14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. [c] Do not think you are superior.
17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," [d] says the Lord. 20 On the contrary:
"If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." [e]
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Dig Deeper
Paul is certainly one of the most captivating and interesting characters in the entire Bible. We probably know as much about him as we do anyone in the New Testament save for Jesus. We know that Paul grew up and was a bright and shining star in the Judaism of his day. We get the impression that he was something of a hotshot. If we piece together different portions of New Testament information, we learn that Paul (before he changed his name from Saul) was a disciple of Gamaliel, one of the leading rabbis of his day. He was a top student that had shot past many people that were older than him. He was extremely zealous for God’s law and was willing to sacrifice anything and do whatever he needed to do in order to further God’s cause. In his own words, he was the Pharisee of Pharisee, which meant that he followed God’s law meticulously and sacrificed everything in order to follow God. He even zealously persecuted and tried to destroy Christ’s church. Then Jesus changed everything by challenging him as he was on the road to Damascus. The risen Lord came to Paul and demanded to know why he was persecuting God’s people. Paul responded humbly to this confrontation and eventually began to serve the Lord Christ with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength. In the process of his conversion, the Lord told Ananias that Paul would truly find out how much he had to suffer for the name of Christ. Paul certainly thought that he had sacrificed and suffered for God but now God was really going to challenge him. He must show love to the very people that he thought were his enemies. He must love and embrace the Christian community and then go and show love to the pagan world that his Pharisaical mind would have told him were every bit as much enemies to God. If he wanted to follow Jesus he would find out just how much he had to sacrifice.
In the beginning of this chapter, Paul called Christians to embrace a non-conformist mindset that they are to be sacrifices. All of us in Christ are to live each moment of every day in sacrifice to Christ, doing his will rather than our own. Any of us who have truly grasped hold of the life of Christ and attempted to make it our own, know that this can be a daunting task. Following Christ is not burdensome but neither is it easy or non-challenging. It is one thing to approach the type of Christian service and unity that Paul discussed in the previous passage with a heart bent on sacrifice. That can be hard enough. But in this passage Paul is calling us all to mimic the very challenge he found in the Christian life. We might have thought that was challenging and sacrificial but now he will show us how much we must really sacrifice. We must not just love our brothers who are loving us back, but we are to love and do good to those who persecute and hate us. This is what it really looks like when we sacrifice our lives for God. This is the real deal.
So far, Paul has had instructions for the Christian community trying to embrace the resurrection life in as much as it concerned their relations with one another. Now he turns to behaviors that will be demanded of them both within the Christian community and outside of the new family. Each of these elements will demand a sort of self-sacrifice on their part. In a sense, we are to embody what Paul said about the Messiah in 5:6-11, while we were still powerless sinners, Christ died for us and reconciled us to God. The resurrection community is to take evil upon ourselves and stop the cycle. Rather than retaliating and passing evil on and on, Christians are to take behavior that should rupture relationships and instead offer reconciliation.
At several places in this passage, not the least of those being verse 14, Paul seems to be paraphrasing instructions that came directly from Jesus’ teachings. Presumably these would have been so well known that Paul doesn’t feel the need to attribute them to Jesus; everyone would have known that already. Don’t just tolerate those who persecute you, says Paul. And certainly don’t sink to the like behavior of cursing those who persecute. Rather they are to bless those who persecute them. Paul here seems to be combining quotations from Jesus found in Matthew 5:44 and Luke 6:27-28.
The quiet demand of the resurrected life is to live in harmony demonstrating the reconciliation that God has given to his people. God’s people celebrate with people when there are things worthy of celebrating. Rather than spiraling into envy or self-obsession, we should identify with the one celebrating and share in their blessing. But we also should empathize and mourn with those who mourn rather than dismissing them or celebrating their misfortunes. Christians identify with others as we demonstrate the unity, love, and reconciliation of the age to come. That means avoiding pride, being willing to associate with anyone of any position, especially those of low position. A Christian that thinks they are superior is one who has completely missed the leveling and reconciling power of the resurrection and the life to which it calls those in Christ.
At the heart of this new ethic is to avoid the deep human desire for revenge. The desire for revenge wells up deep within us and beckons us to level the playing field. Someone does evil to us and we feel compelled to see evil visit them, But this goes against the current of life that flows from the resurrection of Jesus Christ directly into the communities of those who believe in him. Revenge keeps evil circulating and flowing from life to life. Paul says, “do not repay anyone evil for evil”. His point is to simply not allow evil to be passed on. We are to stop the buck and meet curses with blessing, hate with love, persecution with kindness, and revenge with forgiveness. This is not to be done in a self-seeking or attention-grabbing manner but it should be a way of life that is lived out under the watchful gaze of everyone so that they may see this subversive way of living and be drawn to its source. This is a great reminder for Christians to always point our behavior back to Christ. If someone asks you why you did such good work, or why your children behave so well, or why you would forgive someone under those circumstances, rather than just deflecting the praise and saying “oh, it was nothing,” we should seize the opportunity to declare that we have taken the praiseworthy or noteworthy actions because this is the type of life to which Christ calls us, a resurrected life. In doing so, we don’t exalt ourselves but the Lord who gives us his resurrection life.
Revenge is not ours to take. God alone will take justice says Paul quoting from Deuteronomy 32:35: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay.” This prohibition against retaliation extends beyond just fellow Christians but to the much more challenging call to extend forgiving behavior to all people. When we take revenge ourselves we actually put ourselves in the position of being God. Judgment and punishment are God’s to take both in time and for eternity. A refusal to seek leveling behavior like revenge is a declaration that we believe that through the resurrection of Jesus Christ God has set right the wrongs. When we entered into the resurrection life at our baptism we entered into a world where God has already passed judgment on death, sin, and evil. Leaving the avenging of evil to God is a sign that we truly believe in and live in that age. That is not to say, that humans should just ignore evil, though. Societies and governments, as Paul will make clear in the next passage, absolutely have the authority and responsibility to punish wrongdoing. But individuals should never try to assume the authority given to governments and certainly never that which is God’s.
What Paul makes clear is that Christian love is not just a statement or a belief, but is an action. We are to sacrificially love others in the Christians community and even more importantly, in some ways, our enemies. But Paul calls believers to far more than a casual or comfortable kindness or politeness that counterfeits the genuine love that is part of the age to come that is to be lived as a reality now. Many have read Paul’s quotation from Proverbs 25:21-22 and presumed that Paul is calling for God’s people to offer food and drink to one’s enemies so that we may shame them or make them feel bad about their evil or unkind behavior towards us. But this is flawed thinking. Loving others in order to shame them would run counter to everything Paul is saying here. Indeed it would run directly counter to the type of love that Paul is calling for.
A simple custom from the ancient world will help us to understand what Paul is saying here. House fires were kept going with burning coals. From time to time, someone might run out of coals and would carry a basket to a neighbor’s house to ask for coals. The neighbor would take burning coals from their own fire and put them in the basket that was usually carried on top of the head. Thus, you were helping someone get their fire burning when you heaped coals on their head. Paul, then, is saying that in acting in a way that absolutely does not conform to the normal behavior of the culture, which is to seek revenge and repay evil with evil, that we might be opening someone up to the flow of love that comes directly from the resurrection. We just might be helping them to start their fire by sacrificing our own perceived right to receive justice. In this way we loudly pronounce that there is a different reality available, a different way to live, and so rather than being overcome by evil, we “overcome evil with good.” If our churches today would really embrace that way of life we just might be amazed at the fires all around us that were re-ignited.
Devotional Thought
In what ways does this teaching challenge your life? Do you demonstrate God’s values of the age to come by loving others and living in peace as much as you are able? How can you begin to live out the values of this passage today?
Monday, November 30, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Romans 12:6-13
6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your [a] faith; 7 if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; 8 if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, [b] do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.
Love in Action
9 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. 11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. 12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 13 Share with the Lord's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
Dig Deeper
I recently had someone ask me about a new trend that has become quite popular in some circles that are attempting to evangelize large communities of Muslims. Specifically, the questions they were asking concerned a new type of evangelism that is called c-5. In essence, c-5 evangelism attempts to teach potential Muslim converts that they can become Christians without really having to leave or be ostracized by the Muslim community of which they are a part. It teaches them to commit to Jesus as Lord, at least in theory. But they can continue in their Islamic culture, including going to the Mosque, taking part in Muslim services, praying regularly with other Muslims, and so on. The theory is that they will incorporate Jesus into their belief systems but not have to be cast out of the community or risk some of the very violent persecution that can come upon Muslims who leave their faith for Christianity. These converts don’t even refer to themselves as Christians because that would be to betray their community. They are simply quietly messianic Muslims. I have a very big problem with all of this, however. It might sound good but it calls people to something entirely different than true Christianity. One of the central tenets of the Christian faith is that Christians are ready to face being ostracized, being persecuted, or anything else negative that might come from following Jesus. In fact, following Jesus is to go the way of the Cross. To tell people that they can follow Jesus while avoiding anything that might cause them to change their loyalties or might cause them to suffer is to call people to follow a different Jesus than the one of the Bible. You simply cannot follow Jesus without being prepared to suffer and face persecution.
Paul spent eleven chapters, carefully laying down the theology of a Christian community that has embraced and is prepared to live out the reality of Jew and Gentile coming together as the one covenant family of God in Christ. What you believe determines what you do and Paul knows that. That is why Paul has now shifted to the harsh realities of living together as one family and one body. All of the soaring rhetoric and theology in the world won’t mean much if they cannot build on that foundation and create a unified family in the real world. To build a unified family, however, takes diversity of all things. It takes people of different abilities, gifts, backgrounds, and talents in order to put together a complete family. Yet, this is all in danger of sounding rather mundane. It’s easy to look at a passage like this and think “yeah, yeah, we all have to work together, I get it.” But it’s easy to do our part, whatever that may be, and forget something very important. Underlying this whole section of working together, using gifts, and building a true Christian community is the call to sacrifice oneself to the Lord (Rom. 12:1-2). It is this sacrifice that is at the heart of what Paul is saying here.
As Paul names some of the gifts that may be present in the Christian community, he is not just ticking off a list of spiritual gifts and he is certainly not trying to offer an exhaustive list. He is urging each member of the family to use their gifts faithfully and intentionally to build up and strengthen the unity of the body and to help the body grow spiritually. It would appear that the early church had identified a small number of well-defined gifts such as teaching, as well as a larger number of less-well-defined gifts which overlapped with other gifts and were probably not present in every church. Whatever gift individuals and communities have they are “according to the grace given to each of us.” Two important points emerge from that thought. The first is that the gifts that we do have are channels for God’s grace. 1 Peter 4:10 says that those who use their gifts are faithful stewards of God’s grace. The fact that we must realize is that when we do not use the gifts that God has given us, we deny God’s grace to the rest of the community. This is a selfish act and needs to be called what it is. If God has given us a gift we should make every effort to at least make it available to be used by our Christian community. The second important point is that church bodies have gifts every bit as much as individuals do. Some churches are strong in musical worship, while another might have a strength in teaching, and yet another church is uncommonly spiritually mature, and so on.
Some, says Paul, have the Spirit-led ability to reveal scriptural truths for the edification of the church (this gift was needed much more before the New Testament was written), which he calls the gift of prophecy while others have the ability to teach, which is the ability to explain the truths of the scriptures. Others have the ability to serve, a word that Paul uses to describe any work that Christians do for the benefit of others to the glory of God. Still others had the gift of encouraging, which wasn’t the ability to make other people feel good, but was the gift of giving courage to others and urging Christians to hold to and live out the truth of the gospel in their lives. Some have the gift of being able to see needs and give generously of their time and resources. Others that have the ability to lead should do so with eagerness and care. And those that have the gift of being particularly skilled at visiting the sick, or caring for the poor, the elderly, or the disabled should do so. None of this should imply that those who don’t have specific “gifts” in some of these areas are absolved from, for instance, showing mercy to others. Rather Paul’s point is that those who do have specific gifts should make use of the grace that God has given them.
The genuine love that Paul is calling Christians to, including using their gifts to minister to one another, is sincere. Using one’s gifts or being part of the Christian family for reasons other than the sincere love of God is not what God desires for his family. They should, then, cling to the good and reject evil in their community and even in their own motives. Above all, Christians that have been called into the one family of God are to be devoted to one another. John says that anyone who claims to love God but does not love his brother is a liar that basically mocks the faith to which he claims (1 Jn. 4:19-20). The Christian family loves one another by honoring and considering the needs of one another above their own needs. This is what true love is, to lay down your life for another.
Paul also knows that to live such a life demands a complete transformation of the will and a commitment to no longer conform to the pattern of the world. Living in community as the family of God does take effort as we transform our minds to live by the values of the age to come. It is a lifelong responsibility of the Christian to show reverence for God in every aspect of our lives and to maintain our zeal and fervor for God’s family. This is why Christians are to be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer. The Christian family that is truly living by the reality of the resurrection rather than this present age will live in joy because we are living the hope of resurrection now in the present. Living by the reality of our future resurrection causes us to be patient through affliction of any kind because we understand the bigger picture of what God is doing through his people. But even the most hopeful and committed Christian needs to constantly re-connect with Gods’ will through faithfulness in prayer. Without prayer we will quickly lose our patience and spiritual fervor.
To fully grasp the breadth of what Paul is driving at in all of this we must return to our opening thoughts and to what Paul has built this whole section on. The very definition of the Christian life is to sacrifice for the benefit of others. Paul called his readers to be living sacrifices and that is what we must truly be to be the kind of community to which the gospel calls us. We cannot properly use our gifts, keep our zeal and fervor for God’s family, or even be the type of family he wants us to be without sacrifice. Yet, so many Christians quickly do lose their zeal and become rather comfortable. We want to grow spiritually, to see our children be great Christians, to receive great mentoring and discipling, to see our small groups and churches grow, to see our family members come to Christ, but we are not so eager to sacrifice. To be a Christian means to constantly be willing to sacrifice our time, energy, resources, personal rights, and anything else that we might be tempted to call our own. If you have been praying and hoping for God to work in some area of your life, perhaps it’s time to go back and look at yourself in the mirror. Have you really been a living sacrifice? God works through the sacrifice of his people. Has he been able to work through you?
It is this kind of ongoing sacrifice that leads the “Lord’s people” to share with other Christians who are in need. Paul is calling Christian communities to live in the reality and by the values of the resurrection age, which means that we don’t need to cling to possessions as our own but should rather constantly be looking to share with those who have need and constantly seek opportunities to show hospitality to others. Showing the constant hospitality of throwing open your life and home is the very embodiment of Christian love and sacrifice. In fact, it’s hard to imagine someone who is truly living the kind of joyful, sacrificial life in the Messiah to which Paul is pointing, who does not constantly have other people in their home, eating and spending time as the family that we are called to be.
Devotional Thought
Have you forgotten that the core value of your Christian life is to sacrifice for the benefit of others? When was the last time that you intentionally sacrificed so that the kingdom of God might be advanced in some way? What can you do today to embrace the heart of sacrifice in your walk in Christ?
Love in Action
9 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. 11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. 12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 13 Share with the Lord's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
Dig Deeper
I recently had someone ask me about a new trend that has become quite popular in some circles that are attempting to evangelize large communities of Muslims. Specifically, the questions they were asking concerned a new type of evangelism that is called c-5. In essence, c-5 evangelism attempts to teach potential Muslim converts that they can become Christians without really having to leave or be ostracized by the Muslim community of which they are a part. It teaches them to commit to Jesus as Lord, at least in theory. But they can continue in their Islamic culture, including going to the Mosque, taking part in Muslim services, praying regularly with other Muslims, and so on. The theory is that they will incorporate Jesus into their belief systems but not have to be cast out of the community or risk some of the very violent persecution that can come upon Muslims who leave their faith for Christianity. These converts don’t even refer to themselves as Christians because that would be to betray their community. They are simply quietly messianic Muslims. I have a very big problem with all of this, however. It might sound good but it calls people to something entirely different than true Christianity. One of the central tenets of the Christian faith is that Christians are ready to face being ostracized, being persecuted, or anything else negative that might come from following Jesus. In fact, following Jesus is to go the way of the Cross. To tell people that they can follow Jesus while avoiding anything that might cause them to change their loyalties or might cause them to suffer is to call people to follow a different Jesus than the one of the Bible. You simply cannot follow Jesus without being prepared to suffer and face persecution.
