You’d be forgiven for thinking, when you read the first few chapters of Romans, that Paul has it in for the Jews. He goes to such great pains to point out that all their religious systems, all their efforts to be right with God are doomed. He accuses them of condemning others for failing to obey God yet being guilty of exactly the same failings. He shows that Jews are no better than Gentiles as far as righteousness is concerned. But even as he points out their failure, he realises that he is still one of them. It isn’t that he’s standing over against them and pointing out that they’ve got it wrong and he’s got it right. Rather, he identifies with them as one of their own. He too was a Pharisee. He grew up with the revelation of God as it was known by the Jews. In fact, he says, what he’s proclaiming now isn’t that far removed from what he knew before. ’To the Jews belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; 5to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever.’ There’s nothing new in Christianity that wasn’t declared beforehand to the Jews. Even the Messiah. They already had the gospel. They just didn’t recognise him when he appeared. So he’s taking his place as a member of the Jewish race, sympathising with those who have turned away from the Messiah, yet aware that even as they’ve turned away from him, he is still their Messiah.
So he asks the inevitable question, what’s going on? Has God’s promise to Abraham failed?
No, he says. It’s just that those who ask that question have stopped thinking theologically. You see, God’s promise was to Abram’s descendants. But when you think about it, not all of his descendants became part of the chosen people. Only those descended through Isaac.
So what matters first of all is God’s choice. God’s promise was that it was the son of Sarah who would inherit the promise, not the son of Hagar. And in fact we see the same thing with the choice of Jacob over Esau. What matters with Jacob and Esau isn’t their suitability or worthiness. It’s God’s right to choose, God’s sovereignty. Now this is a very difficult concept to cope with in a democratic, egalitarian culture like ours. I mean how are we going to understand the sovereignty of God when we live in a culture where even parents question their right to discipline their own children. But we need to come to grips with this: with a God who has the right to choose what happens to his creatures.
Let’s stop and think about who it is we’re discussing. Who is God? Let me read you a short excerpt from Karl Barth’s commentary on this chapter.
"God, the pure and absolute boundary and beginning of all that we are and have and do; God, who is distinguished qualitatively from men and from everything human, and must never be identified with anything which we name, or experience, or conceive, or worship, as God; God, who confronts all human disturbance with an unconditional command ’Halt’, and all human rest with an equally unconditional command ’Advance’, God, the ’Yes’ in our ’No’ and the ’No’ in our ’Yes’, the First and the Last, and, consequently, the Unknown, who is never a known thing in the midst of other known things; God, the Lord, the Creator, the Redeemer: this is the Living God. In the Gospel, in the Message of Salvation of Jesus Christ, this Hidden, Living, God has revealed Himself, as He is. Above and beyond the apparently infinite series of possibilities and visibilities in this world there breaks forth, like a flash of lightning, impossibility and invisibility, not as some separate, second, other thing, but as the Truth of God which is now hidden, as the Primal Origin to which all things are related, as the dissolution of all relativity, and therefore as the reality of all relative realities." (Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 1933 p330f.)
Now, if you had trouble getting your mind around that then I’ve achieved my purpose, because this God about whom we’re thinking is so far beyond our finite minds that we could never even come close to comprehending him or his purposes. Yet as we think about this salvation that he gives to some and not others, we feel compelled to ask the question don’t we, "Is God unjust in choosing one and not another?"
Here’s where it becomes important that we understand the difference between us and God. We ask the question, but God gives the answer: "No", not as far as He is concerned. God chooses Jacob to demonstrate to us quite clearly that his is the authority in this world. Look at vs 11 & 12: "Even before they had been born or had done anything good or bad (so that God’s purpose of election might continue, 12not by works but by his call) she was told, "The elder shall serve the younger." God wants it to be absolutely clear that the decision to choose Jacob is his and his alone. He wants us to understand that our salvation doesn’t depend on our effort or desire but on God’s mercy. It’s not how hard we work for our salvation that will get us through. It’s not how deserving we are. In fact if you look at Jacob, his character left a lot to be desired. But it was God’s right to show him mercy if he chose to.
And there’s no inconsistency here. God said the same thing to Moses in Exod 33. This was just after the people had made a golden calf and had bowed down and worshipped it and God told them that he had had enough. They could go on and enter the promised land but he wouldn’t go with them in case they did something like this again and his anger burned against them and he destroyed them. But Moses pleads with him to go with them and God relents. He says that because he’s pleased with Moses he’ll go with them. Then Moses makes an outrageously audacious request. He asks to see God’s glory. God says he’ll show him all his goodness and proclaim his name to him. Then he explains why he’s relented. It’s because he chooses to show mercy to whom he chooses. It isn’t in fact because of Moses righteousness, but simply because he chooses to show him mercy.
But then when he declares his name to Moses listen to what he says: (Exo 34:6-7 NRSV) "The LORD passed before him, and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.""
Now the reason I remind you of that is that it reflects on our question: Is God unjust in choosing one person over another?
We need to remember that God’s motive in all this is love and mercy, and the demonstration of his glory. So let’s think for a moment about the nature of mercy. Mercy is something that’s shown to someone who doesn’t deserve it. It’s shown by a judge who reduces a sentence for the sake of the guilty party, not because they deserve it, what they deserve is the full sentence, but because in his or her mercy they see that some better end may be served by a shorter sentence.
