12. Israel’s fall: God’s purpose of election
Each of these three chapters (9, 10 and 11) begins with a personal statement by Paul, in which he identifies himself with the people of Israel and expresses his profound concern for them. Israel’s unbelief is far more than an intellectual problem for him. He writes of the sorrow and anguish he feels over them (9:1ff.), of his prayerful longing for their salvation (10:1) and of his conviction that God has not rejected them (11:1f.).
It may be helpful to sum up the argument of chapter 9. Paul begins by confessing that Jewish unbelief causes him not only anguish of heart (1–3), but also perplexity of mind as he asks himself how the people of Israel with their eight unique privileges could have rejected their own Messiah (4–5). How can their apostasy be explained? Paul’s questions and answers proceed in a clear sequence.
First, is it that ‘God’s word has failed’ (6a)? No, God has kept his promise, which was addressed, however, not to all Israel but to true, spiritual Israel (6b) whom he had called according to his own ‘purpose in election’ (11–12).
Second, is God not ‘unjust’ to exercise his sovereign choices (14)? No. To Moses he stressed his mercy (15), and to Pharaoh his power in judgment (17). But it is not unjust either to show mercy to the undeserving or to harden those who harden themselves (18). Both mercy and judgment are fully compatible with justice.
Third, why then ‘does God still blame us?’ (19). Paul’s threefold response to this question uncovers the misunderstandings of God which it implies. (a) God has the right of a potter to shape his clay, and we have no right to challenge him (20–21). (b) God must reveal himself as he is, making known his wrath and his glory (22–23). (c) God has foretold in the Bible both the inclusion of the Gentiles and the exclusion of Israel except for a remnant (24–29).
Fourth, ‘what then shall we say’ in conclusion (30)? The explanation of the church’s composition (a Gentile majority and a Jewish remnant) is that the Gentiles believed in Jesus whereas the majority of Israel stumbled over him, the stone God had laid (30–33). So the acceptance of the Gentiles is attributed to the sovereign mercy of God, and the rejection of Israel to their own rebellion.
Paul begins with a strong threefold affirmation, intended to put his sincerity beyond question and to persuade his readers to believe him. First, I speak the truth in Christ. He is conscious of his relationship to Christ and of Christ’s presence with him as he writes. Second, as a negative counterpart, I am not lying, or even exaggerating. Third, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit (1). He knows that the human conscience is fallible and culturally conditioned, but he claims that his is illuminated by the Spirit of truth himself.
What, then, is this truth which he asserts with such force? It concerns his continuing love for his people Israel, who have rejected Christ. They cause him great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart (2). He goes on to call them his people and those of his own race. For membership of the Christian family and of God’s ‘holy nation’ does not cancel our natural ties of family and nationality. I could wish, he continues, that for their sake I myself were cursed [anathema] and cut off from Christ (3). Paul is not literally expressing this wish, since he has just stated his conviction that nothing could ever separate him from God’s love in Christ (8:35, 38f.). His use of the imperfect tense conveys the sense that he could entertain such a wish, if it could possibly be granted. Like Moses, who in his plea for Israel’s forgiveness dared to pray that otherwise God would blot him out of the book of life, Paul says he would be willing even to be damned if only thereby Israel might be saved. Luther comments: ‘It seems incredible that a man would desire to be damned, in order that the damned might be saved.’
