1. 1. ROMA S 9 COMME TARY EDITED BY GLE PEASE God's Sovereign Choice 1I speak the truth in ChristI am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit BAR ES, I say the truth - In what I am about to affirm respecting my attachment to the nation and people. In Christ - Most interpreters regard this as a form of an oath, as equivalent to calling Christ to witness. It is certainly to be regarded, in its obvious sense, as an appeal to Christ as the searcher of the heart, and as the judge of falsehood. Thus, the word translated in en is used in the form of an oath in Mat_5:34-36; Rev_10:6, Greek. We are to remember that the apostle was addressing those who had been Jews; and the expression has all the force of an oath by the Messiah. This shows that it is right on great and solemn occasions, and in a solemn manner, and thus only, to appeal to Christ for the sincerity of our motives, and for the truth of what we say. And it shows further, that it is right to regard the Lord Jesus Christ as present with us, as searching the heart, as capable of detecting insincerity, hypocrisy, and perjury, and as therefore divine. My conscience - Conscience is that act or judgment of the mind by which we decide on the lawfulness or unlawfulness of our actions, and by which we instantly approve or condemn them. It exists in every man, and is a strong witness to our integrity or to our guilt. Bearing me witness - Testifying to the truth of what I say. In the Holy Ghost - He does not say that he speaks the truth by or in the Holy Spirit, as he had said of Christ; but that the conscience pronounced its concurring testimony by the Holy Spirit; that is, conscience as enlightened and influenced by the Holy Spirit. It was not simply natural conscience, but it was conscience under the full influence of the Enlightener of the mind and Sanctifier of the heart. The reasons of this solemn asseveration are probably the following: (1) His conduct and his doctrines had led some to believe that he was an apostate, and had lost his love for his countrymen. He had forsaken their institutions, and devoted himself to the salvation of the Gentiles. He here shows them that it was from no lack of love to them. (2) The doctrines which he was about to state and defend were of a similar character; he was about to maintain that no small part of his own countrymen, notwithstanding their privileges, would be rejected and lost. In this solemn manner, therefore, he assures them that this doctrine had not been embraced because he did not love them, but because it was solemn, though most painful truth. He proceeds to enumerate their privileges as a people, and to show to them the strength and tenderness of his love.
2. 2. CLARKE, I say the truth in Christ, I lie not - This is one of the most solemn oaths any man can possibly take. He appeals to Christ as the searcher of hearts that he tells the truth; asserts that his conscience was free from all guile in this matter, and that the Holy Ghost bore him testimony that what he said was true. Hence we find that the testimony of a mans own conscience, and the testimony of the Holy Ghost, are two distinct things, and that the apostle had both at the same time. As the apostle had still remaining a very awful part of his commission to execute, namely, to declare to the Jews not only that God had chosen the Gentiles, but had rejected them because they had rejected Christ and his Gospel, it was necessary that he should assure them that however he had been persecuted by them because he had embraced the Gospel, yet it was so far from being a gratification to him that they had now fallen under the displeasure of God, that it was a subject of continual distress to his mind, and that it produced in him great heaviness and continual sorrow. GILL, I say the truth in Christ, I lie not,.... The apostle being about to discourse concerning predestination, which he had mentioned in the preceding chapter, and to open the springs and causes of it, and also concerning the induration and rejection of the Jewish nation; he thought it necessary to preface his account of these things with some strong assurances of his great attachment to that people, and his affection for them, lest it should be thought he spoke out of prejudice to them; and well knowing in what situation he stood in with them, on account of his preaching up the abrogation of the ceremonial law, and how difficult it might be for him to obtain their belief in what he should say, he introduces it with a solemn oath, "I say the truth in Christ, I lie not": which refers not to what he had said in the foregoing chapter, but to what he was going to say; and is all one as if he had said, as I am in Christ, a converted person, one born again, and renewed in the spirit of my mind, what I am about to speak is truth, and no lie; or I swear by Christ the God of truth, who is truth itself, and I appeal to him as the true God, the searcher of hearts, that what I now deliver is truth, and nothing but truth, and has no falsehood in it. This both shows that the taking of an oath is lawful, and that Christ is truly God, by whom only persons ought to swear: my conscience bearing me witness. The apostle, besides his appeal to Christ, calls his conscience to witness to the truth of his words; and this is as a thousand witnesses; there is in every man a conscience, which unless seared as with a red hot iron, will accuse or excuse, and bear a faithful testimony to words and actions; and especially a conscience enlightened, cleansed, and sanctified by the Spirit of God, as was the apostle's: hence he adds, in the Holy Ghost; meaning either that his conscience was influenced and directed by the Holy Ghost in what he was about to say; or it bore witness in and with the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost with that; so that here are three witnesses called in, Christ, conscience, and the Holy Ghost; and by three such witnesses, his words must be thought to be well established. HE RY, We have here the apostle's solemn profession of a great concern for the
3. 3. nation and people of the Jews - that he was heartily troubled that so many of them were enemies to the gospel, and out of the way of salvation. For this he had great heaviness and continual sorrow. Such a profession as this was requisite to take off the odium which otherwise he might have contracted by asserting and proving their rejection. It is wisdom as much as may be to mollify those truths which sound harshly and seem unpleasant: dip the nail in oil, it will drive the better. The Jews had a particular pique at Paul above any of the apostles, as appears by the history of the Acts, and therefore were the more apt to take things amiss of him, to prevent which he introduces his discourse with this tender and affectionate profession, that they might not think he triumphed or insulted over the rejected Jews or was pleased with the calamities that were coming upon them. Thus Jeremiah appeals to God concerning the Jews of his day, whose ruin was hastening on (Jer_17:16), Neither have I desired the woeful day, thou knowest. Nay, Paul was so far from desiring it that he most pathetically deprecates it. And lest this should be thought only a copy of his countenance, to flatter and please them, I. He asserts it with a solemn protestation (Rom_9:1): I say the truth in Christ, I speak it as a Christian, one of God's people, children that will not lie, as one that knows not how to give flattering title. Or, I appeal to Christ, who searches the heart, concerning it. He appeals likewise to his own conscience, which was instead of a thousand witnesses. That which he was going to assert was not only a great and weighty thing (such solemn protestations are not to be thrown away upon trifles), but it was likewise a secret; it was concerning a sorrow in his heart to which none was a capable competent witness but God and his own conscience. - That I have great heaviness, Rom_9:2. He does not say for what; the very mention of it was unpleasant and invidious; but it is plain that he means for the rejection of the Jews. JAMISO , Rom_9:1-33. The bearing of the foregoing truths upon the condition and destiny of the chosen people - Election - The calling of the Gentiles. Too well aware that he was regarded as a traitor to the dearest interests of his people (Act_21:33; Act_22:22; Act_25:24), the apostle opens this division of his subject by giving vent to his real feelings with extraordinary vehemence of protestation. I say the truth in Christ as if steeped in the spirit of Him who wept over impenitent and doomed Jerusalem (compare Rom_1:9; 2Co_12:19; Phi_1:8). my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost my conscience as quickened, illuminated, and even now under the direct operation of the Holy Ghost. CALVI , In this chapter he begins to remove the offences which might have diverted the minds of men from Christ: for the Jews, for whom he was appointed ACCORDING to the covenant of the law, not only rejected him, but regarded him with contempt, and for the most part bated him. Hence one of two things seemed to follow, either that there was no truth in the Divine promise, or that Jesus, whom Paul preached, was not the Lord anointed, who had been especially promised to the Jews. This twofold knot Paul fully unties in what follows. He, however, so handles this subject, as to abstain from all bitterness against the Jews, that he might not exasperate their minds; and yet he concedes to them nothing to the injury of the gospel; for he allows to them their privileges in such a way, as not to detract anything from Christ. But he passes, as it were abruptly, to the mention of this subject, so that there appears to be no connection in the discourse. (283) He, however, so ENTERS on this new subject, as though he had before referred to it. It so happened in this way, Having finished the doctrine he discussed, he turned his attention to the Jews, and being astonished at their unbelief as at something monstrous, he burst forth into this sudden
