9:1 Paul now switches to a subject about which he feels he must first ward off possible misunderstanding. “I am speaking the truth” (cf. similar expressions in 2 Cor. 12:6; 1 Tim. 2:7) and “I am not lying” (cf. 2 Cor. 11:31; Gal. 1:20; 1 Tim. 2:7) suggest that Paul knows some of his readers (or hearers, as this epistle would be read aloud in congregations) would view what he is about to say with skepticism.

Paul’s assurance lies in the case he is about to set forth. It also lies in his “conscience,” his innate awareness of right and wrong. Taken alone, conscience can be weak and defiled (1 Cor. 8:7; Titus 1:15). Its guidance can be rejected, resulting in the destruction of one’s faith (1 Tim. 1:19). The conscience can also be “seared” (1 Tim. 4:2) and therefore unreliable. Freedom from the conviction of conscience does not make a person right; God is the judge over conscience (1 Cor. 4:4). But exercised “in the Holy Spirit,” backed up by godliness and God’s grace (2 Cor. 1:12), conscience can keep a believer oriented toward God and compliant with his direction. It is in this sense that Paul appeals to his conscience here.

Why would anyone be skeptical of Paul’s compassion for his own people? Perhaps they assume a lack of compassion would be his response to the opposition they mount to Paul’s mission work to Gentiles (1 Thess. 2:14–16). A normal human expectation is opposition in the face of opposition.

9:2 This verse makes sense only against the backdrop of verse 3. There Paul announces his anguish over his fellow Jews for reasons that are the focus throughout chapters 9–11. Because of his countrymen, most of whom are lost to the gospel cause due to unbelief aided by misguided confidence (cf. 10:2–3), Paul expresses (1) “great sorrow” and (2) “unceasing anguish.” “In my heart” indicates that Paul’s concern is not merely academic and shallow.

“Sorrow” means painful remorse. That to which Paul is about to call attention is internally devastating for him. “Unceasing” is how Paul practices and advocates prayer (2 Tim. 1:3; see also Rom. 1:9; 1 Thess. 1:2; 2:13; 5:17). But here it refers to inner “anguish,” a level of mental torment comparable to that brought on by abandonment of the faith (1 Tim. 6:10). Those who truly love and identify with the lost bear a burden that can reduce the one who cares to despair (Luke 19:41; John 11:35; Phil. 3:18).

9:3 Paul proposes a hypothetical. What if there were some way for him to bear God’s curse and in return for his fellow Jews who have rejected Christ to accept him as the Messiah he claims to be? It will be recalled that Moses offered to be blotted out of God’s book of life in exchange for his people to be forgiven of their sins (Ex. 32:32). God did not go along with the proposal (Ex. 32:33). It would not be possible here either: Christ’s death is the sole sufficient sacrifice for people’s sins, whether Gentile or Jew.

The wording of this verse reveals, however, that Paul would do this in a heartbeat—he would accept hell (“were accursed”) if they would only accept the offer of heaven that Jesus has brought. “Brothers” does not signify fellow Christians, his usual meaning of the expression, but people of like ethnicity, as clarified by “my kinsmen [syngenōn] according to the flesh.” Paul uses the word translated “kinsmen” three other times, all in Romans (16:7, 11, 21). For his other uses of “accursed” (anathema), see 1 Corinthians 12:3; 16:22; Galatians 1:8, 9.

9:4 It is striking that Paul refers to his Jewish compatriots as “they.” No one in his generation had been more committed to this ethnicity and its religion: “I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers” (Gal. 1:14). But Christ now claims a loyalty that transcends blood ties and shatters misguided religious affiliation.

Yet this new loyalty does not alter the priceless value and importance of God’s gracious works in former times to save a people and through them bring redemption to the world. These people were Jacob’s descendants, “Israelites.” God had set his fatherly affection on them and in that sense adopted them (“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son,” Hos. 11:1; see also Isa. 63:8; Jer. 3:19).

“The glory” refers to God’s radiance that filled the tabernacle (Ex. 16:10) and later Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 8:11). “The covenants” covers agreements God made with figures such as Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David. The “giving of the law” refers to the Torah conveyed to Moses for the sake of God’s people and “the peoples” (Deut. 4:5–8 AT). “The worship” points to the sacrificial system that foreshadowed Christ; Paul may also have in mind matters such as prayer and Sabbath observance. “The promises” are God’s pledges of his faithfulness occurring across the sweep of the OT.