The apostle’s anguish over unbelieving Israel is the more poignant because of her unique privileges, some of which he has mentioned earlier (2:17ff. and 3:1ff.), but of which he now gives a fuller description. Theirs is the adoption to sonship, since God had said, ‘Israel is my firstborn son’ and ‘I am Israel’s father’; theirs the divine glory, namely the visible splendour of God, which filled first the tabernacle and then the temple, and which came to be permanently localized in the inner sanctuary, so that the Lord could be described as ‘enthroned between the cherubim on the ark’. Theirs too are the covenants, especially of course God’s foundational covenant with Abraham, but also its multiple renewals and elaborations to Isaac and Jacob, Moses and David; the receiving of the law, the unique revelation of God’s will spoken by his voice and written with his finger; the temple worship (though ‘temple’ does not occur in the Greek sentence), comprising all the prescribed regulations for the priesthood and sacrifices; and the promises (4), particularly those relating to the coming of the Messiah as God’s prophet, priest and king. In addition, theirs are the patriarchs, not only Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but also the predecessors of the twelve tribes and other great figures such as Moses, Joshua, Samuel and David; and above all, from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah (5a), literally ‘the Christ according to the flesh’, whose genealogy Matthew traces back to Abraham, and Luke to Adam.
But Paul does not stop there. The final words of verse 5 are: who is God over all, for ever praised! Amen. The question is whether these words refer to Christ or to God the Father. And the difficulty in deciding for certain is due to the absence of punctuation in the original manuscript. We have to supply it. Three main positions are held.
First, the traditional view from the early Greek Fathers onwards has been to apply all three expressions (‘over all’, ‘God’ and ‘for ever praised’) to Christ. The second view applies the expressions to God the Father. By placing a full stop after ‘Christ’, what follows becomes an independent sentence: ‘God who is over all be blessed for ever.’ The third way is a compromise. It applies the words ‘over all’ to Christ, but the remaining words to God the Father.
The real problem is not whether Paul would have described Christ as ‘over all’, since he regularly affirmed his universal sovereignty, but whether he would have called him ‘God’ and ascribed to him everlasting praise. It is argued that Paul usually designated Jesus ‘Son of God’ (e.g. 1:3f., 9; 5:10; 8:29) or God’s ‘own Son’ (e.g. 8:3, 32), not ‘God’, and also that biblical doxologies are normally addressed to God, not to Jesus.
On the other hand, Paul gives Jesus the divine title ‘Lord’, calls him ‘the Lord of both the dead and the living’ (14:9), affirms his pre-existence, describes him as both ‘in the form of God’ and having ‘equality with God’, and declares that ‘all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form’ in him. These expressions accord him divine honours and powers, which are tantamount to calling him ‘God’. Further, Hebrews 13:21 appears to contain a doxology to Christ.
One would think that Israel, favoured with these eight blessings, prepared and educated for centuries for the arrival of her Messiah, would recognize and welcome him when he came. How then can one reconcile Israel’s privileges with her prejudices? How can one explain her ‘hardening’ (11:25)? Paul now addresses himself to this mystery. He asks himself, or his imaginary enquirer, four questions.
Question 1: Has God’s promise failed? (6–13).
At first sight it would appear that God’s promise to Israel had failed, or, literally, ‘fallen’. For he had promised to bless them, but they had forfeited his blessing through unbelief. Israel’s failure was her own failure, however; it was not due to the failure of God’s word (6a). For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel (6b). That is, there have always been two Israels, those physically descended from Israel (Jacob) on the one hand, and his spiritual offspring on the other; and God’s promise was addressed to the latter, who had received it. The apostle has already made this distinction earlier in his letter between those who were Jews outwardly, whose circumcision was in the body, and those who were Jews inwardly, who had received a circumcision of the heart by the Spirit (2:28f.).
He now refers to two well-known Old Testament situations in order to illustrate and prove his point. The first concerns Abraham’s family. Just as not all who are descended from Israel are Israel, so not all who are descended from Abraham are Abraham’s children, his true offspring (cf. Rom. 4). On the contrary, as Scripture says, ‘It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned’ (7), and not through Abraham’s other son, Ishmael, who is not even mentioned. In other words, who are God’s children, who can also be designated Abraham’s offspring? It is not the children by physical descent but the children of the promise, who were born as a result of God’s promise (8). And this was the wording of the promise: At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son (9).
