9:1-3Paul expressed concern for his Jewish brothers and sisters by saying that he would willingly take their punishment if that would save them. While the only one who can save us is Christ, Paul showed a rare depth of love. Like Jesus, he was willing to sacrifice so others would be saved. How concerned are you for those who don't know Christ? Are you willing to sacrifice your time, money, energy, comfort, and safety to see them come to faith in Jesus?
Life Application Study BibleRomansChapter 9
Romans 9
New Living Translation · Life Application Study Bible · Original pages: 1910, 1911, 1912
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9Romans 9
God's Selection of Israel
19 With Christ as my witness, I speak with utter truthfulness. My conscience and the Holy Spirit confirm it. 2My heart is filled with bitter sorrow and unending grief for my people, my Jewish brothers and sisters.* I would be willing to be forever cursed—cut off from Christ!—if that would save them. 4They are the people of Israel, chosen to be God’s adopted children.* God revealed his glory to them. He made covenants with them and gave them his law. He gave them the privilege of worshiping him and receiving his wonderful promises. 5Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are their ancestors, and Christ himself was an Israelite as far as his human nature is concerned. And he is God, the one who rules over everything and is worthy of eternal praise! Amen.* 6Well then, has God failed to fulfill his promise to Israel? No, for not all who are born into the nation of Israel are truly members of God’s people! 7Being descendants of Abraham doesn’t make them truly Abraham’s children. For the Scriptures say, “Isaac is the son through whom your descendants will be counted,”* though Abraham had other children, too. 8This means that Abraham’s physical descendants are not necessarily children of God. Only the children of the promise are considered to be Abraham's children. 9For God had promised, “I will return about this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”* 10This son was our ancestor Isaac. When he married Rebekah, she gave birth to twins.* 11But before they were born, before they had done anything good or bad, she received a message from God. (This message shows that God chooses people according to his own purposes; 12he calls people, but not according to their good or bad works.) She was told, “Your older son will serve your younger son.”* 13In the words of the Scriptures,“T loved Jacob, but I rejected Esau.”* i4Are we saying, then, that God was unfair? Of course not! 5For God said to Moses, “T will show mercy to anyone I choose, and I will show compassion to anyone I choose.”* 16So it is God who decides to show mercy. We can neither choose it nor work for it. 17For the Scriptures say that God told Pharaoh, “I have appointed you for the very purpose of displaying my power in you and to spread my fame throughout the earth.”* 18So you see, God chooses to show mercy to some, and he chooses to harden the hearts of others so they refuse to listen. ‘8Well then, you might say, “Why does God blame people for not responding? Haven't they simply done what he makes them do?” 20No, don't say that. Who are you, a mere human being, to argue with God? Should the thing that was created say to the one who created it, “Why have you made me like this?” 21When a potter makes jars out of clay, doesn’t he have a right to use the same lump of clay to make one jar for decoration and another to throw garbage into? 22In the same way, even though God has the right to show his anger and his power, he is very patient with those on whom his anger falls, who were made for destruction. 23He does this to make the riches of his glory shine even brighter on those to whom he shows mercy, who were prepared in advance for glory. 24And we are among those whom he selected, both from the Jews and from the Gentiles.
25Concerning the Gentiles, God says in the prophecy of Hosea,“Those who were not my people,I will now call my people.And I will love thosewhom I did not love before.”*
26And,“Then, at the place where they were told,“You are not my people,there they will be called‘children of the living God.’”*
27And concerning Israel, Isaiah the prophet cried out,“Though the people of Israel are as numerous as the sand of the seashore,only a remnant will be saved.
28For the LORD will carry out his sentence upon the earthquickly and with finality.”*
29And Isaiah said the same thing in another place:“Tf the LORD of Heaven's Armieshad not spared a few of our children,we would have been wiped out like Sodom,destroyed like Gomorrah.”*
Israel’s Unbelief
3030What does all this mean? Even though the Gentiles were not trying to follow God's standards, they were made right with God. And it was by faith that this took place. 31But the people of Israel, who tried so hard to get right with God by keeping the law, never succeeded. 32Why not? Because they were trying to get right with God by keeping the law* instead of by trusting in him. They stumbled over the great rock in their path. 33God warned them of this in the Scriptures when he said, “1 am placing a stone in Jerusalem* that makes people stumble, arock that makes them fall. But anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced.”*
Textual footnotes
- rules over everything, be praised forever. Amen. 9:7 Gen 21:12. 9:9 Gen 18:10, 14.
