Further Illustration
FURTHER ILLUSTRATION
ROMANS 9:10-13
Paul moves his argument forward one generation in the story of the patriarchs.
In a further movement of argument which would appear relevant to the Jews, to whom he is writing, Paul moves forward one generation in the story of the patriarchs. Paul pictures his Jewish opponent observing that Ishmael was discarded because it was in observance of a pagan custom that Abraham took Hagar, and that Hagar was a slave and an alien. He was therefore illegitimate, and could not rank in privilege with Sarah’s son. But “we are Abraham’s seed and were never enslaved to anyone” (John 8:33-39).
In answer Paul points to Isaac’s children, where no distinction of paternal fault or conduct, no difference of racial background, could be alleged. The two children, Esau and Jacob, were twins. Before there could be any visible grounds of choice between them on the basis of conduct, it was pronounced that the elder by a few minutes should serve the younger. God, in his sovereign will, rejected Esau. (Paul has in mind the opening verses of Malachi.)
Note very carefully that God is speaking of Esau and Jacob in relation to the heritage, the carrying on of the covenanted line of God’s people. He is not discussing the eternal salvation or condemnation of individual people in accordance with an absolute decree of God exercised without relation to their will or works, and resting solely upon an inscrutable and incomprehensible will. His object is to exclude the idea that humanity has claims against God, and, after Paul’s own characteristically intense manner of argument, he pursues it singlemindedly.
He presses home the fact that the visible exclusion of a great mass of contemporary Jewry from the kingdom of their own Messiah was no breach of faith on the part of God towards Abraham’s offspring. Always, his purpose has run through an inner group—the remnant. Paul pauses before the opaque veil of God’s will. “He knows that only righteousness and love are behind it; but he knows that it is a veil, and that in front of it man’s thought must cease and be silent” (Handley Moule).