4. 4. protestation, in the same way as though it was a subject which he had previously handled; for there was no one to whom this thought would not of itself immediately occur, this be the doctrine of the law and the Prophets, how comes it that the Jews so pertinaciously reject it? And further, it was everywhere known, that all that he had hitherto spoken of the law of Moses, and of the grace of Christ, was more disliked by the Jews, than that the faith of the Gentiles should be assisted by their consent. It was therefore necessary to remove this obstacle, lest it should impede the course of the gospel. 1.The truth I say in Christ, etc. As it was an opinion entertained by most that Paul was, as it were, a sworn enemy to his own nation, and as it was suspected somewhat even by the household of faith, as though he had taught them to forsake Moses, he adopts a preface to prepare the minds of his readers, before he proceeds to his subject, and in this preface he frees himself from the false suspicion of evil will towards the Jews. And as the matter was not unworthy of an oath, and as he perceived that his affirmation would hardly be otherwise believed against a prejudice already entertained, he declares by an oath that he speaks the truth. By this example and the like, (as I reminded you in the first chapter,) we ought to learn that oaths are lawful, that is, when they render that truth credible which is necessary to be known, and which would not be otherwise believed. The expression, In Christ, means to Christ. (284) By adding I lie not, he signifies that he speaks without fiction or disguise. My conscience testifying to me, etc. By these words he calls his own conscience before the tribunal of God, for he brings in the Spirit as a witness to his feeling. He adduced the Spirit for this end, that he might more fully testify that he was free and pure from an evil disposition, and that he pleaded the cause of Christ under the guidance and direction of the Spirit of God. It often happens that a person, blinded by the passions of the flesh, (though not purposing to deceive,) knowingly and wilfully obscures the light of truth. But to swear by the name of God, in a proper sense of the word, is to call him as a witness for the purpose of CONFIRMING what is doubtful, and at the same time to bind ourselves over to his judgment, in case we say what is false. COFFMA , With this chapter, one section of Romans ends and another BEGINS . The eighth chapter concluded Paul's outline of the complete acceptance of the Gentiles into God's kingdom. He extended to them the most extravagant assurance of their justification and providential support leading to their ultimate glorification in the presence of God himself, such blessings being far superior to anything ever known before, by either Jews or Gentiles; and now that Paul had finished speaking of those good things, the thought of his own people, the Jews, in their condition of rebellion against God and of rejecting the Messiah, pressed upon his heart. The Jews, who should have been the first to receive those great blessings, and who should have led all the world in their acceptance of them, had, through their leaders, rejected the Saviour; and the great majority of them had followed the blind leadership. Paul's overwhelming emotion of grief and sorrow bursts through in the moving words of the first paragraph (Romans 9:1-5). This and the two following chapters deal with the problem of Israel's rejection of the Christ. This chapter may be outlined thus: (1) Paul skillfully introduced the problem of Israel's attitude of rejection toward Christ, affirming his love for his own nation, and showing his appreciation of what God had done through them (Romans 9:1-5). (2) God's rejection of Israel, due to their rejection of the Messiah, was shown to be consistent with God's promises and his sovereignty (Romans 9:6- 24). (3) The rejection of Israel was SPECIFICALLY foretold by the Jewish prophets (Romans 9:25-29). (4) Conclusions from this line of reasoning (Romans 9:25-30). Lard called this chapter "emphatically the artistic chapter of the Letter."[1]Paul's SUBJECT , the rejection of Israel and the calling of the Gentiles, was repugnant as any that could be imagined for Jewish minds, and this necessitated great skill and tact on his part in daring to launch into a discussion of it. Paul's discernment, knowledge of God's word, and skill in presenting such painful disclosures are apparent in every line. Every word of Paul's message was adorned by the evidence of his rich and overflowing love for his race and nation. ENDNOTE:
5. 5. [1] Moses E. Lard, Commentary on Paul's Letter to Romans (Cincinnati, Ohio: Christian Board of Publication, 1914), p. 291. I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Spirit. (Romans 9:1) Although in no sense an oath, Paul here spoke in the most dogmatic and convincing manner possible, thus emphasizing the utmost accuracy and solemnity of what he was about to say. The use of both positive and negative statements for the sake of emphasis is common in scripture. For impossible to view it as a form of oath.[2] ENDNOTE: [2] David Lipscomb, A Commentary on New Testament Epistles (Nashville: Gospel Advocate Company, 1967), p. 164. HAWKER 1-5, I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, (2) That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. (3) For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: (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; (5) Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen. Perhaps no passage in the word of God is more difficult to apprehend, than the one at the opening of this Chapter. Here is the Apostle, in his regenerate state, entering with such warmth and earnestness of soul, into the spiritual and eternal concerns of Israel after the flesh, that he professes a wish to be accursed from Christ for the accomplishment of their salvation, And, he appeals to Christ for the truth of it. Yea, God the Holy Ghost bears him witness he saith in his own conscience, that it is so. That Paul might feel, as he saith he did, great sorrow of heart in the view of his brethren after the flesh being shut out of Christs kingdom, is very probable. Natural feelings are very strong feelings. But here Paul is speaking as under the most fervent gracious impressions. And yet both nature and grace seem to be in direct opposition to what Paul here wished. For it is contrary to the first law of nature, to wish a mans own damnation. And, it is contrary to all the finer feelings of grace, to contemplate, much less wish, being forever separated from Christ upon any consideration whatever. It is a most difficult passage to apprehend. We meet with an instance in the first view somewhat similar, when Moses, the man of God, prayed so fervently for Israel, that he begged his name might rather be blotted out of the book of God than Israel, Exo_32:32. But the book here alluded to, most probably meant the book of temporal life, and not the eternal. Pauls is a much higher note: Accursed from Christ. Indeed none but one, even the God-Man Christ Jesus, could bear the curse, and be made a curse for his redeemed. It was his peculiar honor and glory, Gal_3:13. I must leave the passage as I found it, for I am free to confess it is attended with too much difficulty of apprehension for me to explore. One improvement may be drawn from it; when we behold such an ardent zeal for the welfare of immortal souls in the Apostle, to take shame in the recollection, how cold and lifeless all of the present hour are, who minister in holy things, in the ministry of the word and ordinances. Oh! for a fervency of spirit, both in ministers and Churches! Lord the Holy Ghost! pour out of thy blessed influences,
6. 6. and cause a revival in this our day and generation! Let it be observed, concerning those of whom the Apostle speaks, that the privileges they are here said to have enjoyed, were not spiritual. They were Israelites, because descended from Jacob by natural descent, which made them so far honorable in that alliance. But they were not of the spiritual seed, concerning whom it was said, in Isaac shall thy seed be called, Gen_21:12. Neither is the adoption here spoken of, that adoption which is of grace, but nature. God separated this one family, with whom might be deposited the shadows and types of the covenant in Christ. But all these were designed no further, than to minister to that better covenant established upon better promises, Heb_8:6. Paul felt, however, a very high regard for Israel after the flesh, in that they were not only his brethren, as a nation, but also as the Lord had so distinguished them with such unspeakable blessings, in their peculiar national character, with his ordinances, and above all, in that high honor that Christ after the flesh should come, w ho is over all, God, blessed forever. Amen! BIBLICAL ILLUSTRATOR, I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost. The truth I. Should be spoken always, and under all circumstances. II. Should be spoken in christ. 1. As a Christian duty. 2. As in Christs presence. 3. In Christs Spirit. 4. For Christs honour. III. Should be attended by conscience. 1. Enlightened. 2. Influenced. 3. Approved by the Holy Spirit. IV. May only be confirmed by direct appeal to God under very solemn and extraordinary circumstances. (J. Lyth, D.D.) Christ the sphere of spiritual being In Christ. This was one of the apostles favourite expressions. All Christians according to him are in Christ. They have been baptized in Christ (Rom_6:3), i.e., they have been united to Christ by the baptism of the Spirit (1Co_12:13); so that they are in Christ as if they were parts of His person, members of His body. When the apostle thinks of this union, he sometimes allows the relations of time past and time future to interpenetrate, so that to his eye believers have not only been crucified with Christ (Gal_2:20) and buried with Him (Rom_6:4), but also raised with Him (Col_2:12; Col 3:1), and glorified with Him in heavenly places (Eph_2:6). Christians have their Christian being in Christ.
