Chapter 9
Paul now expresses his anguish as to unsaved Jews, descendants of Abraham after the flesh. Then he says that not all Abraham's children are his children. Only the children of promise - that is the descendants of Isaac, and not Ishmael. I think his point is that there is more to salvation than tracing your lineage all the way back to Abraham himself. There are those who could do so yet they are not Abraham's children. So if those are not promised salvation though Abraham is their physical father, then wouldn't there also be descendants of Isaac that are not saved? It has to be about more than genetics. He goes on to point out that Jacob and Esau were also not both elected. Only Jacob was, and that even though he was the younger, and should not have received the inheritance. But God, in order to show His sovereignty in election, chose Jacob...and that certainly not because of anything worthy that Jacob ever did!
These verses sum it up, again using the device of asking a question with an obvious "No!!!" answer:
14 What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means! 15 For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." [Rom 9:14-15 ESV]
Need to get this verse in there too:
16 So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. [Rom 9:16 ESV] Unconditional election, irresistible grace.
There it is, like it or not. Nothing we do matters as to our election. That is done. So our responsibility is to conform to election? To confess that Jesus is God's risen Son? We still have to do that...but only those chosen before the foundation will get the option? Is that how to explain it? MSB agrees with the answer to these questions being yes. This is very difficult - for me to swallow, and for most other people I imagine. But this IS what the Bible says.
2025 - Look again at vs 14. It is sort of a "fiat" reply to those Arminians who take the position that if God not offering salvation to all would be unjust on his part. Note that Paul doesn't give us an explanation here, he just gives us an OT quote. God tells Moses that he saves some and not others, because that is how God works. God does not explain himself to Moses, so he is certainly not going to explain himself to us.
2021-2, This verse upends Islam also. Interesting, isn't it. That the same mistake that cost the Jews so much was adopted by Mohammad and Islam. He who works the hardest and complies the most perfectly gets into heaven. But that's not so. God decides. Then throw in vss 30-33:
30 What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith; 31 but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. 32 Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, 33 as it is written, "Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame." [Rom 9:30-33 ESV]
The fault with the Jews of Paul's time, and with Islam since Mohammad, is that they sought/seek to obtain good standing with God by following the Law of God - Torah or Quran - rather than by faith in Christ as the fulfillment of those laws. I need to put this into an email. So interesting that it applies to both Jews and Islam.
((((((((((Can show from the Quran and that Sura that describes the hierarchy of those who go to heaven. How the most compliant get the top spot, then two and three, and show how that is exactly what was going on with Israel.)))))))))
Can I get a FB post out of this?
2024 - Vs 18 has to be included here: 18 So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. [Rom 9:18 ESV]. This verse comes after the quote that tells Pharoah his only purpose on earth was to oppose God so that in throwing him down, God's power is proclaimed to the whole earth. Did Pharoah have an opportunity to have faith in God? No! There is no way to get there and sound like you have good sense. God chooses. He chose before he created the world. If he chose you, you have a responsibility to choose Him once he quickens you enough to realize you need Him, and that only He can pull you out of this hopeless situation in which you find yourself. But no one can choose without first being chosen. And that is the sentence the Arminians cannot and will not except. That's a problem.
This looks like the Bill Burr question, specifically addressed in the Bible:
19 You will say to me then, "Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?" [Rom 9:19 ESV]
If God makes all the rules and the decisions, how can he blame me for anything that I do? He's the one that's determined it and I have no real choice of my own.
Hmmm...The answer is, who are you to question what God has done. So the Bible, so God, refuses to answer such an impertinent question. God does what he wants. MSB says this is not an "honest" question anyway, but a question asked to justify continued sin.
2022 - Also these two verses go with the Bill Burr, and this is Paul's speculation as to the "why" of it all:
22 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, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory-- 24 even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? [Rom 9:22-24 ESV]
Paul poses his own answer to the question, putting it not as a certainty, but a what if. He is saying that if God did it for this reason, doesn't that make sense to us. God is just. But it is not just to be always lenient toward even the vilest offenders. Justice requires both wrath and mercy. To show himself just, some must be refused and sent to hell, while others receive mercy and blessings. So we ask, how then does God choose which is which? And the only answer we have is that He is the potter and we are the clay. If we believe he is just, then there is a reason that only he comprehends. God is never just random. This is also not random, but is not for us to understand at this time. Not completely satisfactory? Too bad, because I think finally I have the correct words. It is about who He is, it is about Him meeting the standard he has set for himself universally, and not about what we think is fair to us individually. We are to have faith. That is what Romans 9 is about. Faith matters, not ancestry, not being a good person, not being a little better than most people. Faith that God knows what He is doing. That is what matters.