9:5 The list continues of the blessings inherited by the Jews. “The patriarchs” refers to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (see also 11:28; 15:8). “From their race,” or ethnic heritage (“the flesh”), emerged a series of blessed men and women (see the Gospel genealogies) whose star descendant was Jesus himself, “the Christ.”

No greater honor or privilege is imaginable, for not only is Christ far above all names and events leading up to his appearance; he is even “God over all, blessed forever.”76 Paul’s “amen” marks the second of five doxological exclamations in Romans (cf. 1:25; 11:36; 15:33; 16:27).

With this ascription of praise to God for the blessings enjoyed by the Jews, Paul defends himself from any charge that he devalues their heritage or makes light of the foundation they provide for the gospel message he advocates. Most of all, he reaffirms his conviction that God has been faithful to his Word through all the centuries of his dealings with this people. The steadfastness of God’s Word becomes the center of attention in following verses.

9:6 Given the listing of blessings in verses 4–5, who could suppose that the “word of God has failed”? Paul is evidently thinking of two things, closely related. One is that the heirs of God’s blessings just listed, the Jews, have for the most part rejected Jesus as their Messiah, or Christ. There are plenty of exceptions, Paul among them. But most first-century Jews of Jerusalem, Judea, Galilee, and the diaspora across the Roman Empire did not rise up in acclaim of the person Paul argued was their promised king.

The failure of the Jews overall to recognize Christ could be construed as proof that God’s word to them had failed. If that word were true and in line with the history from which the gospel message emerged, why did God’s people not accept it?

A second consideration is that the lineage described in verses 4–5 has an obvious ethnic center: first Abraham and his offspring known as Hebrews and Israelites, and from them eventually the Jews. But Paul is an “apostle to the Gentiles” (11:13). He addresses Romans to congregations he treats as primarily Gentile, writing to them “in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles” (1:13).

From a Jewish viewpoint, if the message of salvation based on the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has now been received primarily by Gentiles, God appears to have left the Jews high and dry.

To this objection Paul’s answer is as terse as it is suggestive: God’s Word has not failed, “for not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.”

9:7 Paul’s answer to the charge that God’s Word has failed continues. His point is simple: ethnic ancestry is not in itself salvation. As John the Baptist told a Jewish audience a generation before, “Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham” (Luke 3:8). Jesus too foretold a disconnect between God’s sure promises and their future skeptical reception: “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out” (Luke 13:28).

Paul is confirming that that day has arrived. From those “descended from Israel” (Rom. 9:6) came many who rejected their God and his terms of covenant redemption. God’s destruction of Israel (722 BC) and then Judah (587 BC) underscore that Abrahamic heritage does not automatically result in divine approval. True “children of Abraham” show faith and faithfulness like Abraham did. And they welcome the one sent by God in fulfillment of his promises to Abraham.

Accordingly, blood connection to Abraham does not make people “children of Abraham” in the highest sense. The promise that “through Isaac shall your offspring be named” (Gen. 21:12) points to a deeper truth.

9:8 Paul offers an explicit explanation of his assertion in verses 6–7 that Abrahamic ancestry does not in itself constitute a saving relation to God.

Who are the true “children of God”? In Paul’s day, the Jews could lay claim to that privilege by appealing to Abraham as their father (John 8:39). But Paul points out a distinction. Abraham’s descendants were actually of two different types. Some were “children of the flesh.” They had blood ties to Abraham but did not inherit, so to speak, or exhibit his faith. Esau might serve as an example (Heb. 12:16–17). Others were “children of the promise.” They combined blood relation to Abraham with spiritual connection to God—they received God’s promise and lived in the light of it. “Counted as offspring” uses the same word used earlier to describe Abraham’s faith as “counted to him as righteousness” (Rom. 4:3). No one has ever deserved God’s acceptance; it has always been a matter of God’s imputing pardon to sinners who in themselves possess no justification for God’s favor. Salvation has always been by God’s promise rather than human merit.

9:9 In very abbreviated form Paul concludes the point made in verse 8: God’s offspring are “children of the promise,” not just people with formal ties like ancestry. To illustrate this Paul cites a portion of Genesis 18:10. The entire verse reads, “The Lord said, ‘I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.’ And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him.” The italicized portion is what Paul quotes.

