Romans 9
9
1 I tell the truth in Christ. I am not lying, my conscience testifying with me in the Holy Spirit 2that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart. 3For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brothers’ sake, my relatives according to the flesh 4who are Israelites; whose is the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service, and the promises; 5of whom are the fathers, and from whom is Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God, blessed forever. Amen.
6 But it is not as though the word of God has come to nothing. For they are not all Israel that are of Israel. 7Neither, because they are Abraham’s offspring, are they all children. But, “your offspring will be accounted as from Isaac.”#Genesis 21:12 8That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as heirs. 9For this is a word of promise: “At the appointed time I will come, and Sarah will have a son.”#Genesis 18:10,14 10Not only so, but Rebekah also conceived by one, by our father Isaac. 11For being not yet born, neither having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him who calls,#9:11 NU puts the phrase “not of works, but of him who calls” at the beginning of verse 12 instead of the end of verse 11. 12it was said to her, “The elder will serve the younger.”#Genesis 25:23 13Even as it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”#Malachi 1:2-3
14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? May it never be! 15For he said to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”#Exodus 33:19 16So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy. 17For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I caused you to be raised up, that I might show in you my power, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”#Exodus 9:16 18So then, he has mercy on whom he desires, and he hardens whom he desires.
19 You will say then to me, “Why does he still find fault? For who withstands his will?” 20But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed ask him who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?”#Isaiah 29:16; 45:9 21Or hasn’t the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel for honour, and another for dishonour? 22What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23and that he might make known the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory— 24us, whom he also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles? 25As he says also in Hosea,
“I will call them ‘my people,’ which were not my people;
and her ‘beloved,’ who was not beloved.”#Hosea 2:23
26“It will be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’
there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’”#Hosea 1:10
27 Isaiah cries concerning Israel,
“If the number of the children of Israel are as the sand of the sea,
it is the remnant who will be saved;
28 for he will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness,
because the Lord will make a short work upon the earth.”#Isaiah 10:22-23
29 As Isaiah has said before,
“Unless the Lord of Armies#9:29 Greek: Sabaoth (or Hebrew: Tze’va’ot) had left us a seed,
we would have become like Sodom,
and would have been made like Gomorrah.”#Isaiah 1:9
30 What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, who didn’t follow after righteousness, attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith; 31but Israel, following after a law of righteousness, didn’t arrive at the law of righteousness. 32Why? Because they didn’t seek it by faith, but as it were by works of the law. They stumbled over the stumbling stone, 33even as it is written,
“Behold,#9:33 “Behold”, from “ἰδοὺ”, means look at, take notice, observe, see, or gaze at. It is often used as an interjection. I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and a rock of offence;
and no one who believes in him will be disappointed.”#Isaiah 8:14; 28:16
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Romans 9
9
God Is Calling His People
1-5At the same time, you need to know that I carry with me at all times a huge sorrow. It’s an enormous pain deep within me, and I’m never free of it. I’m not exaggerating—Christ and the Holy Spirit are my witnesses. It’s the Israelites . . . If there were any way I could be cursed by the Messiah so they could be blessed by him, I’d do it in a minute. They’re my family. I grew up with them. They had everything going for them—family, glory, covenants, revelation, worship, promises, to say nothing of being the race that produced the Messiah, the Christ, who is God over everything, always. Oh, yes!
6-9Don’t suppose for a moment, though, that God’s Word has malfunctioned in some way or other. The problem goes back a long way. From the outset, not all Israelites of the flesh were Israelites of the spirit. It wasn’t Abraham’s sperm that gave identity here, but God’s promise. Remember how it was put: “Your family will be defined by Isaac”? That means that Israelite identity was never racially determined by sexual transmission, but it was God-determined by promise. Remember that promise, “When I come back next year at this time, Sarah will have a son”?
10-13And that’s not the only time. To Rebecca, also, a promise was made that took priority over genetics. When she became pregnant by our one-of-a-kind ancestor, Isaac, and her babies were still innocent in the womb—incapable of good or bad—she received a special assurance from God. What God did in this case made it perfectly plain that his purpose is not a hit-or-miss thing dependent on what we do or don’t do, but a sure thing determined by his decision, flowing steadily from his initiative. God told Rebecca, “The firstborn of your twins will take second place.” Later that was turned into a stark epigram: “I loved Jacob; I hated Esau.”
14-18Is that grounds for complaining that God is unfair? Not so fast, please. God told Moses, “I’m in charge of mercy. I’m in charge of compassion.” Compassion doesn’t originate in our bleeding hearts or moral sweat, but in God’s mercy. The same point was made when God said to Pharaoh, “I picked you as a bit player in this drama of my salvation power.” All we’re saying is that God has the first word, initiating the action in which we play our part for better or worse.
19Are you going to object, “So how can God blame us for anything since he’s in charge of everything? If the big decisions are already made, what say do we have in it?”
20-33Who in the world do you think you are to second-guess God? Do you for one moment suppose any of us knows enough to call God into question? Clay doesn’t talk back to the fingers that mold it, saying, “Why did you shape me like this?” Isn’t it obvious that a potter has a perfect right to shape one lump of clay into a vase for holding flowers and another into a pot for cooking beans? If God needs one style of pottery especially designed to show his angry displeasure and another style carefully crafted to show his glorious goodness, isn’t that all right? Either or both happens to Jews, but it also happens to the other people. Hosea put it well:
I’ll call nobodies and make them somebodies;
I’ll call the unloved and make them beloved.
In the place where they yelled out, “You’re nobody!”
they’re calling you “God’s living children.”
Isaiah maintained this same emphasis:
If each grain of sand on the seashore were numbered
and the sum labeled “chosen of God,”
They’d be numbers still, not names;
salvation comes by personal selection.
God doesn’t count us; he calls us by name.
Arithmetic is not his focus.
Isaiah had looked ahead and spoken the truth:
If our powerful God
had not provided us a legacy of living children,
We would have ended up like ghost towns,
like Sodom and Gomorrah.
How can we sum this up? All those people who didn’t seem interested in what God was doing actually embraced what God was doing as he straightened out their lives. And Israel, who seemed so interested in reading and talking about what God was doing, missed it. How could they miss it? Because instead of trusting God, they took over. They were absorbed in what they themselves were doing. They were so absorbed in their “God projects” that they didn’t notice God right in front of them, like a huge rock in the middle of the road. And so they stumbled into him and went sprawling. Isaiah (again!) gives us the metaphor for pulling this together:
Careful! I’ve put a huge stone on the road to Mount Zion,
a stone you can’t get around.
But the stone is me! If you’re looking for me,
you’ll find me on the way, not in the way.
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.