Did God Break His Promise to Israel?
Romans 9
ROmans 9 is the chapter in the Bible that most definitively teaches God’s sovereignty in the election of those whom He would save and the hardening of those whom He would leave unsaved. But it is also a chapter that clearly presents God’s faithfulness to His promise to Israel.
Up to this point, you see, the teaching in Romans could lead some to conclude that God has broken His promise to Israel. After all, Israel was the seed of Abraham and heirs of God’s oath-bound covenant. Yet, this epistle insists that Jews and Gentiles are much alike. Chapter 2 verse 25, for instance, states:
For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision.
Simply put, if the Israelites are found to be transgressors of God’s law, they are under judgment just like all other law-breakers; their circumcision and possession of the Law of Moses are of no value whatsoever.
Human misperception
Writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul begins Romans 9 by heading off any suggestion that his inclusion of the Gentiles into full covenantal citizenship is driven by hatred of his countrymen. He affirms most vigorously his own grief for the Israelites, saying in the first three verses:
I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh:
Paul does not acknowledge the value of Israelite citizenship out of mere sentiment. Avowing Israel’s privileged status in God’s redemptive program, he continues in verse 4:
Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises.
He notes in verse 5, moreover, that in an act of unspeakable condescension, the incarnate Son of God Himself deigned to be born as a son of Abraham:
Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.
Temporal vs. Eternal. The acceptance of national Israel’s privileged status as a covenantal entity is mistakenly equated by some with the Jews’ inheritance of the covenant’s eternal blessing. The Holy Spirit thus moves Paul to point out that Israel’s privileged status must be qualified by other truths. Specifically, membership in theocratic Israel with its national benefits does not guarantee membership in spiritual Israel. Hence, this thematic statement in verse 6:
For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel.
In other words, elect Israel and national Israel are not coextensive. Put yet another way: being an offspring in the Abrahamic line does not guarantee that one is a child of God. Verses 7 and 8:
Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.
This is not merely a squabble about national privilege. The Jews’ refusal to accept God’s terms for righteousness by faith only brings them a personal obligation to fulfill all the terms of the Law, and a personal liability with disastrous results. So, the chapter concludes in verses 30-33:
What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith. But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone; As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.
God’s point of view
This leads us into the great issue of Romans 9. If privileged Israel has betrayed the true import of her inheritance through unbelief and disobedience, has God’s whole redemptive program failed? Has His promise to make Israel the light to the Gentiles and the channel for the Abrahamic blessing failed?
The answer God gives in verse 6—”For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel”—is as direct as it is profound. God has not betrayed His redemptive program, because membership in elect Israel has always depended solely upon God’s personal selection of individuals. He has not rejected the Jews en masse, as evidenced by Paul’s own election.
Moreover, God’s strategy of saving a remnant in the Old Testament makes it clear that the eternal benefits of God’s covenant of grace have always been guaranteed only to those upon whom God has chosen from eternity to show mercy. Jacob, as the divine record shows, was the heir of the promise, not his twin brother Esau. This promise has not been and cannot be broken. Reason: all of God’s promises are fulfilled in Christ Jesus, in whom every spiritual Israelite, whether Jew or Gentile, becomes a child of promise.
Fundamental issue. This chapter does not merely assert the truth that belonging to the Israel of God has as its requirement personal faith. If that were the case, it would have said, for instance, that circumcision is a matter of the heart, not of the flesh—a thread of Biblical teaching stretching far back into the Old Testament.
Instead, Romans 9 addresses a more fundamental issue: Why haven’t all ethnic Israelites believed and thereby partake in the eternal inheritance? Verses 10-13 give the answer:
And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
In other words, one believes only because God so chooses. The root of all salvation benefits is God’s predestination. It is eminently true that God foreknows the faith and the works of all people from before the world’s foundation, but that does not enter at all into God’s consideration for election. Salvation does not depend on any human work, whether good or bad.
Nor does it depend on the human will or the way he conducts his course of life. Thus, verse 16 elaborates:
So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.
Romans 9 also points to some Old Testament events to buttress the underlying point of the doctrine of predestination. Verses 7-9 cite God’s choice of Isaac over Ishmael even though both of them were sons of Abraham. And verse 17 shows from Exodus that it was God who hardened Pharaoh. Hence, this profound statement of verse 18:
Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.
The Creator’s right
“This is unfair,” one may say. If God had sovereignly chosen His elect before the foundation of the world, and if He had long decided not to save the rest of us, then in all fairness He should remove from us human beings the responsibility for being transgressors!
Anticipating this kind of questions, God Himself presents the question and the answer thereto in verses 19-21:
Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?
From our point of view, such an objection seems reasonable enough. But the Bible wants us to consider the whole from God’s vantage point.
We must remember that God does not have to answer to us or to our standard of justice for His actions. After all, we are nothing but clay vessels created by Him, the Potter; He is the Creator. How dare we challenge His right to create us however His perfect will had decided!
Power of His wrath. Besides, God goes on to say in verses 22,23:
What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory.
You see, God’s choice is not absolutely arbitrary. His predestination plan is aimed at showing some special attributes of His.
By having creatures fitted to destruction, He can show that He is a Holy God that does not tolerate forever vessels that keep rebelling against Him and keep refusing to worship Him. On Judgment Day, He will let all such vessels know that He has the power to condemn them to eternal punishment no matter how strong and how independent they had thought they were.
Riches of His glory. On the other hand, His salvation plan is also meant to make known to those whom He had chosen the glorious enormity of His mercy toward them. Ephesians 2:7 puts it this way: “That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.”
Yes, even in this life, we believers do know that we are more blessed than the unsaved—but not nearly as much as we ought to. But when we finally get to Heaven and realize that billions of people have been sent to hell even though they were no worse than we were, we shall fully appreciate the salvation that God has freely given us.
We shall also realize how faithful God is to His word in II Peter 3:9:
The Lord is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
God has let this wicked world go on for thousands and thousands of years to ensure that not one of His Elect will perish. That’s how He endured with much longsuffering.
Gentiles also. Notice that in verse 24, God carefully identifies those He had afore prepared unto glory as:
Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles.
He emphasizes thereby that His predestination plan has always included Gentiles as well as Jews.
As it is written
To further prove that God has been faithful to His promise to Israel, the chapter quotes four passages from the Old Testament. Two are from Hosea and they prophesied clearly that God would include Gentiles among His people. We read in verses 25, 26:
As he saith also in Osee, I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved. And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people; there shall they be called the children of the living God.
The other two show that even in Isaiah’s day, God had warned that only a remnant of Israel would be saved and that the rest would be subject to God’s judgment. Verses 27-29:
Esaias also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved: For he will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth. And as Esaias said before, Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodoma, and been made like unto Gomorrha.
Conclusion. As I pointed out earlier, Romans 9 concludes that salvation by grace through the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ has always been the righteousness of God. The fact that most Jews have not attained this free gift is also part of God’s pre-ordained plan for that physical nation. Hence, the closing verse reads:
As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.
Even today, most Jewish people do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Because God has not chosen them to become saved, they continue to find Christ a stumbling stone and rock of offence. How eternally grateful we believers should be for God having predestinated us to be His people even before time began.