From Abraham and his two sons Isaac and Ishmael, Paul turns for his second illustration to Isaac and his two sons Jacob and Esau. He shows that just as God chose Isaac, not Ishmael, to be the recipient of his promise, so he chose Jacob, not Esau. In this case, however, it was even clearer that God’s decision had nothing whatever to do with any eligibility in the boys themselves, for there was nothing to distinguish them from one another. Isaac and Ishmael had had different mothers, but Jacob and Esau had the same mother (Rebekah). Not only that, but Rebekah’s children were conceived at the same time by our father Isaac (10): moreover they were twins. Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad, God had made his decision and revealed it to their mother. This was deliberate, in order that God’s purpose in election, his eternal purpose which operates according to the principle of election, might stand (11).
Perhaps there is a conscious contrast between the question whether God’s promise had ‘fallen’ (6, literally) and the statement that his purpose must stand (11). What ‘God’s purpose in [literally, according to] election’ means is clear beyond doubt. It is that God’s choice of Isaac (not Ishmael), and of Jacob (not Esau), does not originate in them or in any works they may have done, but in the mind and will of him who calls (12a). To clinch this, Paul quotes two Scriptures referring to Jacob and Esau. The first declares that The older will serve the younger (12b), putting Jacob above Esau.
The second Scripture says: Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated (13). This bald statement sounds shocking in Christian ears and cannot possibly be taken literally. Although there is such an emotion as ‘holy hatred’, it is directed only to evildoers and would be inappropriate here. So several suggestions for softening the statement have been proposed. Some suggest that the reference is less to the individuals Jacob and Esau than to the peoples they fathered, the Israelites and the Edomites, and to their historical destinies. Others interpret the sentence as meaning, ‘I chose Jacob and rejected Esau.’ But the third option seems best, which is to understand the contrast as a Hebrew idiom for preference. Jesus himself does something similar, since according to Luke he told us that we cannot be his disciples unless we hate our family, whereas according to Matthew we are forbidden rather to love them more than him. Although this makes the wording more acceptable, the reality behind it stands, namely that God put Jacob above Esau – as individuals too, not just in the sense that the Israelites were God’s people, not the Edomites.
We have also to remember that Esau forfeited his birthright because of his own worldliness and lost his rightful blessing because of his brother’s deceit, so that human responsibility was interwoven with divine sovereignty in their story. We should also recall that the rejected brothers, Ishmael and Esau, were both circumcised, and therefore in some sense they too were members of God’s covenant, and were both promised lesser blessings. Nevertheless, both stories illustrate the same key truth of ‘God’s purpose in election’. So God’s promise did not fail; but it was fulfilled only in the Israel within Israel.
Many mysteries surround the doctrine of election, and theologians are unwise to explain it in such a way that no puzzles, enigmas or loose ends are left. At the same time, in addition to the arguments developed in the exposition of Romans 8:28–30, we need to remember two truths. First, election is not just a Pauline or apostolic doctrine; it was also taught by Jesus himself. ‘I know those I have chosen,’ he said. Second, election is an essential foundation of Christian worship, in time and eternity. It is the essence of worship to say: ‘Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to your name be the glory.’ If we were responsible for our own salvation, either in whole or even in part, we would be justified in singing our own praises and blowing our own trumpet in heaven. But such a thing is inconceivable. God’s redeemed people will spend eternity worshipping him, humbling themselves before him in grateful adoration, attributing their salvation to him and to the Lamb, and acknowledging that he alone is worthy to receive all praise, honour and glory. Why? Because our salvation is due entirely to his grace, will, initiative, wisdom and power.
Question 2: Is God unjust? (14–18).
Granted that God’s promise has not failed, but has been fulfilled in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and in their spiritual pedigree, is not ‘God’s purpose in election’ intrinsically unjust? To choose some for salvation and pass by others looks like a violation of basic justice. Is it? What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Paul’s immediate retort is Not at all! (14). He then goes on to explain. For he says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion’ (15). Paul’s way of defending God’s justice is to proclaim his mercy. It sounds like a complete non sequitur. But it is not. It simply indicates that the question itself is misguided, because the basis on which God deals savingly with sinners is not justice but mercy. For salvation does not . . . depend on human desire or effort, that is, on anything we want or strive for, but on God’s mercy (16).