7. 7. They are justified (Gal_2:17), sanctified (1Co_1:1-31; 1Co 2:1-16), triumph (2Co_2:14), speak in Christ (2Co_2:17; 2Co 12:19). The personality of Christ had, to his transfiguring conception, become the sphere of his spiritual being and activity, so that what he did, in the express consciousness of his Christian state, he did in the realised presence of Christ, and thus all the nobler elements of his spiritual being were intensified and exalted. In such a mood how could he stoop to wilful misrepresentation? Realising that he was, so to speak, interred in Christ, he felt that in his ethical acts he was dominated by the power that ensphered him, (J. Morison, D.D.) Conscience and the Spirit 1. St. Paul does here a most difficult thing. He distinguishes two voices within, and his own voice from either. Consciencethe Holy Ghostbearing me witness. These distinctions are important. Some confuse conscience and the Spirit, others leave the Spirit altogether out, and conscience alone recognised as the guide of man. 2. Consciencewhich is, literally, co-knowledgeis a natural faculty. Like intellect, affection, or any other department of the man, conscience is rather a state than an ingredient of the person. We introduce confusion when we speak of the unit being as split into parts. Memory, will, conscience, and the rest, are, in reality, only so many conditions or moods of the one man. 3. Conscience is that state of the man in which he reviews and judges his own actions. It is natural to every man to ask of himself, Of what complexion is this thing which I have thought, spoken, or done, in regard to right and wrong? We cannot help itit is a sign, therefore, neither of good nor evilwe must sit in judgment upon ourselves. Who is so happy as never to have passed an unquiet night in the remembrance of word spoken or deed done during the day? And yet there was no one to reproach him! The thing itself was unknown to the world. No matter! He was his own accuser, witness, judge, and executioner. But conscience also exercises a legislative as well as a judicial function. It says, This is right, do itthis is wrong, shun itas well as, This was wrong, and thou hast done it, etc. 4. This conscience was without the gospel, and is still with it. See the case of Paul (Act_23:1, of. 24:16; 2Ti_1:3, cf. 1Ti_1:19). As much towards mans nature, as towards the law, Christs office was to elevate, to deepen, to perfect, not to abolish. Just as Christ took the instinct of patriotism, and turned it into a world-wide benevolence, or the love of those that love us (Mat_5:46), and consecrated it into a universal charity; so He took the natural instinct which we call conscience, and both instructed it in the Divine law of which before it had but the dimmest conception, and also enabled it with that preventing grace which is the presence of the indwelling Spirit. 5. It is a great thing to be conscientious, but it does not make a man a Christian. St. Paul was conscientious, so were some Pharisees, and in these days of grace and the gospel there are conscientious lives which are both un-Christian and anti-Christian. But I am well assured of this, that for one man who lives a good life out of Christ, a hundred thousand are wallowing in the sty of sin for lack of Him. Even in those men who think themselves able to dispense with Him I can always notice some damaging deficiency, self-conceit, coldness, exclusiveness, or uselessness. All this makes me understand why St. Paul and the Master should make so much of that superadded gift, which is the presence of Gods Holy Spirit. There are those amongst us who have
8. 8. bitterly felt the powerlessness of conscience. They have suffered, resolved, hoped, struggled, but again and again they have found themselves no match for the strong man armed. We may blame, but the weak by nature may be made strong by grace. A man whose conscience has failed to give him the victory may find victory in Christ. It will be hard work for him; but prayer can prevail where resolution has faltered; the man whose conscience has been blunted may bare it set again and edged and made powerful by grace; he who knows what it is to have stifled and all but silenced the inward voice, may yet hear it again in new tones, but with new powers also, speaking of Christ crucified and the love of the Spirit. 6. The Church and the Churchs Lord can compassionate the feebleness which man never pities. The Physician came not for the whole but for the sick. This it is which makes His gospel so inestimably precious, and makes us weep for surprise and joy when we find Jesus sitting at meat with publicans and sinners, bidding welcome to sinful women, and drawing His loveliest parables from the history of prodigals, etc. Cry out to Him for the Spirit of adoptionand where nature fails, and conscience, prayer and the Spirit shall prevail and conquer yet! Most of all do I commend this to those who have sunk the deepest. But the gospel is a voice for all men. It addresses the moral man as well as the sinner. It says to him, St. Paul was no libertine; yet even he found his righteousness of no avail in the day of his trial. In the brightness of heavens light his fabric of self-assertion melted like snow. He cast away all trust in himself, and began to build quite afresh upon the one foundation which is Jesus Christ. How should it be otherwise with you? 7. Let so many of us as have risen into this higher life of grace and the Spirit see that we seek therein a liberty, not of sin, but of God. St. Paul himself exercised himself day by day to have always a conscience void of offence. Conscience in him was still the law; only it was a conscience not bounded by law, but enlarged and illuminated by the Spirit. When he described himself, for a moment, as without the law, he yet was careful to add, lest any should misinterpret him, being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ. (Dean Vaughan.) Conscience, consciousness, and the Spirit In order to do justice to the Greek idea it is necessary to cord together mentally the two words conscience and consciousness. In the usage of New Testament and Stoic philosophy the term almost always throws out into relief its moral import. Hence we read of a good and pure, and also of an evil, defiled and seared conscience, of a conscience toward God, and one void of offence. The moral character of the conscience in this acceptation of the term is strikingly represented by the derivation conscientiousness. In Heb_10:2 the psychological idea of conscience is predominant, and is strong in 2Co_1:12. Here it must not be lost sight of, but the moral idea is predominant. The conscientious principle within the apostle attested the veracity of his utterance when he said, I am not lying. It is worthy of note that the apostle allows himself the use of a popular representation of the conscienceviz., as if it were distinct from himselfreminding us of Adam Smiths phrase, the man within the breast. Paul makes his appeal to this man. He had referred simply to himself when he said I lie not. That was his own proper testimony concerning himself. But either deliberately or instinctively realising that men often falsify even when they say We lie not, he turns to the man within, and listens till he hears him say, True, thou liest not. Of course the Romans could not look within the apostles breast and verify the concurrent testimony.
9. 9. There was but one person in the witness box, the apostle himself. But the apostle had not merely to satisfy the Romans; that might or might not be possible. He had to satisfy himself; and that was possible if he was honest. Thus it is that after his outward affirmation he turns in, and receiving inward confirmation, he, as it were, reaffirms. To all who know the man, such a solemn reaffirmation would render assurance, if that were possible, doubly sure. Once more, the apostles conscience bore witness in the Holy Spirit. Like the rest he was a man full of the Holy Ghost, so that at every point of his spiritual being he was touched and energised by the heavenly influence. There was still, it is true, the unimpaired principle of moral freedom in the centre of his being, in virtue of which it devolved on himself, as a real self-contained person, to welcome and cherish the hallowing influence. The mans individual manhood was not absorbed into the infinite essence. Neither was his moral accountability merged or superseded. But he in his freedom had made his choice. To him to live was Christ. And hence all the avenues to the very centre of his being were habitually left open to the ingress of the Holy Spirit whom he neither resisted nor grieved. And when, therefore, his inward conscience bore concurrent testimony with his outward declaration, there was more than itself in the voice of that conscience. There was the echo of the voice of Gods Spirit. (J. Morison, D.D.) That I have great heaviness. Pauls concern for Israel I. Its character. 1. Sincere. 2. Divinely inspired. II. Its intensity. 1. Great. 2. Continual. 3. Self-sacrificing. III. Its special grounds. 1. Their high privileges. 2. National affinity with Christ. (J. Lyth, D.D.) Concern for other mens souls I. The persons about whom Paul felt this anxiety. 1. His worst enemies. If any of you in following Christ should meet with opposition, avenge it in the same way. Love most the man who treats you worst. 2. His kinsfolk according to the flesh. Charity must begin at home. He who does not desire the salvation of those who are his own kith and kin, how dwelleth the love of God in him? Is thy husband unsaved? Love him to Christ! Next to your homes let your own neighbours be first of all considered, and then your country, for all Englishmen are akin.
10. 10. 3. Persons of great privileges. (1) They had privileges by birthWho are Israelites. Many of you have the privilege of being born in the midst of gracious influences. Those poor gutter children start in the race of life under terrible disadvantages. And some of you have had everything in your favour; yet we tremble for you, lest you should be cast out, while many come from the east and from the west and sit down at the banquet of grace. (2) They had the adoption, and enjoyed national advantages; and God has been pleased to adopt this nation, giving it special liberty, an open Bible, and the free proclamation of the gospel. (3) They had the glory, i.e., God had revealed Himself in their midst from the mercy-seat in the bright light of the Shekinah. And in this very house of prayer the Lord has manifested His glory very wonderfully. Many hundreds have been turned from darkness to light in this place! (4) They had the first hold of all spiritual gifts. They had seen God revealing His Son to them by types; but Christ is not so well seen in bleeding bullocks and rams and hyssop, etc., as He is seen in the preaching of the gospel. 4. Yet Paul had a great solicitude for these people because he saw them living in the commission of great sin. Although many of them were exceedingly moral and religious. The greatest of sins is to be at enmity with God. The most damning of iniquities is to refuse Christ. So many now value their external religiousness above faith in Jesus. II. The nature of this anxiety. It was 1. Very truthful. There was no sham about it, I say the truth in Christ. He did not fancy that he felt, but he really felt. He did not sometimes get up into that condition or down into it, but he lived in it. I lie not, he says. I do not exaggerate. For fear he should not be believed he asseverates as strongly as is allowed to a Christian man. Do we feel the same, or is it only a little excitement at a revival meeting? You must feel deeply for the souls of men if you are to bless them. 2. Very gracious. It was not an animal feeling, or a natural feeling; it was in Christ. When he was nearest to his Lord, then he felt that he did mourn over mens souls. It was truth in Christ that he was expressing, because he was one with Christ. It is of no use to try to get this feeling by reading books, or to pump yourself up to it in private; it is the work of God. 3. Spiritual. The Holy Spirit bore witness with his conscience. I am sometimes afraid that our zeal for conversion would not stand the test of the Holy Ghost. Perhaps we want to increase our denomination, or enlarge our church for our own honour, or get credit for doing good. None of these motives can be tolerated; our concern for souls must he wrought in us by the Holy Ghost. 4. Most deep and depressing he had great heaviness, and he tells us that this did not come on him at times, but that he always felt it whenever his thoughts turned that way: I have continual sorrow in my heart. In his very heart, for it was not a superficial desire; a continual sorrow, for it was no fitful emotion. 5. Most intense (verse 3). Of course the apostle never thought of wishing that he could be an enemy to Christ, but he did sometimes look at the misery which comes upon those who are separated from Christ, until he felt that if he could save his
11. 11. kinsmen by his own destruction, ay, by himself enduring their heavy punishment, he could wish to stand in their stead. He did not say that he ever did wish it, but he felt as if he could wish it when his heart was warm. His case was parallel with that of Moses when he prayed the Lord to spare the people and said, If not, blot my name out of the Book of Life. When the heart is full of love even the boldest hyperboles are simple truths. Extravagances are the natural expression of warm hearts even in ordinary things. What the cool doctrinalist pulls to pieces, and the critic of words regards as altogether absurd, true zeal nevertheless feels. Christ saved others, Himself He could not save. Men are extravagantly prudent, dubious, profane; they may therefore well permit the minister of Christ to be extravagant in his love for others. Such a text as this must be fired off red hot; it spoils if it cools. It is a heart, not a head business. The apostle means us to understand that there was nothing which he would not suffer if he might save his kindred according to the flesh. III. Its excellences. What would be the result if we felt as Paul did? 1. It would make us like Christ. After that manner he loved. He became a curse for us. He did what Paul could wish, but could not do. I want you to feel that you would pass under poverty, sickness, or death, if you could save those dear to you. I heard of a dear girl the other day who said to her pastor, I could never bring my father to hear you, but I have prayed for him long, and God will answer my request. Now you will bury me, wont you? My father must come and hear you speak at my grave. Do speak to him. God will bless him. And he did, and her father was converted. 2. It will save us from selfishness. The first instinct of a saved soul is a longing to bring others to Christ. Yet, lest there should grow up in your spirit any of that Pharisaic selfishness which was seen in the elder brother, ask to feel a heaviness for your prodigal younger brother, who is still feeding swine. 3. It will save you from any difficulty about forgiving other people. Love mankind with all your soul, and you will feel no difficulty in exercising patience, forbearance, and forgiveness. 4. It will keep you from very many other griefs. You will be delivered from petty worries if you are concerned about the souls of men. 5. It will put you much upon prayer. That is the right style of prayingwhen a man prays because he has an awful weight upon him, and pray he must. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Concern for kindred I. Its true expression. 1. Heartfelt compassion. 2. Earnest prayer. 3. Self-sacrificing zeal. II. Its powerful motives. 1. Our brethren. 2. Specially privileged. 3. Dear to Christ. (J. Lyth, D.D.)
