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.
INTRODUCTION ROMANS 9.1-11.36
There is an obvious coherency to the first 8 chapters of Romans that culminates with an affirmation of the believer’s inseparableness from the eternal love God. No matter how tightly woven the argument of those chapters might be, they are closely related to the next section of Paul’s letter. Indeed, there is a progression from Paul’s discourse on Habakkuk 2.4, The righteous by their faith shall live, to the assurance that God will never abandon believers. The assurance of God’s abiding love and grace is of particular importance at this point in the development of Paul’s theme of God’s faithfulness in salvation, because it may appear to many that his message about salvation through faith in Christ has been largely rejected by the Jews. So then, if Jesus is God’s expression of salvific love for his covenant people, how is it that the gospel has largely fallen on deaf ears so far as the Jews are concerned? Has God forsaken the people descended from ancient Israel? If he has, then how can one believe that God will not also abandon him? But Paul’s argument in Romans 9-11 is just this: God has not failed Israel, nor has he failed to keep for himself all those who are rightfully his. It is not a matter of God having abandoned Israel but recognizing that from the outset God did not intend to bestow salvation on every physical descendant of Abraham. Indeed, in these chapters Paul’s emphasis on ethnic Israel and the community of faith answers the questions raised by his explication of salvation by faith alone stressed in chapters 1-8. There is a corporate relationship between the Jews and Gentiles and this connection is endemic to Paul’s letters. The covenant established with Abraham does not abruptly come to an end with the inauguration of the kingdom in the New Testament.
Paul’s address of Gentile Christians in 11:13-32 is in a different category. This must be read as an indication of Paul’s intended audience at this point in his discussion and demonstrates that one of Paul’s purposes in Rom. 9-11 is the rebuke of Gentile arrogance (in Rome and elsewhere) towards
Jews and Jewish Christians. But does it require that this be Paul’s only intended audience without these chapters? We do not think so. Paul’s vehement affirmation of concern for his Jewish kinfolk, as well as his careful scriptural defense of the exclusion of many Jews from the messianic salvation, suggests strongly that he also writes to convince Jewish Christians of the truth of his gospel. As he has throughout the letter, then, Paul in Rom. 9-11 writes to both Gentile and Jewish Christians, both of whom are represented, as we have seen, in the church at Rome. Paul’s complex theologizing in chaps. 9-11 has a very practical purpose: to unite the squabbling Roman Christians behind his vision of the gospel and its implications for the relationship of Jew and Gentile. As so often in Romans, Paul’s approach is balanced. He insists, against the presumption of many Gentiles in the community, that the gospel does not signal the abandonment of Israel (chap. 11, especially). But he also makes clear that Jews and Jewish Christians who think that they have an inalienable salvific birthright are in error (chaps. 9 and 10, especially). Paul therefore criticizes extremists from both sides, paving the way for his plea for reconciliation in chaps. 14-15. (Douglas Moo, Romans, pp. 552-53)
PAUL’S LAMENT (9.1-5)
Though the transition from Romans 8 to 9 is abrupt it does not warrant the conclusion that Paul is radically changing his theme or line of reasoning, merely that he has moved on to a new facet of his argumentation. The lack of a conjunction or participle to connect the two chapters only serves to heighten the dramatic shift in moods: from celebration (8.31-39) to lamentation (9.1-3).
Paul had suffered much at the hands of Jewish antagonists and an uninformed observer might easily conclude that Paul would have little personal affection for his tormentors. Yet, though Paul was repeatedly and systematically vilified and physically mistreated by those representing the Jewish establishment (e.g., Acts 21.28-31; 24.5-8), it is clear that he held no resentment nor hatred towards those who abused him (Romans 12.14-21; cp. Matthew 5.10-12). Moreover, Paul’s advocacy for salvation through grace by faith alone may have led some Gentiles to believe that Paul no longer saw any place for Israel in God’s redemptive plan. Nothing could be further from the truth and his preface to this section, I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears witness along with me in the Holy Spirit, gives weight to the assertions that follow. Indeed, Paul emphatically states that his most ardent wish for his brothers in the flesh is that they might be saved. This desire is expressed in a manner reminiscent of Moses’ own intercession for Israel: The next day Moses said to the people, “You have sinned a great sin. And now I will go up to the LORD; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” So Moses returned to the LORD and said, “Alas, this people have sinned a great sin. They have made for themselves gods of gold. But now, if you will forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written” (Exodus 32.32; cp. Genesis 44.33; 2 Samuel 18.33). Of course, the substitutionary sacrifice of one sinner for another is utterly inadequate (Psalm 49.7-8). Thus, Moses’ plea to be blotted out of God’s book, though emotionally charged, had no redemptive effect.