Paul spent eleven chapters, carefully laying down the theology of a Christian community that has embraced and is prepared to live out the reality of Jew and Gentile coming together as the one covenant family of God in Christ. What you believe determines what you do and Paul knows that. That is why Paul has now shifted to the harsh realities of living together as one family and one body. All of the soaring rhetoric and theology in the world won’t mean much if they cannot build on that foundation and create a unified family in the real world. To build a unified family, however, takes diversity of all things. It takes people of different abilities, gifts, backgrounds, and talents in order to put together a complete family. Yet, this is all in danger of sounding rather mundane. It’s easy to look at a passage like this and think “yeah, yeah, we all have to work together, I get it.” But it’s easy to do our part, whatever that may be, and forget something very important. Underlying this whole section of working together, using gifts, and building a true Christian community is the call to sacrifice oneself to the Lord (Rom. 12:1-2). It is this sacrifice that is at the heart of what Paul is saying here.
As Paul names some of the gifts that may be present in the Christian community, he is not just ticking off a list of spiritual gifts and he is certainly not trying to offer an exhaustive list. He is urging each member of the family to use their gifts faithfully and intentionally to build up and strengthen the unity of the body and to help the body grow spiritually. It would appear that the early church had identified a small number of well-defined gifts such as teaching, as well as a larger number of less-well-defined gifts which overlapped with other gifts and were probably not present in every church. Whatever gift individuals and communities have they are “according to the grace given to each of us.” Two important points emerge from that thought. The first is that the gifts that we do have are channels for God’s grace. 1 Peter 4:10 says that those who use their gifts are faithful stewards of God’s grace. The fact that we must realize is that when we do not use the gifts that God has given us, we deny God’s grace to the rest of the community. This is a selfish act and needs to be called what it is. If God has given us a gift we should make every effort to at least make it available to be used by our Christian community. The second important point is that church bodies have gifts every bit as much as individuals do. Some churches are strong in musical worship, while another might have a strength in teaching, and yet another church is uncommonly spiritually mature, and so on.
Some, says Paul, have the Spirit-led ability to reveal scriptural truths for the edification of the church (this gift was needed much more before the New Testament was written), which he calls the gift of prophecy while others have the ability to teach, which is the ability to explain the truths of the scriptures. Others have the ability to serve, a word that Paul uses to describe any work that Christians do for the benefit of others to the glory of God. Still others had the gift of encouraging, which wasn’t the ability to make other people feel good, but was the gift of giving courage to others and urging Christians to hold to and live out the truth of the gospel in their lives. Some have the gift of being able to see needs and give generously of their time and resources. Others that have the ability to lead should do so with eagerness and care. And those that have the gift of being particularly skilled at visiting the sick, or caring for the poor, the elderly, or the disabled should do so. None of this should imply that those who don’t have specific “gifts” in some of these areas are absolved from, for instance, showing mercy to others. Rather Paul’s point is that those who do have specific gifts should make use of the grace that God has given them.
The genuine love that Paul is calling Christians to, including using their gifts to minister to one another, is sincere. Using one’s gifts or being part of the Christian family for reasons other than the sincere love of God is not what God desires for his family. They should, then, cling to the good and reject evil in their community and even in their own motives. Above all, Christians that have been called into the one family of God are to be devoted to one another. John says that anyone who claims to love God but does not love his brother is a liar that basically mocks the faith to which he claims (1 Jn. 4:19-20). The Christian family loves one another by honoring and considering the needs of one another above their own needs. This is what true love is, to lay down your life for another.
Paul also knows that to live such a life demands a complete transformation of the will and a commitment to no longer conform to the pattern of the world. Living in community as the family of God does take effort as we transform our minds to live by the values of the age to come. It is a lifelong responsibility of the Christian to show reverence for God in every aspect of our lives and to maintain our zeal and fervor for God’s family. This is why Christians are to be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer. The Christian family that is truly living by the reality of the resurrection rather than this present age will live in joy because we are living the hope of resurrection now in the present. Living by the reality of our future resurrection causes us to be patient through affliction of any kind because we understand the bigger picture of what God is doing through his people. But even the most hopeful and committed Christian needs to constantly re-connect with Gods’ will through faithfulness in prayer. Without prayer we will quickly lose our patience and spiritual fervor.
To fully grasp the breadth of what Paul is driving at in all of this we must return to our opening thoughts and to what Paul has built this whole section on. The very definition of the Christian life is to sacrifice for the benefit of others. Paul called his readers to be living sacrifices and that is what we must truly be to be the kind of community to which the gospel calls us. We cannot properly use our gifts, keep our zeal and fervor for God’s family, or even be the type of family he wants us to be without sacrifice. Yet, so many Christians quickly do lose their zeal and become rather comfortable. We want to grow spiritually, to see our children be great Christians, to receive great mentoring and discipling, to see our small groups and churches grow, to see our family members come to Christ, but we are not so eager to sacrifice. To be a Christian means to constantly be willing to sacrifice our time, energy, resources, personal rights, and anything else that we might be tempted to call our own. If you have been praying and hoping for God to work in some area of your life, perhaps it’s time to go back and look at yourself in the mirror. Have you really been a living sacrifice? God works through the sacrifice of his people. Has he been able to work through you?
It is this kind of ongoing sacrifice that leads the “Lord’s people” to share with other Christians who are in need. Paul is calling Christian communities to live in the reality and by the values of the resurrection age, which means that we don’t need to cling to possessions as our own but should rather constantly be looking to share with those who have need and constantly seek opportunities to show hospitality to others. Showing the constant hospitality of throwing open your life and home is the very embodiment of Christian love and sacrifice. In fact, it’s hard to imagine someone who is truly living the kind of joyful, sacrificial life in the Messiah to which Paul is pointing, who does not constantly have other people in their home, eating and spending time as the family that we are called to be.
Devotional Thought
Have you forgotten that the core value of your Christian life is to sacrifice for the benefit of others? When was the last time that you intentionally sacrificed so that the kingdom of God might be advanced in some way? What can you do today to embrace the heart of sacrifice in your walk in Christ?
Friday, November 20, 2009
Romans 12:1-5
A Living Sacrifice
1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is true worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Humble Service in the Body of Christ
3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. 4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.
Dig Deeper
I was recently at a website looking at a few reviews of a movie that I was considering going to see. Most of the reviews were not very good and so now I think I’ll save my time and money and not go to those movies. While I was there, however, I decided to look up the past reviews of a Christian movie named “Fireproof.” I had no other reason than that I was curious to see what secular movie reviewers had to say about a decidedly Christian movie that I happened to enjoy. I wasn’t surprised to see that the vast majority of them were very negative and critical but one stuck out to me in particular. He said that the major problem that the movie had was that it’s religious message was completely unrelatable to most audiences. He says that “the film gets all religulous, suggesting that [the lead character’s] devotion to healing means nothing without Jesus, and so Fireproof stops becoming relatable to us all and only to the already, or easily, indoctrinated.” It’s not that he said anything that was particularly surprising. Would you really expect a non-Christian to appreciate a film that is firmly based on the worldview that one must completely surrender their life to Jesus? No, that wasn’t a shock. What did hit me though was another thought. If non-Christians are so offended and so unable to relate to movies that have a Christian worldview, then why aren’t movies that have a non-Christian worldview so equally offensive and unrelatable to Christians?
The answer to that question is the very thing that Paul picks up on in this passage. Yes, Christians really have died to the old Adamic humanity and entered into the covenant family of God and begun the process of becoming the Spirit-led and transformed Messiah shaped humanity. But this isn’t all just lofty religious talk. The theology of the previous eleven chapters has real implications for the lives of individual persons who were once individuals separated from and in rebellion against God but are now part of God’s restored and renewed humanity. But that doesn’t all happen instantly. We are so conditioned by the mindset, worldview, and culture of the Adamic world in which we all grew up that it takes real, concerted effort to no longer be comfortable with that culture. That’s why non-Christians are more offended by Christian movies than vice-versa. The true Christian culture of the age to come is completely foreign and non-sensible to the non-Christian. What Paul calls for here is for Christians to make the values and culture of the present age just as foreign and non-sensible to those in Christ.
Paul begins this passage with “therefore,” signaling that what he is going to say for the next several chapters is the practical outcropping of everything that he has said in the previous eleven chapters. One cannot truly understand the life to which Paul is calling believers without understanding God’s faithfulness and the life out of which he has called us all as well as the reality of the resurrection life that we now have. The incredible mercy that God has shown both Jew and Gentile in justifying them through his grace and creating the covenant family that he always promised informs us and elicits a response. When we take the time it should cause us to embrace the new freedom that God has lavished upon us in Christ. As Paul begins to describe what this will look like and the impact that it will have, he brings together at least six themes that are woven together throughout this book. When put together, we can step back and see the beautiful tapestry of the reality of living in God’s new creation.
The first theme is that of laying down our lives. Paul has said in chapter 6 that we die to our old Adamic humanity as we enter into the life of Christ at our baptism. Now he employs the language of a Temple sacrifice to make that point clear. The way to embrace the resurrection life is to offer your very self as a sacrifice to God. There are three aspects of this sacrifice that Paul delineates. When we sacrifice our entire lives to God, it is a sacrifice that is living, holy, and pleasing. By living, Paul doesn’t so much mean that we are still alive, but that the nature of the sacrifice is one that is living or ongoing and continual. We are called to be like the priests who would present or offer the sacrifice to God. When we do that in an ongoing fashion, God will find it holy, or set apart, and acceptable or pleasing to God.
Second, when we realize that we are to die to ourselves and our old way of doing things on an ongoing basis, then and only then will we find that we are engaging in true worship. As much as people tend to think of worship as something that really happens when we raise our hands, close our eyes, and sing really passionately, true worship happens when we offer every aspect of our lives and will to God. This is “true” worship, says Paul, using the Greek word “logiken,” which carries the meaning of appropriate worship that honors God by giving him what he wants and involves the entire human being, rather than simply going through the motions or offering the depraved self-serving worship of pagans who indulge their own wills.
But the way to truly offer oneself as a sacrifice to God so that we can embrace the life of Christ and offer true worship to God is not some esoteric act of vague spirituality. It is the rigorous and sometimes difficult work of no longer molding ourselves to the pattern of the world through changing the way we think about everything. The only way to present our whole selves to the Lord as a holy and pleasing sacrifice is to not conform to the world but go through the process of renewing our minds. Thus, simply claiming a new status doesn’t do much of anything for a Christian unless it is accompanied by an impassioned desire to change the way we think. We can no longer accept the way the world thinks about things. This involves examining every thought and every area of our lives (2 Cor. 10:5), as well as the implied need to know God’s word voraciously so that we have a new standard by which to judge and base our thoughts. Belonging to the resurrection life in Christ means living by the reality of God’s age to come, by his values and love rather than living as though we were still a living part of the present age.
This transformation, though, challenging and demanding as it may be, does not come through our own effort, it stands firmly on trusting that when we walk according to the leading of the Holy Spirit as Paul has described in chapter 8, that the futile thinking of humankind described in chapter 1 will be reversed. The crux of the futile thinking is in believing that our will is something worthy of listening to and following. Yet, going all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the problem for humans has been in following our own wills rather than God’s. That is a short definition of what sin is. Only in Christ can human beings truly connect with God’s will. It is in dying to self and fully embracing the life of Christ with the kind of attitude that Paul describes in Galatians 2:20 that we can finally come in contact with God’s will. We can finally identify it, recognize it, and realize it in our lives.
A very real part of this mind transformation is the realization that you are no longer an individual, living and thinking for yourself. This, too, is firmly built on the case that Paul has been making that God has welcomed those in Christ into the covenant family. We tend to think of even salvation in Christ as an individual process and event as though we get saved and then choose to attend church with a group of other believers that meet our needs, but this is not the biblical presentation. One should not think of him or herself more highly than you ought as though you are still living by your own will, for your own benefit, according to the values of the self-obsessed present age. The demand of being in Christ is to realize that we have died to ourselves and entered into the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13).
The new covenant family is not a group of individuals that simply agree to spend some extra time together. In Christ we have truly become the one family that corporately comprises the body of the Messiah. Each part has separate gifts and functions, but together we form the one body of Christ and the body of Christ can no more be separate than a foot can decide to leave the rest of the body. “Each member belongs to all the others,” says Paul. This is truly what a family is. The practical way that one works out being a sacrifice presented to God and living out his will is to realize that once we were not a people and had not connection with one another but now we are a people (1 Pet 2:10) that belongs to each other. This will only make sense when we understand the power of the resurrection in the present reality. Because Christ has risen and defeated death we can lay down our lives and take up the life of God’s resurrection age to come right now. But doing so, means to realize that every part of us, our mind, heart, soul, and body belong to Christ. This is where we must remind ourselves of the theme that Paul has alluded to often in this book. What is true of the Messiah is true of his people. That means, in a very real way, if we belong to Christ, then we belong to his people. We are the covenant family, moving through the world, calling it to reconciliation with God (2 Cor. 5:14-21; Col. 1:21-28), and living together as one entity. If the church were to embrace the true radical nature of the practical reality of the gospel in the lives of believers, God’s church would truly begin to turn the world upside down once again.
Devotional Thought
Could you look at your life right now and rightly say that it is still laid up on the altar in sacrifice to God or have you tried to crawl down from the altar and conform back to the pattern of the world by doing your own will at times? What area of your life is the most difficult to consistently sacrifice to God? What can you specifically do to change that starting right now?
1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is true worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Humble Service in the Body of Christ
3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. 4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.
Dig Deeper
I was recently at a website looking at a few reviews of a movie that I was considering going to see. Most of the reviews were not very good and so now I think I’ll save my time and money and not go to those movies. While I was there, however, I decided to look up the past reviews of a Christian movie named “Fireproof.” I had no other reason than that I was curious to see what secular movie reviewers had to say about a decidedly Christian movie that I happened to enjoy. I wasn’t surprised to see that the vast majority of them were very negative and critical but one stuck out to me in particular. He said that the major problem that the movie had was that it’s religious message was completely unrelatable to most audiences. He says that “the film gets all religulous, suggesting that [the lead character’s] devotion to healing means nothing without Jesus, and so Fireproof stops becoming relatable to us all and only to the already, or easily, indoctrinated.” It’s not that he said anything that was particularly surprising. Would you really expect a non-Christian to appreciate a film that is firmly based on the worldview that one must completely surrender their life to Jesus? No, that wasn’t a shock. What did hit me though was another thought. If non-Christians are so offended and so unable to relate to movies that have a Christian worldview, then why aren’t movies that have a non-Christian worldview so equally offensive and unrelatable to Christians?
The answer to that question is the very thing that Paul picks up on in this passage. Yes, Christians really have died to the old Adamic humanity and entered into the covenant family of God and begun the process of becoming the Spirit-led and transformed Messiah shaped humanity. But this isn’t all just lofty religious talk. The theology of the previous eleven chapters has real implications for the lives of individual persons who were once individuals separated from and in rebellion against God but are now part of God’s restored and renewed humanity. But that doesn’t all happen instantly. We are so conditioned by the mindset, worldview, and culture of the Adamic world in which we all grew up that it takes real, concerted effort to no longer be comfortable with that culture. That’s why non-Christians are more offended by Christian movies than vice-versa. The true Christian culture of the age to come is completely foreign and non-sensible to the non-Christian. What Paul calls for here is for Christians to make the values and culture of the present age just as foreign and non-sensible to those in Christ.
Paul begins this passage with “therefore,” signaling that what he is going to say for the next several chapters is the practical outcropping of everything that he has said in the previous eleven chapters. One cannot truly understand the life to which Paul is calling believers without understanding God’s faithfulness and the life out of which he has called us all as well as the reality of the resurrection life that we now have. The incredible mercy that God has shown both Jew and Gentile in justifying them through his grace and creating the covenant family that he always promised informs us and elicits a response. When we take the time it should cause us to embrace the new freedom that God has lavished upon us in Christ. As Paul begins to describe what this will look like and the impact that it will have, he brings together at least six themes that are woven together throughout this book. When put together, we can step back and see the beautiful tapestry of the reality of living in God’s new creation.