12. 12. Home and foreign missions The fervency of affection professed by Paul in this passage is all in behalf of his own countrymen; and yet none more zealous than he in the labours of a Christian missionary among the distant countries of the world. What gives more importance to this remark is the tendency in our own day to place these two causes in opposition to each other. It might serve as a useful corrective to look at Paul and at the one comprehensive affection which actuated his bosom, cleaving with all the devotedness of a thorough patriot to the families of his own land; and yet carrying him beyond the limits of a contracted patriotism among all the families of the earth. The truth is, that home and foreign Christianity, instead of acting upon the heart like two forces in opposite directions, draw both the same way, so that he who has been carried forward to the largest sacrifices in behalf of the one, is the readiest for like sacrifices in behalf of the other. The friends of the near being also, as they have opportunity, the most prompt and liberal in their friendship to the distant enterprise; recognising in man, wherever he is to be found, the same wandering outcast from the light and love of heaven, and the same befitting subject for the offers of a free salvation. We cannot therefore sympathise with those who affect an indifference to the Christianisation of the heathen till the work of Christianisation shall have been completed at our own door. Let them be careful, lest there do not lurk within them a like indifference to both, lest the feelings and the principles of all true philanthropy lie asleep in their bosoms; and they, unlike to Paul, who found room for the utmost affection towards the spiritual well-being of his own kinsfolk and the utmost activity among the aliens and idolaters of far distant lands, shall be convicted of deep insensibility to the concerns of the soul, of utter blindness to the worth of eternity. (T. Chalmers, D.D.) Earnestness in promoting the salvation of others We were going from Camden to Philadelphia some years ago very late at night after a meeting. It was a cold winter night, and we stood on the deck of the ferry-boat, impatient to get ashore. Before the boat came to the wharf, a man who stood on the outside of the chains slipped and dropped into the water. It is the only man that we ever saw overboard. It was a fearful night. The icicles had frozen on the wharf, and they had frozen on the steamer. The question was how to get the man up. The ropes were lowered, and we all stood with feverish anxiety lest the man should not be able to grasp the ropes, and when he grasped it and was pulled up on to the deck, and we saw he was safe, although we had never seen him before, how we congratulated him! A life saved! Have we the same earnestness about getting men out of spiritual peril? Do we not go up and down in our prayer-meetings, and our Christian work, coldly saying, Yes, there is a great deal of sin in the world; men ought to do better. I wish the people would become Christians. I think it is high time that men attended to their eternal interests; and five minutes after we put our head on the pillow we are sound asleep, or from that consideration we pass out in five minutes into the utmost mirthfulness, and have forgotten it all. Meanwhile there is a whole race overboard. How few hands are stretched out to lift men out of the flood! how few prayers offered! how earnest opportunities! how little earnest Christian work! (T. De Witt Talmage.)
13. 13. EBC 1-33, THE SORROWFUL PROBLEM: JEWISH UNBELIEF; DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY WE may well think that again there was silence awhile in that Corinthian chamber, when Tertius had duly inscribed the last words we have studied. A "silence in heaven" follows, in the Apocalypse, (Rev_8:1) the vision of the white hosts of the redeemed, gathered at last, in their eternal jubilation, before the throne of the Lamb. A silence in the soul is the fittest immediate sequel to such a revelation of grace and glory as has passed before us here. And did not the man whose work it was to utter it, and whose personal experience was as it were the informing soul of the whole argument of the Epistle from the first, and not least in this last sacred paean of faith, keep silence when he had done, hushed and tired by this "exceeding weight" of grace and glory? But he has a great deal more to say to the Romans, and in due time the pen obeys the voice again. What will the next theme be? It will be a pathetic and significant contrast to the last; a lament, a discussion, an instruction, and then a prophecy, about not himself and his happy fellow saints, but poor self-blinded unbelieving Israel. The occurrence of that subject exactly, here is true to the inmost nature of the Gospel. The Apostle has just been counting up the wealth of salvation, and claiming it all, as present and eternal property, for himself and his brethren in the Lord. Justifying Righteousness, Liberty from sin in Christ, the Indwelling Spirit, electing Love, coming and certain Glory, all have been recounted, and asserted, and embraced. "Is it selfish," this great joy of possession and prospect? Let those say so who see these things only from outside. Make proof of what they are in their interior, enter into them, learn yourself what it is to have peace with God, to receive the Spirit, to expect the eternal glory; and you will find that nothing is so sure to expand the heart towards other men as the personal reception into it of the Truth and Life of God in Christ. It is possible to hold a true creed-and to be spiritually hard anal selfish. But is it possible so to be-when not only the creed is held, but the Lord of it, its Heart and Life, is received with wonder and great joy? The man whose certainties, whose riches, whose freedom, are all consciously "in Him," cannot but love his neighbour, and long that he too should come into "the secret of the Lord." So St. Paul, just at this point of the Epistle, turns with a peculiar intensity of grief and yearning towards the Israel which he had once led, and now had left, because they would not come with him to Christ. His natural and his spiritual sympathies all alike go out to this self-afflicting people, so privileged, so divinely loved, and now so blind. Oh, that he could offer any sacrifice that would bring them reconciled, humbled, happy, to the feet of the true Christ! Oh, that they might see the fallacy of their own way of salvation, and submit to the way of Christ, taking His yoke, and finding rest to their souls! Why do they not do it? Why does not the light which convinced him shine on them! Why should not the whole Sanhedrin say, "Lord, what wouldst Thou have us to do?" Why does not the fair beauty of the Son of God make them too "count all things but loss" for Him? Why do not the voices of the Prophets prove to them, as they do now to Paul, absolutely convincing of the historical as well as spiritual claims of the Man of Calvary? Has the promise failed? Has God done with the race to which He guaranteed such a perpetuity of blessing? No, that cannot be. He looks again, and he sees in the whole past a long warning that, while an outer circle of benefits might affect the nation, the inner circle, the light and life of God indeed, embraced "a remnant" only; even from the day when Isaac and not Ishmael was made heir of Abraham. And then he ponders the impenetrable mystery of the relation of the Infinite Will to human wills; he remembers how, in a way whose full reasons are unknowable, (but they are good, for they are in
14. 14. God,) the Infinite Will has to do with our willing; genuine and responsible though our willing is. And before that opaque veil he rests. He knows that only righteousness and love are behind it; but he knows that it is a veil, and that in front of it mans thought must cease and be silent. Sin is altogether mans fault. But when man turns from sin it is all Gods mercy, free, special, distinguishing. Be silent, and trust Him, O man whom He has made. Remember, He has made thee. It is not only that He is greater than thou, or stronger; but He has made thee. Be reasonably willing to trust, out of sight, the reasons of thy Maker. Then he turns again with new regrets and yearnings to the thought of that wonderful Gospel which was meant for Israel and for the world, but which Israel rejected, and now would fain check on its way to the world. Lastly, he recalls the future, still full of eternal promises for the chosen race, and through them full of blessings for the world; till he rises at length from perplexity and anguish, and the wreck of once eager expectations, into that great Doxology in which he blesses the Eternal Sovereign for the very mystery of His ways, and adores Him because He is His own eternal End. Truth I speak in Christ, speaking as the member of the All-Truthful; I do not lie, my conscience, in the Holy Ghost, informed and governed by Him, bearing me concurrent witness-the soul within affirming to itself the word spoken without to others-that I have great grief, and my heart has incessant pain, yes, the heart in which (Rom_5:5) the Spirit has "poured out" Gods love and joy; there is room for both experiences in its human depths. For I was wishing, I myself, to be anathema from Christ, to be devoted to eternal separation from Him; awful dream of uttermost sacrifice, made impossible only because it would mean self-robbery from the Lord who had bought him; a spiritual suicide by sin- for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen flesh-wise. For they are ( ) Israelites, bearers of the glorious theocratic name, sons of the "Prince with" Gen_32:28; theirs is the adoption, the call to be Jehovahs own filial race, "His son, His firstborn" (Exo_4:22) of the peoples; and the glory, the Shechinah of the Eternal Presence, sacramentally seen in Tabernacle and Temple, spiritually spread over the race; and the covenants, with Abraham, and Isaac, and Levi, and Moses, and Aaron, and Phinehas, and David; and the Legislation, the Holy Moral Code, and the Ritual, with its divinely ordered symbolism, that vast Parable of Christ, and the Promises, of "the pleasant land," and the perpetual favour, and the coming Lord; theirs are the Fathers, patriarchs, and priests, and kings; and out of them, as to what is flesh-wise, is the Christ, -He who is over all things, God, blessed to all eternity. Amen. It is indeed a splendid roll of honours, recited over this race "separate among the nations," a race which today as much as ever remains the enigma of history, to be solved only by Revelation. "The Jews, your Majesty," was the reply of Frederick the Greats old believing courtier, when asked with a smile for the credentials of the Bible; the short answer silenced the Encyclopaedist King. It is indeed a riddle, made of indissoluble facts, this people everywhere dispersed, yet everywhere individual; scribes of a Book which has profoundly influenced mankind, and which is recognised by the most various races as an august and lawful claimant to be divine, yet themselves, in so many aspects, provincial to the heart; historians of their own glories, but at least equally of their own unworthiness and disgrace; transmitters of predictions which may be slighted, but can never, as a whole, be explained away, yet obstinate deniers of their majestic fulfilment in the Lord of Christendom; human in every fault and imperfection, yet so concerned in bringing to man the message of the Divine that Jesus Himself said of them, "Salvation (Joh_4:22) comes from the Jews." On this wonderful race this its most illustrious member (after his Lord) here fixes his eyes, full of tears. He sees their glories pass before him-and then
