04.31. LESSON 31

LESSON 31

"The Spirit of truth," through Paul, weaves into Romans 9:1-33, Romans 10:1-21, Romans 11:1-36 about thirty quotations from the Old Testament. Some of these, such as Paul’s applying to the gospel, with fuller, deeper, more spiritual meaning, language that Moses applied to the law, are free, allusive quotations. This manner of quoting throws light upon the Christian use of the Old Testament, and upon the unity, and consistency of the Bible as a whole. This may be called interpreting the Old Testament in the spirit of the New. Such use of the language of others is a common practice of both inspired and uninspired men. For instance, to how many things besides marriage has Christ’s saying about marriage, "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder," been applied? A living, increasing, unifying purpose runs through the Bible—"The word of God is living and active," and "shall not pass away." With the fuller, final revelation of the New Testament on such subjects as God’s kingdom, Christ’s nature and character, the ministry of the Holy Spirit, God’s care for his children, the resurrection, immortality, and eternal life, Job, Psalms, Isaiah, and indeed all the books of the Old Testament mean more to us than they could possibly mean to their first readers. Certainly, God’s personal character, his government, and his word since Revelation was written are changeless, but when a Christian’s knowledge of God and the Bible becomes changeless, his life is impoverished. The reading of Christians may be so fragmentary, disjointed, and textual that they cannot grow in knowledge as they should. The failure to include in their methods of studying the Bible this general, synthetic method accounts for much of their partial, superficial understanding of God’s invincible, overall, eternal purpose.

"With the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." Belief of the heart guards against hypocrisy, and confession with the mouth against cowardice. How simple, easy to come by, and efficient Christianity really is. Every seeking sinner finds a seeking Savior coming to meet him; no advantage of fleshly privilege is needed to reach spiritual blessing in Christ; Christians ascend the heights because Christ descended into the depths. Free and Universal! Ask and have—what more could one wish? If the Jews were destined by God to eternal damnation, how much short of blasphemy is the language of Isaiah and Paul, "All day long I (God) spread out my hands (beseeching them to be reconciled unto him) unto a disobedient and gainsaying people?" One wonders whether God’s long-continued patience and goodness to "vessels fitted unto destruction," or the Jews’ long-continued hardness, willful ignorance, and complaining, stubborn, rebellious spirit is the greater wonder.

Rejection of Israel Not Total
(Romans 11:1-10) As God’s forbearance with Pharaoh was finally exhausted this longsuffering with the Jews was fast running out when Romans was written. About thirteen years later (AD 70) God used Rome to destroy Israel in what has been called the most complete military execution of any nation in history.

Although this impending doom, and subsequent eternal woe, as well it may, grieves Paul, himself an Israelite, beyond words and tears, he is not hopeless as Elijah was when he faithlessly wailed that he, the only faithful man left alive, was being persecuted unto death. Paul knows that as there were seven thousand who did not bow the knee to Baal in Elijah’s day, "Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant (including himself) according to the election of grace." Thus, Paul finds comfort and hope in the fact that God is not compelled to cast off all "His people which he foreknew" in a special way.

"But if it is by grace, it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace." Paul nowhere states more incisively and incisively and categorically than in this verse the utter incompatibility of grace and works. He knows by both subjective and objective experience the seductive, powerful, and tenacious nature of the faith in human sufficiency and merit. Such faith energized him when he persecuted the church, and it later energized the Jews when they persecuted him as a Christian. Even many Jews who came into the church, not really converted from flesh to spirit, and consequently having little conception of the newness, liberty, and largeness of Christianity, were his aggressive enemies. This crafty, Judaic party in the church (Galatians 2:3-5), by destroying its freedom and universality, perverted and shriveled it (Galatians 1:7) into another Jewish sect. Paul’s knowing how very hard it is for men to believe that works and grace are mutually contradictory and destructive must account for his often repeated, emphatic teaching on the subject in so many of his letters. Anyway, he teaches that men who trust grace are the elect, and that men who trust their own works are the non-elect—that any election must be an "election of grace;" teaches that men are free and may will to have God’s grace to work Christian works in and through them (Ephesians 2:4-10). This section closes with more quotations from Isaiah and David re-emphasizing the fact that the Jews so hardened themselves against God that God had to harden them, even unto allowing their religion to become a burden and a curse to them. Truly, a most solemn warning to all worshippers of all races!

Rejection of Israel Not Final
(Romans 11:11-32)

Romans 11:11-15 of this section prepare for the rest of the passage. "I say then, did they stumble that they might fall (beyond recovery)? God forbid: but by their fall (a second Greek word for "fall," meaning "falling aside") salvation is come unto the Gentiles, to provoke them to jealousy... For if the casting away of them is the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?"

Paul here declares that the rejection of Christ by the Jews was the occasion of the reception of Christ by the Gentiles—that Jewish unbelief was Gentile opportunity. He rejoices that his success among the Gentiles reacts favorably upon some of his beloved kinsmen after the flesh, and moves them to become Christians. But Paul, being too familiar with the whole fabric of traditional Hebrew culture with its entrenched, obstinate bigotry to be blindly optimistic, speaks of this saving only "some of them." His two rhetorical questions emphasize the idea that, if Israel’s falling aside works such benefits, Israel’s restoration should mean a mighty spiritual revival.

Questions