WHEEL WITHIN A WHEEL (9.6-13)
Before Rebecca gave birth to twin boys, God promised Abraham that his first born son, Esau, would be subservient to his younger brother Jacob. More than the mere reversal of the law of primogenitor, Esau is estranged from God simply because God does not love him (Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated). There are scholars who understand these verses (9.6-13) to be a literary tool for describing the birth and destinies of nations not as the eternal states of two individuals. While it is true that Scripture does use the names of individuals to speak of groups of people, for example, Israel is associated with Jacob, Edom with Esau, or Ephraim with the northern tribes of Israel (cp. Malachi 1.2-4; Isaiah 11.13), yet, there are several reasons for believing that Paul has the eternal destinies of individuals in mind in this instance. (1) Paul is addressing the issue of why only a very few Jews have accepted Christ as the Messiah. “(2) Key words in the paragraph – ‘Children of God’ (v. 8), ‘descendants’ (vv. 7 and 8), ‘counted’ (v. 8), ‘children of promise’ (v. 8) ‘name’ or ‘call’ (vv. 7, 12), and ‘not of works’ (v. 12) – are consistently applied by Paul elsewhere to the salvation of individuals. (3) The continuation of vv. 6b-13 in vv. 24-29 shows that Paul’s point is to demonstrate how God has called individuals from among both Jews and Gentiles to be his people and that those Jews who are called (the ‘Israel’ within Israel of vv. 6b-13) constitute the ‘remnant’ that will be ‘saved’ (v. 27)” (Douglas Moo, Romans, p. 572).
The Scriptures never say that God promised that all of Israel would be saved eschatologically, nor is it recorded anywhere in Romans 9-11 that the term Israel is to be appended to the church so that the church becomes the vehicle whereby the promises to Israel are fulfilled. Rather, Paul takes pains to demonstrate that not all the physical descendants of Abraham are his spiritual beneficiaries. Quite to the contrary, Scripture indicates that a winnowing process has been in effect from the very beginning. First, with the two sons of Abraham by two different women and then with the two sons of Isaac by the same woman. God is not forsaking his promises to Abraham by not saving all Israel; rather, he is keeping them by saving some. It is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise (9.8; cp. Galatians 4.28).
It was this way ever since Abraham. “The seed” coming from him and his children are to be distinguished. Abraham’s children have the promise, but they are not children merely because of their origin that links them with Abraham. What Israel received, the covenant, the law, the promise, the patriarchs, and Christ, are God’s eternal gifts; but they were not intended for the ethnic community created by nature, but always belonged to those that God’s election linked with him. That the natural and the spiritual remained distinct within the national community was neither an obvious postulate for Paul nor a construct whereby he later sought to interpret history; that was history, revealed from the beginning through the events. God declared: “it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned” (Gen. 21:12). Thus Abraham’s other son, Ishmael, was excluded. Though he was conceived through Abraham, he was not Abraham’s child. Paul articulates the premise clearly: the children of the flesh are not God’s children. Only natural forces were at work in the procreation of Ishmael, and these do not mediate the life coming from God. Isaac’s procreation, however, was not the work of the flesh but of the promise, as delineated in the account of his birth in Genesis 18.10. God’s word applies to the one who receives life through the promise. It has not failed, nor has it been invalidated if it is not fulfilled in those who receive life only from the flesh. (Adolf Schlatter, Romans: The Righteousness of God, p. 204)
THE DIVINE WILL (9.11-13)
The preeminence of Jacob over Esau was a matter of the Divine will. Esau’s unholy behavior was not a factor in God’s rejection of him (cp. Hebrews 12.14-17), nor, for that matter, were Jacob’s many deceptions and later reformation factored into God’s acceptance of him. “Any attempt to explain the promise to Jacob on the basis of God’s foresight of Jacob’s good works turns the text upside down. Romans 9:12 reiterates the thought—the promise to Jacob and the exclusion of Esau were not based on works (ou]k e]c e@rgwn, ouk ex ergon, not of works). Nor is it convincing to say that predestination cannot be read into the text … for Paul says specifically that human works were excluded ‘in order that God’s electing purpose should prevail’ (v. 11), and he contrasts ‘calling’ with ‘works’ (v. 12), showing that the former is the ground of Jacob’s inclusion. … This text forges a close connection between the themes of justification and predestination, implying that they are inseparable” (Thomas Schreiner, Romans, p. 499). So then, Paul’s contrast is not a matter of faith and works, but of God’s call and works. God’s call and election precede human faith and it is God’s work of effectual call that is the center of Paul’s argument.
“It was the call of God who made known his will, not determined by the individual, that caused Jacob to be God’s people and Esau not to be God’s people; this is also what the prophet proclaimed, saying that the reason for the difference in the destiny of Jacob and of Esau was that God loved Jacob and hated Esau (Mal 1:2). It was not Jacob’s work that made him to be Jacob, but God’s love, and it was not Esau’s work that denied him God’s word and grace, but God’s rejection. God’s love and hatred are his own will, over which the individual has no power” (Schlatter, p. 205). Paul’s language is startling, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated, but it is consistent with everything he has said. The relationship between God’s sovereign rule and human responsibility is a mystery beyond mankind’s finite comprehension (cp. Deuteronomy 29.29), but that is not to diminish his accountability to God for every decision. So the author of Hebrews warns his readers: Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled; that no one is sexually immoral or unholy life like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears (Hebrews 12.14-17).
