04.26. LESSON 26

LESSON 26 Our "Studies in Romans" has covered Romans 1:1-32, Romans 2:1-29, Romans 3:1-31, Romans 4:1-25, Romans 5:1-21, Romans 6:1-23, Romans 7:1-25, Romans 8:1-39, and concludes the strictly doctrinal part of the book. We have found that there are no good fallen men—"no not so much as one," "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God"—just as there are no good fallen angels; have found that men are as powerless to change their fleshly nature by their own strivings, as an Ethiopian is to "change his skin, or a leopard his spots;" have found that a man-centered system of religion, based on man’s living up to a code of law in his own strength, but reveals the sin in his nature and life, thus increasing his guilt and misery; have found, in short, that sin celebrates its triumph over man when their religion, even though given by God, is a legal covenant.

We have found, furthermore, that to men who see they cannot make themselves good, and are therefore ready to let God make them good in his way, God proposes to give, by means of a spiritual birth, a new, spiritual nature, which will bear fruit after its kind. This requires that men, repenting, admit the justice of their death sentence, gratefully accept Christ’s execution in lieu of their own, and eagerly appropriate Christ’s risen, glorified life as God’s total answer to their total need; requires that they, in the power that God in Christ, through the Spirit, by the Bible supplies, live their Christian life, which is not merely the old, fleshly, Adamic life lived on a higher level, but which is a new order of life altogether, even eternal life, the very life which God himself lives.

According to the outline of Romans proposed in the beginning of our study these eight chapters pertain to "The Philosophy of Christian Birth and Maturity." We are now ready for the second major division of the book namely, "The Philosophy of Christian History" (Romans 9:1-33, Romans 10:1-21, Romans 11:1-36). The subject of these chapters, as given in the outline, is: "God created Christianity, past, present, and future, according to his will and grace for man’s salvation and his own glory." In the days of Christ, the Jews were subject to Rome, and Palestine was an "occupied" country. But their proud spirit was unbroken, and their fierce patriotism and nationalism burned on. Had not Moses at the birth of their nation said to their fathers: "Thou art a holy people unto Jehovah thy God, and Jehovah hath chosen thee to be a people for his own possession, above all people that are upon the face of the earth" (Deuteronomy 14:2); and "Thine enemies shall submit themselves unto thee; and thou shalt tread upon their high places" (Deuteronomy 33:29)!

Partly, because Christ would not take sides with them against the Romans, the Jews rejected him. When Paul wrote Romans, about 57 A.D., nearly all the estimated more than 15,000,000 Jews scattered over the Roman world still thought Christ was a blasphemous impostor, who richly deserved the doom he suffered. Several years before he wrote Romans, Paul characterized them: "Who both killed the Lord and the prophets, and drove out us, and please not God, and are contrary to all men; forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved" (1 Thessalonians 2:15-16). To Jews, Paul, a Jew himself, who taught that Christ "Abolished in his flesh the enmity (between Jew and Gentile), even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; that he might create in himself of the two one new man,... fitly framed together,...builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit" (Ephesians 2:15-22), was a contemptuous traitor to all the nationalistic promises, hopes, and struggles of his race. That God was of "stones" raising up children unto Abraham was still, as in the days of John, intolerable heresy to the fiery, bigoted Jews. The important matter of the relationship of the Jews to Christianity is introduced in Romans 2:1-29, where Paul tells them that their soulless observance of annulled rites and ceremonies is but sitting by a burnt out crater, only to be dismissed in Romans 3:1, after slight notice of the involved questions of Jewish advantages and God’s moral integrity. Now, in Romans 9:1-33, however, he is ready to face and discuss these questions. This glance at Jewish history, and at the structure of Romans, helps to a better understanding of Paul’s method and doctrine in the artistic and skillfully executed Romans 9:1-33.

Paul’s Preliminaries
(Romans 9:1-5)

"I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren’s sake, by kinsmen according to the flesh." How is this great human, God-like cry, "White-hot with love and wild with all regret;" this "wish of passion and power in which Paul’s heart seems to be pumping blood through his pen" to be taken? In Paul’s preaching, it was always "to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (Romans 1:16). In fact, considering that, when Paul early in his ministry pleaded even with God that he be allowed to work among them Jews, he was commanded to "Depart: for I will send thee for hence unto the Gentiles" (Acts 22:17-21); and considering how much unavailing (humanly speaking) trouble he would have escaped had he not later returned to Jerusalem against further advice of prophets, too, (Acts 21:1-40), one can but wonder if Paul, as many since have been so influenced, did not allow his "kith and kin" to influence him too much. Be that as it may, if Paul is to have an honest study with the Jews, he must first allay their groundless prejudice against him by convincing them that he loves them and has their best interest at heart. Hence, "His intense love for his brethren constrains him to contemplate himself as their victim, if such victim there could be" (Moule). As to whether or not such victim could be, God’s answer to Moses, who proposed that he himself be blotted out of God’s book instead of the Jews in the matter of the golden calf, is final. The answer: "Whosoever hath sinned against me, will I blot out of my book" (Exodus 32:33). Such shifting of moral responsibility is repugnant to divine sovereignty and moral dealing. It reverses God’s will, robs Christ of a soul, and makes Paul a spiritual suicide. Could Paul really have dreamed of such things? His very words, "I could wish," imply preventing causes.

Paul’s naming over nine great divine favors which distinguish the Jews from all other races further attract and conciliate them. They knew that he himself had once been "of the law found blameless," and had led the Jewish op-!position to Christianity. After this masterly preparation, Paul is now ready to reconcile, he hopes to ready readers, the equality of Jew and Gentile in Christ to the promise unto Abraham. Are we not ready, ’in our next "Study," to hear him too?

Questions