still, Paul says here: ‘God was free in those days. He still is’. Yet we should never forget that God does not just choose us. He chooses us in Christ.

In verse 14, we seem to be in God’s law court once again. In our courts, things often seem to go wrong. In God’s court nothing goes wrong. God is always just. Everyone can see that what He does is right. In verse 15, Paul uses words which God spoke to Moses. The words come from Exodus 33:19. Notice there in Exodus that in verse 18, Moses asks to see the glory of God. In verse 19 God says He will show Moses His goodness. Then God says that He is free.

A judge shows mercy to a man who is guilty and condemned. As long as the trial goes on, it is a time to wait for justice. Now as we are in God’s court of law here, this may be what mercy means in these verses. Verse 15 is the first time that Paul has used the word mercy in this letter. [9.2] Mercy is a very important word right through to 11:32. (Verse 16) Paul says that whether we are saved or not depends on God’s mercy. We are not saved by our own will or wish or desire. God saves us by His grace. This means that God does not save us against our will. Then Paul says that life is like a race. We may run fast, or we may run a very long way. Yet God does not save us because we decide to lead good lives. God saves us because He shows mercy to us when are lost. If you do not feel happy about this truth, look again at 4:16. If we had to save ourselves, we could never be sure. God’s grace makes it sure that we are saved.

Now in verses 17 and 18 Paul talks about Pharoah. That was not a name, but the ‘title’ of all the Kings of Egypt in Bible times. Paul talks about the Pharoah who ruled Egypt at the time of the ‘Exodus’, when the Jewish people came out of Egypt. Paul gives us the words of Exodus 9:16 in verse 17. Pharoah did not want the Jews to leave Egypt. They were slaves. They were a cheap way to get hard work done. We can read in Exodus 7:14 to 12:30 about the things which God did in Egypt. At the end, Pharoah did let the Jews go. Yet this was only because of what God had done by His power.

Do not miss the last part of verse 17 however. What God really wanted was that people all over the world should know ‘His Name’, that is, what God is like. So Paul means that the same is now true of Israel. Long ages ago, God made Pharoah’s heart hard. The result of this was that later on people all over the world learned about God. So now God makes hard the hearts of Israel. Yet there is a good reason for this. It is so that all nations may learn about God’s goodness and love.

We know that Paul himself does not find what he has to say easy. It may be that this is why he says: ‘The Scripture says to Pharoah.....’ Perhaps ‘God says to Pharoah in Scripture’ would have seemd too hard. But verse 18 is not easy either. We are happy at God’s freedom to show mercy. The second part of the verse is not so easy. Some people say that Pharoah first made his own heart hard (Exodus 7:13). Then after that, we read that God made Pharoah’s heart hard (Exodus 10:20). This seems to help some people. Yet right back in Exodus 4:21, God says that He will make Pharoah’s heart hard. We may not like it, but God is at work.

In verse 19, Paul seems to know what one of the Christians in Rome will say when they hear this. ‘You know what this means, Paul. If you are right, God cannot blame us when we sin. We would be fighting against God’s will if we did not sin.’ Paul gives one answer to this in verses 20 and 21. There is another answer in verses 22 to 24. Paul really says first that the question is a bad question. We like to think that because we are men, we have our rights. God has His rights, too, and God is greater than we are. His rights are greater than our rights. He made us. He takes us in His hands and gives us our shape. So we do not have the right to argue with Him.

Now in verse 21, Paul turns this another way. The picture of the potter, who works with his clay, is a very old one. It goes right back to Genesis 2:7. There, in verse 5, the ground is clay. It is too dusty. Nothing could be made from it. In verse 6, water comes up out of the ground. Now the ground can be worked. So in verse 7, God forms the first Man, Adam, from the dust or clay. He does it like a potter. He forms Adam and gives him shape. This is a word which is used of the potter at his work. See Job 10:9, Isaiah 29:16, 45:9 and 64:8 and Jeremiah 18:1-6. As the potter shapes the clay, so God shapes us.

The RSV rightly uses the word ‘vessel’ or clay pot in verses 21,22 and 23. NIV in verse 21 gives us ‘some pottery’ but in verses 22 and 23 it has ‘objects’. This makes it a little difficult to follow what Paul says here. [9.3]

So in verse 22 when Paul says ‘what if’ he means: ‘There is no reason why this should not be so. This is in fact the case’. God is free, but He made a choice. He chose first to show to men His great anger or wrath. Second, He chose to make known to men His power. Only God could be trusted witrh such great power. Any angel or man would use it in wrong ways. What God did was ‘to bear with great patience’ these people. They are like vessels or pots. Paul may mean that they are like pots which are full of God’s great anger. They are only like pots made from the earth. God could easily break them if He wanted to. They sin against Him, so He has reason to break them. He lets them go on for a long time. He is patient with them. So these people are ‘fitted’ or made ready to be destroyed. But Paul does not say that it is God who has made them ready. We should rather think that they have done this to themselves.