Having quoted God’s word to Moses (15), Paul now quotes his word to Pharaoh (17), although it is noteworthy that he writes of what Scripture says to Pharaoh, since to him what God says and what Scripture says are synonyms: I raised you up for this very purpose, that is, ‘brought you on the stage of history’, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth (17). Indeed, the refrain in the narrative of Pharaoh and the plagues is ‘so that you may know there is no one like the Lord our God’.
Paul sees these divine words to Moses (15) and Pharaoh (17), both recorded in Exodus, as complementary, and sums them up in verse 18: Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy [the message to Moses], and he hardens whom he wants to harden [the message to Pharaoh]. Dr Leon Morris rightly comments: ‘Neither here nor anywhere else is God said to harden anyone who had not first hardened himself.’ That Pharaoh hardened his heart against God and refused to humble himself is made plain in the story. So God’s hardening of him was a judicial act, abandoning him to his own stubbornness, much as God’s wrath against the ungodly is expressed by ‘giving them over’ to their own depravity (1:24, 26, 28). The same combination of human obstinacy and divine judgment in the hardening of the heart is seen in God’s word to Isaiah (‘Make the heart of this people calloused’), which Jesus applied to his own teaching ministry, and Paul applied to his.
So God is not unjust. The fact is, as Paul demonstrated in the early chapters of his letter, that all human beings are sinful and guilty in God’s sight (3:9, 19), so that nobody deserves to be saved. If therefore God hardens some, he is not being unjust, for that is what their sin deserves. If, on the other hand, he has compassion on some, he is not being unjust, for he is dealing with them in mercy. The wonder is not that some are saved and others not, but that anybody is saved at all. For we deserve nothing from God but judgment. If we receive what we deserve (which is judgment), or if we receive what we do not deserve (which is mercy), in neither case is God unjust. If therefore anybody is lost, the blame is that person’s, but if anybody is saved, the credit is God’s. This antinomy contains a mystery which our present knowledge cannot solve; but it is consistent with the Bible, history and experience.
Question 3: Why does God still blame us? (19–29).
If salvation is due entirely to God’s will (which it is, as stated twice in verse 15 and twice more in verse 18), and if we do not resist his will (which we do not, and indeed could not), one of you will say to me: ‘Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?’ (19). In other words, is it fair of God to hold us accountable to him, when he makes the decisions? To this question Paul makes three responses, all of which concern who God is. Most of our problems arise and seem insoluble because our image of God is distorted.
First, God has the right of a potter over his clay (20–21). Paul’s first response to his critic’s two questions is to pose three counter-questions which all concern our identity. They ask whether we know who we are (Who are you, a human being . . . ? 20a), what kind of relationship we think exists between us and God, and what attitude to him we consider appropriate to this relationship. Moreover, all three counter-questions emphasize the gulf which yawns between a human being and God (20a), between a crafted object and the craftsman (between what is formed and the one who formed it, 20b), and between a lump of clay and the potter who is shaping it (21). Since this is the relationship between us, do we really think it fitting for a human being to talk back to God (20a), for art to ask the artist why he or she has made it in this way (20b), or for a pot to challenge the potter’s right to shape the same lump of clay into pottery for different uses (21)?
We need to recall the Old Testament background to Paul’s questions. The village potter at his wheel was a familiar figure in Palestine, and his craft was used to illustrate several different truths. For example, Jeremiah watches the potter’s skill and determination in reshaping a vessel which has been spoiled. This is not in Paul’s mind here, however. He is referring rather to two texts in Isaiah. The first contains God’s striking complaint to Israel, ‘You turn things upside down.’ That is, refusing to allow God to be God, they even attempt to reverse roles, as if the potter had become the pot and the pot the potter. In the second text God pronounces a ‘woe’ to ‘those who quarrel with their Maker’, to those who are themselves only pieces of broken pottery, yet challenge the potter to explain what he is making.