- children through this one man. 9:12 Gen 25:23. 9:13 Mal 1:2-3. 9:15 Exod 33:19.
- 9:3 Greek my brothers.
- 9:4 Greek chosen for sonship.
- 9:5 Or May God, the one who
- 9:10 Greek she conceived
- 9:17 Exod 9:16 (Greek version). 9:25 Hos 2:23.
- 9:26 Greek sons of the living God. Hos 1:10.
Life Application Notes 11 notes
9:4The Jews viewed God’s choosing of Israel in the Old Testament as being like adoption. They were undeserving and without tights as natural children. Yet God adopted them and granted them the status of his sons and daughters.
9:6God’s word in the form of beautiful covenant promises came to Abraham. Covenant people, the true children of Abraham, are fot just his biological descendants. They are all those who trust in God and in what Jesus Christ has done for them (see also 2:29; Galatians 3:7).
9:11The Jews were proud of the fact that their lineage came from!saac, whose mother was Sarah (Abraham’s legitimate wife), rather than Ishmael, whose mother was Hagar (Sarah’s servant). that God has aiready reached down to them. We cannot earn God's mercy—if we could, it would not be mercy.
9:17,18Paul quotes from Exodus 9:16, where God foretold how Pharaoh would be used to declare God’s power. Paul uses this argument to show that salvation was God’s work, Not people's. God’s judgment on Pharaoh’s choice to resist God was to confirm that sin and harden his heart. The consequences of Pharaoh's rebellion would be his own punishment.
9:21With this illustration, Paul is not saying that some of us are worth more than others but that the Creator has control over the created object. The created object, therefore, has no right to demand anything from its Creator—its very existence depends on him. Keeping this perspective removes any temptation to have pride in personal achievement.
9:25,26About seven hundred years before Jesus’ birth, Hosea told of God's intention to restore his people. Paul applies Hosea’s message to God’s intention to bring Gentiles into his family after the Jews rejected his plan. Verse 25 is a quotation from Hosea
9:27-29Isaiah prophesied that only a small number of God’s original people, the Jews, would be saved. Paul saw this happening in every city where he preached. Even though he went to the Jews first, relatively few ever accepted the message. Verses 97 and 28 are based on Isaiah 10:22, 23; and 9:29 is from isaiah 1:9.
9:31-33Sometimes we are like these people, trying to get right with God by keeping his laws. We may think that attending church, doing church work, giving offerings, and being nice will be enough. After all, we've played by the rules, haven't we? But Paul's words sting——this approach never succeeds. Paul explains that God’s plan is not for those who try to earn his favor by being good; it is for those who realize that they can never be good enough and so must depend on Christ. We can be saved only by putting our faith in what Jesus Christ has done. If we do that, we will never be disappointed.
9:32The Jews had a worthy goal—to honor God. But they tried to achieve it the wrong way——by rigid and painstaking Obedience to the law. Thus, some of them became more dedicated to the law than to God. They thought that if they kept the law, God would have to accept them as his people. But God cannot be controlled. The Jews did not see that their Scriptures, the Old Testament, taught that salvation depended on faith, not on human effort (see Genesis 15:6).
9:32The “great rock” they stumbled over was Jesus. The Jews did not believe in him because he didn’t meet their expectations for the Messiah. Some people still stumble over Christ because salvation by faith doesn’t make sense to them. They think they
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Study feature · page 1911
WARNING SIGNS OF DEVELOPING HARDNESS
Hardening is like a callus or like the tough bone fibers that bridge a fracture. Spiritual hardening begins with self-sufficiency, security in one’s self, and self-satisfaction. The real danger is that at some point, repeated resistance to God will yield an actual inability to respond, which the Bible describes as a hardened heart. Insensitivity indicates advanced hardening. Here are some of the warning signs: Warning Sign Reference Disobeying—Pharaoh’s willful disobedience led to his Exodus 4:21 hardened heart.
Having wealth and prosperity—Taking God’s blessings for granted can cause us to feel as if they were owed to us. Rebeiling and being discontented—Suffering or discomfort can create an attitude that blames God.
Deuteronomy 8:6-14 Psalm 95:8
Rejecting a deserved rebuke—Rejecting God's gift makes our neck stiff and our heart hard.
Proverbs 29:1
Refusing to listen—Refusing to listen leads to a loss of spiritual hearing. Failing to respond—Listening to God with no intention of obeying produces an inability to obey.
Zechariah 7:11-13 Matthew 13:11-15
Study feature · page 1912
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