Page 63 - Romans Student Textbook.doc

expressed that love this way, “For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the
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sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.”

Paul does not just love Israel he also believes that Israel has a special place in God’s heart and God’s plan.
They have a heritage that flows out of the history of their relationship with God. They were graciously
brought into a covenant relationship with God that includes a whole list of privileges. He expressed it in
this way,

They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the
worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is
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the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

All of these things revealed that Paul had a deep, abiding desire that all of Israel would come to trust in
Christ the way that he had.

People become children of God not by fleshly means, but by the gracious, merciful choice of God to give
them His promise to be their Father. (9:6-18)

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“If the Israelites haven’t believed, has God’s word and His plan failed?” That is the question that is on
the heart of the Roman believers. “Can we trust that God’s plan of salvation will work for us?” is another
version of the question that expressed the attitude that Paul was confronting as he continued to write.
The answer to those kinds of questions is the subject of the next paragraph. The answer is simply that not
all the physical children of Abraham are recipients of the promise given to Abraham. They are not all what
Paul called “children of the promise.” To be a child of the promise required more than just physical
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birth. It required God’s choice to show His mercy as an expression of His compassion on specific people.
Paul listed two pairs of those people as examples. Isaac, not Ismael; Jacob, not Esau. Paul put this truth
this way, “So then, it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy.” People do not
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make themselves children of God and heirs of God’s promise. People do not become heirs of God’s
promise just by virtue of their physical birth into the nation of Israel. Only God produces heirs to His
promise, and He doesn’t explain everything about how He does so to us. He expects that His people will
trust Him to do what is right.

God has the right to display His glory through His sovereign choices to redeem a remnant of His covenant
people, Israel. (9:19-29)

“Well doesn’t that mean that God is being unfair?” That question summarizes the two questions in
Romans 9:19. It is interesting to note that this is a place where Paul answers questions with questions.
Three of them seem to explode off of his pen at the suggestion that God is being unfair in His judgments
and actions. They are (1) What makes you think you have the right to question God? (2) Doesn’t the
craftsmen have the right to form the material he uses the way he wants to make what he intends to
make? (3) Does the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay vessels that fulfill different
purposes? In other words, “If it is right for people to have this kind of power, why so you think that is God
wrong if He exerts the same kind of privilege?”

Paul, followed those rhetorical questions with a rather long hypothetical question that begins with “What
if?” It is a question that stretched over three verses in the text of Paul’s letter.

62 Romans 9:3, ESV.
63 Romans 9:4-5, ESV.
64 Romans 9:6.
65 Romans 8:8.
66 Romans 9:16, ESV.

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