What then is Paul condemning? Some commentators betray their embarrassment at this point, and others are brash enough to reject Paul’s teaching. ‘It is the weakest point in the whole epistle,’ declares C. H. Dodd. But we need to draw a distinction. Paul is not criticizing someone who asks sincerely perplexed questions, but rather someone who ‘quarrels’ with God, who answers back (20). Such a person manifests a shameful spirit of rebellion against God, a refusal to let God be God and to acknowledge his or her true status as creature and sinner. Instead of such presumption we need, like Moses, to keep our distance, take off our shoes in recognition of the holy ground on which we stand, and even hide our face from him. Similarly, we need, like Job, to put our hand over our mouth, confess that we tend to speak things we do not understand, despise ourselves, and repent in dust and ashes. Job had been right to reject the traditional claptrap of his so-called ‘comforters’, and in his dialogue with them he had been in the right and they in the wrong. Where Job had gone wrong was in daring to ‘contend’ with the Almighty, to ‘accuse’ him and attempt to ‘correct’ him.
But the whole story has still not yet been told. For human beings are not merely lumps of inert clay, and this passage well illustrates the danger of arguing from an analogy. To liken humans to pottery is to emphasize the disparity between us and God. But there is another strand in biblical teaching which affirms not our unlikeness but our likeness to God, because we have been created in his image, and because we still bear it (though distorted) even since the fall. As God’s image-bearers, we are rational, responsible, moral and spiritual beings, able to converse with God, and encouraged to explore his revelation, to ask questions and to think his thoughts after him. As a result, there are occasions when biblical characters who have fallen on their faces before God are told to stand up on their feet again, especially to receive God’s commission. In other words, there is a right kind of prostration before God, which is a humble acknowledgment of his infinite greatness, and a wrong kind, which is a grovelling denial of our human dignity and responsibility before him.
Returning to Romans, Paul is not wishing to stifle genuine questions. After all, he has been asking and answering questions throughout the chapter and indeed the whole letter. No, ‘it is the God-defying rebel and not the bewildered seeker after the truth whose mouth he [Paul] so peremptorily shuts’.
Paul’s emphasis in this paragraph is that as the potter has the right to shape his clay into vessels for different purposes, so God has the right to deal with fallen humanity according to both his wrath and his mercy, as he has argued in verses 10–18. ‘In the sovereignty here asserted,’ writes Hodge, ‘it is God as moral governor, and not God as creator, who is brought to view.’ It is nowhere suggested that God has the right to ‘create sinful beings in order to punish them’, but rather that he has the right to ‘deal with sinful beings according to his good pleasure’, either to pardon or to punish them.
Second, God reveals himself as he is (22–23). The apostle continues to demonstrate that God’s freedom to show mercy to some and to harden others is fully compatible with his justice. The point of his argument is that we must allow God to be God, not only in renouncing every presumptuous desire to challenge him (20–21), but also in assuming that his actions are without exception in harmony with his nature. For God is always self-consistent and never self-contradictory. He determines to be himself and to be seen to be himself.
Verses 22 and 23, which are parallel to each other, express this theme plainly. The word that is common to both is the verb ‘to make known’. Verse 22 speaks of the revelation of God’s wrath and power to the objects of his wrath, and verse 23 of the revelation of the riches of his glory . . . to the objects of his mercy. Paul is implying that if God acts in perfect accordance with his wrath and mercy, there can be no possible objection.
Although the structure of the two verses is the same, there are also significant differences to be noted. First, God is said to bear with great patience the objects of his wrath, instead of visiting it upon evildoers immediately. The implication seems to be that his patience in delaying the hour of judgment will not only keep the door of opportunity open longer, but also make the ultimate outpouring of his wrath even more dreadful. This was so in the case of Pharaoh, and it is still the situation today as we wait for the Lord’s return. Second, although Paul describes the objects of God’s mercy as those whom he prepared in advance for glory (23), he describes the objects of God’s wrath simply as prepared for destruction, ready and ripe for it, without indicating who or what is responsible for this preparation. Certainly God has never ‘prepared’ anybody for destruction; they prepare themselves for it by their own evildoing.