How do the italicized words help make Paul’s point? He is arguing that God’s true children, going all the way back to Abraham, are “children of the promise” (Rom. 9:8). With the Genesis 18:10 quote Paul takes the reader back to the inception of Abrahamic salvation. Abraham, at age ninety-nine, has just been circumcised along with all males in his household in response to God’s command (Genesis 17). Now three men visit, angels sent to administer God’s judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18:16–19:29). In the course of their visit an angel makes an announcement, “the promise” cited above.

The child promised to Abraham and Sarah will be Isaac (Gen. 18:19), not Ishmael. That is Paul’s first implicit point. Redemption lies in the patriarchal line and nowhere else. Related to this, Paul’s point is also that redemption is by God’s promise, or what we could call good news, not by the sort of human scheming that produced Ishmael. And a third point is this: God’s redemption may well transcend human understanding and seem impossible—how could there be hope of a son via Sarah and Abraham at their age? (Paul has already made this point in Rom. 4:19.)

Essentially, Paul is saying that believers in Christ in his day have grasped the promise dynamic of approaching God by faith in his good news. Those who do not, starting with his fellow Jews who are entrusted with so much yet deny Jesus as the Messiah, are filling the role of “children of the flesh” (9:8) despite their Abrahamic heritage.

9:10 Now Paul moves down the line from Abraham and Sarah to their son Isaac and his wife, Rebekah. He will continue to show that salvation is by promise, and he will lay a foundation for answering objections to the ways God dispenses his saving grace.

“And not only so, but also” indicates that Paul is going to take his argument to another, even more decisive, step. By moving to Rebekah and to Abraham’s son Isaac he shows how God’s promise to Abraham was fulfilled and continued to play out. The patriarchs, starting with Abraham and now continuing through Isaac, are as integral as Paul has already noted (v. 5) to the gospel promise fulfilled in Jesus and preached by Paul.

9:11–12 These verses build on the affirmation in verses 9–10 that God’s saving promise is through Abraham and Isaac. But they take the argument a step further. In mysterious manner, God’s saving work and hidden wisdom were already at work in Isaac’s offspring while they were yet unborn. For at that time Rebekah “was told, ‘The older will serve the younger’” (cf. Gen. 25:23).

Paul explains his rationale for citing the OT account in this way. He seeks to confirm that salvation is by God’s election or choosing. Related to this, “God’s purpose of election” is realized not by people’s “good or bad” behavior but “because of him who calls.” Paul is not saying that faith is not necessary for salvation; he has already made the point that God’s righteousness comes via the human act of believing (Rom. 1:16–17). He is rather reminding us that salvation is not by works. And he is confirming that God’s purposes in redemption, and his foreknowledge of who will join the ranks of God’s people and who will not, are matters of promise. Neither ethnicity nor religious performance can guarantee God’s favor. It is the achievement of God’s promise alone.

9:13 Paul’s case is sealed from Malachi 1:2–3, the final prophet contained in the canonical OT writings. Some millennium and a half after Jacob and Esau lived and went their respective ways, Jacob to blessing and Esau to perdition, God continued to honor and enforce his saving promise, according to Malachi—with whom Paul concurs.

It should be noted that while Paul is stressing God’s faithfulness in his sovereign saving work, the Esau narrative in Scripture makes it clear that Esau was culpable in bargaining away his birthright (Gen. 25:29–34; cf. Heb. 12:16). Like Pharaoh in Romans 9:17 or those God “gave up” to perdition in 1:24, 26, 28, Esau was neither blameless nor helpless in the dark path he chose. God’s “purpose of election” (9:11) does not relieve those it affects—all humankind—of their responsibility to seek the creator and redeemer of the universe. In Scripture Esau, Pharaoh, and all others lost in their sins are “without excuse” (1:20), not helpless victims of an unfeeling God’s heartless choice.

Paul has arrived at a plateau in his argument stretching back to 9:1. He has sought to affirm the blessedness of Abrahamic salvation as fulfilled in Christ, expressing sorrow that so many of Abrahamic descent have not affirmed the fulfillment of God’s saving promise in Jesus (vv. 1–5). Most of all, he has shown that the Word of God has not failed (v. 6), remaining in merciful force to Paul’s present hour. And he has also made allusions that he will take up in passages ahead. One is to God’s choice of Jacob rather than Esau.