15. 15. realises the spiritual squalor and misery of their rejection of the Christ of God. He groans, and in real agony asks how it can be. One thing only cannot be; the promises have not failed; there has been no failure in the Promiser. What may seem such is rather mans misreading of the promise. But it is not as though the word of God has been thrown out, that "word" whose divine honour was dearer to him than even that of his people. For not all who come from Israel constitute Israel; nor, because they are seed of Abraham, are they all his children, in the sense of family life and rights; but "In Isaac shall a seed be called thee"; (Gen_21:12) Isaac, and not any son of thy body begotten, is father of those whom thou shalt claim as thy covenant race. That is to say, not the children of his flesh are the children of his () God; no, the children of the promise, indicated and limited by its developed terms, are reckoned as seed. For of the promise this was the word. (Gen_18:10; Gen_18:14) "According to this time I will come, and Sarah, she and not any spouse of thine; no Hagar, no Keturah, but Sarah, shall have a son." And the law of limitations did not stop there, but contracted yet again the stream of even physical filiation: Nor only so, but Rebecca too-being with child, with twin children, of one husband-no problem of complex parentage, as with Abraham, occurring here-even of Isaac our father, just named as the selected heir-(for it was while they were not yet born, while they had not yet shown any conduct good or bad, that the choice-wise purpose of God might remain, sole and sovereign, not based on works, but wholly on the Caller)-it was said to her, (Gen_25:23) "The greater shall be bondman to the less." As it stands written, in the prophets message a millennium later, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated," I repudiated him as heir. So the limit has run always along with the promise. Ishmael is Abrahams son, yet not his son. Esau is Isaacs son, yet not his son. And though we trace in Ishmael and in Esau, as they grow, characteristics which may seem to explain the limitation, this will not really do. For the chosen one in each case has his conspicuous unfavourable characteristics too. And the whole tone of the record (not to speak of this its apostolic interpretation) looks towards mystery, not explanation. Esaus "profanity" was the concurrent occasion, not the cause, of the choice of Jacob. The reason of the choice lay in the depths of God, that World "dark with excess of bright." All is well there, but not the less all is unknown. So we are led up to the shut door of the sanctuary of Gods Choice. Touch it; it is adamantine, and it is fast locked. No blind Destiny has turned the key, and lost it. No inaccessible Tyrant sits within, playing to himself both sides of a game of fate, and indifferent to the cry of the soul. The Key Bearer, whose Name is engraved on the portal, is "He that liveth, and was dead, and is alive for evermore". (Rev_1:18) And if you listen you will hear words within, like the soft deep voice of many waters, yet of an eternal Heart; "I am that I am; I will that I will; trust Me." But the door is locked; and the Voice is mystery. Ah, what agonies have been felt in human souls, as men have looked at that gate, and pondered the unknown interior! The Eternal knows, with infinite kindness and sympathy, the pain unspeakable which can beset the creature when it wrestles with His Eternity, and tries to clasp it with both hands, and to say that "that is all!" We do not find in Scripture, surely, anything like an anthema for that awful sense of the unknown which can gather on the soul drawn-irresistibly as it sometimes seems to be-into the problems of the Choice of God, and oppressed as with "the weight of all the seas upon it," by the very questions stated presently here by the Apostle. The Lord knoweth, not only His will, but our heart, in these matters. And where He entirely declines to explain (surely because we are not yet of age to understand Him if He did) He yet shows us Jesus, and bids us meet the silence of the mystery with the silence of a personal trust in the personal
16. 16. Character revealed in Him. In something of such stillness shall we approach the paragraph now to follow? Shall we listen, not to explain away, not even over much to explain, but to submit, with a submission which is not a suppressed resentment but an entire reliance? We shall find that the whole matter, in its practical aspect, has a voice articulate enough for the soul which sees Christ, and believes on Him. It says to that soul, "Who maketh thee to differ? Who hath fashioned thee to honour? Why art thou not now, as once, guiltily rejecting Christ, or, what is the same, postponing Him? Thank Him who has compelled thee, yet without violation of thyself, to come in. See in thy choice of Him His mercy on thee. And now, fall at His feet, to bless Him, to serve Him, and to trust Him. Think ill of thyself. Think reverently of others. And remember (the Infinite, who has chosen thee, says it), He willeth not the death of a sinner, He loved the world, He bids thee to tell it that He loves it, to tell it that He is Love." Now we listen. With a look which speaks awe, but not misgiving, disclosing past tempests of doubt, but now a rest of faith, the Apostle dictates again: What therefore shall we say? Is there injustice at Gods bar? Away with the thought. The thing is, in the deepest sense, unthinkable. God, the God of Revelation, the God of Christ, is a Being who, if unjust-"ceases to be," "denies Himself." But the thought that His reasons for some given action should be, at least to us now, absolute mystery, He being the Infinite Personality, is not unthinkable at all. And in such a case it is not unreasonable, but the deepest reason, to ask for no more than His articulate guarantee, so to speak, that the mystery is fact; that He is conscious of it, alive to it (speaking humanly); and that He avows it as His will. For when God, the God of Christ, bids us "take His will for it," it is a different thing from an attempt, however powerful, to frighten us into silence. It is a reminder Who He is who speaks; the Being who is kindred to us, who is in relations with us, who loved us, but who also has absolutely made us, and cannot (because we are sheer products of His will) make us so much His equals as to tell us all. So the Apostle proceeds with a "for" whose bearing we have thus already indicated: For to Moses he says, (Exo_34:19) in the dark sanctuary of Sinai, "I shall pity whomsoever I do pity, and compassionate whomsoever I do compassionate"; My account of My saving action shall stop there: It appears therefore that it, the ultimate account of salvation, is not of (as the effect is "of" the first cause) the wilier, nor of the runner, the carrier of willing into work, but of the Pitier - God. For the Scripture says (Exo_10:16) to Pharaoh, that large example of defiant human sin, real and guilty, but also, concurrently, of the sovereign Choice which sentenced him to go his own way, and used him as a beacon at its end, "For this very purpose I raised thee up, made thee stand, even beneath the Plagues, that I might display in thee My power, and that My Name, as of the just God who strikes down the proud, might be told far and wide in all the earth." Pharaohs was a case of concurrent phenomena. A man was there on the one hand, willingly, deliberately, and most guiltily, battling with right, and rightly bringing ruin on his own head, wholly of himself. God was there on the other hand, making that man a monument not of grace but of judgment. And that side, that line, is isolated here, and treated as if it were all. It appears then that whom He pleases, He pities, and whom He pleases, He hardens, in that sense in which He "hardened Pharaohs heart," "made it stiff," "made it heavy," "made it harsh"-by sentencing it to have its own way. Yes, thus "it appears." And beyond that inference we can take no step of thought but this-that the Subject of that mysterious "will," He who thus "pleases," and "pities," and "hardens," is no other than the God of Jesus Christ. He may be, not only submitted to, but trusted, in that unknowable