There is a third difference between verses 22 and 23. Although they are complementary, verse 23 is dependent on verse 22: What if God, although choosing to show his wrath . . . bore with great patience the objects of his wrath . . . ? What if he did this in order to make the riches of his glory known . . . ? The double question implies that this is indeed what God did. That is, the revelation of his wrath to the objects of his wrath was with a view to the revelation of his glory to the objects of his mercy. The most significant disclosure will be of the riches of God’s glory; and the glory of his grace will shine the more brightly against the sombre background of his wrath. ‘Glory’ is of course shorthand for the final destiny of the redeemed, in which the splendour of God will be shown to and in them, as first they are transformed and then the universe (cf. 8:18f.).
So God’s two actions, summed up in verse 18 as ‘showing mercy’ and ‘hardening’, have now been traced back to his character. It is because he is who he is that he does what he does. And although this does not solve the ultimate mystery of why he prepares some people in advance for glory and allows others to prepare themselves for destruction, yet both are revelations of God, of his patience and wrath in judgment and above all of his glory and mercy in salvation.
Paul is responding to the question ‘Why does God still blame us?’ (19). He now gives a third explanation. It is that God foretold these things in Scripture (24–29). Among the objects of God’s mercy, whom he has prepared in advance for glory (23), Paul now includes even us, himself and his readers, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles (24). For God’s way of dealing with Jews and Gentiles was another illustration of his ‘purpose in election’ (11) and had been clearly foretold in Old Testament Scripture. In verses 25–26 Paul quotes two texts from Hosea, to explain God’s amazing inclusion of the Gentiles, and then in verses 27–29 two texts from Isaiah, to explain his equally amazing reduction of Jewish inclusion to a remnant.
The background to the Hosea texts was Hosea’s marriage to his ‘adulterous wife’, Gomer, together with their three children whose names symbolized God’s judgment on the unfaithful northern kingdom of Israel. He told them to call their second child, a daughter, ‘Lo-Ruhamah’ (‘not loved’) because, he said, ‘I will no longer show love to Israel.’ He then told them to call their third child, a boy, ‘Lo-Ammi’ (‘not my people’) because, he added, ‘you are not my people, and I am not your God’. Yet God went on to promise that he would reverse the situation of rejection implicit in the children’s names. These are the texts Paul quotes.
I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people;
and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one,
and,
In the very place where it was said to them,
‘You are not my people,’
there they will be called ‘children of the living God’.
In order to understand Paul’s handling of these texts, we need to remember that, according to the New Testament, Old Testament prophecies often have a threefold fulfilment. The first is immediate and literal (in the history of Israel), the second intermediate and spiritual (in Christ and his church), and the third ultimate and eternal (in God’s final kingdom). A good example is the prophecies of the rebuilding of the temple. Here, however, the prophecy takes the form of God’s promise in mercy to overturn an apparently hopeless situation, to love again those he had declared unloved, and to welcome again as his people those he had said were not. The immediate and literal application was to Israel in the eighth century bc, rejected and judged by the Lord for apostasy, but promised a reconciliation and reinstatement.
Paul the apostle, however, is shown that God’s promise has a further and gospel fulfilment in the inclusion of the Gentiles. They had been ‘separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus’, Paul continues, ‘you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ . . . Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household.’ The apostle Peter also applies Hosea’s prophecy to the Gentiles. Their inclusion is a marvellous reversal of fortunes by God’s mercy. The outsiders have been welcomed inside, the aliens have become citizens, and the strangers are now much-loved members of the family.