The first theme is that of laying down our lives. Paul has said in chapter 6 that we die to our old Adamic humanity as we enter into the life of Christ at our baptism. Now he employs the language of a Temple sacrifice to make that point clear. The way to embrace the resurrection life is to offer your very self as a sacrifice to God. There are three aspects of this sacrifice that Paul delineates. When we sacrifice our entire lives to God, it is a sacrifice that is living, holy, and pleasing. By living, Paul doesn’t so much mean that we are still alive, but that the nature of the sacrifice is one that is living or ongoing and continual. We are called to be like the priests who would present or offer the sacrifice to God. When we do that in an ongoing fashion, God will find it holy, or set apart, and acceptable or pleasing to God.
Second, when we realize that we are to die to ourselves and our old way of doing things on an ongoing basis, then and only then will we find that we are engaging in true worship. As much as people tend to think of worship as something that really happens when we raise our hands, close our eyes, and sing really passionately, true worship happens when we offer every aspect of our lives and will to God. This is “true” worship, says Paul, using the Greek word “logiken,” which carries the meaning of appropriate worship that honors God by giving him what he wants and involves the entire human being, rather than simply going through the motions or offering the depraved self-serving worship of pagans who indulge their own wills.
But the way to truly offer oneself as a sacrifice to God so that we can embrace the life of Christ and offer true worship to God is not some esoteric act of vague spirituality. It is the rigorous and sometimes difficult work of no longer molding ourselves to the pattern of the world through changing the way we think about everything. The only way to present our whole selves to the Lord as a holy and pleasing sacrifice is to not conform to the world but go through the process of renewing our minds. Thus, simply claiming a new status doesn’t do much of anything for a Christian unless it is accompanied by an impassioned desire to change the way we think. We can no longer accept the way the world thinks about things. This involves examining every thought and every area of our lives (2 Cor. 10:5), as well as the implied need to know God’s word voraciously so that we have a new standard by which to judge and base our thoughts. Belonging to the resurrection life in Christ means living by the reality of God’s age to come, by his values and love rather than living as though we were still a living part of the present age.
This transformation, though, challenging and demanding as it may be, does not come through our own effort, it stands firmly on trusting that when we walk according to the leading of the Holy Spirit as Paul has described in chapter 8, that the futile thinking of humankind described in chapter 1 will be reversed. The crux of the futile thinking is in believing that our will is something worthy of listening to and following. Yet, going all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the problem for humans has been in following our own wills rather than God’s. That is a short definition of what sin is. Only in Christ can human beings truly connect with God’s will. It is in dying to self and fully embracing the life of Christ with the kind of attitude that Paul describes in Galatians 2:20 that we can finally come in contact with God’s will. We can finally identify it, recognize it, and realize it in our lives.
A very real part of this mind transformation is the realization that you are no longer an individual, living and thinking for yourself. This, too, is firmly built on the case that Paul has been making that God has welcomed those in Christ into the covenant family. We tend to think of even salvation in Christ as an individual process and event as though we get saved and then choose to attend church with a group of other believers that meet our needs, but this is not the biblical presentation. One should not think of him or herself more highly than you ought as though you are still living by your own will, for your own benefit, according to the values of the self-obsessed present age. The demand of being in Christ is to realize that we have died to ourselves and entered into the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13).
The new covenant family is not a group of individuals that simply agree to spend some extra time together. In Christ we have truly become the one family that corporately comprises the body of the Messiah. Each part has separate gifts and functions, but together we form the one body of Christ and the body of Christ can no more be separate than a foot can decide to leave the rest of the body. “Each member belongs to all the others,” says Paul. This is truly what a family is. The practical way that one works out being a sacrifice presented to God and living out his will is to realize that once we were not a people and had not connection with one another but now we are a people (1 Pet 2:10) that belongs to each other. This will only make sense when we understand the power of the resurrection in the present reality. Because Christ has risen and defeated death we can lay down our lives and take up the life of God’s resurrection age to come right now. But doing so, means to realize that every part of us, our mind, heart, soul, and body belong to Christ. This is where we must remind ourselves of the theme that Paul has alluded to often in this book. What is true of the Messiah is true of his people. That means, in a very real way, if we belong to Christ, then we belong to his people. We are the covenant family, moving through the world, calling it to reconciliation with God (2 Cor. 5:14-21; Col. 1:21-28), and living together as one entity. If the church were to embrace the true radical nature of the practical reality of the gospel in the lives of believers, God’s church would truly begin to turn the world upside down once again.
Devotional Thought
Could you look at your life right now and rightly say that it is still laid up on the altar in sacrifice to God or have you tried to crawl down from the altar and conform back to the pattern of the world by doing your own will at times? What area of your life is the most difficult to consistently sacrifice to God? What can you specifically do to change that starting right now?
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Romans 11:33-36
Doxology
33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and [i] knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
34 "Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?" [j]
35 "Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay them?" [k]
36 For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.
Dig Deeper
My wife and I were recently returned to South Africa for a trip that involved a lot of teaching but was just as much about renewing some great friendships that we have there. Near the end of our three weeks there, some very good friends of ours took us on a special trip to a place called Tsitsikamma. It was one of the most most beautiful places that I have ever been to in my entire life. Spending two days there was truly an incredible experience that we will never forget and was full of unforgettable memories. On the way back from the area, we stopped at a large gas station and restaurant complex along the road. As we got out, our friends insisted that we walk down this highway with them that headed away from the complex. They said they wanted to show us a bridge. My first thoughts were that this was a little strange. I had seen plenty of bridges and I wasn’t particularly fond of walking along the side of a highway. We went perhaps a hundred yards and then came to a narrow walkway that was part of the bridge but still on the side of the highway.
As we walked further out over the chasm that the bridge spanned, I realized that it was fairly windy and the way seemed rather precarious. To my right was speeding cars whizzing past, but on my left was a precipitous drop off. I still didn’t see much of the point of all of this until suddenly we stopped in the middle of the bridge and our friends told us to look down. I carefully braced myself against the short fence and peered over the side. Suddenly I was exhilarated. I was standing over the largest drop and the biggest bridge I had ever been on in my life. I had never seen anything like that and it was hard to comprehend. Looking down into was frightening and enthralling all at the same time. It was so majestic and yet there still felt like an element of danger to looking over the side. After standing and looking over for quite some time, I did what any normal person would do (at least humor me that this is what normal people would do). First I spit over the side but the bridge was so high that I lost site of the spit long before it got anywhere near the bottom. Not to be deterred, I threw a coin over and timed it to see how long it would take to hit the bottom. I don’t remember the exact time it took, but it seemed like it took forever.
Paul uses a series of quotations and allusions in this doxology that come from Isaiah, Job, and the Psalms, but overall, it has a Psalm-like feel to it. And that is perfectly appropriate. Paul has taken us through a pattern that is typical for the Psalms. He has brought up a problem and wrestled through it, asking the question of how God is going to work and still be faithful to his word in all of this. Finally, he works out the problem and sees things more clearly, if not perfectly, and breaks out into unadulterated praise of God. He has made his way through a confusing and rather thorny issue, trying to work out God’s covenant purposes and demonstrating that through the Messiah he has shown himself to be righteous and faithful to his promises. The walk was difficult but now we have arrived at the end and as we look back at everything that Paul has discovered about God’s plans and his mercy shown in the Messiah, we realize just how far we have come and how exhilarating it is. Sure, there are areas where we can go too far in one direction or the other and come up with some strange ways to take what Paul has tried to say, but as we stand braced at the top of the summit, we can see the breathtaking reality that Paul has uncovered. All of God’s promises are truly “yes” in the Messiah. He has done exactly what he said he would do even though it was in a far more subtle, crazy, complex, baffling, and beautiful way.
Before we look at Paul’s exuberant praise of God, however, we would do well to consider one more aspect of what Paul has said up to this point. Paul has laid out the truth that God had chosen ethnic Israel as his people but that they rebelled against their purposes because they were susceptible to the same problem of sin that the pagan world, born in Adam, was prey to. Israel was hardened, meaning that they had rebelled against God’s will and God delayed judgment, giving them time to repent. They did not use that time to repent, however, and continued in their unbelief, yet God used that very rejection of the Messiah to open the door to bring mercy to the remnant of ethnic Israel and to the Gentiles. Paul’s hope was that the coming in of the Gentiles would spur the rebellious Jews that were still part of hardened Israel into the kingdom. Paul believed that hardening was the process where judgment was delayed so that first, the hardened would have the opportunity to repent; second, God would use the intervening time to further his own purposes; and third, when God did enact judgment, it would be clear that he had acted justly. This all raises the question, though. Was there a specific time when the hardening of the nation of Israel would come to an end and the judgment of God would no longer be delayed? The short answer would seem to be yes, and that that judgment happened in 70 AD when the Temple was destroyed and Jerusalem was largely destroyed. This event clearly declared that God had come in judgment and vindicated Jesus as the Messiah that he said he was all along. This is what Jesus referred to in Matthew 16:28 when he promised that some people that were listening to him that day would still be alive when (using apocalyptic language from Daniel 7) he would be vindicated by God and come into his kingdom, which was language that signaled that he would “come” or “enact judgment” in his kingdom. This coming, we need to note, should not be confused with the “second coming” at the time of the resurrection.
But in Paul’s mind, he has climbed the mountain and shown how incredible God’s plan is and the only reasonable response for Paul is pure praise. “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom,” says Paul. God’s wisdom is unspeakably greater than anyone could have imagined. Rather than questioning God’s faithfulness, the proper response is to marvel at his wisdom. His judgments, rather than being unjust, are unsearchably faithful. Even when one doesn’t understand God’s ways, faith in his righteousness should be our instinct. His paths are straight but so incredible that no one could have guessed that this is how God has worked. The knowledge of God, meaning his knowledge of us and his ways, is truly wonderful beyond our ability to every fully comprehend. We can apprehend the greatness of God’s ways but never fully comprehend them.
In Isaiah 40 and Job 41, we have two of the most exuberant and strongly worded statements concerning the incredible and unquestionable sovereignty of God in the entire Bible. It is from Isaiah 40:13 that Paul draws his first two questions in verse 34, while his third question comes from a loose quotation of Job 41:13. His point of the three questions is that God’s ways and purposes are so incredible and so complex, yet so simple that no human being could match this kind of thinking or make it up. No human could come up with this. No one could put this sort of plan into effect through their own power and put God in their debt to forgive them. This could only come about through the power and mercy of God.
Paul has seemingly laid out each of his rhetorical questions to match up with his three statements from verse 33 in a chiastic (ABCCBA) pattern. Thus: The depth of his riches relate to “Who has ever given to God that God should repay them?”; his unserachable judgments relate to “who has been his counselor?”; and his paths beyond tracing out relates to “who has known the mind of the Lord?” The implied answer to each of the rhetorical questions is presumably “no,” but perhaps Paul wants us to see something deeper than that. Can any human know all of this? The answer is that no human can understand what God is doing but Jesus Christ is the embodiment of wisdom. He alone can grasp God’s plan, fulfill it and act on it. This would mean that Paul wants his readers to see that the answer to “who can know all of this,” is “no one, except Jesus Christ, who has revealed in his own life the very plan of God for reconciling his covenant family to himself.”
Paul ends this brief hymn of praise by pointing out that God is the source, the sustainer, and the goal of all things. He is truly the one worthy of glory forever. Humans have failed to give God proper glory (Rom. 1:21) and have subsequently fallen short of that glory (Rom. 3:23). Abraham was called into the family of God and gave God glory (Rom. 4:20) because he knew that God would keep his promises. Now, for those in Christ, the glory is restored (Rom. 5:2; 8:30), but ultimately, the glory rightly belongs to God. He is truly worthy of glory and praise.
In the opening story I mentioned that once I realized how incredible, breathtaking, and majestic was the view at which I could look down upon from the bridge, my immediate response was to spit and then to throw a coin from the bridge. Why would I feel the need to do that? Because once I grasped the sheer majesty and height of where I was, I wanted to see how that worked out practically. What did it mean? How high was I really? In a sense, this is what Paul is about to do for the next four chapters of this letter. He has addressed the question of God’s covenant faithfulness and has shown just how incredible and deep the answer is. Now as he stands looking down on the majesty of God’s wisdom, Paul wants to show exactly how this all works out practically; What this all means on a day-to-day basis for God’s people. As he works it out in the real world, we will realize that it is no less breath-taking than unsearchable truths he has laid out so far.
Devotional Thought
How often do you take the time to take a step back like Paul does here and just consider how incredible God and his paths really are? Take an extra ten or fifteen minutes, at least, in your prayer time today to do this and to give God the praise he deserves.
33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and [i] knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
34 "Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?" [j]
35 "Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay them?" [k]
36 For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.
Dig Deeper
My wife and I were recently returned to South Africa for a trip that involved a lot of teaching but was just as much about renewing some great friendships that we have there. Near the end of our three weeks there, some very good friends of ours took us on a special trip to a place called Tsitsikamma. It was one of the most most beautiful places that I have ever been to in my entire life. Spending two days there was truly an incredible experience that we will never forget and was full of unforgettable memories. On the way back from the area, we stopped at a large gas station and restaurant complex along the road. As we got out, our friends insisted that we walk down this highway with them that headed away from the complex. They said they wanted to show us a bridge. My first thoughts were that this was a little strange. I had seen plenty of bridges and I wasn’t particularly fond of walking along the side of a highway. We went perhaps a hundred yards and then came to a narrow walkway that was part of the bridge but still on the side of the highway.
As we walked further out over the chasm that the bridge spanned, I realized that it was fairly windy and the way seemed rather precarious. To my right was speeding cars whizzing past, but on my left was a precipitous drop off. I still didn’t see much of the point of all of this until suddenly we stopped in the middle of the bridge and our friends told us to look down. I carefully braced myself against the short fence and peered over the side. Suddenly I was exhilarated. I was standing over the largest drop and the biggest bridge I had ever been on in my life. I had never seen anything like that and it was hard to comprehend. Looking down into was frightening and enthralling all at the same time. It was so majestic and yet there still felt like an element of danger to looking over the side. After standing and looking over for quite some time, I did what any normal person would do (at least humor me that this is what normal people would do). First I spit over the side but the bridge was so high that I lost site of the spit long before it got anywhere near the bottom. Not to be deterred, I threw a coin over and timed it to see how long it would take to hit the bottom. I don’t remember the exact time it took, but it seemed like it took forever.
Paul uses a series of quotations and allusions in this doxology that come from Isaiah, Job, and the Psalms, but overall, it has a Psalm-like feel to it. And that is perfectly appropriate. Paul has taken us through a pattern that is typical for the Psalms. He has brought up a problem and wrestled through it, asking the question of how God is going to work and still be faithful to his word in all of this. Finally, he works out the problem and sees things more clearly, if not perfectly, and breaks out into unadulterated praise of God. He has made his way through a confusing and rather thorny issue, trying to work out God’s covenant purposes and demonstrating that through the Messiah he has shown himself to be righteous and faithful to his promises. The walk was difficult but now we have arrived at the end and as we look back at everything that Paul has discovered about God’s plans and his mercy shown in the Messiah, we realize just how far we have come and how exhilarating it is. Sure, there are areas where we can go too far in one direction or the other and come up with some strange ways to take what Paul has tried to say, but as we stand braced at the top of the summit, we can see the breathtaking reality that Paul has uncovered. All of God’s promises are truly “yes” in the Messiah. He has done exactly what he said he would do even though it was in a far more subtle, crazy, complex, baffling, and beautiful way.