17. 17. sovereignty of His will. Yet listen to the question which speaks out the problem of all hearts: "You will say to Me therefore, Why does He still, after such an avowal of His sovereignty, softening this heart, hardening that, why does He still find fault?" Ah, why? For His act of will who has withstood? (Nay, you have withstood His will, and so have I Not one word of the argument has contradicted the primary fact of our will, nor therefore our responsibility. But this he does not bring in here.) Nay, rather, rather than take such an attitude of narrow and helpless logic, think deeper; nay, rather, O man, O mere human being, you-who are you, who are answering back to your God? Shall the thing formed say to its Former, Why did you make me like this? Has not the potter authority over his clay, out of the same kneaded mass to make this vessel for honour, but that for dishonour? But if God, being pleased to demonstrate His wrath, and to evidence what He can do-what will St. Paul go on to say? That the Eternal, being thus "pleased," created responsible beings on purpose to destroy them, gave them personality, and then compelled them to transgress? No, he does not say so. The sternly simple illustration, in itself one of the least relieved utterances in the whole Scripture-that dread Potter and his kneaded Clay!-gives way, in its application, to a statement of the work of God on man full of significance in its variation. Here are indeed the "vessels" still; and the vessels "for honour" are such because of "mercy," and His own hand has "prepared them for glory." And there are the vessels "for dishonour," and in a sense of awful mystery they are such because of "wrath." But the "wrath" of the Holy One can fall only upon demerit; so these "vessels" have merited His displeasure of themselves. And they are "prepared for ruin"; but where is any mention of His hand preparing them? And meanwhile He "bears them in much longsuffering." The mystery is there, impenetrable as ever, when we try to pierce behind "His will." But on every side it is limited and qualified by facts which witness to the compassions of the Infinite Sovereign even in His judgments, and remind us that sin is altogether "of" the creature. So we take up the words where we dropped them above: What if He bore, (the tense throws us forward into eternity, to look back thence on His ways in time,) in much longsuffering, vessels of wrath, adjusted for ruin? And acted otherwise with others, that He might evidence the wealth of His glory, the resources of His inmost Character, poured upon vessels of pity, which He prepared in advance for glory, by the processes of justifying and hallowing grace-whom in fact He called, effectually, in their conversion, even us, not only from the Jews, but also from the Gentiles? For while the lineal Israel, with its privilege and its apparent failure, is here first in view, there lies behind it the phenomenon of "the Israel of God," the heaven-born heirs of the Fathers, a race not of blood, but of the Spirit. The great Promise, all the while, had set towards that Israel as its final scope; and now he gives proof from the Prophets that this intention was at least half revealed all along the line of revelation. As actually in our Hosea (Hos_2:23, Heb_2:5) in the book we know as such, He says, "I will call what was not My people, My people; and the not-beloved one, beloved. And [another Hosean oracle, in line with the first] it shall be, in the place where it was said to them, Not My people are ye, there they shall be called sons of the living God." In both places the first incidence of the words is on the restoration of the Ten Tribes to covenant blessings. But the Apostle, in the Spirit, sees an ultimate and satisfying reference to a vaster application of the same principle; the bringing of the rebelling and banished ones of all mankind into covenant and blessing. Meanwhile the Prophets who foretell that great ingathering indicate with equal solemnity the spiritual failure of all but a fraction of the lineal heirs of promise. But Isaiah cries over Israel, "If the number of the sons of Israel should be as the sand of the sea, the remnant only shall be saved; for as one who completes and cuts short will the Lord do His work upon the earth." Here again is a first and second incidence of the
18. 18. prophecy. In every stage of the history of Sin and Redemption the Apostle, in the Spirit, sees an embryo of the great Development. So, in the woefully limited numbers of the Exiles who returned from the old captivity he sees an embodied prophecy of the fewness of the sons of Israel who shall return from the exile of incredulity to their, true Messiah. And as Isaiah (Isa_1:9) has foretold, so it is; "Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us a seed, like Sodom we had become, and to Gomorrah we had been resembled." Such was the mystery of the facts, alike in the older and in the later story of Israel. A remnant, still a remnant, not the masses, entered upon an inheritance of such ample provision, and so sincerely offered. And behind this lay the insoluble shadow within which is concealed the relation of the Infinite Will to the wills of men. But also, in front of the phenomenon, concealed by no shadow save that which is cast by human sin, the Apostle sees and records the reasons, as they reside in the human will, of this "salvation of a remnant." The promises of God, all along, and supremely now in Christ, had been conditioned (it was in the nature of spiritual things that it should be so) by submission to His way of fulfilment. The golden gift was there, in the most generous of hands, stretched out to give. But it could be put only into a recipient hand open and empty. It could be taken only by submissive and self-forgetting faith. And man, in his fall, had twisted his will out of gear for such an action. Was it wonderful that, by his own fault, he failed to receive? What therefore shall we say? Why, that the Gentiles, though they did not pursue righteousness, though no Oracle had set them on the track of a true divine acceptance and salvation, achieved righteousness, grasped it when once revealed, but the righteousness that results on faith; but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, aiming at what is, for fallen man, the impossible goal, a perfect meeting of the Laws one principle of acceptance, "This do and thou shalt live," did not attain that law; that is to say, practically, as we now review their story of vain efforts in the line of self, did not attain the acceptance to which that law was to be the avenue. The Pharisee as such, the Pharisee Saul of Tarsus for example, neither had peace with God, nor dared to think he had, in the depth of his soul. He knew enough of the divine ideal to be hopelessly uneasy about his realisation of it. He could say, stiffly enough, "God, I thank Thee"; (Luk_18:11; Luk_18:14) but he "went down to his house" unhappy, unsatisfied, unjustified. On what account? Because it was not of faith, but as of works; in the unquiet dream that man must, and could, work up the score of merit to a valid claim. They stumbled on the Stone of their stumbling; as it stands written, (Isa_8:14; Isa_28:16) in a passage where the great perpetual Promise is in view, and where the blind people are seen rejecting it as their foothold in favour of policy, or of formalism, Behold, I place in Sion, in the very centre of light and privilege, a Stone of stumbling, and a Rock of upsetting; and he who confides in Him, (or, perhaps, in it,) he who rests on it, on Him, shall not be put to shame. One great Rabbi at least, Rashi, of the twelfth century, bears witness to the mind of the Jewish Church upon the significance of that mystic Rock. "Behold," so runs his interpretation, "I have established a King, a Messiah, who shall be in Zion a stone of proving." Was ever prophecy more profoundly verified in event? Not for the lineal Israel only, but for Man, the King Messiah is, as ever, the Stone of either stumbling or foundation. He is, as ever, "a Sign spoken against." He is, as ever, the Rock of Ages, where the believing sinner hides, and rests, and builds, "Below the storm-mark of the sky, Above the flood-mark of the deep." Have we known what it is to stumble over Him? "We will not have this Man to reign over us"; "We were never in bondage to any man; who is He that He should set us free?" And
19. 19. are we now lifted by a Hand of omnipotent kindness to a place deep in His clefts, safe on His summit, "knowing nothing" for the peace of conscience, the satisfaction of thought, the liberation of the will, the abolition of death, "but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified"? Then let us think with always humbled sympathy of those who, for whatever reason, still "forsake their, own mercy". (Jon_2:8) And let us inform them where we are, and how we are here, and that "the ground is good." And for ourselves, that we may do this the better, let us often read again the simple, strong assurance which closes this chapter of mysteries; "He who confides in Him shall not be put to shame"; "shall not be disappointed"; "shall not," in the vivid phrase of the Hebrew itself, "make haste." No, we shall not "make haste." From that safe Place no hurried retreat shall ever need to be beaten. That Fortress cannot be stormed; it cannot be surprised; it cannot crumble. For "IT is HE"; the Son, the Lamb, of God; the sinners everlasting Righteousness, the believers unfailing Source of peace, of purity, and of power. DETACHED NOTE TO Rom_9:5 THE following is transcribed, with a few modifications, from the writers Commentary on the Epistle in "The Cambridge Bible": "[Who is over all, God blessed forever.] The Greek may, with more or less facility, be translated (1) as in A.V; or (2) who is God over all, etc.; or (3) blessed forever be He who is God over all (i.e., the Eternal Father) If we adopt (3) we take the Apostle to be led, by the mention of the Incarnation, to utter a sudden and solemn doxology to the God who gave that crowning mercy. In favour of this it is urged (by some entirely orthodox commentators, as H.A.W. Meyer) that St. Paul nowhere else styles the Lord simply God, but rather the Son of God, etc. By this they do not mean to detract from the Lords Deity; but they maintain that St. Paul always so states that Deity, under Divine guidance, as to mark the Subordination of the Son-that Subordination which is not a difference of Nature, Power, or Eternity, but of Order; just such as is marked by the simple but profound words Father and Son." "But on the other hand there is Tit_2:13, where the Greek is (at least) perfectly capable of the rendering, our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. There is Act_20:28, where the evidence is very strong for the reading, retained by the R.V (text) the Church of God, which He purchased with His own blood. And if St. John is to be taken to report words exactly, in his narrative of the Resurrection, in an incident whose point is deeply connected with verbal precision, we have one of the first Apostles, within eight days of the Resurrection, addressing the Risen Lord (Joh_20:28) as my God. (We call attention to this as against the contention that only the latest developments of inspiration, represented in, e.g., St. Johns Preamble to his Gospel, show us Christ called explicitly God.)" "If it is divinely true that the Word is God, it is surely far from wonderful if here and there, in peculiar connections, [St. Paul] should so speak of Christ, even though guided to keep another phase of the truth habitually in view." "Now, beyond all fair question, the Greek here is quite naturally rendered as in the A.V; had it not been for historical controversy, probably, no other rendering would have been suggested. And lastly, and what is important, the context far rather suggests a lament (over the fall of Israel) than an ascription of praise. And what is most significant of all, it pointedly suggests some explicit allusion to the super-human Nature of Christ, by the words, according to the flesh. But if there is such an allusion, then it must lie in the words, over all, God."