This sentence from the notes in MSB on vs 22: "God does not make men sinful, but He leaves them in the sin they have chosen." So think about this. It is not just that Bill Burr is asking a dishonest question. It is in fact that he is so ignorant that he does not see that it is even "worse" than he thinks it is. Not only does God hold us responsible for the sins we commit, even though we inherit our sinfulness from Adam, whom God created, and so Burr blames Adam's imperfection for his own sin, but God CHOOSES those who will go to hell, so that they can do nothing ever in their lives to escape hell, and will then burn because God chose them to burn. But here is the thing...look at the MSB sentence. Even though God chooses some for hell, he does not CAUSE THEM to sin. Sin is what they'd have done anyway. And God leaves them to that, and gives them the justice that is their due because of their sin.
So very difficult to grasp...
2024 - The above is correct, but not well worded. It is wrong to ever say that God CHOOSES those who will go to hell. In fact, he leaves them to the fate they already deserve. He does not make men sin. Sin is what men do. And some he just does not choose to save. If he saved all, there would be no justice. If he saved based on works, we'd all be in competition. He saves those whom he chooses according to his Godly standard, which is forever and always perfection...because what God does is by definition always perfect.
2024 - Have to talk about this one also:
22 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, [Rom 9:22 ESV].
What if is a key here, I don't think Paul is saying "this is it", but instead confessing that he doesn't understand it either...But Paul is suggesting that some are allowed to continue in evil - think Pharoah, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot - and not be immediately sent to hell by God - to show how justified he would be in sending everyone to hell. These evil men show us what lives within us all if God does not intervene for us. And they show us the mercy God has in that he saves SOME who were potentially just as evil as these. Some of us he saves from what we deserve. What fool would question his methods!?!? Remember Roman decimation? When the whole legion needed to be punished, one in ten was killed...completely at random. If you were not selected for that, would you complain that the method wasn't fair, or would you be grateful that you were spared???
As this goes on, through vs 29, Paul points out that were it not for God's intervention, even Israel would have all been doomed to hell. He doesn't send people to hell, he saves some FROM hell, and the rest ultimately receive what they earned of their own choices. The rules were in place before Adam was created.
These last verses indicate that the whole point of the "why blame me" question was to get around to this point:
31 but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. 32 Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, 33 as it is written, "Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame." [Rom 9:31-33 ESV]
2021 - Look at vs 32...how have I not noticed it before? Earlier, in 8, Paul made it clear that the contract was fair, that it was achievable for Israel, and yet they failed to keep their part, and they failed. Why? Because in their minds they perverted the contract and made it all about the letter of the contract - about the stipulations - and CHOSE to IGNORE the purpose behind the details. The purpose was to help them love and appreciate God and to have faith in all his ways and to serve him gladly. Instead, they made sure to tithe from their cumin seeds while behaving like a bunch of heathens - indistinguishable from the nations around them. The question answered in so many words. And then when clarity came - when the purpose was unveiled for all to see, and especially for the seed of Abraham to see - they were so far removed in understanding the law they lived by that they "stumbled" over its fulfillment. They just flat missed it.
God can hold us accountable for the things we do wrong because He is a qualified judge. Maybe He set the rules up that way so we had to fail - and thus He proves to us that He is right to condemn us because we could never have gotten it right on our own anyway.