Before we look at Paul’s exuberant praise of God, however, we would do well to consider one more aspect of what Paul has said up to this point. Paul has laid out the truth that God had chosen ethnic Israel as his people but that they rebelled against their purposes because they were susceptible to the same problem of sin that the pagan world, born in Adam, was prey to. Israel was hardened, meaning that they had rebelled against God’s will and God delayed judgment, giving them time to repent. They did not use that time to repent, however, and continued in their unbelief, yet God used that very rejection of the Messiah to open the door to bring mercy to the remnant of ethnic Israel and to the Gentiles. Paul’s hope was that the coming in of the Gentiles would spur the rebellious Jews that were still part of hardened Israel into the kingdom. Paul believed that hardening was the process where judgment was delayed so that first, the hardened would have the opportunity to repent; second, God would use the intervening time to further his own purposes; and third, when God did enact judgment, it would be clear that he had acted justly. This all raises the question, though. Was there a specific time when the hardening of the nation of Israel would come to an end and the judgment of God would no longer be delayed? The short answer would seem to be yes, and that that judgment happened in 70 AD when the Temple was destroyed and Jerusalem was largely destroyed. This event clearly declared that God had come in judgment and vindicated Jesus as the Messiah that he said he was all along. This is what Jesus referred to in Matthew 16:28 when he promised that some people that were listening to him that day would still be alive when (using apocalyptic language from Daniel 7) he would be vindicated by God and come into his kingdom, which was language that signaled that he would “come” or “enact judgment” in his kingdom. This coming, we need to note, should not be confused with the “second coming” at the time of the resurrection.
But in Paul’s mind, he has climbed the mountain and shown how incredible God’s plan is and the only reasonable response for Paul is pure praise. “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom,” says Paul. God’s wisdom is unspeakably greater than anyone could have imagined. Rather than questioning God’s faithfulness, the proper response is to marvel at his wisdom. His judgments, rather than being unjust, are unsearchably faithful. Even when one doesn’t understand God’s ways, faith in his righteousness should be our instinct. His paths are straight but so incredible that no one could have guessed that this is how God has worked. The knowledge of God, meaning his knowledge of us and his ways, is truly wonderful beyond our ability to every fully comprehend. We can apprehend the greatness of God’s ways but never fully comprehend them.
In Isaiah 40 and Job 41, we have two of the most exuberant and strongly worded statements concerning the incredible and unquestionable sovereignty of God in the entire Bible. It is from Isaiah 40:13 that Paul draws his first two questions in verse 34, while his third question comes from a loose quotation of Job 41:13. His point of the three questions is that God’s ways and purposes are so incredible and so complex, yet so simple that no human being could match this kind of thinking or make it up. No human could come up with this. No one could put this sort of plan into effect through their own power and put God in their debt to forgive them. This could only come about through the power and mercy of God.
Paul has seemingly laid out each of his rhetorical questions to match up with his three statements from verse 33 in a chiastic (ABCCBA) pattern. Thus: The depth of his riches relate to “Who has ever given to God that God should repay them?”; his unserachable judgments relate to “who has been his counselor?”; and his paths beyond tracing out relates to “who has known the mind of the Lord?” The implied answer to each of the rhetorical questions is presumably “no,” but perhaps Paul wants us to see something deeper than that. Can any human know all of this? The answer is that no human can understand what God is doing but Jesus Christ is the embodiment of wisdom. He alone can grasp God’s plan, fulfill it and act on it. This would mean that Paul wants his readers to see that the answer to “who can know all of this,” is “no one, except Jesus Christ, who has revealed in his own life the very plan of God for reconciling his covenant family to himself.”
Paul ends this brief hymn of praise by pointing out that God is the source, the sustainer, and the goal of all things. He is truly the one worthy of glory forever. Humans have failed to give God proper glory (Rom. 1:21) and have subsequently fallen short of that glory (Rom. 3:23). Abraham was called into the family of God and gave God glory (Rom. 4:20) because he knew that God would keep his promises. Now, for those in Christ, the glory is restored (Rom. 5:2; 8:30), but ultimately, the glory rightly belongs to God. He is truly worthy of glory and praise.
In the opening story I mentioned that once I realized how incredible, breathtaking, and majestic was the view at which I could look down upon from the bridge, my immediate response was to spit and then to throw a coin from the bridge. Why would I feel the need to do that? Because once I grasped the sheer majesty and height of where I was, I wanted to see how that worked out practically. What did it mean? How high was I really? In a sense, this is what Paul is about to do for the next four chapters of this letter. He has addressed the question of God’s covenant faithfulness and has shown just how incredible and deep the answer is. Now as he stands looking down on the majesty of God’s wisdom, Paul wants to show exactly how this all works out practically; What this all means on a day-to-day basis for God’s people. As he works it out in the real world, we will realize that it is no less breath-taking than unsearchable truths he has laid out so far.
Devotional Thought
How often do you take the time to take a step back like Paul does here and just consider how incredible God and his paths really are? Take an extra ten or fifteen minutes, at least, in your prayer time today to do this and to give God the praise he deserves.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
romans 11:25-32
All Israel Will Be Saved
25 I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not think you are superior: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, 26 and in this way [e] all Israel will be saved. As it is written:
"The deliverer will come from Zion;
he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.
27 And this is [f] my covenant with them
when I take away their sins." [g]
28 As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, 29 for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable. 30 Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, 31 so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now [h] receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you. 32 For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.
Dig Deeper
I heard a lot of sermons growing up between Sunday morning services, Sunday nigh services, Wednesday night services, and even weekly chapel services at the Christian school that I went to as a young man. With all of those sermons under my belt I cannot remember the exact setting, but I do remember hearing a sermon that was based in part, at least, on this passage in Romans 11. The point made then was that at some point before the “end of the world” that all Jews were going to be saved. I didn’t really understand all that was being said at the time, and, in fairness, I cannot completely recall the complete context of the sermon, but I do remember thinking how unfair it seemed that Jews were going to get saved just because they were Jews. Since that time, though, I have heard many a preacher on television preach just that. There is one famous television preacher that has become one of the leading proponents of the rather curious modern evangelical teaching that when Christ returns all of the Jews will receive salvation solely because they are part of the Jewish nation. He goes so far as to claim that there are dual covenants in play. One covenant is for the Jews and gives them automatic salvation while the other is the covenant of Christ. According to this teaching, there will be millions of Jews that receive salvation without ever having entered into Christ in this age.
But is this really what Paul is talking about in this passage? Can we simply take a handful of words out of this passage and build a whole theology around it that seems to flatly contradict everything else that Paul has said up to this point? Can we possibly allow for a reading that creates a covenant that lies outside of the mercy found in the life of the Messiah? Or is there some future moment when all of ethnic Israel will inexplicably turn to Christ? Who is the Israel to whom Paul refers here? How is it that all of Israel will be saved? This dense little section elicits a whole bevy of questions. Let’s see if we can find some answers.
Paul has tried to carefully show that there is no difference between Jew and Gentile in their need for the Messiah and their need to respond to the grace shown in the gospel by faith. It is in the Messiah that God’s covenant promises of having one family that would have their sin be dealt with have been answered. “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God” (2 Cor. 1:20). Paul has also wanted to show the Gentile Christians that God’s family is still just as open to Jews as it is to Gentiles. In helping them to see this, Paul has had some rather stern words for the Gentile believers. Yet, he wants to assure them of their status as well. They really are his beloved brothers and sisters in Christ. They are part of the family, there are just some things that he desperately does not want them to be ignorant. Paul is not introducing something new in this passage but actually begins verse 25 with the word “for” (omitted in the TNIV) which signals that he is beginning to summarize what he has said up to this point.
The mystery that Paul wants them to see is the revelation of the life of Christ that has brought together Jews and Gentiles into one family (see Eph. 2 & 3). He wants them to fully grasp God’s plan so that they will not fall into thinking that they are somehow superior in their covenant status over and against the Jewish people. What has happened to Israel? Have they really been cut off completely? Paul sums up what he has been saying all along, declaring that they have been hardened. Or in other words, their judgment for rebellion has been delayed so that they can either repent or stand fully guilty when God finally does bring judgment, but in the meantime God will use that time and the rebellion for his own purposes. We need two quick clarifiers on verse 25 before we move on. The word “part” should probably be understood to describe “Israel” rather than “hardening”. Also, “the full number of the Gentiles” likely refers to a level of completion, such as when the gospel was announced to all nations, rather than a specific and predetermined mathematical number. Thus, it would be best to understand the latter half of verse 25 to read, “A hardening has come upon part of Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in.” Part of Israel has continued in their unbelief and come into hardening while another smaller part of Israel has become the remnant that has entered into the Messiah.
This is the way of the process that “all Israel will be saved.” Those five words have become some of the most controversial and misused words in the entire Bible. The big question here is who is the Israel to which Paul refers. Does he mean every single Jew? Does he mean some number of elect Jews? Does he mean the nation of Israel as an entity but not every single Jew? Or does he mean something else altogether? It is true that in verse 25, Paul uses Israel to refer the nation of Israel, yet Paul has prepared us since the opening of this section for the fact that he is redefining Israel, “For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel” (9:6). But Paul’s redefinition of Israel goes far beyond one or two verses. It was one of the primary themes of his writing and ministry. True Jews were Jews inwardly by the Spirit (Rom. 2:29) and “those who have the faith of Abraham” (Rom. 4:16). All those in Christ are Abraham’s seed and heirs of the promise (Gal. 3:26-29). Jewish and Gentile Christians are the true circumcision group that put no confidence in the flesh (Phil. 3:3-4). Those who live by faith in the life of Christ alone are the true Israel of God (Gal. 6:12-16). It’s not that Israel had been exchanged, replaced, superseded, or reaffirmed for what they were. Israel had been transformed through the death and resurrection of the Messiah so that Israel was now the Israel that God had always promised. God has created one new humanity out of the two (Eph. 2:15). Paul is thus summarizing what he said in 10:13. “All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Part of Israel had undergone hardening and through that action, God has brought in those who chose to be part of the remnant of ethnic Israel to join together with the fullness of the Gentiles to become the one true family of God. All Israel, then, is all those who call on the name of the Lord, and all who do that will be saved.
We must remember that if Paul is offering some future salvation to ethnic Israel, this would hardly be a fulfillment of the promises that God gave to Abraham. God had made covenant promises to Israel and this is how they have been fulfilled. Paul has shown how Israel has been redrawn to the shape of the Messiah. Those in the Messiah are Abraham’s seed, they are the true Israel and “yes,” says Paul we can now see how God has been faithful to his promises to Israel. He promised to bless the whole world through Abraham’s descendants and he promised to have one family of many nations, a people whose sins would be dealt with. God has been faithful to his promises. The resurrection and the gospel declaration of it do really demonstrate the righteousness of God.
The biblical quotes in verses 26 and 27 are Paul’s attempts to demonstrate that how God dealt with Israel and their sins in the past is exactly what he is doing now in saving Israel. Paul quotes from Isaiah 59:20-21; Jeremiah 31:33-34; and Isaiah 27:9. Paul is not implying that Jews somehow have a private path to salvation apart from Christ or the Gentiles. The covenant that God promised to Israel has been fulfilled in the Messiah. Theologian Tom Wright says, “Taken together, Isaiah 59:20, Jeremiah 31:33-34 and Isaiah 27:9 speak, not of special privilege coming to Israel aside from the Gentiles, but of God working for the benefit of Gentiles through the fulfillment of the covenant with Israel.” The substance of the covenant was that God would take away the sins of his people and he has done that. The Messiah has come from Zion and has turned godlessness away from his people. The Christ -shaped people have finally been revealed.
Beginning in verse 28, Paul will lay out what he has been saying about Israel’s role. Ethnic Israel is not the enemy of God’s people, but they have certainly set themselves up as enemies of the gospel. They have rejected God’s plan, but they are loved by God because they were the people of God. Paul is not advocating the idea in verses 28-29 that every Jew in some future generation will be saved because they are part of the elect and always will be. His point is the one he has been making throughout the chapter. God loves the Jewish people. They are Abraham’s descendants and he has not completely cut them off as some accursed brood. The true Israel was and would always be open to the Jewish people who wished to join the remnant in Christ. God will continue to yearn for their salvation. The original relationship he had with them cannot be broken. He desires them to join into the family of the Messiah.
This leads Paul to his thoughts in verses 30-32. Gentile Christians need urgently to learn a clear lesson. The Gentiles, as Paul has already shown, were clearly once in disobedience to God. But they had received mercy as a result of the disobedience of the Jews. The Jews had rejected the Messiah and that created the conditions, in a sense, for the family to be fully thrown open to all people. But Jews, lest they think something different, can also benefit from their own disobedience. The Jews disobeyed God and brought about the death of the Messiah, and subsequently rejected him. This disobedience opened the door for mercy to be shown to the Gentiles, and this mercy created the space and jealousy through which they could now come back to the covenant family themselves. If the entire nation of Israel had immediately embraced the gospel we can speculate that this would have left them thinking that they were entitled to this status and that the Gentiles were, at best, second class citizens. But no, both groups were given over to their disobedience. The Gentile nation was shut out from God’s family so that when it was opened up to them, they could see the truth that their entry into the family was solely a result of God’s grace. In the same way, the nation of Israel had been given over to their disobedience and shut out from God’s family. That way when any Jews returned to the covenant family in the Messiah, they too would see that it was due to nothing else than God’s mercy.
God has acted in the death and resurrection of the Messiah and created the covenant family, the people who would have their sins taken away, just as he had always promised. But he has worked in such an incredible way to show both Jew and Gentile that they are part of God’s family based on nothing else than God’s own mercy to them. This truth and the way that God has worked to bring it about is so incredible that it truly should leave us with no other response than genuine and unfettered praise and worship of God. And this is exactly what Paul is about to do as he closes chapter 11.
Devotional Thought
Have you ever really spent time dwelling on your own disobedience to God before entering into Christ and how it actually magnifies God’s mercy in your life? How can you share with a non-Christian today the incredible and matchless mercy that God has shown in your life?
25 I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not think you are superior: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, 26 and in this way [e] all Israel will be saved. As it is written:
"The deliverer will come from Zion;
he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.
27 And this is [f] my covenant with them
when I take away their sins." [g]
28 As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, 29 for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable. 30 Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, 31 so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now [h] receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you. 32 For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.
Dig Deeper
I heard a lot of sermons growing up between Sunday morning services, Sunday nigh services, Wednesday night services, and even weekly chapel services at the Christian school that I went to as a young man. With all of those sermons under my belt I cannot remember the exact setting, but I do remember hearing a sermon that was based in part, at least, on this passage in Romans 11. The point made then was that at some point before the “end of the world” that all Jews were going to be saved. I didn’t really understand all that was being said at the time, and, in fairness, I cannot completely recall the complete context of the sermon, but I do remember thinking how unfair it seemed that Jews were going to get saved just because they were Jews. Since that time, though, I have heard many a preacher on television preach just that. There is one famous television preacher that has become one of the leading proponents of the rather curious modern evangelical teaching that when Christ returns all of the Jews will receive salvation solely because they are part of the Jewish nation. He goes so far as to claim that there are dual covenants in play. One covenant is for the Jews and gives them automatic salvation while the other is the covenant of Christ. According to this teaching, there will be millions of Jews that receive salvation without ever having entered into Christ in this age.
But is this really what Paul is talking about in this passage? Can we simply take a handful of words out of this passage and build a whole theology around it that seems to flatly contradict everything else that Paul has said up to this point? Can we possibly allow for a reading that creates a covenant that lies outside of the mercy found in the life of the Messiah? Or is there some future moment when all of ethnic Israel will inexplicably turn to Christ? Who is the Israel to whom Paul refers here? How is it that all of Israel will be saved? This dense little section elicits a whole bevy of questions. Let’s see if we can find some answers.
Paul has tried to carefully show that there is no difference between Jew and Gentile in their need for the Messiah and their need to respond to the grace shown in the gospel by faith. It is in the Messiah that God’s covenant promises of having one family that would have their sin be dealt with have been answered. “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God” (2 Cor. 1:20). Paul has also wanted to show the Gentile Christians that God’s family is still just as open to Jews as it is to Gentiles. In helping them to see this, Paul has had some rather stern words for the Gentile believers. Yet, he wants to assure them of their status as well. They really are his beloved brothers and sisters in Christ. They are part of the family, there are just some things that he desperately does not want them to be ignorant. Paul is not introducing something new in this passage but actually begins verse 25 with the word “for” (omitted in the TNIV) which signals that he is beginning to summarize what he has said up to this point.