9:14 If someone could devalue Paul’s gospel by alleging that a gospel to the Gentiles is a betrayal of God’s promises through Abraham, so that God’s Word has failed (v. 6), someone else could charge God with “injustice” (Gk. adikia), a word found twelve times in Paul’s writings and also translated “unrighteousness” (1:18, 29; 2:8; 3:5; 6:13; 2 Thess. 2:12), “wrongdoing” (1 Cor. 13:6), “wrong” (2 Cor. 12:13), or “iniquity” (2 Tim. 2:19). Is it fair that Jacob could be chosen over Esau before either was born (Rom. 9:11)? Is it fair that human works are not taken into account by God when he decides whom to save (v. 11)? Is it fair that people who suppose they have eternal salvation because of their ethnicity will face a rude awakening at the final judgment when they discover that God is not partial (2:11) and adopts as his children all who come to him by grace alone through faith alone? Are all people not God’s children? If only “children of promise” receive his blessing, is this not discriminatory and unacceptable to human assumptions and expectations? Some might term it a violation of human rights.

To get at such objections, in rhetorical fashion Paul airs the blasphemous contention (see also 3:5–8) that God might in some way be guilty of “injustice.” “By no means!” is the strongest possible denial.

9:15 A major reason God is not unjust is the simple fact that he is merciful. He shows compassion. Paul has already established that no one deserves such treatment; what would be just is God’s wrath (1:18–3:20). A bedrock OT truth about God is that he is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex. 34:6; cf. Num. 14:18; Neh. 9:17; Pss. 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2). Yet there is an offsetting side to this: “The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty” (Nah. 1:3). God’s saving compassion is abundant. But he holds accountable those who spurn it.

So, despite how richly deserving all humans are of God’s rejection, Moses affirms God’s readiness to forgive and save. In this respect, too, God’s Word does not fail (Rom. 9:6) but proves true.

9:16 “It depends” is added by the translators and is a reasonable rendering of words that more directly run “So then, [it is] not of the one who wills, nor of the one who runs, but of the one showing mercy, God.” Adding “it depends” throws the stress on God’s sole sovereignty in anyone’s salvation, which is an undeniable truth about individual (as well as corporate) salvation as Scripture presents it (see also John 1:12–13).

But equally important in the present discourse is the more basic matter of the faithfulness of God to his Word (Rom. 9:6). He is not unjust (v. 14). God’s mercy and compassion, which find and redeem countless undeserving sinners, are reminders that God’s Word surmounts all obstacles and reaches into the locations and hearts of all who call on his name. To say “So then it depends . . . on God, who has mercy” is to say that “the word of God has [not] failed” (v. 6; see also Isa. 55:10–11) and that “injustice” is not an appropriate label for anything God plans or does.

9:17 Paul draws on Moses to illustrate God’s sovereignty in salvation as attested in his faithful and unerring Word. One of the mightiest kings of his era, and not a believer in the God of Abraham, Pharaoh was nevertheless subject to God’s purpose and “raised . . . up” by God to show God’s power precisely in his life and circumstances. An additional divine intention was that as a result of God’s interactions with the Egyptian sovereign, God’s “name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”

As with Esau, while God’s sovereign hand conditioned all that Pharaoh did and ultimately hardened his heart, in the exodus narrative Pharaoh hardens his own heart too (Ex. 8:15, 32; 9:34) and therefore bears responsibility for his own condemnation.

And God’s mercy (Rom. 9:16) is shown in Pharaoh not just in that time but in all the eras since when the Torah has been read and applied, including the moment at which Paul dictates these words. The gospel Romans announces and explains, in part through the argument found in chapter 9, is an extension of God’s “name” being “proclaimed in all the earth” through the working of his faithful word to Pharaoh, not in “injustice” (v. 14) but in mercy made known wherever the Torah has been read for those with eyes to see.

9:18 Paul concludes this minisection (vv. 14–18) with the declaration that there is no “injustice on God’s part” (v. 14) but rather merciful consistency. On the undeserving—every last member of the human race—“he has mercy on whomever he wills.” Shortly he will clarify the identity of this “whomever”: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (10:13, citing Joel 2:32, a verse also cited by Peter at Pentecost in Acts 2:21).

