Now someone might say but doesn't Romans 9 teach that human beings are completely inert in the process of salvation? That it belongs entirely to God's will who is elect and who is reprobate and left unsaved? Doesn't Romans 9 teach a strong doctrine of predestination and irresistible grace that excludes any sort of human role in terms of a free response such as I have suggested?
Well I'd like to suggest for your consideration a very different reading of Romans 9 than the one that we so often hear. Typically people think of Romans 9 as God's narrowing down the scope of election to just those few people that he wants to save. He passes over the broad mass of humanity to selectively save those few that he has picked out.
I want to suggest that Paul's burden in Romans 9 is exactly the opposite. What Paul wants to do here is to broaden the scope of salvation, not to narrow it down to a select few. He wants to broaden it as wide as possible.
You see the problematic that Paul is dealing with in Romans 9 concerns Jewish persons who think that because of their Jewish ethnicity they have a sort of leg up on salvation with God. Those who were ethnically Jewish found it unthinkable that God would reject his chosen people Israel and instead allow these execrable Gentiles to go into the kingdom of God rather than his own people. How God could prefer over the Jews these Gentile dogs and save them and pass over the Jews was just unthinkable for these Jewish people.
So what Paul wants to emphasize in Romans 9 is God's sovereignty in electing and saving whomever he wants regardless of their ethnic background. Whether Jew or Gentile, it is God's choice as to who will be saved. So you notice at the beginning of chapter 9 Paul expresses his anguish concerning those Israelites to whom all the promises of the Old Covenant belong that are not believers in Christ.
He says in verse six that it is not as though God's Word had failed. Rather, he says that not everyone who is descended from Israel belongs to Israel. Not everybody is a real child of Abraham just because they are his physical descendant.
Just because you are ethnically Jewish doesn't mean that you have some sort of a favored status with God. Rather, as Paul illustrates with the story of Jacob and Esau, God has the freedom to choose whom he wills to be saved. Just being descended from Abraham physically is no guarantee.
So in verses 6 to 24, Paul says God is free to save whomever he wants, and that no one can call into question God's choice. No one has the right to talk back to God; no one has the right to say that God has to prefer his own people Israel over these Gentiles. If God wants to broaden the scope of salvation to include Gentiles in addition to, and even instead of, his chosen people the ethnic Jews, then no one can talk back to God.
It is God who has mercy upon whom he has mercy and has compassion upon whom he has compassion. So here is the key question: who is it then, according to Romans 9, that God has chosen to elect if it is not those who are ethnically Jewish? The answer is those who have faith in Christ Jesus.
Those are the ones that he has chosen to elect and save, and so in verse 30 he writes, "What shall we say then? That the Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, righteousness through faith; but that Israel who pursued the righteousness which is based on law did not succeed in fulfilling that law. Why?
Because they did not pursue it through faith, but as if it were based on works. So what God has done is that he has decided to save all those who have faith in Christ Jesus. Whether Jew or Gentile, it doesn't matter; it is those who have faith in Christ Jesus whom God has elected.
Therefore, given God's sovereign choice, ethnically Jewish people cannot complain if God has preferred to save certain Gentiles over certain Jewish persons. This is all based upon the principle of faith that Paul explains back in Romans 3 and 4 with respect to Abraham himself. So in Romans 3:21 and following Paul writes, "But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.
For there is no distinction; since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. " In verse 27 Paul says, "Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded.
On what principle? On the principle of works? No, but on the principle of faith.
For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law. " Then he asks specifically, "Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also?
Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of their faith and the uncircumcised through their faith. " So it is through faith that one becomes a true child of Abraham and a member of that elect body that will inherit the kingdom of God.