The mystery that Paul wants them to see is the revelation of the life of Christ that has brought together Jews and Gentiles into one family (see Eph. 2 & 3). He wants them to fully grasp God’s plan so that they will not fall into thinking that they are somehow superior in their covenant status over and against the Jewish people. What has happened to Israel? Have they really been cut off completely? Paul sums up what he has been saying all along, declaring that they have been hardened. Or in other words, their judgment for rebellion has been delayed so that they can either repent or stand fully guilty when God finally does bring judgment, but in the meantime God will use that time and the rebellion for his own purposes. We need two quick clarifiers on verse 25 before we move on. The word “part” should probably be understood to describe “Israel” rather than “hardening”. Also, “the full number of the Gentiles” likely refers to a level of completion, such as when the gospel was announced to all nations, rather than a specific and predetermined mathematical number. Thus, it would be best to understand the latter half of verse 25 to read, “A hardening has come upon part of Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in.” Part of Israel has continued in their unbelief and come into hardening while another smaller part of Israel has become the remnant that has entered into the Messiah.
This is the way of the process that “all Israel will be saved.” Those five words have become some of the most controversial and misused words in the entire Bible. The big question here is who is the Israel to which Paul refers. Does he mean every single Jew? Does he mean some number of elect Jews? Does he mean the nation of Israel as an entity but not every single Jew? Or does he mean something else altogether? It is true that in verse 25, Paul uses Israel to refer the nation of Israel, yet Paul has prepared us since the opening of this section for the fact that he is redefining Israel, “For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel” (9:6). But Paul’s redefinition of Israel goes far beyond one or two verses. It was one of the primary themes of his writing and ministry. True Jews were Jews inwardly by the Spirit (Rom. 2:29) and “those who have the faith of Abraham” (Rom. 4:16). All those in Christ are Abraham’s seed and heirs of the promise (Gal. 3:26-29). Jewish and Gentile Christians are the true circumcision group that put no confidence in the flesh (Phil. 3:3-4). Those who live by faith in the life of Christ alone are the true Israel of God (Gal. 6:12-16). It’s not that Israel had been exchanged, replaced, superseded, or reaffirmed for what they were. Israel had been transformed through the death and resurrection of the Messiah so that Israel was now the Israel that God had always promised. God has created one new humanity out of the two (Eph. 2:15). Paul is thus summarizing what he said in 10:13. “All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Part of Israel had undergone hardening and through that action, God has brought in those who chose to be part of the remnant of ethnic Israel to join together with the fullness of the Gentiles to become the one true family of God. All Israel, then, is all those who call on the name of the Lord, and all who do that will be saved.
We must remember that if Paul is offering some future salvation to ethnic Israel, this would hardly be a fulfillment of the promises that God gave to Abraham. God had made covenant promises to Israel and this is how they have been fulfilled. Paul has shown how Israel has been redrawn to the shape of the Messiah. Those in the Messiah are Abraham’s seed, they are the true Israel and “yes,” says Paul we can now see how God has been faithful to his promises to Israel. He promised to bless the whole world through Abraham’s descendants and he promised to have one family of many nations, a people whose sins would be dealt with. God has been faithful to his promises. The resurrection and the gospel declaration of it do really demonstrate the righteousness of God.
The biblical quotes in verses 26 and 27 are Paul’s attempts to demonstrate that how God dealt with Israel and their sins in the past is exactly what he is doing now in saving Israel. Paul quotes from Isaiah 59:20-21; Jeremiah 31:33-34; and Isaiah 27:9. Paul is not implying that Jews somehow have a private path to salvation apart from Christ or the Gentiles. The covenant that God promised to Israel has been fulfilled in the Messiah. Theologian Tom Wright says, “Taken together, Isaiah 59:20, Jeremiah 31:33-34 and Isaiah 27:9 speak, not of special privilege coming to Israel aside from the Gentiles, but of God working for the benefit of Gentiles through the fulfillment of the covenant with Israel.” The substance of the covenant was that God would take away the sins of his people and he has done that. The Messiah has come from Zion and has turned godlessness away from his people. The Christ -shaped people have finally been revealed.
Beginning in verse 28, Paul will lay out what he has been saying about Israel’s role. Ethnic Israel is not the enemy of God’s people, but they have certainly set themselves up as enemies of the gospel. They have rejected God’s plan, but they are loved by God because they were the people of God. Paul is not advocating the idea in verses 28-29 that every Jew in some future generation will be saved because they are part of the elect and always will be. His point is the one he has been making throughout the chapter. God loves the Jewish people. They are Abraham’s descendants and he has not completely cut them off as some accursed brood. The true Israel was and would always be open to the Jewish people who wished to join the remnant in Christ. God will continue to yearn for their salvation. The original relationship he had with them cannot be broken. He desires them to join into the family of the Messiah.
This leads Paul to his thoughts in verses 30-32. Gentile Christians need urgently to learn a clear lesson. The Gentiles, as Paul has already shown, were clearly once in disobedience to God. But they had received mercy as a result of the disobedience of the Jews. The Jews had rejected the Messiah and that created the conditions, in a sense, for the family to be fully thrown open to all people. But Jews, lest they think something different, can also benefit from their own disobedience. The Jews disobeyed God and brought about the death of the Messiah, and subsequently rejected him. This disobedience opened the door for mercy to be shown to the Gentiles, and this mercy created the space and jealousy through which they could now come back to the covenant family themselves. If the entire nation of Israel had immediately embraced the gospel we can speculate that this would have left them thinking that they were entitled to this status and that the Gentiles were, at best, second class citizens. But no, both groups were given over to their disobedience. The Gentile nation was shut out from God’s family so that when it was opened up to them, they could see the truth that their entry into the family was solely a result of God’s grace. In the same way, the nation of Israel had been given over to their disobedience and shut out from God’s family. That way when any Jews returned to the covenant family in the Messiah, they too would see that it was due to nothing else than God’s mercy.
God has acted in the death and resurrection of the Messiah and created the covenant family, the people who would have their sins taken away, just as he had always promised. But he has worked in such an incredible way to show both Jew and Gentile that they are part of God’s family based on nothing else than God’s own mercy to them. This truth and the way that God has worked to bring it about is so incredible that it truly should leave us with no other response than genuine and unfettered praise and worship of God. And this is exactly what Paul is about to do as he closes chapter 11.
Devotional Thought
Have you ever really spent time dwelling on your own disobedience to God before entering into Christ and how it actually magnifies God’s mercy in your life? How can you share with a non-Christian today the incredible and matchless mercy that God has shown in your life?
Monday, November 16, 2009
Romans 11:16-24
16 If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches. 17 If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, 18 do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. 19 You will say then, "Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in." 20 Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.
22 Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. 23 And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. 24 After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!
Dig Deeper
When I was coaching basketball I had a team one season that had a set group of five starters. They had started every game in the previous year and all five starters came back for the next season. As that second season with that group wore on, though, I noticed that they began to take on a sense of entitlement about being starters. They had actually begun to separate themselves from the rest of the team, thinking themselves as more privileged and different from everyone else. At the same time that all of that was going on, their play had begun to slip noticeably. So I decided to have a bit of a shake-up. I benched the entire starting unit for a game and started younger players. My intention was to send a strong message to those players that there was no inherent superiority to them as a group simply because they had been starting the games and playing most of the minutes. My plan worked and the young men got the message loud and clear but imagine if I had permanently removed them as starters and made the five younger players the starters for the rest of the season. What if I did that and then these new starters began to look down upon the old starters and question whether they should even be on the team? What if they started to begin to think of themselves as superior and started doing the same things that the original starters had done, forgetting that they were once sitting on the bench and being excluded by the starters?
Paul spent the first several chapters of this letter demonstrating that although there were advantages to being a Jew, that those advantages weren’t the type that made Jews better off or superior to the Gentiles in any way. They were both equally guilty before God and in need of him being faithful to the covenant promises through the resurrection of the Messiah. The unique situation in Rome was that the Jews, including Jewish Christians, had been expelled from Rome but were now returning. It seems that the Gentile Christians in Rome had gotten used to the idea of not having Jewish Christians around. So much so that they began to wonder whether God had just given up on the Jews altogether now. Sure there was an initial remnant group but now hadn’t it become obvious that God was turning the kingdom completely over to the Gentiles, as though there was now some special status given to Gentiles when it came to God’s covenant family? That kind of thinking, however, is very wrong-headed and dangerous as Paul is about to make clear. In fact, it is to make the same sort of mistake that the Jews of the Old Covenant had made concerning the Gentiles, only in reverse.
Paul offers up two quick analogies in verses 16 and 17 as he picks up the thought of Jews coming back to life spiritually just as the Messiah has risen from the dead. The first example he gives is that of the firstfruits. Part of a crop or batch would be sacrificed to God as an offering. It would sanctify or make holy the rest of the batch and show that it was dedicated to God and also appeal to God to bring in the rest of the crop. In a similar fashion, Paul’s hope is that the remnant of Jewish believers will serve as a type of firstfruits.
The Jewish people have their roots as God’s people, so even if some branches are broken off, as we transition from the first analogy to the second, there is still hope. Paul takes advantage of the common knowledge that people would have had about olive trees to make a firm point. The branches have been broken off from the tree because of their lack of belief in the Messiah. That much is not in dispute. Paul still holds firm to the fact that faith in the life of the Messiah is the only means to true covenant status as the people of God. The root of the tree of being the people of God is a decidedly Jewish root. The branches have been broken off and that has benefited the Gentiles who are like wild olive shoots who were commonly grafted into the olive tree to bring new life to it.
What Paul wants the Gentile Christians to understand in no uncertain terms is the foolishness of beginning to think that God has turned his back completely on all Jewish people. The nation of Israel as a whole has hardened, that is true, and God has used them for his overall purposes. But that, by no means, is a signal that Jews cannot still come to faith in the Messiah and be renewed as the people of God just as surely as Gentiles have been grafted into the family. Holding such a position would be arrogant and would be to forget that the root of the tree is still a Jewish root. That should be respected. If they start buying into the idea that Jews have been completely cut off then a form of reverse prejudice would come into play. Whereas Paul has criticized the fact that Israel began to think of the covenant family as their special status and belonging simply because of their ethnic identity, the Gentiles would be, in fact, committing the same act of arrogance if they began to believe that ethnic identity was a marker after all, but that it was the Gentiles who were in and the Jews who were out.
The branches were not broken off for being Jewish branches. They were broken off because they did not believe in the Messiah. They trusted ethnic identity and birth status. If those branches were broken off because they clung to belief in things other than the life of the Messiah, then the Gentile Christians had better take heed. To think that someone could not become a Christian simply because they were Jews and had been cut off by God would be the same act of unbelief that the nation of Israel had taken part in. If God did not spare them, Gentiles should not look for any such sparing either for the same act. Again, it is important to note that Paul is speaking in terms of groups not individuals. He is not arguing that someone will lose their salvation here but is arguing instead that these churches are in danger of embracing a false gospel, effectively cutting themselves off from true faith in the Messiah.
Paul asks his readers to remember two aspects of God that all people should keep in tension with one another. God is both kind and stern. He has shown his sternness to Israel and his kindness to those who have been grafted into the people of God. But they should not make the mistake of thinking that God will not show the same kind of sternness if they act in the same way that Israel did. God is kind but he is also just and faithful to his promises. He has promised all along to have one family built on faith and that is exactly what he will have. If any Jews do not persist in their unbelief they will be grafted back into the tree. The tree, after all, is the family of God, the Messiah. So Gentiles had better remember that if they start clinging to the thought that Jews have been cut out, then they are in reality embracing the thought that status in the family of the Messiah comes through something other than belief or unbelief in the Messiah. This would be tantamount to unbelief themselves. The Gentiles should not get cocky. If God has already done the difficult work of grafting the wild branches of the Gentile people into the tree, they should realize that it could be just as easy to graft back into the original tree the branches that had been cut off.
Thus, Paul has made his points regarding where Jewish people stand in regards to their future status in the kingdom of God. Paul takes seriously what he has stated in chapters 9 and 10. Jews who have not believed in the life of the Messiah really have been broken off from the tree and there is no going back on that. They will not simply be grafted back in because they are Jewish branches. The tree may be Jewish but the true Israel consists of all who have faith in the Messiah not those who are simply of Jewish descent (Rom. 9:6). The people of God would really be a single family based on resurrection faith as God had always promised. Yet Paul did not believe that there was any good reason that Jews could not continue to join the family of God. Any notion that they were cursed or rejected by God must be dismissed. In all of this, Paul has also made his serious point that the Gentiles need to make sure that they are clinging to faith in the life of the Messiah alone and not accepting some warped ideas that the family of God is now a Gentile-only family. That would be to think that the grace of God through the Messiah was tied to ethnicity after all. If they embrace that then they can expect God to deal with their church in the same way that he did with Israel. It also stands as a stern reminder to us that we stand in the covenant family of God on no other status than our faith in the life of Christ. Christ alone truly is our solid rock on which we stand.
Devotional Thought
Paul sternly warned the Gentiles not to fall into the type of thinking that said that anyone was beyond the reach of God’s mercy. Do you ever do that? Do you ever pass on sharing your faith with someone, thinking that they’ll never respond? How does Paul’s words here help to change your mind?
22 Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. 23 And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. 24 After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!
Dig Deeper
When I was coaching basketball I had a team one season that had a set group of five starters. They had started every game in the previous year and all five starters came back for the next season. As that second season with that group wore on, though, I noticed that they began to take on a sense of entitlement about being starters. They had actually begun to separate themselves from the rest of the team, thinking themselves as more privileged and different from everyone else. At the same time that all of that was going on, their play had begun to slip noticeably. So I decided to have a bit of a shake-up. I benched the entire starting unit for a game and started younger players. My intention was to send a strong message to those players that there was no inherent superiority to them as a group simply because they had been starting the games and playing most of the minutes. My plan worked and the young men got the message loud and clear but imagine if I had permanently removed them as starters and made the five younger players the starters for the rest of the season. What if I did that and then these new starters began to look down upon the old starters and question whether they should even be on the team? What if they started to begin to think of themselves as superior and started doing the same things that the original starters had done, forgetting that they were once sitting on the bench and being excluded by the starters?
Paul spent the first several chapters of this letter demonstrating that although there were advantages to being a Jew, that those advantages weren’t the type that made Jews better off or superior to the Gentiles in any way. They were both equally guilty before God and in need of him being faithful to the covenant promises through the resurrection of the Messiah. The unique situation in Rome was that the Jews, including Jewish Christians, had been expelled from Rome but were now returning. It seems that the Gentile Christians in Rome had gotten used to the idea of not having Jewish Christians around. So much so that they began to wonder whether God had just given up on the Jews altogether now. Sure there was an initial remnant group but now hadn’t it become obvious that God was turning the kingdom completely over to the Gentiles, as though there was now some special status given to Gentiles when it came to God’s covenant family? That kind of thinking, however, is very wrong-headed and dangerous as Paul is about to make clear. In fact, it is to make the same sort of mistake that the Jews of the Old Covenant had made concerning the Gentiles, only in reverse.
Paul offers up two quick analogies in verses 16 and 17 as he picks up the thought of Jews coming back to life spiritually just as the Messiah has risen from the dead. The first example he gives is that of the firstfruits. Part of a crop or batch would be sacrificed to God as an offering. It would sanctify or make holy the rest of the batch and show that it was dedicated to God and also appeal to God to bring in the rest of the crop. In a similar fashion, Paul’s hope is that the remnant of Jewish believers will serve as a type of firstfruits.
The Jewish people have their roots as God’s people, so even if some branches are broken off, as we transition from the first analogy to the second, there is still hope. Paul takes advantage of the common knowledge that people would have had about olive trees to make a firm point. The branches have been broken off from the tree because of their lack of belief in the Messiah. That much is not in dispute. Paul still holds firm to the fact that faith in the life of the Messiah is the only means to true covenant status as the people of God. The root of the tree of being the people of God is a decidedly Jewish root. The branches have been broken off and that has benefited the Gentiles who are like wild olive shoots who were commonly grafted into the olive tree to bring new life to it.
What Paul wants the Gentile Christians to understand in no uncertain terms is the foolishness of beginning to think that God has turned his back completely on all Jewish people. The nation of Israel as a whole has hardened, that is true, and God has used them for his overall purposes. But that, by no means, is a signal that Jews cannot still come to faith in the Messiah and be renewed as the people of God just as surely as Gentiles have been grafted into the family. Holding such a position would be arrogant and would be to forget that the root of the tree is still a Jewish root. That should be respected. If they start buying into the idea that Jews have been completely cut off then a form of reverse prejudice would come into play. Whereas Paul has criticized the fact that Israel began to think of the covenant family as their special status and belonging simply because of their ethnic identity, the Gentiles would be, in fact, committing the same act of arrogance if they began to believe that ethnic identity was a marker after all, but that it was the Gentiles who were in and the Jews who were out.