Paul’s conviction of God’s mercy (mentioned over two dozen times in the NT) is particularly strong because that mercy pulled him from the flames of his homicidal zeal: he was “formerly . . . a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy” (1 Tim. 1:13). Or again: “I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost [sinner], Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life” (1 Tim. 1:16). Peter also marvels that those with no claim to God’s favor nevertheless by God’s mercy receive it: “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Pet. 2:10).

And just as God is consistent and impartial in showing mercy, “he hardens whomever he wills.” Paul has already established that God has made sufficient self-disclosure to render all people accountable to acknowledge him; we all alike are “without excuse” (Rom. 1:20). His hardening results when his mercy is spurned. This can be viewed as “injustice” only when examined from a sinful self-exalting viewpoint; it is rather God’s viewpoint that must be discerned and affirmed.

9:19 Paul anticipates an objection to the answer he has given (vv. 15–18) to the previous rhetorical question raised (v. 14). The “you” is singular and envisions an individual interlocutor: in Paul’s mind he is eye to eye with someone questioning God’s goodness. Like Jesus, Paul is not only an itinerant missionary and public preacher but also a personal evangelist.

The rhetorical question is twofold: (1) Why does God continue to blame people or find them guilty? Because, (2) as Paul has just stated (v. 18), God hardens whomever he wishes. And “who can resist his will?”

9:20 The translation brings into smooth English a string of expressions that could be rendered “Whoa! Just a minute, here, buddy! Entirely to the contrary, you! Who do you think you are, smarting off to God!” Paul perceives behind the question an impious attitude that has dared to question and blame God.

A modern reader may find it easy to cast Paul in a negative light because of the apostle’s self-assurance. But this would overlook the basis of his confidence, which is not in himself or his logic but in God’s written Word. Paul cites a portion of Isaiah 29 just a few verses past a verse favored by Jesus.77 This verse (Isa. 29:13) speaks of those who give God lip service but have hard hearts (cf. Mark 7:6–8). It is likely that Paul pictures a questioning person who by his very tone proves he is among those Jesus called out. He is not a seeker but a scoffer, like the person nailed in Isaiah 29:15–16:

    Ah, you who hide deep from the Lord your counsel,

    whose deeds are in the dark,

    and who say, “Who sees us? Who knows us?”

    You turn things upside down!

    Shall the potter be regarded as the clay,

    that the thing made should say of its maker,

    “He did not make me”;

    or the thing formed say of him who formed it,

    “He has no understanding”?

Paul’s concern, then, is not to exonerate his reasoning by winning an argument or proving he is right; it is to remove the questioner’s blinders so he can see God and the gospel message. No one who approaches God with such arrogance as to ignore one’s own sin (Isa. 29:15) or to invert who is who (Isa. 29:16) can tap into God’s abundant mercy; it is God who places man in question, not vice versa.

9:21 As with Jesus’ parables, Paul draws on a common image in an ancient world where potters and pots were everyday sights. Obviously, potters can do as they wish with their clay. As in verse 20, Paul is thinking scripturally, this time drawing on Jeremiah 18. There God tells Jeremiah to go observe a potter handling clay “as it seemed good to the potter to do” (Jer. 18:4). Jeremiah reports what he learned from this: “Then the word of the Lord came to me: ‘O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel’” (Jer. 18:5–6).

In the Jeremiah passage, however, the point is not that God shows mercy or hardens by inscrutable decree. It is rather that when God declares judgment, but then people repent, he relents from his judgment (Jer. 18:7–11). He therefore calls on any who will listen to heed and turn to him.

In other words, the potter (God) has built into the system (his saving plan) a judgment that is reversible if people (the pots) will respond to his self-disclosure, consider their ways, and turn to him. God has a perfect right to show mercy, or to harden, under such gracious terms.

The leading question in this discussion (Rom. 9:19) is shown to be out of bounds based on the very attitude it shows. It is only human self-righteousness that can justify such an accusatory approach to a God who has forever shown himself to be merciful.

9:22–23 In these verses Paul makes the same point that God does in Jeremiah 18:7–10. If a people (like the Gentiles) is condemned by God but then turns to him, God says that “I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it” (Jer. 18:8). But if a people (like the Jews) has favorable prospects in God’s sight but then “does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it” (Jer. 18:10).

