Page 64 - Romans Student Textbook.doc

What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience
vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of
mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory — even us, whom he has called, not from the Jews only
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but also for the Gentiles?

His point expressed in this question is that God has the right by virtue of His holy character to do
whatever He wants with whomever He wants so that His glory will be displayed in the greatest possible
brilliance to all of His creation. He even has the right to exclude some who are physically seed of Abraham
and to include some who are not seed of Abraham into those who are the children of the promise to
Abraham. God doesn’t have to save every Israelite to save Israel. A remnant is all that is necessary
through whom He can fulfill his promises to Abraham.

To reinforce the point of this question Paul went to the Old Testament prophets Hosea and Isaiah in the
verses that follow. He quoted one passage from Hosea and two from Isaiah to show that God’s plan has
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always been to combine a remnant of the Jews and a remnant of the Gentiles into the body of people
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who are called “the children of the promise.” He also used these verses to point out that none of those
who are chosen as “children of the promise” deserve to be counted as so by any act of their own. They all
deserve the righteous judgment that God poured out on Sodom and Gomorrah.
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Righteousness before God only comes by faith in Jesus Christ. (9:30-33)

All of the questions and quotations that Paul included in this chapter led somewhere. To help his readers
begin to consider where all these things he wrote about were going he asked, “What shall we say,
then?” This is just a way of saying to them, “Let’s draw some conclusions from all of this that will help us
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make sense of how God worked and how God is working.” There are Gentiles who are right before God
without keeping the Old Testament law. There are Israelites who pursued keeping the Old Testament law
conscientiously who are not right before God. Why is this so? How can this be so? The answer to this
problem was given through the Old Testament prophet of Isaiah in a passage where he wrote to Israel
about the significance of the Messiah and their responsibility to respond properly to Him. The response
that God commanded to Israel through Isaiah was belief — trust. It is that response that Paul brought into
the context of the Roman church to answer this “Why?” question. Israel was refusing to believe in Christ
— the stone laid in Zion — but Gentiles were believing in Him. Righteousness before God and inclusion as
“children of the promise” only comes to those — both Jew and Gentile who believe in Jesus Christ. The
question to be answered to determine whether or not people are children of the promise to Abraham was
not “Were their parents Israelites?” but it is rather “Are believing in Jesus as the Messiah of Israel and
Savior of the World?”

This entire section emphasizes the difference between “Law Righteousness” and “faith righteousness.”
The differences are seen in this summary.

67 Romans 9:22-24, ESV.
68 Romans 9:27-28; Isaiah 10:22-23.
69 Romans 9:25-26; Hosea 1:10; 2:23.
70 Romans 9:8, ESV.
71 Isaiah 1:9; Genesis 19:23-29.
72 Romans 9:30, ESV.

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