Now it seems to me that we need to clear a bit of ground on this issue, because the question that inevitably arises in people’s minds is why does God condemn some people while saving others. We need to remember that in the first 3 chapters of Romans Paul has gone to great lengths to describe the plight of every human being. We are all creatures who have fallen short of the glory of God. We all stand under God’s judgement, under the sentence of death. If God chooses to show his glory by choosing some to be saved by his grace, isn’t that his right? Isn’t he able to show mercy to anyone he chooses? And if he chooses to punish those who have disobeyed, he’s totally just in doing so, isn’t he?
Paul takes the example of a potter. Doesn’t the potter have a right to choose whether he makes the clay into a beautiful ornament, say a vase, or into a mere utilitarian article like a mixing bowl or even a chamber pot? Of course he does. And even that analogy fails to truly express the issue. The potter is working with something that he obtained from another part of creation. In God’s case he’s working with something that he made in the first place.
You see we need to understand the situation clearly so we avoid category errors. We’re not talking here about something like our government throwing asylum seekers into detention centres because they’re an inconvenience. This is not the case of one creature mistreating another. This is the case of the creator choosing how to deal with his creatures. And the way he deals with them is both with justice and with mercy. Again, those people who leap from God being sovereign to God being responsible when people disobey have misunderstood the reality of the situation. When God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, it doesn’t mean that God makes Pharaoh sinful. Pharaoh was always sinful, just like you and me. Pharaoh always deserved God’s wrath. God simply removed any constraints that might have made him listen to the pleas of Moses to let his people go. And the reason he did it was to show to everyone at the time, through the various plagues that fell on the land, that God was sovereign. It was to make it plain to them that if they wanted salvation then they’d better join up with the people of God. God’s motive in all this was love and mercy, and the demonstration of his glory. The fact that such a demonstration of power was ignored by the Egyptians simply shows that they were rebellious creatures, not willing to listen to their creator. Had they listened, they too could have left to go to the promised land.
And that’s always the way it will be. The only ones to experience God’s wrath are those who are objects of wrath - i.e. sinners - people destined for destruction; like you and me.
And we mustn’t forget that the reason that rebellious people are still around, is that God has been putting up with us for the sake of those to whom he chose to show mercy. In fact Peter, when he’s talking about the delay in Christ’s return says: "The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9) So it isn’t that God is unjust. Rather in his mercy he’s long-suffering and patient beyond anything we could possibly expect.
But getting back to this question of the Jews’ place in God’s plan, even in the days of the Old Testament, those God promised to show mercy to weren’t just the Jews, but the Gentiles also. The book of Hosea, that Paul quotes here, tells in poignant fashion of God’s great love for a people who are totally unfaithful to him. And then as the book comes to an end we get this glimpse of the extent of God’s love as he declares that "Those who were not my people I will call ’my people,’ and her who was not beloved I will call ’beloved.’ 26And ... ’there they shall be called children of the living God.’" Here we see the choosing of Jacob over Esau coming full circle, because now those who are outside the line of Jacob find themselves drawn in once again. Now God has brought about a miracle of grace that takes in not just those he chose through Jacob but also the rejected descendants of Esau, along with everyone else who’s outside the people of Israel. In fact, as he concludes in v29, if it weren’t for the grace of God, even Jacob’s descendants would have perished. So, far from God failing in his promise to Abraham, God has now brought blessing to both Abraham’s descendants and to all the nations on earth, just as he promised.
In fact, he says, the whole OT picture is one of Israel being doomed for its unfaithfulness with, in the end, only a remnant being saved, and that through God’s mercy.
Well, this isn’t really a good place to stop. There’s much more to be said about the Jews. He goes on in the next few chapters to think more about the future hope of the Jews. He concludes that there is hope for them, but only if they’ll turn to Christ as their Messiah, their Saviour.
But before we finish we need to think about what this has to do with us? Why not stop at the end of ch8 and jump to ch12 as so many preachers seem to do? Let me suggest that it’s important that we look at these chapters because when Paul approaches the question of Israel, he’s also raising the question of the church.
You see, just as Israel was the possessor of God’s promise so now that promise has been passed on to the church, and the church suffers from all the same temptations that Israel faced. As members of the church, particularly as evangelicals we can be tempted to think that we have it all sewn up. We know what we have believed and are persuaded that we have it right. But in the end we can be in the same position as Israel who thought that because they had the law they were OK. Rather we need to remind ourselves that we stand under the judgement of God. That if God dealt with us justly, we’d be consigned to an eternity outside his presence. That all our present knowledge of God is like sand that slips through our fingers before we can properly grasp hold of it. That our membership of the church even if it’s the best church we can find, will no more save us than circumcision would have saved Paul.
Yet at the same time, the church, like Israel, is the holder of the truth of the Gospel, even if at times it’s failed to understand that truth. But even in its failure we see God at work, saving those whom he chooses. That’s because the promise of God doesn’t fail simply because Israel fails or the church fails. No, God continues to call out those whom he chooses, not because of any merit of their own, but simply because he chooses to use them to show his glory.
Well we need to stop, so let’s think what we’ve discovered today.
God’s promises have not been forgotten.
God has the right to choose because he is the sovereign Lord and Creator.
God’s motive is love and mercy, and the demonstration of his glory.
So then, as Christians, as the members of a fallen Church, we, like Paul and the Jews, need to be aware of our own limitations, our own failings, so that we turn to God again and again asking him in his mercy to save us despite our failings, despite our inability to please him on our own, knowing that his mercy has guaranteed us a place with him in eternity.
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