(2023 - Or so we would realize that we need Him! If it had been so easy to be sinless that we could do it without effort, we would never have realized our need for God, nor understood his plan for redemption. No struggle, no need, no purpose. All these go together. If there is no dragon to slay you don't need knights. Everyone can just lay around and get fat. Why would anyone glorify you and give you an eternity in a place like heaven if you yourself never did anything? There is no way to EARN heaven, so God made it about faith in HIM to find a way to justify rewarding us with heaven, not for what WE did, but for what HE did. Again, we are so small that our worst sins can't condemn the elect nor can an exemplary life save those who are not elect! The saved SHOULD be grateful for the faith that saves them, and the lost SHOULD....No, that cannot be right can it? That the lost should blame God for NOT saving them? The first part is God's sovereignty. The last is man's responsibility. ALL would go to hell, because all DESERVE hell, but God chooses some to save FROM hell. This last is where you start. Left to themselves, all men would choose sin, as Adam proved in paradise. He had the best chance he could possibly have, and he chose sin. The only way around that would have been for Adam to have no choice at all. To be constrained in his actions and so be a righteous robot. Is it then a greater thing for God to create a perfectly righteous robot, or to create a thinking deciding creature that CHOOSES to do right, as the God in whose image he is created defines right?) Yes. This God is far greater than that God would have been.
And the fundamental truth is that our works are not determinative anyway, only faith matters, only faith ever mattered. Our sins don't condemn us because Christ paid the price for those sins. Our sins are proof that we need God's salvation, and encourage us to seek that salvation, through faith. God condemns us for our sins, but it is our lack of faith that sends us to hell. Sins are to learn from, sins are for our instruction. It is for faith or lack of it that He holds us accountable....
But we don't have faith either without Him blessing us with belief.
It's a hard concept, and I am still not satisfied with the explanation as I can work it out.
2022 - It is fair for God to hold us accountable for the things we do wrong, even if we say that His determinative will was ultimately responsible for our actions, because he also sent Jesus to reconcile, to justify us despite those sins. Since Christ paid in full for all those things, those things do not condemn us. Not having faith, not acknowledging the sacrifice made on our behalf by the Son of the One who decides all things, is what condemns us. Playing word games and making decisions that are wrong while refusing to take responsibility for those decisions is not faith. Faith is what matters, and it is all that matters.
2025 - The paragraph above is spot on. I think this is where universal atonement comes from. One of Calvin's five points was "Limited Atonement", that Jesus only really died for those who would be saved. Given the paragraph above, I finally see the problem with that.
2025 - See how this ties in with the whole "Adam to Moses" being a time when sin was not imputed? People sinned, but since there was no Law against it, sin was not imputed. No charges were brought against them...so no substitutionary death was required. If you are not charged with a crime there is no sentence to be served.
2025 - It then follows that when the Law was fulfilled and went away, we are back to no sin imputed. Or...maybe that is the key. Under the New Covenant, we know the Law of the Spirit. We no longer need the Law of Moses to identify sin for us, we each one know what is sin...but only if we are saved. But the lost...have no Law of Moses to tell them what things are sin and what things are not...so no sin in imputed to them either. But like those from Adam to Moses, they do still sin, they WERE still "in Adam" when he sinned, and they are condemned for that transgression of the Law.
Hmm...
2023 - As I read Chapter 9, it occurs to me that I need to stop struggling with the Bill Burr question, at least I need to stop trying to find an answer for it that would make sense to Bill Burr. His very question means he isn't looking for the answer. The Bible, here in Romans 9, gives the answer:
20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me like this?"
21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?
22 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,
23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory--
24 even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? [Rom 9:20-24 ESV].
Burr elevates himself wrongly by thinking himself worthy to even ask the question! Just like in those last chapters of Job where God says "Were you there??? Did I need your input??? Only My equal has any right to question me!!! From now on, I'll just let it lay right there. If it is wrong to ask it, it is equally presumptuous to explain it. No matter which side of the argument you are on, you are talking about things the human mind can never comprehend.
2024 - In vss 30-32 look at what Paul says about the Jews, his own people, with whom he would gladly trade places if they would be saved. They did not find the truth of the Gentiles - that justification is by faith and not by works - because they didn't even try! They preferred works because that let them be "in control" of their own eternity, at least in their own minds. Stubbornness and pride is what is going on. They wouldn't try, because to try was to give up control. It is that primacy of "self" that is the stumbling block. The Jews were offended that they had to trust not themselves, but this man from Nazareth who didn't even keep the Sabbath as holy as they did. Wow.