Next Paul turns from Hosea to Isaiah, and so from the inclusion of the Gentiles to the exclusion of the Jews, apart from a remnant. The historical background to the two Isaiah texts is again one of national apostasy in the eighth century bc, although it now relates to the southern kingdom of Judah. The ‘sinful nation’ has forsaken Yahweh and has been judged through an Assyrian invasion, so that the whole country lies desolate and only a few survivors are left. God goes on to promise, however, that Assyria will be punished for its arrogance, and that a believing remnant will return to the Lord. Indeed, the name of Isaiah’s son symbolized this promise, as Shear-Jashub means ‘a remnant will return’.
Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:
‘Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea,
only the remnant will be saved.
For the Lord will carry out
his sentence on earth with speed and finality.’
It is just as Isaiah said previously:
‘Unless the Lord Almighty
had left us descendants,
we would have become like Sodom,
we would have been like Gomorrah.’
The significance of both texts lies in the contrast they contain between the majority and the minority. In verse 27 (quoting Isa. 10:22) it is said that the number of the Israelites will be like the sand by the sea. This was God’s promise to Abraham after his surrender of Isaac, although he added the second metaphor, ‘as the stars in the sky’. But in comparison with the countless number of Israelites, like stars and grains of sand, only a remnant would be saved, the Israel within Israel (6). Similarly, in verse 29, out of the total destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah only a handful was spared, in fact only Lot and his two daughters.
By bringing the Hosea and Isaiah texts together, Paul provides Old Testament backing for his vision. On the one hand, God has called us, he writes, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles (24). So there is a fundamental Jewish–Gentile solidarity in God’s new society. On the other hand, Paul is conscious of the serious imbalance between the size of the Gentile participation and the size of the Jewish participation in the redeemed community. As Hosea prophesied, multitudes of Gentiles, formerly excluded, have now been welcomed as the people of God. As Isaiah prophesied, however, the Jewish membership was only a remnant of the nation, so small in fact as to constitute not the inclusion of Israel but its exclusion, not its acceptance but its ‘rejection’ (11:15). Jesus himself had foretold this situation, when he said:
I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside.
Question 4: What then shall we say in conclusion? (30–33).
Paul’s fourth and final question, repeated from verse 14, is addressed to himself. In the light of the argument he has been developing, what conclusion would it be right to draw? In particular, faced with the unbelief of the majority of Israel and the minority status of believing Israel, how have these things come about? In response, Paul begins with a description, continues with an explanation, and ends with a biblical confirmation.
The situation he describes is completely topsy-turvy. On the one hand, the Gentiles [better ‘Gentiles’ without the definite article], who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith (30). To describe pagans as ‘not pursuing righteousness’ is a major understatement. Most of them at least are godless and self-centred, going their own way, lovers of themselves, of money and pleasure, rather than lovers of God and of goodness. Nevertheless, they obtained what they did not pursue. Indeed, when they heard the gospel of justification by faith, the Holy Spirit worked in them so powerfully that they laid hold of it almost with violence (katalambanō) by faith. But the people of Israel, on the other hand, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal (31). The people of Israel’s pursuit of righteousness was almost proverbial. They were filled with a religious and moral passion which some would call fanaticism. Why, then, did they not ‘attain’ it? Paul uses a different verb (phthanō), meaning to ‘reach’ or ‘arrive at’. And the reason they did not arrive is that they were pursuing an impossible goal. Paul anticipates what he will say in the next verse by setting over against the Gentiles’ righteousness that is by faith what he calls the law . . . of righteousness, which must be a reference to Torah, the law of Moses, viewed as a law to be obeyed. Here, then, is Paul’s description of the upside-down religious situation of his day. The Jews who pursued righteousness never reached it; the Gentiles who did not pursue it laid hold of it.
