Romans — (Continued.)
IN Chap. 9-11 we have a needed supplement to the doctrine of the previous ones. The question is, If all be thus of grace through faith, what about the casting away of Israel, the people of God? And again, if man is simply cast upon the mercy of God for everything, have they no promises of which they can claim fulfillment? This question as to Israel still meets us in the present day; and the answers which it gets are various and contradictory enough. Let us try then to get hold of the apostle’s argument as simply as we can.
In the first place he recognizes fully that the [national] adoption, the [visible] glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God — the ordered ceremonial service — and with these the promises, belong to Israel still and to no other. It is the very Israel over whom he mourns for their unbelief; and yet he says, to them these things pertain. Just because God is sovereign in His grace, and His gifts and calling are without repentance, not even their unbelief can change those thoughts and purposes of His. The apostle has not the idea of Israel’s promises being now made over to the Church. She has other and heavenly ones. These things, familiar to the reader of the Old Testament by the names he uses, and which needed not to be more exactly distinguished from things which represent seine of them in the New, belonged to Israel still (chapters 9:1-5).
“Yet in the fulfillment of these promises God had never tied Himself to perform them to people because they were children of Abraham according to the flesh. Were not the Ishmaelites — those Arabs, — Abraham’s seed? And was not Esau? (6-13) And as to His being just in doing so, when all Israel had apostatized and made the golden calf, had not God taken them up openly upon the principle of showing mercy to whom He would? Was that injustice, when He might have cut off all? The goodness they experienced there, was not from man’s willing or his running, plainly, but was God’s mere mercy. And so it ever is (14-16).
On the other hand, Pharaoh had been raised up, that God might chew in him all His power in judgment. So upon whom He would He shewed mercy, and whom. He would He hardened (17-18).
An objection here is readily anticipated: “If it be His will, why doth He yet find fault; for who hath resisted His will?” To which there is a two-fold answer: first, if He be God, He is your judge, and not you His (10-21). Secondly, if He does purpose to make example of His wrath, it is on vessels (self-) fitted for destruction, whom He has endured with much long-suffering. On the other hand, the vessels of mercy in whom He will make known the riches of His glory, are vessels before-prepared by His own hand (22, 23).
But in this case the Jew stood on no different ground from the Gentile. He called, as He pleased, both. Hosea had borne witness to the call of Gentiles; Isaiah, that not all Israel, but only a remnant of it would be saved. Had God not spared a remnant, they had been as Sodom. (24-29.)
Now comes the moral reason for the breaking off of the Jewish branches. We see at once how different was their condition from that of believers justified by faith. They on the contrary were those who zealous for the works of the law had stumbled at the stumbling stone of a humbled and crucified Messiah, suffering for men’s sins (30-33). The real reason was that not knowing how righteous God was, they tried to establish their righteousness before Him. Whereas Christ was the end of the legal way of righteousness, that it might be the portion of every one who believed (10:1-4).
The way of faith is then put in broad and striking contrast to the legal one. On the one hand Moses spoke of man’s living by righteousness which he had himself wrought out. On the other hand God’s work for righteousness was the coming of Christ from heaven down into the dust of death, and His resurrection from the dead. A work man could not think of having a hand in; but where the word as to it simply came to be believed. And wherever there was this faith, faith inseparably connected with the owning as one’s Lord of the risen Jesus, salvation followed (5-9). All indeed depend upon the owning of Him in whose hands salvation was. Jew and Gentile made no difference. Faith was the essential thing, for how could they call on One in whom they did not believe? (10-15.) God’s word then was that by which faith came, His report as to Christ, a report which Israel had not believed, as Isaiah, and even Moses, had foretold would be the case (16-21).
We have thus had before us, first, the sovereignty of God in fulfilling His own promises, a sovereignty exercised in goodness, mid to which Israel owed their all. And secondly, the reason for the breaking off of the Jewish branches, by which we see that those broken off never believed in Christ, and certainly could be no warning as to one who did believe or ever had believed, being so dealt with. The apostle now goes on (chapters 11.) to point out that even for the present time God was still saving a remnant, so that Israel was not totally cast off; while, after the fullness of the Gentiles (the complete number in the mind of God) should be brought in, He would take up the nation again as such and “all Israel” be saved, so that “the gifts and calling of God” would be seen to be “without repentance.” Connected with this are two most important points. First, that the professing Gentile body stood upon the same ground of responsibility to abide in what God had committed to them, that Israel in their day stood upon; and would be cut off as His witness, if they did not. Secondly, that Israel’s conversion and salvation would not be the effect of the present gospel, but by the coming of the Lord, the Deliverer Himself.
The apostle himself was an example of the election of grace in his day, even as Scripture had testified of it in the dark times of Elijah’s ministry (11:1-6). As for the rest, judicial blindness had come upon them. Yet their fall was not what God aimed at, but through their fall the setting aside of their exclusive privileges, that salvation might go forth to the Gentiles, while yet that very salvation of the Gentiles might provoke to jealousy the Jews themselves (7-11). In every way, Israel was to be a blessing to the Gentile world; even the casting away, of them, the reconciliation of the world; what should it be then, when they were received back? It would, — it will be — as the raising of the whole world from the dead (12-15).
If then the Gentiles, grafted in among the natural branches, partook of all the fatness of the tree of promise in place of the branches broken off for unbelief, they need not boast, for the root was not with them. Faith had brought them in, and by faith they stood. The Gentile branches might be broken off, as some of the Jewish ones had been, indeed would be if they abode not in God’s goodness to them. On the other hand, the broken-off branches might be grafted back again (16-24). And this was actually what would be. God would gather out the complete number of His elect among the Gentiles; and until this was done, blindness in part (for all were not blind) had come on Israel. After which, “all” — the nation as such — should be saved by the Deliverer out of Zion (25-27). Thus “as concerning the gospel” they are naturally as enemies; treated as such by God while the gospel dispensation lasts. Still in sovereign grace and love they are remembered by Him “for the fathers’ sake; for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (28-29). Not until this dispensation is ended by the coming of the Lord, and the saints are taken up to be with Him, will be the fulfillment of the Divine counsels concerning Israel. But then will they be visited and while the remainder of Christendom is in turn broken off as were the Jewish branches, these will be again grafted in, and “blossom and bud, and fill the face of the earth with fruit.”
Thus does God overrule man’s sin. The unbelief of Israel is made the occasion of mercy to the Gentiles; while it casts themselves too, without claim of any kind, upon that mere mercy of His, which alone gives a sure, unchangeable foundation for all blessing. “O the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!”
The old Christian can say to a young Christian, “you may try, but you cannot satisfy your heart with the world, for I have never found a thing in it to satisfy mine.” But he could not say, “I have walked so far down the hill of life, and I cannot fail.” Yet we can say, “Let all that can be brought against me, yet God will be faithful to His word, and Christ will present me faultless and without spot or blemish before Him at His appearing.