20. 20. BARCLAY, THE PROBLEM OF THE JEWS In Rom. 9-11 Paul tries to deal with one of the most bewildering problems that the Church has to solve--the problem of the Jews. They were God's chosen people; they had had a unique place in God's purposes; and yet when God's Son had come into the world they had rejected him and crucified him. How is this tragic paradox to be explained? That is the problem with which Paul seeks to deal in these chapters. They are complicated and difficult, and, before we begin to study them in detail, it will be well to set out the broad lines of the solution which Paul presented. One thing we must note before we begin to disentangle Paul's thought--the chapters were written not in anger but in heartbreak. He could never forget that he was a Jew and he would gladly have laid down his own life if, by so doing, he could have brought his brethren to Jesus Christ. Paul never denies that the Jews were the chosen people. God adopted them as his own; he gave them the covenants and the service of the Temple and the law; he gave them the presence of his own glory; he gave them the patriarchs. Above all Jesus was a Jew. The special place of the Jews in God's economy of salvation Paul accepts as an axiom and as the starting-point of the whole problem. The first point which he makes is this--it is true that the Jews as a nation rejected and crucified Jesus, but it is also true, that not all the Jews rejected him; some received him and believed in him, for all the early followers of Jesus were Jews. Paul then looks back on history and insists that racial descent from Abraham does not make a Jew. Over and over again in Jewish history there was in God's ways a process of selection--Paul calls it election--whereby some of those who were racial descendants of Abraham were chosen and some rejected. In the case of Abraham, Isaac, the son born according to the promise of God, was chosen, but Ishmael, the son born of purely natural desire, was not. In the case of Isaac, his son Jacob was chosen, but Esau, Jacob's twin, was not. This selection had nothing to do with merit; it was the work entirely of God's electing wisdom and power. Further, the real chosen people never lay in the whole nation; it always lay in the righteous remnant, the few who were true to God when all others denied him. It was so in the days of Elijah, when seven thousand remained faithful to God after the rest of the nation had gone after Baal. It was an essential part of the teaching of Isaiah, who said: "Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant Of them will be saved" (Isa. 10:22; Rom. 9:27). Paul's first point is that at no time were the whole people the chosen people. There was always selection, election, on the part of God.
21. 21. Is it fair of God to elect some and to reject others? And, if some men are elected and others are rejected through no virtue or fault of their own, how can you blame them if they reject Christ, and how can you praise them if they accept him? Here Paul uses an argument at which the mind staggers, and from which we quite properly recoil. Bluntly, it is that God can do what he likes and that man has no right whatever to question his decisions, however inscrutable they may be. The clay cannot talk back to the potter. A craftsman may make two vessels, one for an honourable purpose and another for a menial purpose; the vessels have nothing whatever to do with it. That, said Paul, is what God has a right to do with men. He quotes the instance of Pharaoh (Rom. 9:17) and says that he was brought on to the stage of history simply to be the instrument through which God's avenging power was demonstrated. In any event, the people of Israel had been forewarned of the election of the Gentiles and of their own rejection, for, did not the prophet Hosea write: "Those who were not my people I will call `my people', and her who was not beloved I will call `my beloved'" (Hos. 1:10; Rom. 9:25). However, this rejection of Israel was not callous and haphazard. The door was shut to the Jews that it might be opened to the Gentiles. God hardened the hearts of the Jews and blinded their eyes with the ultimate purpose of opening a way for the Gentiles into the faith. Here is a strange and terrible argument. Stripped of all its non-essentials, it is that God can do what he likes with any man or nation. and that he deliberately darkened the minds and shut the eyes of the Jews in order that the Gentiles might come in. What was the fundamental mistake of the Jews? This may seem a curious question to ask in view of what we have just said. But, paradoxically, Paul holds that though the rejection of the Jews was the work of God, it need never have happened. He cannot get rid of the eternal paradox--nor does he desire to--that at one and the same time all is of God and man has free-will. The fundamental mistake of the Jews was that they tried to get into a right relationship with God through their own efforts. They tried to earn salvation; whereas the Gentiles simply accepted the offer of God in perfect trust. The Jews should have known that the only way to God was the way of faith and that human achievement led nowhere. Did not Isaiah say: "No one who believes in him will be put to shame"? (Isa. 28:16; Rom. 10:11.) Did not Joel say: "Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved"? (Joel 2:32; Rom. 10:13.) True, no man can have faith until he hears the offer of God; but to the Jews that offer was made. They clung to the way of human achievement through obedience to the law; they staked everything on works, but they should have known that the way to God was the way of faith, for the prophets had told them so. Once again it is to be stressed that all this was God's arrangement; and that it was so arranged to allow the Gentiles to come in. Paul therefore turns to the Gentiles.
22. 22. He orders them to have no pride. They are in the position of wild olive shoots which have been grafted into a garden olive tree. They did not achieve their own salvation any more than the Jews did; in point of fact they are dependent on the Jews; they are only engrafted branches; the root and the stem are still the chosen people. The fact of their own election and the fact of the rejection of the Jews are not to produce pride in Gentile hearts. If that happens, rejection can and will happen to them. Is this the end? Far from it. It is God's purpose that the Jews will be moved to envy at the relationship of the Gentiles to him and that they will ask to be admitted to it themselves. Did not Moses say: "I make you jealous of those who are not a nation; with a foolish nation I will make you angry"? (Deut. 32:21; Rom. 10:19.) In the end the Gentiles will be the very instrument by which the Jews will be saved. "And so all Israel will be saved" (Rom. 11:26). So Paul comes to the end of the argument. We may summarily set out its steps. (i) Israel is the chosen people. (ii) To be a member of Israel means more than racial descent. There has always been election within the nation; and the best of the nation has always been the remnant who were faithful. (iii) This selection by God is not unfair, for he has the right to do what he likes. (iv) God did harden the hearts of the Jews, but only to open the door to the Gentiles. (v) Israel's mistake was dependence on human achievement founded on the law; the necessary approach to God is that of the totally trusting heart. (vi) The Gentiles must have no pride for they are only wild olives grafted into the true olive stock. They must remember that. (vii) This is not the end; the Jews will be so moved to wondering envy at the privilege that the Gentiles have received that in the end they will be brought in by them.