But why was this so? And with regard to the Jews who did not arrive, why not? Significantly, Paul’s answer on this occasion makes no reference to God’s ‘purpose in election’ (11), but instead attributes Israel’s failure to arrive to her own foolishness: because they pursued it not by faith [which is how the Gentiles laid hold of it, 30] but as if it were by works, that is, as if the accumulation of works-righteousness were God’s way of salvation. So they stumbled over the ‘stumbling stone’ (proskomma, 32). What Paul means by this is not in doubt, since he uses the same imagery (although a different vocabulary) elsewhere. In particular, he calls the proclamation of Christ crucified ‘a stumbling-block [skandalon] to Jews’, and refers also to ‘the offence [skandalon] of the cross’. And why do people stumble over the cross? Because it undermines our self-righteousness. For ‘if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing’. That is, if we could gain a righteous standing before God by our own obedience to his law, the cross would be superfluous. If we could save ourselves, why should Christ have bothered to die? His death would have been redundant. The fact that Christ died for our sins is clear proof that we cannot save ourselves. But to make this humiliating confession is an intolerable offence to our pride. So instead of humbling ourselves, we ‘stumble over the stumbling stone’.
It only remains for the apostle to provide biblical support for what he has written (33). Like Peter in his first letter, he brings together two rock-sayings from Isaiah. But Paul goes further than Peter and brings them together. The first and final phrases he quotes are from Isaiah 28:16: See, I lay in Zion a stone, and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame. In between these, however, the other two phrases come from Isaiah 8:14: a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall. The primary affirmation is that God himself has laid down a solid rock or stone. It is, of course, Jesus Christ. He boldly applied to himself the prophecy of Psalm 118: ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.’ In addition, ‘no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ’. So everybody has to decide how to relate to this rock which God has laid down. There are only two possibilities. One is to put our trust in him, to take him as the foundation of our lives and build on him. The other is to bang our shins against him, and so to stumble and fall.
Paul began this chapter with the paradox of Israel’s privilege and prejudice (1–5). How can her unbelief be explained?
It is not because God is unfaithful to his promises, for he has kept his word in relation to the Israel within Israel (6–13).
It is not because God is unjust in his ‘purpose in election’, for neither his having mercy on some nor his hardening of others is incompatible with his justice (14–18).
It is not because God is unfair to blame Israel or hold human beings accountable, for we should not answer him back, and in any case he has acted according to his own character and according to Old Testament prophecy (19–29).
It is rather because Israel is proud, pursuing righteousness in the wrong way, by works instead of faith, and so has stumbled over the stumbling block of the cross (30–33).
Thus this chapter about Israel’s unbelief begins with God’s purpose of election (6–29) and concludes by attributing Israel’s fall to her own pride (30–33). In the next chapter Paul calls her ‘a disobedient and obstinate people’ (10:21).
Many liberal commentators insist that, by attributing Jewish unbelief now to God’s purpose of election and now to Israel’s own blindness and arrogance, the apostle was contradicting himself. But that is a shallow conclusion, and unacceptable to anybody who accepts Paul’s apostolic authority. No, ‘antinomy’ is the right word to use, not ‘contradiction’. Dr Lloyd-Jones sums up Paul’s position in these words: ‘In verses 6 to 29 he explains why anybody is saved; it is the sovereign election of God. In these verses (30–33) he is showing us why anybody is lost, and the explanation of that is their own responsibility.’
Few preachers can have maintained this balance better than Charles Simeon of Cambridge in the first half of the nineteenth century. He lived and ministered at a time when the Arminian–Calvinist controversy was bitter, and he warned his congregation of the danger of forsaking Scripture in favour of a theological system. ‘When I come to a text which speaks of election’, he said to J. J. Guerney in 1831, ‘I delight myself in the doctrine of election. When the apostles exhort me to repentance and obedience, and indicate my freedom of choice and action, I give myself up to that side of the question.’ In defence of his commitment to both extremes, Simeon would sometimes borrow an illustration from the Industrial Revolution:
As wheels in a complicated machine may move in opposite directions and yet subserve a common end, so may truths apparently opposite be perfectly reconcilable with each other, and equally subserve the purposes of God in the accomplishment of man’s salvation.