The branches were not broken off for being Jewish branches. They were broken off because they did not believe in the Messiah. They trusted ethnic identity and birth status. If those branches were broken off because they clung to belief in things other than the life of the Messiah, then the Gentile Christians had better take heed. To think that someone could not become a Christian simply because they were Jews and had been cut off by God would be the same act of unbelief that the nation of Israel had taken part in. If God did not spare them, Gentiles should not look for any such sparing either for the same act. Again, it is important to note that Paul is speaking in terms of groups not individuals. He is not arguing that someone will lose their salvation here but is arguing instead that these churches are in danger of embracing a false gospel, effectively cutting themselves off from true faith in the Messiah.
Paul asks his readers to remember two aspects of God that all people should keep in tension with one another. God is both kind and stern. He has shown his sternness to Israel and his kindness to those who have been grafted into the people of God. But they should not make the mistake of thinking that God will not show the same kind of sternness if they act in the same way that Israel did. God is kind but he is also just and faithful to his promises. He has promised all along to have one family built on faith and that is exactly what he will have. If any Jews do not persist in their unbelief they will be grafted back into the tree. The tree, after all, is the family of God, the Messiah. So Gentiles had better remember that if they start clinging to the thought that Jews have been cut out, then they are in reality embracing the thought that status in the family of the Messiah comes through something other than belief or unbelief in the Messiah. This would be tantamount to unbelief themselves. The Gentiles should not get cocky. If God has already done the difficult work of grafting the wild branches of the Gentile people into the tree, they should realize that it could be just as easy to graft back into the original tree the branches that had been cut off.
Thus, Paul has made his points regarding where Jewish people stand in regards to their future status in the kingdom of God. Paul takes seriously what he has stated in chapters 9 and 10. Jews who have not believed in the life of the Messiah really have been broken off from the tree and there is no going back on that. They will not simply be grafted back in because they are Jewish branches. The tree may be Jewish but the true Israel consists of all who have faith in the Messiah not those who are simply of Jewish descent (Rom. 9:6). The people of God would really be a single family based on resurrection faith as God had always promised. Yet Paul did not believe that there was any good reason that Jews could not continue to join the family of God. Any notion that they were cursed or rejected by God must be dismissed. In all of this, Paul has also made his serious point that the Gentiles need to make sure that they are clinging to faith in the life of the Messiah alone and not accepting some warped ideas that the family of God is now a Gentile-only family. That would be to think that the grace of God through the Messiah was tied to ethnicity after all. If they embrace that then they can expect God to deal with their church in the same way that he did with Israel. It also stands as a stern reminder to us that we stand in the covenant family of God on no other status than our faith in the life of Christ. Christ alone truly is our solid rock on which we stand.
Devotional Thought
Paul sternly warned the Gentiles not to fall into the type of thinking that said that anyone was beyond the reach of God’s mercy. Do you ever do that? Do you ever pass on sharing your faith with someone, thinking that they’ll never respond? How does Paul’s words here help to change your mind?
Romans 11:7-15
7 What then? What the people of Israel sought so earnestly they did not obtain. The elect among them did, but the others were hardened, 8 as it is written:
"God gave them a spirit of stupor,
eyes that could not see
and ears that could not hear,
to this very day." [c]
9 And David says:
"May their table become a snare and a trap,
a stumbling block and a retribution for them.
10 May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see,
and their backs be bent forever." [d]
Ingrafted Branches
11 Again I ask: Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. 12 But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their fullness bring!
13 I am talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I make much of my ministry 14 in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them. 15 For if their rejection brought reconciliation to the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?
Dig Deeper
Just recently we were home one night with our two sons but we also had five other kids that we were babysitting. It was quite a hectic scene but we’re fairly used to that sort of thing now after all these years. When it came time for supper we made something simple that most kids like, macaroni and cheese. We also had some delicious cookies for them as a treat afterwards. The only stipulation was that they had to finish all of their mac-n-cheese before they could have a cookie. One of the kids, who was about five, just did not want to eat, though. He wanted a cookie and to go play so he asked if he could just skip the meal and get to the good stuff. I told him “no,” an answer that he didn’t really appreciate. So, I decided upon a little motivation. I took a cookie and placed it on a napkin and placed it right where he could see it on the counter. I told him that he could have that cookie when he finished. That worked for a moment as he took a few bites but then lost his motivation and no longer cared. He just didn’t want to eat anymore. Then it happened. One of the other kids finished so I told them to take the cookie on the counter. This threw the non-eater into a bit of a meltdown. That was his cookie. How could he sit there and watch someone else enjoy his cookie? He hadn’t done what he needed to but now he couldn’t stand to see someone else enjoy what was supposed to be his. He suddenly returned to his bowl with a renewed vigor and motivation, downed his food quickly, and claimed another cookie as his own.
This is, of course, a simple analogy but it carries along the truth that jealousy can, in certain situations, actually be a positive motivator. Israel has rejected God’s purposes in the Messiah, this much had become true. Everything in their Scriptures had pointed them to the truth of the coming Messiah but when he actually came they didn’t like how God had worked. They didn’t want things to go that way and so rejected it. This was all part of God’s purposes and he used their rebellion to further his purposes in bringing Gentiles into the covenant family. But now Paul hoped that Israel would begin to be like a child watching someone else eat their cookie. He hoped that the jealousy would motivate them to accepting the life of the Messiah in belief, the only proper response to the declaration of the gospel.
Paul restates in verse 7 the point that he has made in the previous section. The people of Israel so earnestly sought to be part of God’s covenant family but the tighter that they held to their own expectations of how that would work out, the more they moved themselves further away from how God had actually worked through the resurrection of Christ. They were missing the boat, so to speak. A small remnant, including Paul, had submitted to God’s plan but the rest of Israel were hardened. As we have seen earlier, “hardened” was the somewhat mysterious process where someone would rebel against God’s purposes and rather than being judged immediately, God would allow them time and bring out the rebellion that was in their heart, using the extra time to work his purposes through the very rebellion against his purposes. When God delays his judgment but this time is not used to repent, those in rebellion are hardened and their final judgment, when it comes will be shown to be just.
Paul does not mean that God makes it so that certain individuals are unable to come to faith somehow. He is still speaking in terms of people, so it is Israel as a collective that is hardened. Paul still hopes that some individuals will join him in the remnant created by grace. Their rightful judgment has been delayed and they have been hardened, says Paul in vv. 8-10, using a string of Old Testament allusions and quotations from Deuteronomy, the Psalms, and Isaiah. Ethnic Israel as a collective has seen their opportunity come and go, and God has now used their rebellion and delay of judgment for his own purposes. In that hardening, table fellowship, the spiritual heart of the society (and something that Jews had turned around to highlight the differences between them and pagans), had become a snare. The tighter they held to it as a symbol of separation and exclusion, the more they missed the boat of the true inclusive table fellowship of the Messiah. When one rejects the truth as a lie, then their eyes will be forever darkened to the truth. This is the position in which Israel now found itself.
But Paul asks a poignant question in verse 11. Has Israel stumbled so far as to be a permanent situation for every Jew? Certainly not, says Paul. God had a purpose in choosing Israel for the task of being called to be his people, and in being hardened to God’s purposes. Just as Pharaoh had been allowed a position of power and was used by God through his hardening, his delay of judgment, to bring about the freedom of the Israelites, so the Gentile salvation has come about as a result of Israel’s hardening. Israel is playing the role of Pharaoh and Egypt in God’s new exodus. But this does not, believes Paul firmly, somehow seal the fate of every individual Jew.
Israel rebelled against God’s purposes and has now, as a collective, been hardened allowing the Gentiles to come into the full riches and blessings of being the covenant people. Israel really has lost this. We should not, as many today still incorrectly claim, that Gentiles have a path to salvation in Christ but Jews have a parallel track apart from Christ and will be saved simply because they are ethnic Israel. Paul’s whole point here is that the Gentiles really have come into the blessings that originally belonged to ethnic Israel. The promises, the inheritance, it was all theirs. And now they must look and see all of that being given to Gentiles and a small remnant of their kinsmen, a group that included Paul. The inclusion of the Gentiles into the covenant family was more than just the fulfillment of God’s promised family of many nations, it served a double purpose of making the Jews envious. Paul hopes that this jealousy will motivate them in larger numbers to embrace the gospel now that the Gentiles have streamed into the kingdom and it is clear that this will truly be a family of all people groups.
The rebellion of the Jews and their subsequent hardening has meant an incredible opportunity and riches for the Gentiles. Perhaps Paul believes that if the Jews had immediately embraced the gospel as a people then it would have somehow stood in the way of the Gentiles embracing it. Ethnic Israel has been whittled down to a remnant but Paul sees something beyond that perhaps. “How much greater riches will their fullness bring,” asks Paul. “Fullness” is basically a term that Paul uses to mean “all those who eventually will” come to faith. His point is that is Israel’s stumble has brought riches to the world, how much more should Israel receive “fullness.” This is not, then, a specific predetermined number but simply Paul means, “why shouldn’t Jews come into the family in large numbers?” In a way, the refusal of the young man to obey allowed another to enjoy his cookie (this is not a perfect analogy obviously because the second boy was going to get a cookie regardless, but we can still imagine the point), then how much sweeter will it be when he does obey and gets his cookie. This is Paul’s point. Israel as a collective has lost their inheritance but how much sweeter will it be when a full number of Jews realize that, are motivated by the jealously of seeing the Gentiles enjoy the riches of the kingdom, and enter into for themselves (We should note here that just as God is jealous that humans should worship him, jealousy for something that is rightfully yours, is not a sinful form of jealousy so we need not think that Paul is arguing some sort of ends-justifying-the-means theology). Their rejection has brought reconciliation for the whole world so when Jews do begin to accept the gospel, something Paul hopes sincerely and deeply will happen, then it will be like the dead coming back to life.
We should not miss what Paul has alluded concerning the role of Israel in all of this. They were humbled and brought low so that the world might be lifted up. They were cast out so that the world could be reconciled. They experienced death so that the world might gain life. And now Paul looks ahead hopefully to a time when they will resurrect from that state of death and come into the life that they have, in part, brought about. Do you see it? Written into the story of Israel itself is the story of the Messiah. They have acted out the story of Jesus, if now they would only see that and come to Christ. In the resurrection of Christ, then, Paul sees the glorious hope that his kinsmen will also be brought back to life. In short, Paul does not want any Jews thinking they made it into the remnant and that will be it for their kinsmen and he doesn’t want any Gentiles thinking that God will not bring anymore Jews into the kingdom.
Devotional Thought
Paul had found salvation for himself but he deeply desired to see that same reconciliation pass on to his kinsmen. Do you have the same kind of passion for your family, your hometown friends, etc.? Spend some time today praying about your own “kinsmen” and consider how you might be able to share the gospel with them.
"God gave them a spirit of stupor,
eyes that could not see
and ears that could not hear,
to this very day." [c]
9 And David says:
"May their table become a snare and a trap,
a stumbling block and a retribution for them.
10 May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see,
and their backs be bent forever." [d]
Ingrafted Branches
11 Again I ask: Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. 12 But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their fullness bring!
13 I am talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I make much of my ministry 14 in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them. 15 For if their rejection brought reconciliation to the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?
Dig Deeper
Just recently we were home one night with our two sons but we also had five other kids that we were babysitting. It was quite a hectic scene but we’re fairly used to that sort of thing now after all these years. When it came time for supper we made something simple that most kids like, macaroni and cheese. We also had some delicious cookies for them as a treat afterwards. The only stipulation was that they had to finish all of their mac-n-cheese before they could have a cookie. One of the kids, who was about five, just did not want to eat, though. He wanted a cookie and to go play so he asked if he could just skip the meal and get to the good stuff. I told him “no,” an answer that he didn’t really appreciate. So, I decided upon a little motivation. I took a cookie and placed it on a napkin and placed it right where he could see it on the counter. I told him that he could have that cookie when he finished. That worked for a moment as he took a few bites but then lost his motivation and no longer cared. He just didn’t want to eat anymore. Then it happened. One of the other kids finished so I told them to take the cookie on the counter. This threw the non-eater into a bit of a meltdown. That was his cookie. How could he sit there and watch someone else enjoy his cookie? He hadn’t done what he needed to but now he couldn’t stand to see someone else enjoy what was supposed to be his. He suddenly returned to his bowl with a renewed vigor and motivation, downed his food quickly, and claimed another cookie as his own.
This is, of course, a simple analogy but it carries along the truth that jealousy can, in certain situations, actually be a positive motivator. Israel has rejected God’s purposes in the Messiah, this much had become true. Everything in their Scriptures had pointed them to the truth of the coming Messiah but when he actually came they didn’t like how God had worked. They didn’t want things to go that way and so rejected it. This was all part of God’s purposes and he used their rebellion to further his purposes in bringing Gentiles into the covenant family. But now Paul hoped that Israel would begin to be like a child watching someone else eat their cookie. He hoped that the jealousy would motivate them to accepting the life of the Messiah in belief, the only proper response to the declaration of the gospel.
Paul restates in verse 7 the point that he has made in the previous section. The people of Israel so earnestly sought to be part of God’s covenant family but the tighter that they held to their own expectations of how that would work out, the more they moved themselves further away from how God had actually worked through the resurrection of Christ. They were missing the boat, so to speak. A small remnant, including Paul, had submitted to God’s plan but the rest of Israel were hardened. As we have seen earlier, “hardened” was the somewhat mysterious process where someone would rebel against God’s purposes and rather than being judged immediately, God would allow them time and bring out the rebellion that was in their heart, using the extra time to work his purposes through the very rebellion against his purposes. When God delays his judgment but this time is not used to repent, those in rebellion are hardened and their final judgment, when it comes will be shown to be just.
Paul does not mean that God makes it so that certain individuals are unable to come to faith somehow. He is still speaking in terms of people, so it is Israel as a collective that is hardened. Paul still hopes that some individuals will join him in the remnant created by grace. Their rightful judgment has been delayed and they have been hardened, says Paul in vv. 8-10, using a string of Old Testament allusions and quotations from Deuteronomy, the Psalms, and Isaiah. Ethnic Israel as a collective has seen their opportunity come and go, and God has now used their rebellion and delay of judgment for his own purposes. In that hardening, table fellowship, the spiritual heart of the society (and something that Jews had turned around to highlight the differences between them and pagans), had become a snare. The tighter they held to it as a symbol of separation and exclusion, the more they missed the boat of the true inclusive table fellowship of the Messiah. When one rejects the truth as a lie, then their eyes will be forever darkened to the truth. This is the position in which Israel now found itself.
But Paul asks a poignant question in verse 11. Has Israel stumbled so far as to be a permanent situation for every Jew? Certainly not, says Paul. God had a purpose in choosing Israel for the task of being called to be his people, and in being hardened to God’s purposes. Just as Pharaoh had been allowed a position of power and was used by God through his hardening, his delay of judgment, to bring about the freedom of the Israelites, so the Gentile salvation has come about as a result of Israel’s hardening. Israel is playing the role of Pharaoh and Egypt in God’s new exodus. But this does not, believes Paul firmly, somehow seal the fate of every individual Jew.
Israel rebelled against God’s purposes and has now, as a collective, been hardened allowing the Gentiles to come into the full riches and blessings of being the covenant people. Israel really has lost this. We should not, as many today still incorrectly claim, that Gentiles have a path to salvation in Christ but Jews have a parallel track apart from Christ and will be saved simply because they are ethnic Israel. Paul’s whole point here is that the Gentiles really have come into the blessings that originally belonged to ethnic Israel. The promises, the inheritance, it was all theirs. And now they must look and see all of that being given to Gentiles and a small remnant of their kinsmen, a group that included Paul. The inclusion of the Gentiles into the covenant family was more than just the fulfillment of God’s promised family of many nations, it served a double purpose of making the Jews envious. Paul hopes that this jealousy will motivate them in larger numbers to embrace the gospel now that the Gentiles have streamed into the kingdom and it is clear that this will truly be a family of all people groups.
