THE JEWS
THE JEWS
ROMANS 9:1-5
What place, then, do the Jews have in God’s purposes?
A positive exposition of the gospel has occupied the first eight chapters of the letter, and concluded on a high note of faith. This chapter introduces a new theme. It has been reasonably suggested that chapters 9–11 form a distinct unit because they are, in fact, an address which Paul often gave to synagogue congregations wholly composed of Jews. Yet there is a connection with what goes before. Paul finds it necessary to answer a question which would puzzle many of his readers. How was this new message of righteousness and salvation apart from the Law consistent with the privileged position of the Jewish nation? Had God rejected them? Was he inconsistent?
This section therefore is intimately woven into the structure of the letter. Paul had himself passed through an agonizing reappraisal of all that Judaism meant to him, and all Christians of Jewish birth and upbringing had similarly to reassess a lifetime of belief and thinking. They had to realize that their cherished heritage was not an end in itself but a means to an end, not final and complete, but a preparation destined to find consummation, completion and submersion in a fuller revelation.
The bulk of Jewry found the adjustment impossible. There was therefore a grim dilemma of daunting enormity for all who treasured Judaism. As a result came the passionate attempts to absorb Christianity and make it a reforming sect of Judaism. The Messiah, as was expected, came from the Jews, but, if Paul preached Christ’s message rightly, the Messiah brought condemnation, not redemption, to the mass of the “chosen people.” In short, the Jews protested, if the Christian church represented the consummation of God’s plan for the world, then God appeared to deny all that he had owned and to have broken the ancient covenant with Israel.
This, to any devout Jew, would have seemed impossible. It followed that Paul’s preaching must be rejected as mistaken or perverse. Paul had passed through the stress of this dilemma. He had seen with God’s own clarity that there was no contradiction. Since his first audience everywhere was Jewish, it was essential for him to speak convincingly of this difficult theme. The next three chapters are his argument.
9:1-5 show how he loved his blinded compatriots. Then, in 9:6-29 Paul asserts the sovereignty of God. The Jew had no special claim on God. In 9:30–10:21 Paul boldly declares that the Jews’ rejection by God is the result of their own willful stubbornness. In chapter 11 he shows how the gathering in of the Gentiles made the ancient promise real.