23. 23. (viii) So in the very end all, Jew and Gentile, will be saved. The glory is in the end of Paul's argument. He began by saying that some were elected to reception and some to rejection. In the end he comes to say that it is God's will that all men should be saved. THE TRAGIC FAILURE Rom. 9:1-6 I tell you the truth as one who is united to Christ is bound to do. I do not lie. My conscience bears witness with me in the Holy Spirit when I say that my grief is great and there is unceasing anguish in my heart. I could pray that I myself might be accursed so that I was completely separated from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen as far as human relationship goes. For my kinsmen are the Israelites, and theirs is the special sonship of God, and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the worship of the Temple and the promises. To them the fathers belong. And from them, on his human side, came the Anointed One of God. Blessed for ever be the God who is over all! Amen. Paul begins his attempt to explain the Jewish rejection of Jesus Christ. He begins, not in anger, but in sorrow. Here is no tempest of anger and no outbreak of enraged condemnation; here is the poignant sorrow of the broken heart. Paul was like the God whom he loved and served--he hated the sin. but he loved the sinner. No man will ever even begin to try to save men unless he first loves them. Paul sees the Jews, not as people to be lashed with anger, but as people to be yearned over with longing love. Willingly Paul would have laid down his life if he could have won the Jews for Christ. It may be that his thoughts were going back to one of the greatest episodes in Jewish history. When Moses went up the mountain to receive the law from the hands of God, the people who had been left below sinned by making the golden calf and worshipping it. God was wreath with them; and then Moses prayed the great prayer: "Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin--and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written" (Exo.32:32). Paul says that for the sake of his brethren he would consent to be accursed if it would do any good. The word he uses is anathema and it is a terrible word. A thing which was anathema was under the ban; it was devoted to God for utter destruction. When a heathen city was taken, everything in it was devoted to utter destruction, for it was polluted (Deut. 3:6; Deut. 2:34; Josh. 6:17; Josh. 7:1-26). If
24. 24. a man tried to lure Israel away from the worship of the true God, he was pitilessly condemned to utter destruction (Deut. 13:8-11). The dearest thing in all Paul's life was the fact that nothing could separate him from the love of God in Christ Jesus; but, if it would do anything to save his brethren, he would even accept banishment from God. Here again is the great truth that the man who would save the sinner must love him. When a son or a daughter has done something wrong and incurred punishment, many a father and a mother would gladly bear that punishment if only they could. As Myers makes Paul say in his poem Saint Paul: "Then with a thrill the intolerable craving, Shivers throughout me like a trumpet call; O to save these, to perish for their saving-- Die for their life, be offered for them all." That is what God felt; that is what Paul felt; and that is what we must feel. Paul did not for a moment deny the place of the Jews in the economy of God. He enumerates their privileges. (i) In a special sense they were children of God, specially chosen, specially adopted into the family of God. "You are the sons of the Lord your God" (Deut. 14:1). "Is not he your father, who created you?" (Deut. 32:6). "Israel is my firstborn son" (Exo. 4:22). "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt called my son" (Hos. 11:1). The Bible is full of this idea of the special sonship of Israel and of Israel's refusal to accept it in the fullest sense. Boreham somewhere tells how he was visiting in a friend's house when he was a boy. There was one room into which it was forbidden to go. One day he was opposite the room when the door opened and inside he saw a boy of his own age, but in a dreadful state of animal idiocy. He saw the boy's mother go to his side. She must have seen young Boreham in all his health and sanity and then looked at her own son; and the comparison must have pierced her heart. He saw her kneel by the idiot boy's bedside and heard her cry out in a kind of anguish: "I've fed you and clothed you and loved you--and you've never known me." That was what God might have said to Israel--only in this case it was worse, for Israel's rejection was deliberate and open-eyed. It is a terrible thing to break the heart of God. (ii) Israel had the glory. The shekinah or kaboth occurs again and again in Israel's history. It was the divine splendour of light which descended when God was
25. 25. visiting his people (Exo.16:10; Exo.24:16-17; Exo.29:43; Exo.33:18-22). Israel had seen the glory of God and yet had rejected him. To us it has been given to see the glory of God's love and mercy in the face of Jesus Christ; it is a terrible thing if we then choose the ways of earth. (iii) Israel had the covenants. A covenant is a relationship entered into between two people, a bargain for mutual profit, an engagement for mutual friendship. Again and again God had approached the people of Israel and entered into a special relationship with them. He did so with Abraham, with Isaac, with Jacob and upon Mount Sinai when he gave the law. Irenaeus distinguishes four great occasions when God entered into agreement with men. The first was the covenant with Noah after the flood, and the sign was the rainbow in the heavens which stood for God's promise that the floods would not come again. The second was the covenant with Abraham and its sign was the sign of circumcision. The third was the covenant with the nation entered into on Mount Sinai and its basis was the law. The fourth is the new covenant in Jesus Christ. It is an amazing thing to think of God approaching men and entering into a pledged relationship with them. It is the simple truth that God has never left men alone. He did not make one approach and then abandon them. He has made approach after approach; and he still makes approach after approach to the individual human soul. He stands at the door and knocks; and it is the awful responsibility of human will that man can refuse to open. (iv) They had the law. Israel could never plead ignorance of God's will; God had told them what he desired them to do. If they sinned, they sinned in knowledge and not in ignorance, and the sin of knowledge is the sin against the light which is worst of all. (v) They had the worship of the Temple. Worship is in essence the approach of the soul to God; and God in the Temple worship had given to the Jews a special road of approach to himself. If the door to God was shut, they had shut it on themselves. (vi) They had the promises. Israel could never say that it did not know its destiny. God had told them of the task and the privilege which were in store for them in his purpose. They knew that they were destined for great things in the economy of God.
26. 26. (vii) They had the fathers. They had a tradition and a history; and it is a poor man who can dare to be false to his traditions and to shame the heritage into which he has entered. (viii) Then comes the culmination. From them there came the Anointed One of God. All else had been a preparation for this; and yet when he came they rejected him. The biggest grief a man can have is to give his child every chance of success, to sacrifice and save and toil to give him the opportunity, and then to find that the child, through his disobedience or rebelliousness or self-indulgence, has failed to grasp it. Therein lies tragedy, for therein is the waste of love's labour and the defeat of love's dream. The tragedy of Israel was that God had prepared her for the day of the coming of his Son--and all the preparation was frustrated. It was not that God's law had been broken; it was that God's love had been spurned. It is not the anger, but the broken heart of God, which lies behind Paul's words. 2I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. BAR ES, Great heaviness - Great grief. Continual sorrow - The word rendered continual here must be taken in a popular sense. Not that he was literally all the time pressed down with this sorrow, but that whenever he thought on this subject, he had great grief; as we say of a painful subject, it is a source of constant pain. The cause of this grief, Paul does not expressly mention, though it is implied in what he immediately says. It was the fact that so large a part of the nation would be rejected, and cast off. GILL, That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. This is the thing he appeals to Christ for the truth of, and calls in his conscience and the Holy Ghost to bear witness to. These two words, "heaviness" and "sorrow", the one signifies grief, which had brought on heaviness on his spirits; and the other such pain as a woman in travail feels: and the trouble of his mind expressed by both, is described by its quantity, "great", it was not a little, but much; by its quality it was internal, it was in his "heart", it did not lie merely in outward show, in a few words or tears, but was in his heart, it was a heart sorrow; and by its duration, "continual", it was not a sudden emotion or passion, but what had been long in him, and had deeply affected and greatly depressed him: and what was the reason of all this? it is not expressed, but may pretty easily be understood; it was because of the obstinacy of his countrymen the Jews, the hardness of their hearts, and their wilful rejection of the Messiah; their trusting to their own righteousness, to the neglect and contempt of the righteousness of Christ, which he
27. 27. knew must unavoidably issue in their eternal destruction; also what greatly affected his mind was the utter rejection of them, as the people of God, and the judicial blindness, and hardness of heart, he full well knew was coming upon them, and which he was about to break unto them. JAMISO , That I have, etc. That I have great grief (or, sorrow) and unceasing anguish in my heart - the bitter hostility of his nation to the glorious Gospel, and the awful consequences of their unbelief, weighing heavily and incessantly upon his spirit. CALVI , 2.That I have great sorrow, etc. He dexterously manages so to cut short his sentence as not yet to express what he was going to say; for it was not as yet seasonable OPENLY to mention the destruction of the Jewish nation. It may be added, that he thus intimates a greater measure of sorrow, as imperfect sentences are for the most part full of pathos. But he will presently express the cause of his sorrow, after having more fully testified his sincerity. But the perdition of the Jews caused very great anguish to Paul, though he knew that it happened through the will and providence of God. We hence learn that the obedience we render to God providence does not prevent us from grieving at the destruction of lost men, though we know that they are thus doomed by the just judgment of God; for the same mind is capable of being influenced by these two feelings: that when it looks to God it can willingly bear the ruin of those whom he has decreed to destroy; and that when it turns its thoughts to men, it condoles with their evils. They are then much deceived, who say that godly men ought: to have apathy and insensibility, ( ) lest they should resist the decree of God. COFFMA , That I have great sorrow, and unceasing pain in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren's sake, my kinsmen ACCORDING to the flesh. Paul had more than sufficient reason, if he had been of a mean and vindictive spirit, to hold bitterness against his Jewish kinsmen because of their unrelenting persecutions and harassment of his ministry and apostleship. Forty of them, on occasion, had bound themselves with an oath not to eat or drink until they had murdered him; and emissaries from the Jews in Jerusalem had dogged his every step on the mission field. They had preferred charges against him before kings and governors; and yet, despite all this, his love for Israel was undiminished. How noble are Paul's thoughts in such a context as that which frames them here. letter, bring it out; and thus he approached it from a different angle. Lard has this with reference to this amazing fact: His countrymen had repudiated Christ; that was the fact which caused his grief and sorrow; that any person should do this is painful enough; that one's own kin should do it is exquisitely so. The apostle does not yet name the fact that gave him pain, but conceals it until he can bring it out with better effect.[3] I could wish ... is the key to understanding Romans 9:3. As Hodge wrote: The expression is evidently hypothetical and conditional, "I could wish, were the thing allowable, possible, or proper."[4]
28. 28. Paul's grief was like that of Jesus who "had compassion on the multitude "(Matthew 9:6), and like that of Moses who said, "Blot me out of