The rebellion of the Jews and their subsequent hardening has meant an incredible opportunity and riches for the Gentiles. Perhaps Paul believes that if the Jews had immediately embraced the gospel as a people then it would have somehow stood in the way of the Gentiles embracing it. Ethnic Israel has been whittled down to a remnant but Paul sees something beyond that perhaps. “How much greater riches will their fullness bring,” asks Paul. “Fullness” is basically a term that Paul uses to mean “all those who eventually will” come to faith. His point is that is Israel’s stumble has brought riches to the world, how much more should Israel receive “fullness.” This is not, then, a specific predetermined number but simply Paul means, “why shouldn’t Jews come into the family in large numbers?” In a way, the refusal of the young man to obey allowed another to enjoy his cookie (this is not a perfect analogy obviously because the second boy was going to get a cookie regardless, but we can still imagine the point), then how much sweeter will it be when he does obey and gets his cookie. This is Paul’s point. Israel as a collective has lost their inheritance but how much sweeter will it be when a full number of Jews realize that, are motivated by the jealously of seeing the Gentiles enjoy the riches of the kingdom, and enter into for themselves (We should note here that just as God is jealous that humans should worship him, jealousy for something that is rightfully yours, is not a sinful form of jealousy so we need not think that Paul is arguing some sort of ends-justifying-the-means theology). Their rejection has brought reconciliation for the whole world so when Jews do begin to accept the gospel, something Paul hopes sincerely and deeply will happen, then it will be like the dead coming back to life.
We should not miss what Paul has alluded concerning the role of Israel in all of this. They were humbled and brought low so that the world might be lifted up. They were cast out so that the world could be reconciled. They experienced death so that the world might gain life. And now Paul looks ahead hopefully to a time when they will resurrect from that state of death and come into the life that they have, in part, brought about. Do you see it? Written into the story of Israel itself is the story of the Messiah. They have acted out the story of Jesus, if now they would only see that and come to Christ. In the resurrection of Christ, then, Paul sees the glorious hope that his kinsmen will also be brought back to life. In short, Paul does not want any Jews thinking they made it into the remnant and that will be it for their kinsmen and he doesn’t want any Gentiles thinking that God will not bring anymore Jews into the kingdom.
Devotional Thought
Paul had found salvation for himself but he deeply desired to see that same reconciliation pass on to his kinsmen. Do you have the same kind of passion for your family, your hometown friends, etc.? Spend some time today praying about your own “kinsmen” and consider how you might be able to share the gospel with them.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Romans 11:1-6
The Remnant of Israel
1 I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew. Don't you know what Scripture says in the passage about Elijah—how he appealed to God against Israel: 3 "Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me" [a]? 4 And what was God's answer to him? "I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal." [b] 5 So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. 6 And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.
Dig Deeper
As a high school teacher in the inner city, I daily dealt with students who felt that they were stuck in their circumstances. They were born into poor families in poor neighborhoods and they often felt that it was their fate in life to remain poor, or as they put it, to remain “stuck in the hood.” Beyond that, many of the young men felt that they had no choice but to be enslaved to the gang violence into which they were born. They believed that there was no escape and that it was likely their fate to die young. They just didn’t see a way out. They could see no light at the end of the tunnel. There is nothing quite as hopeless as feeling like there are no other options and that you are stuck where you’re at. In fact, I don’t think I could have continued to go to work each day if I had believed that but I knew something that perhaps they didn’t. I knew people who had grown up in the same environment of poverty, violence, and crime, and I knew that they had and had made it out. My own wife had grown up under such circumstances but was hardly enslaved by them. She fought her way through incredibly difficult circumstances and worked her way through college. There were also students from the very school that I was teaching at that had worked hard and gone to college and become quite successful. If anyone was tempted to say that the situation was hopeless and there were no options, these people stood as as important reminders and signs that the situation was not hopeless. Some people had made it out of those circumstances. It was indeed possible to make it out so why couldn’t they?
The obvious question following the realization that ethnic Israel has continued in their obstinacy and rebellion by rejecting the salvation found in the Messiah is the one that Paul asks as this passage begins. Has God left Israel? Were the Gentile Christians, who were apparently urging that taking the gospel to the Jewish people was no longer a valid mission, correct? It may have seemed quite hopeless for Paul as he looked and realized that the influx of Jews into the kingdom of God through the Messiah was not happening in the numbers that he had so desperately hoped for. He has already, however, argued that this by no means meant that the gospel was defect or lacked power. God had promised all along that this would happen. But, the ray of hope, is that God promised a remnant. Some would make it. Some would come to Christ. And Paul, himself, was evidence of that fact. Paul was a shining example for all, that Jews could still come to the gospel. It wasn’t a hopeless endeavor.
As we have already stated, it seems apparent that at least some Gentiles in the Roman church were pushing for the idea that God had rejected the Jewish people and that Christianity was strictly a Gentile religion now. That viewpoint was probably exacerbated by the expulsion of Jews from Rome and their five-year absence in the church. But was the fact that a majority of Jews were rejecting the idea of the Messiah’s kingdom, despite the fact that the first Christians were almost exclusively Jewish, a clear indication that God had completely rejected his people? “By no means,” says Paul emphatically. Paul’s first argument against that viewpoint is that he was not one of the disciples during Jesus’ lifetime. He was a skeptic and a persecutor of the church. He was a zealous Israelite. He was of the seed (rather than the TNIV’s “descendant”) of Abraham. Paul’s existence as a Jewish Christian is evidence in the flesh that God has not completely turned away Israel from the possibility of salvation.
His second line of reasoning against the thought of God completely rejecting Israel comes from Scripture. Paul says the Lord “did not reject his people,” using language from Psalm 94:14, and 1 Samuel 12:22. Israel were the people that God foreknew. They were the elect, the ones through whom God would bless the world. It is here that we must keep Paul’s point from chapter 9 in mind. God promised to bless the world through the one family, yes. Those promises were given to Israel, Abraham’s descendants, yes. But part of that promise, as Paul has already shown, was that the one family would include people from all nations. Thus, it is vital to follow Paul’s train of thought. Just as the promise from the very beginning was passed to some of Abraham’s descendants and not others based on God’s grace and mercy, because none of them deserved the promise in and of themselves, so now the promise has rightfully been passed to the Messiah. God has not rejected Israel. He has merely redefined it around the Messiah. It was always God’s plan to have a Christ-shaped people and now that time had arrived. Paul will not abide the charge that God has completely abandoned his promises to Israel and started over. The people in the Messiah are Israel and it is just as available to an ethnic Jew as to anyone else in the world. God had indeed chosen Israel and the Messiah-shaped Israel would continue to be his people but that does not guarantee the salvation of every single ethnic Israelite nor does it signal their complete rejection.
Paul’s third argument in showing that God has not now shut out ethnic Israel from the Messiah’s Israel is to turn again to Scripture and show that God always promised to have a remnant. Once again, the gospel, rather than showing God to be unfaithful to his covenant promises, shows that God has truly kept every bit of his word. If the Jews are to truly hold to God’s word, then they must accept the Messiah as Paul did.
It seems that Paul held a special affinity for Elijah and can certainly identify with his feelings as Paul alludes to the time just after Elijah’s incredible victory of the prophets of Ba’al. But then he suddenly found himself on the run and feeling very much like he was by himself. Perhaps Paul is hinting that he, at some point, had struggled with similar feelings. He had experienced the thrill of spreading the gospel around the Roman world but at the same time, began to feel the pressing grief of seeing his kinsmen turn away from the Messiah and started to wonder if he was all alone. But God had buoyed Elijah and declared to him that he had reserved for himself “seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Ba’al.” God had reserved a remnant that had remained faithful to him. Just as Elijah had seen God’s grace in the choosing of a small remnant, and Israel would send a remnant back to Jerusalem following their exile, so once again God had preserved a remnant.
If we are going to fully understand what Paul says in verses 5-6 it helps to understand a bit of the circumstances in which Paul was writing. There were Jewish groups, among them the Qumran group that was responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls, at the time of Paul that believed, like Paul, that God would create a new remnant that would be faithful to him. They each believed that they were the small group, the remnant, that would truly keep the law. The Qumran community separated themselves, in large part, from the rest of the culture and believed that they would be the fulfillment of God’s remnant as the ones that clung tightly to the works of the law and to their privilege as the true descendants of Abraham. They were the ones that would be true when all others had fallen away from following God’s law. They would find their status as the remnant of grace through the works of the law after all, they believed.
Paul agrees that there is indeed a remnant but they are part of the elect by the grace and initiation of God through the life of Christ. This remnant would be Christ-shaped not law-shaped. It would be by grace not through the works of the law. If there really was a possibility that after all, a group would be God’s remnant through keeping the law, then Paul’s entire argument that God’s people were not defined by the law but by faith and the grace of God would completely fall apart. Just as he did in the time of Elijah, God has found a way to stay completely faithful to his word and to still keep a remnant through his unmerited favor alone. There was a remnant of Jews that had been preserved by God but they were Jewish Christians like Paul who had been called by God’s grace through the gospel into the people of the Messiah. If Paul and others had been found as a part of this remnant, looking ahead to Paul’s argument in the rest of the chapter, then there is nothing stopping other Jews from joining them.
Perhaps it is worth a moment of reflection for Christians today to marvel at how Paul took very difficult problems of his day and constantly filtered them through the lens of the Scriptures and the enveloping truth of God’s grace in the Messiah. It is up to us to solve some of our most difficult issues in the same way.
Devotional Thought
Have you ever thought about your own church as being part of God’s Messiah-shaped people? 1 Corinthians 12 speaks of being baptized into the body of Christ. How does it change our mentality to realize that we are part of a people, a family, rather than our salvation being an individual thing?
1 I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew. Don't you know what Scripture says in the passage about Elijah—how he appealed to God against Israel: 3 "Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me" [a]? 4 And what was God's answer to him? "I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal." [b] 5 So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. 6 And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.
Dig Deeper
As a high school teacher in the inner city, I daily dealt with students who felt that they were stuck in their circumstances. They were born into poor families in poor neighborhoods and they often felt that it was their fate in life to remain poor, or as they put it, to remain “stuck in the hood.” Beyond that, many of the young men felt that they had no choice but to be enslaved to the gang violence into which they were born. They believed that there was no escape and that it was likely their fate to die young. They just didn’t see a way out. They could see no light at the end of the tunnel. There is nothing quite as hopeless as feeling like there are no other options and that you are stuck where you’re at. In fact, I don’t think I could have continued to go to work each day if I had believed that but I knew something that perhaps they didn’t. I knew people who had grown up in the same environment of poverty, violence, and crime, and I knew that they had and had made it out. My own wife had grown up under such circumstances but was hardly enslaved by them. She fought her way through incredibly difficult circumstances and worked her way through college. There were also students from the very school that I was teaching at that had worked hard and gone to college and become quite successful. If anyone was tempted to say that the situation was hopeless and there were no options, these people stood as as important reminders and signs that the situation was not hopeless. Some people had made it out of those circumstances. It was indeed possible to make it out so why couldn’t they?
The obvious question following the realization that ethnic Israel has continued in their obstinacy and rebellion by rejecting the salvation found in the Messiah is the one that Paul asks as this passage begins. Has God left Israel? Were the Gentile Christians, who were apparently urging that taking the gospel to the Jewish people was no longer a valid mission, correct? It may have seemed quite hopeless for Paul as he looked and realized that the influx of Jews into the kingdom of God through the Messiah was not happening in the numbers that he had so desperately hoped for. He has already, however, argued that this by no means meant that the gospel was defect or lacked power. God had promised all along that this would happen. But, the ray of hope, is that God promised a remnant. Some would make it. Some would come to Christ. And Paul, himself, was evidence of that fact. Paul was a shining example for all, that Jews could still come to the gospel. It wasn’t a hopeless endeavor.
As we have already stated, it seems apparent that at least some Gentiles in the Roman church were pushing for the idea that God had rejected the Jewish people and that Christianity was strictly a Gentile religion now. That viewpoint was probably exacerbated by the expulsion of Jews from Rome and their five-year absence in the church. But was the fact that a majority of Jews were rejecting the idea of the Messiah’s kingdom, despite the fact that the first Christians were almost exclusively Jewish, a clear indication that God had completely rejected his people? “By no means,” says Paul emphatically. Paul’s first argument against that viewpoint is that he was not one of the disciples during Jesus’ lifetime. He was a skeptic and a persecutor of the church. He was a zealous Israelite. He was of the seed (rather than the TNIV’s “descendant”) of Abraham. Paul’s existence as a Jewish Christian is evidence in the flesh that God has not completely turned away Israel from the possibility of salvation.
His second line of reasoning against the thought of God completely rejecting Israel comes from Scripture. Paul says the Lord “did not reject his people,” using language from Psalm 94:14, and 1 Samuel 12:22. Israel were the people that God foreknew. They were the elect, the ones through whom God would bless the world. It is here that we must keep Paul’s point from chapter 9 in mind. God promised to bless the world through the one family, yes. Those promises were given to Israel, Abraham’s descendants, yes. But part of that promise, as Paul has already shown, was that the one family would include people from all nations. Thus, it is vital to follow Paul’s train of thought. Just as the promise from the very beginning was passed to some of Abraham’s descendants and not others based on God’s grace and mercy, because none of them deserved the promise in and of themselves, so now the promise has rightfully been passed to the Messiah. God has not rejected Israel. He has merely redefined it around the Messiah. It was always God’s plan to have a Christ-shaped people and now that time had arrived. Paul will not abide the charge that God has completely abandoned his promises to Israel and started over. The people in the Messiah are Israel and it is just as available to an ethnic Jew as to anyone else in the world. God had indeed chosen Israel and the Messiah-shaped Israel would continue to be his people but that does not guarantee the salvation of every single ethnic Israelite nor does it signal their complete rejection.
Paul’s third argument in showing that God has not now shut out ethnic Israel from the Messiah’s Israel is to turn again to Scripture and show that God always promised to have a remnant. Once again, the gospel, rather than showing God to be unfaithful to his covenant promises, shows that God has truly kept every bit of his word. If the Jews are to truly hold to God’s word, then they must accept the Messiah as Paul did.
It seems that Paul held a special affinity for Elijah and can certainly identify with his feelings as Paul alludes to the time just after Elijah’s incredible victory of the prophets of Ba’al. But then he suddenly found himself on the run and feeling very much like he was by himself. Perhaps Paul is hinting that he, at some point, had struggled with similar feelings. He had experienced the thrill of spreading the gospel around the Roman world but at the same time, began to feel the pressing grief of seeing his kinsmen turn away from the Messiah and started to wonder if he was all alone. But God had buoyed Elijah and declared to him that he had reserved for himself “seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Ba’al.” God had reserved a remnant that had remained faithful to him. Just as Elijah had seen God’s grace in the choosing of a small remnant, and Israel would send a remnant back to Jerusalem following their exile, so once again God had preserved a remnant.
If we are going to fully understand what Paul says in verses 5-6 it helps to understand a bit of the circumstances in which Paul was writing. There were Jewish groups, among them the Qumran group that was responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls, at the time of Paul that believed, like Paul, that God would create a new remnant that would be faithful to him. They each believed that they were the small group, the remnant, that would truly keep the law. The Qumran community separated themselves, in large part, from the rest of the culture and believed that they would be the fulfillment of God’s remnant as the ones that clung tightly to the works of the law and to their privilege as the true descendants of Abraham. They were the ones that would be true when all others had fallen away from following God’s law. They would find their status as the remnant of grace through the works of the law after all, they believed.
Paul agrees that there is indeed a remnant but they are part of the elect by the grace and initiation of God through the life of Christ. This remnant would be Christ-shaped not law-shaped. It would be by grace not through the works of the law. If there really was a possibility that after all, a group would be God’s remnant through keeping the law, then Paul’s entire argument that God’s people were not defined by the law but by faith and the grace of God would completely fall apart. Just as he did in the time of Elijah, God has found a way to stay completely faithful to his word and to still keep a remnant through his unmerited favor alone. There was a remnant of Jews that had been preserved by God but they were Jewish Christians like Paul who had been called by God’s grace through the gospel into the people of the Messiah. If Paul and others had been found as a part of this remnant, looking ahead to Paul’s argument in the rest of the chapter, then there is nothing stopping other Jews from joining them.
