Children of the Promise

Stephen Terry

 

Commentary for the December 9, 2017 Sabbath School Lesson

 

You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, “You did not make me”?

Can the pot say to the potter, “You know nothing”?

Isaiah 29:16, NIV

Paul begins chapter nine of Romans with a lament for the Jewish people who have been granted so much by God, yet so many of whom have rejected the Messiah. It is through the lineage of the Jewish people that Christ was descended. Theirs was the promise of His coming. Everything that is now offered to those who come to Jesus was first offered to the Jews. They are deserving of a special honor for faithfully transmitting the holy oracles that we have today.

In spite of this, we should understand as Paul is pointing out, so many have not accepted the very Messiah that those oracles proclaimed. Not only have they neglected the great salvation offered through Christ, but they have turned away from the great honor that could have been theirs as His heralds. Like Paul, we should weep for the Jewish people. He would have given his own life and salvation if it meant that they could be saved. Do we feel that way toward our own people? Perhaps this is what it will take to save some in the end, even among our friends and neighbors.

I understand how deep Paul’s frustration might have been. One summer while serving as a young pastor in a three-church district in Kansas, I had the opportunity to teach baptismal studies to a couple in their 40s, who lived in a small, rural community. We studied together for about twenty weeks, covering many of the important teachings of Jesus and the Bible. When it came time to move forward with baptism, they declined. I reviewed briefly the doctrines we had studied and asked if there were concerns about any of them or further questions. Their response surprised me.

The husband told me that there was no problem with any of the doctrines and there was no question as to the truth of what we had studied. He then went on to state that no one in his extended family had ever accepted the teachings of Jesus that we had studied, so he could not accept them either, no matter how true they might be. Perhaps this echoes to some degree what the Jews were doing who were not only turning from Paul’s witness, but also openly opposing it.

In Romans 9:6-9, Paul calls the children of Abraham, children of the promise, and he traces that promise through Isaac. Truly, Isaac, was the promised child of faith, but Abraham had another child, Ishmael, of his own works. (cf. Galatians 4:21-31) Ishmael being the child of the bondwoman, Hagar, represents those who are in bondage to their own attempts at righteousness. They have not found the freedom that comes through the righteousness of Christ. Paradoxically our attempts at achieving righteousness through our own efforts, not only fail, but they bind us ever tighter to a theological chimera which attempts to somehow derive a works oriented faith from the gift of grace freely offered to those who believe. (Ephesians 2:8-9) Such a beast is more likely to mercilessly consume our ardor and leave us torn and broken on the shoals after discovering we had insufficient strength to row beyond the breakers and into the tranquil sea beyond.

In spite of all of this, we perhaps should admit that many of us have more in common with Ishmael than with Isaac, for we, too, were born outside the lineage of promised Isaac. We did not receive the oracles firsthand as did the Jews. While the Messiah was born among the Jews in Bethlehem, our ancestors went about their daily tasks oblivious to events in Palestine. This was a time when God overlooked our ignorance (Acts 17:30), but with the Gospel now going to the entire world, even those outside, the Gentiles, were called to repent and be baptized as well. This means we are no longer outside the covenant, if we ever really were.

For instance, in Genesis 17, Ishmael is brought into the covenant of circumcision when he is thirteen years old, well before Isaac was even born. This covenant was to be an everlasting covenant of inclusion, but Israel made it a covenant of exclusion, creating a wall of separation between themselves and the descendants of Ishmael. Perhaps for that reason, it became necessary to abandon the covenant of circumcision in order to tear down that wall. (Acts 15) Then the gospel could expand beyond the boundaries of Judaism to the world. While Judaism has remained to this day, Christianity has done far more to take the message of salvation to the remotest hinterlands and bringing the light of faith to some of the spiritually darkest regions of the Earth.

We must be careful that we not allow ourselves to fall into the same trap by excluding the Jews, or even the children of Ishmael from the current covenant of grace. God's blessings are never limited by our prejudices. There is a very real danger that we, like the Jews may choose to withdraw from the world behind barriers of exclusion to keep ourselves unstained by the contamination of sin which seems to have spread everywhere. But such concerns may be the concerns of those who serve a weak, watered-down version of God who is unable to be the protection His people need. In reality, those who hide behind the walls of church or cloister are trusting to the physical barriers they have created more than to the God who gave them life. They may be honoring the creature more than the Creator. (Romans 1:25)

As Paul continues on in this chapter, he begins to speak about God's dealings with Jacob and Esau, as well as Pharaoh. The presentation about God hardening hearts is fascinating, but why would God harden anyone’s heart?

We have been emphasizing repeatedly how our salvation and sanctification is not dependent on who we are, but rather it is because of who God is and what He does for us. Paul brings that out perhaps most clearly in verse 16. "It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy." This may be where the hardening comes in.