Think about two other places in Scripture. One is Matthew 25:41. There, Jesus judges all men at the last day. Jesus sends away the wicked into ‘the eternal fire’. We may feel that some of them are not so very wicked! But ‘the eternal fire’ was not got ready for them. It was got ready for the devil and his angels. We may think that God got it ready. Jesus does not say so. He does not say when it was made ready. If you will look at Matthew 25:34, you will see what is ready for God’s people. You will see how long it has been made ready. They will be happy there. The wicked can never be happy in a place that was made ready for the devil.

The other verse we should think about is Psalm 1:6. There the Psalm says:- ‘For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,..............but the way of the wicked will perish’ - that is, come to nothing. ‘The way’ here means the whole life. The Lord does not just ‘watch over’ the righteous. He knows all about their lives. God will see that their end is happy and blessed. No doubt God also knows about the lives of the wicked. The Psalm does not say that God will destroy them. He does not need to. Their lives will come to nothing just because of the way that they live. [9.4]

So we move on to verse 23. Paul tells us now what God’s purpose is. He wanted to make known not just His grace, but also His glory. He wanted to make known not just His glory but the riches of His glory. God’s glory is surely too much for us to understand. Yet this, says Paul, is just what God wants us to know. More, He gets us ready for (or ‘into’) glory.

In verse 24, Paul begins to come back to what he really wants to say. The test of whether we are ‘clay pots’ that God makes ready for glory is not whether we are Jews or belong to some other nation. The test is whether God has called us out to be His people. If He has called us we shall not wish to argue against the way that He works. In verses 25 and 26, Paul brings to us some words from the book of the prophet Hosea. They come from Hosea 2:23 and Hosea 1:10. There is much that we have to work hard at in the Book of Hosea. But there are also many great verses which speak about God’s grace. The thing that we must learn in these verses is that we may call, and nothing happens. When God calls, it is the voice that made all things. God calls, and what He says is true and it becomes real. His call is enough to change those who are ‘not His people’. Now they ‘are His people’. They will be the sons of the God Who gives life.

In verses 27-29 Paul brings before us some verses from Isaiah. In verses 27 and 28 we have Isaiah 10:22 and 23. In verse 29, we have Isaiah 1:9. In Paul’s day, there were many millions of Jews, not only in Palestine but in many other parts of the world. The Jew might say: ‘This is because God has blessed us’. But Paul answers: ‘Yes, but it was like that in David’s time. It was like that in Isaiah’s day. There have been other times, too, when there were few Jews lwft’. In verse 29, God is the Lord of the ‘Hosts’ that is, of the armies of heaven. Isaiah says that God has left Israel ‘a seed’, that is, Christ. But for that, the Jews would be have been destroyed. God took care of the Jews because Jesus was to come from the Jewish race.

This ends the first part of what Paul has to say. The Jews must not trust in their great numbers, but in the One, Christ. We read about the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19. They were so wicked that God destroyed them and almost all the people in them. Notice the word ‘remnant’ at the end of verse 27. This may mean the whole body of Christians, whether they are Jews or not. Paul will talk more about this in Chapter 11: 1-10, but first he will write about the Jews and faith.

Verse 30 to Chapter 10:10 Israel did not have faith.

Paul has written about God’s purpose and freedom. Mostly he used words from the Old Testament to prove his point. These, after all, are things which we cannot see. Now he moves on. People could see that most of the Jews did not believe the Good News. So Paul now uses verses from the Old Testament to show us that God had warned us that this would happen. Paul has to explain now why the Jews went wrong. It was strange because many other people were right. They did believe.

In verse 30, Paul says first that the ‘Gentiles’ that is, the nations, did not run after righteousness. They did not run in the race, yet they have won the prize! They have ‘overtaken’ righteousness. Now you should ask exactly what the word righteousness means here. In the same way you must also ask just what the word ‘faith’ means here. Probably, the first use of ‘righteousness’ here has had a broad meaning. It covers the righteousness which God has and which He asks of us. Then the second time the meaning is narrow. It means the righteousness which God gives to us when we have faith. That is justification. Faith is like the empty hand which we stretch out to God to take from Him the great gift of righteousness.

What Paul says is that Israel ran after a ‘law of righteousness’. The other nations did not run after ‘a law of righteousness’. They ran after righteousness itself. Israel ran the wrong race. The Jews did not ‘win’ their race either. They wanted a law which would make them righteous. The ‘nations’ had faith in Christ, and God gave to them the only righteousness which any man can ever have. That is the righteousness of Christ.

Of course, when Paul speaks of ‘Gentiles’ or ‘nations’ he does not mean every one in them. Not every one believed. Yet a great number from many nations did.

So verse 32 says that God’s law calls for man’s works, but God’s grace calls for man’s faith. The Jews’ problem was that they did not have faith. The Jews have tripped up on a big stone. Perhaps Paul still thinks here of the race that is run. If we trip up and fall in a race, we shall not win it. Paul gives us in verse 33 a verse from Isaiah. It is Isaiah 28:16 and it says some strange things. It seems that the stone is Christ Himself. God has placed Him there. Just as strange, He is ‘in Zion’, the holy city of God! Isaiah says that it is the man who has faith who will not trip up on this stone. Those who do not have faith will trip up and fall over.