Perhaps it is worth a moment of reflection for Christians today to marvel at how Paul took very difficult problems of his day and constantly filtered them through the lens of the Scriptures and the enveloping truth of God’s grace in the Messiah. It is up to us to solve some of our most difficult issues in the same way.
Devotional Thought
Have you ever thought about your own church as being part of God’s Messiah-shaped people? 1 Corinthians 12 speaks of being baptized into the body of Christ. How does it change our mentality to realize that we are part of a people, a family, rather than our salvation being an individual thing?
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Romans 10:14-21
14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15 And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"
16 But not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed our message?" [h] 17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ. 18 But I ask: Did they not hear? Of course they did:
"Their voice has gone out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world." [i]
19 Again I ask: Did Israel not understand? First, Moses says,
"I will make you envious by those who are not a nation;
I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding." [j]
20 And Isaiah boldly says,
"I was found by those who did not seek me;
I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me." [k]
21 But concerning Israel he says,
"All day long I have held out my hands
to a disobedient and obstinate people."
Dig Deeper
John 13-17 is an incredible record of Jesus’ last and very private night with his closest disciples. His overall intention for that evening was to encourage his disciples who were a bit worried about what would happen to them if Jesus was going to die as he was seemingly indicating that he would. There is much good news recorded by John during that evening but there is some bad news as well. Jesus indicates clearly that he is leaving them, things will get rough, one of them will prove himself to be a betrayer to their cause, and they will have to face a great deal of hardship and persecution. Those may seem like peculiar topics to bring up if your intention is to bring encouragement to someone but Jesus makes is clear why he has been so frank in 16:1. He says, “All this I have told you so that you will not fall away.” Jesus did want to encourage them, but we have to remember that “encourage” means to give someone courage not just to say things that make them feel better. He was telling them these things so that when they happened their faith would not be rocked. The toughest challenges, I believe, that we have in life are when things hit us unexpectedly. Jesus did not want that to happen to his disciples so he prepares them. When these things came then, rather than destroying or weakening their faith, they would build it because Christ had told them all along that this would be part of following him. The hard times would actually serve as a confirmation that they were heading down the right path.
This is such a key concept because most Christians at one time or another struggle with the same question that Paul turns to now. If the gospel is so incredible and it is the fulfillment of God’s covenant plan to reconcile the world to himself then why aren’t more people responding? When that happens is there something wrong with the message? Shouldn’t more people be streaming in to the kingdom of God. Paul recognizes that that was a very real concern in his day every bit as much as it is in ours. It is a legitimate question. One that should not be dodged and Paul will not duck it. His response is similar to the concept that Christ used on his last night. When people reject the gospel, it should not come as a surprise this is what God had said all along would happen.
Paul declared in the previous section that the gospel is the fulfillment of God’s promises to return Israel from their long exile from God and the promises to bring Gentiles into the family. The gospel is a universal opportunity for all those who call on the name of the Lord. Remembering this helps to guide us through a section that has long been a puzzle. An argument rages on over whether Paul is speaking of Jews or Gentiles in this passage (the TNIV has made their choice added the word “Israelites” as an explanatory help in verse 16 when it is not there in the original Greek). Paul has been discussing Israel’s role in the preaching of the gospel but he has also been stressing the universal appeal of the gospel and how that plays into Israel’s role. Thus, I don’t believe that we have to choose whether Paul speaks of Jews or Gentiles here. He speaks of all people, but no doubt, with a special consideration of the role of the Jewish people within the truism that he is discussing.
If the gospel is available to all, any talk of not needing to take the gospel to any specific group of people should be immediately quashed. People cannot call on the Lord unless they have believed in the gospel. And they cannot believe unless they have heard. And they cannot hear unless someone preaches the gospel to them. And, finally, they cannot encounter preaching unless those preaching are sent by God. If people are to be saved then God ultimately has to send people to take the message to them. But as Isaiah declared in 52:7, a passage concerning the coming Messiah and the fact that people would know the life, or name, of the Lord through the message being passed by those bringing good news. The last condition necessary for the salvation of all people has been met. The messengers have been sent, says Paul, referring at one level to his own apostolic mission, but surely on another level to the role that each believer takes up in spreading the message of the gospel (Matt. 28:18-20).
That is wonderful news, says Paul, but what about the fact that not everyone has accepted the good news? As mentioned earlier, the TNIV adds “Israelites” and is probably correct that the emphasis here is on Jews but Paul probably intentionally left his words vague so that the principle could be applied beyond just ethnic Israel. Not everyone has accepted the gospel. How can that be explained? Is there a problem with the gospel? Is there a problem with the preachers that are carrying the message? The fact is there are lots of people that have heard the message but have not believed. Paul’s answer to all of this is that this is what God said would happen all along. Paul points to Isaiah’s question in 53:1, “who has believed our message?” as proof that this message would not be believed by all who hear it.
Faith does come from hearing the message and the message is heard through the gospel of Christ, but if they are not responding in faith, does that mean that something is wrong with the gospel. Of course not. So the next question is could it be that they simply have not heard? Again, Paul speaks generally of all people but with special consideration to the Jewish people. Paul answers this question by appealing to God’s general revelation in Psalm 19 and making an analogy. Just as the voice of the heavens have declared God’s glory to the ends of the world, so has the message of the gospel been declared to all. Paul’s point is not that the gospel had been declared to every single human being in the late 50’s AD but his somewhat hyperbolic point is that the gospel has been declared universally and people have had the opportunity to respond. The problem is not with the message and it is not that the message has not been preached. So what does Paul do with the fact that many have heard and not responded? What do we do with that problem in our own day? More on that in a moment.
In verse 19, Paul turns to Israel specifically. Could it be that Israel has not responded because they did not know (the TNIV’s “understand” changes the meaning slightly) or, in other words, were not aware that God was going to have Gentiles streaming into the kingdom. In fact, as they held a tighter grip onto the idea that they were shown to be the people of God by following the works of the law and the more Gentiles came into the kingdom of God through the Messiah, the more likely Jews were to reject that as a possibility. If their paradigm of being the covenant family of God insisted on observing the works of the law that kept God’s people separate from non-believers then the more Gentiles came in and were not circumcised, or did not observe the Sabbath, or did not follow the food laws then the more confirmation that was for them that these people were not God’s covenant family. This is why Paul was so adamant in the previous chapters in explaining that the covenant status, going back to Abraham, was always about resurrection faith and was never about the works of the law.
Rather than the inclusion of the Gentiles turning away the Jews, they need to realize that this is what God had promised throughout his word. Again, Paul sees in the words of Moses and Isaiah, shadows pointing ahead to the time of the Messiah. God had foreshadowed that he would make Israel envious with uninvited guests. People who were not part of the family and did not have the wisdom and understanding of the law would be used to make Israel jealous and drive them towards salvation. This presupposes that the Jews would reject the gospel message and that God would subsequently use the acceptance of large numbers of Gentiles so spur on some Jews to hopefully see that this is what God promised and respond in faith. Isaiah declared that the Lord would be found by “those who did not seek” him and he would reveal himself to those who were not asking about what he was up to in the world. This thought looks back to 9:25-26 but also echoes Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew 22 in which the invited guests refused to come and so the banquet was opened up to people who didn’t even know that there was a wedding going on.
In verse 20, Paul applied Isaiah 65:1 to the Gentiles as those who were not seeking but found it anyway. In verse 21 he applies 65:2 to Israel. They were the people that God held his hands out to, wanting them to come to his banquet. He will continue to use the thoughts of Israel’s disobedience and the jealousy of the situation of the Gentiles coming into the people of God as the center points for his arguments in the following chapter. Paul has completed his argument concerning the history between God and Israel and how things have gotten to where they are. Now he will turn to take a look at God and Israel going forward from here on out.
This is all particularly relevant for those of us who have wondered why more people haven’t come into the kingdom of God. Why hasn’t our church grown? Why are so many people in our world rejecting the gospel? Just as God forewarned that Israel would in large part reject the gospel, so did Jesus warn us that more people would find destruction rather than life (Matt. 7:13-14) and that many would have a form of godliness and look quite good from a religious standpoint but would not embrace the genuine truth and be known by Jesus (Matt. 7:21-23). The rejection of the gospel should not shake our faith but be a reminder of how much more grateful we should be for those who do come to faith and motivate us to find the few who will respond to the gospel in faith.
Devotional Thought
Have you ever struggled with the frustration of wondering why more people have not responded to the gospel? What does this passage do to help your thought process on that important question?
16 But not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed our message?" [h] 17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ. 18 But I ask: Did they not hear? Of course they did:
"Their voice has gone out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world." [i]
19 Again I ask: Did Israel not understand? First, Moses says,
"I will make you envious by those who are not a nation;
I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding." [j]
20 And Isaiah boldly says,
"I was found by those who did not seek me;
I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me." [k]
21 But concerning Israel he says,
"All day long I have held out my hands
to a disobedient and obstinate people."
Dig Deeper
John 13-17 is an incredible record of Jesus’ last and very private night with his closest disciples. His overall intention for that evening was to encourage his disciples who were a bit worried about what would happen to them if Jesus was going to die as he was seemingly indicating that he would. There is much good news recorded by John during that evening but there is some bad news as well. Jesus indicates clearly that he is leaving them, things will get rough, one of them will prove himself to be a betrayer to their cause, and they will have to face a great deal of hardship and persecution. Those may seem like peculiar topics to bring up if your intention is to bring encouragement to someone but Jesus makes is clear why he has been so frank in 16:1. He says, “All this I have told you so that you will not fall away.” Jesus did want to encourage them, but we have to remember that “encourage” means to give someone courage not just to say things that make them feel better. He was telling them these things so that when they happened their faith would not be rocked. The toughest challenges, I believe, that we have in life are when things hit us unexpectedly. Jesus did not want that to happen to his disciples so he prepares them. When these things came then, rather than destroying or weakening their faith, they would build it because Christ had told them all along that this would be part of following him. The hard times would actually serve as a confirmation that they were heading down the right path.
This is such a key concept because most Christians at one time or another struggle with the same question that Paul turns to now. If the gospel is so incredible and it is the fulfillment of God’s covenant plan to reconcile the world to himself then why aren’t more people responding? When that happens is there something wrong with the message? Shouldn’t more people be streaming in to the kingdom of God. Paul recognizes that that was a very real concern in his day every bit as much as it is in ours. It is a legitimate question. One that should not be dodged and Paul will not duck it. His response is similar to the concept that Christ used on his last night. When people reject the gospel, it should not come as a surprise this is what God had said all along would happen.
Paul declared in the previous section that the gospel is the fulfillment of God’s promises to return Israel from their long exile from God and the promises to bring Gentiles into the family. The gospel is a universal opportunity for all those who call on the name of the Lord. Remembering this helps to guide us through a section that has long been a puzzle. An argument rages on over whether Paul is speaking of Jews or Gentiles in this passage (the TNIV has made their choice added the word “Israelites” as an explanatory help in verse 16 when it is not there in the original Greek). Paul has been discussing Israel’s role in the preaching of the gospel but he has also been stressing the universal appeal of the gospel and how that plays into Israel’s role. Thus, I don’t believe that we have to choose whether Paul speaks of Jews or Gentiles here. He speaks of all people, but no doubt, with a special consideration of the role of the Jewish people within the truism that he is discussing.
If the gospel is available to all, any talk of not needing to take the gospel to any specific group of people should be immediately quashed. People cannot call on the Lord unless they have believed in the gospel. And they cannot believe unless they have heard. And they cannot hear unless someone preaches the gospel to them. And, finally, they cannot encounter preaching unless those preaching are sent by God. If people are to be saved then God ultimately has to send people to take the message to them. But as Isaiah declared in 52:7, a passage concerning the coming Messiah and the fact that people would know the life, or name, of the Lord through the message being passed by those bringing good news. The last condition necessary for the salvation of all people has been met. The messengers have been sent, says Paul, referring at one level to his own apostolic mission, but surely on another level to the role that each believer takes up in spreading the message of the gospel (Matt. 28:18-20).
That is wonderful news, says Paul, but what about the fact that not everyone has accepted the good news? As mentioned earlier, the TNIV adds “Israelites” and is probably correct that the emphasis here is on Jews but Paul probably intentionally left his words vague so that the principle could be applied beyond just ethnic Israel. Not everyone has accepted the gospel. How can that be explained? Is there a problem with the gospel? Is there a problem with the preachers that are carrying the message? The fact is there are lots of people that have heard the message but have not believed. Paul’s answer to all of this is that this is what God said would happen all along. Paul points to Isaiah’s question in 53:1, “who has believed our message?” as proof that this message would not be believed by all who hear it.
Faith does come from hearing the message and the message is heard through the gospel of Christ, but if they are not responding in faith, does that mean that something is wrong with the gospel. Of course not. So the next question is could it be that they simply have not heard? Again, Paul speaks generally of all people but with special consideration to the Jewish people. Paul answers this question by appealing to God’s general revelation in Psalm 19 and making an analogy. Just as the voice of the heavens have declared God’s glory to the ends of the world, so has the message of the gospel been declared to all. Paul’s point is not that the gospel had been declared to every single human being in the late 50’s AD but his somewhat hyperbolic point is that the gospel has been declared universally and people have had the opportunity to respond. The problem is not with the message and it is not that the message has not been preached. So what does Paul do with the fact that many have heard and not responded? What do we do with that problem in our own day? More on that in a moment.
In verse 19, Paul turns to Israel specifically. Could it be that Israel has not responded because they did not know (the TNIV’s “understand” changes the meaning slightly) or, in other words, were not aware that God was going to have Gentiles streaming into the kingdom. In fact, as they held a tighter grip onto the idea that they were shown to be the people of God by following the works of the law and the more Gentiles came into the kingdom of God through the Messiah, the more likely Jews were to reject that as a possibility. If their paradigm of being the covenant family of God insisted on observing the works of the law that kept God’s people separate from non-believers then the more Gentiles came in and were not circumcised, or did not observe the Sabbath, or did not follow the food laws then the more confirmation that was for them that these people were not God’s covenant family. This is why Paul was so adamant in the previous chapters in explaining that the covenant status, going back to Abraham, was always about resurrection faith and was never about the works of the law.
Rather than the inclusion of the Gentiles turning away the Jews, they need to realize that this is what God had promised throughout his word. Again, Paul sees in the words of Moses and Isaiah, shadows pointing ahead to the time of the Messiah. God had foreshadowed that he would make Israel envious with uninvited guests. People who were not part of the family and did not have the wisdom and understanding of the law would be used to make Israel jealous and drive them towards salvation. This presupposes that the Jews would reject the gospel message and that God would subsequently use the acceptance of large numbers of Gentiles so spur on some Jews to hopefully see that this is what God promised and respond in faith. Isaiah declared that the Lord would be found by “those who did not seek” him and he would reveal himself to those who were not asking about what he was up to in the world. This thought looks back to 9:25-26 but also echoes Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew 22 in which the invited guests refused to come and so the banquet was opened up to people who didn’t even know that there was a wedding going on.
In verse 20, Paul applied Isaiah 65:1 to the Gentiles as those who were not seeking but found it anyway. In verse 21 he applies 65:2 to Israel. They were the people that God held his hands out to, wanting them to come to his banquet. He will continue to use the thoughts of Israel’s disobedience and the jealousy of the situation of the Gentiles coming into the people of God as the center points for his arguments in the following chapter. Paul has completed his argument concerning the history between God and Israel and how things have gotten to where they are. Now he will turn to take a look at God and Israel going forward from here on out.
This is all particularly relevant for those of us who have wondered why more people haven’t come into the kingdom of God. Why hasn’t our church grown? Why are so many people in our world rejecting the gospel? Just as God forewarned that Israel would in large part reject the gospel, so did Jesus warn us that more people would find destruction rather than life (Matt. 7:13-14) and that many would have a form of godliness and look quite good from a religious standpoint but would not embrace the genuine truth and be known by Jesus (Matt. 7:21-23). The rejection of the gospel should not shake our faith but be a reminder of how much more grateful we should be for those who do come to faith and motivate us to find the few who will respond to the gospel in faith.
Devotional Thought
Have you ever struggled with the frustration of wondering why more people have not responded to the gospel? What does this passage do to help your thought process on that important question?
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