That same mercy and love of God may work differently in different people. For some, that mercy will draw out a loving response of surrender and humility, while others respond with pride and a stiffening of their animosity toward God and His people. However, because it is God who extends mercy and love without relenting because it is His character to do so, He may be said to be the active agent of those changes. Did He harden Pharaoh's heart? Yes, under this perspective, He may have hardened it by offering him every opportunity to be saved. We face the same choice in the face of God's mercy. Will we resist God's love and grow harder in that resistance, or will we surrender to that love and find the greatest joy we have ever known?

In Romans 9:17, Paul refers to Exodus 9:16 but does not share the original sense of that passage. Instead he causes it to appear that God raised up Pharaoh for the purpose of hardening his heart. However, the passage in Exodus reveals that He raised up Pharaoh to show "my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." (NIV) In other words, perhaps the purpose of Pharaoh's existence was to bring glory to God. In that case, we are all raised up for that same purpose, for no matter whether we choose the path of righteousness offered by Jesus Christ or the path of self-exaltation that our own wayward hearts lean toward, God will be glorified in either case, either by demonstrating the futility of a selfish existence, or the joy of a life lived in the grace of Christ.

"God is love" the Bible tells us. (1 John 4:8) God is also unfazed in His love by our choices, for He sends His blessings on good and evil alike. (Matthew 5:45) For the good, God's loving blessings can result in a closer bonding between Creator and created. For the evil, it may result in a hardening of the heart toward God, as in Pharaoh's case. Repeatedly, God lovingly offered Pharaoh a way out, but instead he continually chose to set his face against God. We may choose to do the same for we are not robots constrained to follow only what we have been programed with. The overriding principle in God’s kingdom is love, and love cannot exist in a robot’s heart. Love is only possible when one can choose to love or not to love.

While we might say that God hardened Pharaoh's heart by loving him, if we are to preserve the free will that allows us to freely return love to God, then we might need to recognize that just like in the Garden of Eden, God continues to allow us to choose to become softened or hardened by His love. But no matter our choice God will never stop loving us because God does not simply love, He is love.

Paul now asks an interesting rhetorical question in Romans 9:19, but his response perhaps illustrates more about then current Pharisaic theology than it does of biblical precedent. In echoes of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 18:1-10), he compares the believer to a clay pot that has no right to challenge the actions of the potter. However, this may be a slightly flawed analogy.

There are several examples in the Bible of those who did challenge God and were not only none the worse for doing so but are looked to as exemplars by the Jews. Abraham challenged God before the destruction of Sodom. (Genesis 18) Moses also challenged God when He was going to destroy the people over the golden calf incident. (Exodus 32) So it would seem that Paul may be in danger of stretching a metaphor too far here. Why is that?

Paul fails to account here for the free will that God has given every human being. While we may have no more right to challenge our Creator than a clay pot, we were created to be able to do so, and as in the account of the destruction of Sodom, God may even encourage us to do so by responding favorably to those challenges.

Fortunately, Paul's theological detour ends up in the right place when he declares that the purpose of our relationship with God is to show the glory of His mercy toward us. (v 23) With that, I wholeheartedly agree.

For those who might be tempted to inject into this chapter of Romans that salvation is a matter of predestination as opposed to grace, Paul quotes Hosea in Romans 9:25. “I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people..." If God's people are predestined to be saved, how could they ever be "not my people?" Perhaps we can see free will, an ability to choose to be saved or lost, as the logical answer.

To further explain, the Bible speaks of the Book of Life where the names of the saved are recorded. However, I have found no mention of anyone being added to this book. It speaks of those being blotted out or removed, but not added. Instead it says that the Book of Life was written from the foundation of the world. (Revelation 17:8) Perhaps we all start out written in the book and then some later make the choice not to be. This would fit well with the character of God who sends his blessings on both the good and the evil. (Matthew 5:45) He is a God who offers us salvation even when we are at war with Him. (Romans 5:10) That is the Good News of the Gospel.

Paul closes Romans, chapter nine, with a return to the overall theme of his epistle: we are saved by faith alone. (v 30) He sharply delineates between those who obtain salvation by faith and those who seek it by law keeping and stumble thereby. Their reliance on the Law as a source of righteousness prevented them from seeing the true source of righteousness, Jesus Christ.

Sadly, in spite of this lesson and Paul's epistle, some continue to stumble at this same stone in our day. They continue to preach obedience to the Law as the means of salvation but are apparently not aware of their own stumbling as they fail continually to keep that Law. Jesus Christ is the only answer. (John 14:6) We may be ashamed at our failure to keep the Law, but if we instead cling to Jesus and trust only in the salvation He offers, we "will never be put to shame." (Romans 9:33, NIV)