Romans 9:22 pictures God’s twofold intention of punishing sin (“show his wrath”) and subduing (“make known his power”) those who resist him. To show wrath with patience (as he does; 2:4) on people who by their willful ignorance “are storing up wrath for [themselves] on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed” (2:5), God endures “with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.” Paul has already foreshadowed this: “For those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury” (2:8).

Romans 9:23 speaks of the other side of the coin. This group was likewise earlier foreshadowed: “to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life” (2:7). God has foreknown and predestined them (8:29–30) “in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.”

Romans 9:22–23, then, confirms God’s justice (not “injustice,” v. 14) in damning some and saving others. This has always been his stance toward wayward humans. In that sense, too, God’s Word has not failed (v. 6), for he is dealing with people in the Roman Empire of Paul’s day with the same kindness (which none deserve) and severity (which all have earned) that have always marked his redemptive reign (cf. 11:22 on God’s kindness and severity).

9:24 “Even us whom he has called” points to Paul (a Jew) and his Roman readers (for the most part Gentile). The rest of the verse (“not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles”) confirms that in the preceding discourse Paul has had in mind the problem, posed by his Gentile-inclusive gospel understanding, for Jews who rejected Jesus.

For such Jews “the word of God has failed” (as they saw it) because God has allowed non-Jews entrance into their Jew-only fraternity. Paul started his reply to this by affirming that “not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel” (v. 6). Verse 24 summarizes his preliminary conclusion (to be substantiated and enlarged on later) that “vessels of wrath” (v. 22) and “vessels of mercy” (v. 23) may be found among both Jews and Gentiles. It is God’s call that transforms the former into the latter.

9:25 This verse is reminiscent of 4:17, where Paul speaks of the God “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” Now Paul quotes Hosea 2:23 to provide a scriptural justification for his conclusion (Rom. 9:24) that a mixed Gentile-Jew fellowship is acceptable to God despite his historic and long-standing commitment to the Abrahamic heritage. From the beginning God has had in mind a universal, not an eternally ethnocentric, identity for his people, since (1) Abraham himself was an uncircumcised Gentile at his calling and when first justified (Gen. 15:6; cf. Rom. 4:10) and (2) God told Abraham from the start, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” not just Hebrew and Jewish families (Gen. 12:3).

So Paul is fully justified in pointing out that where there was no Gentile people of God, there now is. Whereas that people was not God’s “beloved” or chosen people (like the Hebrews and Jews rightly understood themselves to be), now it is.

The Hosea quote supports Paul’s position because it confirms what the Roman Christians in fellowship with Paul grasp: God’s people in Christ are not limited to any single ethnicity. God foretold what he has now brought to pass (a point made also by Peter, who draws on the same passage in 1 Pet. 2:10).

God’s Word has not failed (Rom. 9:6), and protests to that effect (vv. 14, 19) are wrongheaded, in part because they fail to see the compelling case for Gentile inclusion in God’s people prophesied in various OT passages.

9:26 Paul now backs up from Hosea 2:23 to Hosea 1:10 (2:1 LXX). This verse restates the core of Romans 9:25; the point in citing it may be Paul’s rabbinic instinct to let facts be confirmed by multiple witnesses (Deut. 19:15). Also, “sons of the living God” confirms two points that are important to Paul’s previous argument: (1) the Roman believers are beneficiaries of God’s adoption (Rom. 8:14–17), and (2) the God they honor through faith in Christ is the “living” God revealed by Jesus (Matt. 16:16; 22:32), who is also the God of the patriarchs.

What was future for the prophet Hosea (latter half of the 8th century) Paul sees as present due to gospel reception in the early church.

9:27–28 Paul opens and closes Romans with statements that his gospel was “promised beforehand through [God’s] prophets in the holy Scriptures” (1:2) and “has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations” (16:26). Based on these writings Paul now continues and intensifies his case that God’s people in Christ are “called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles” (9:24).

In verse 27 he draws on a sobering pronouncement in Isaiah 10:22 that, despite the high number of visible Israelites, at some future time “only a remnant of them will be saved.” This implies a judgment on the many not saved, a point confirmed in the Hebrew text of Isaiah 10:22: “Destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness.” (Note that this supports Paul’s earlier contention in Rom. 9:14 that God, even in judgment, is not a party to injustice.) This statement is obscured in the LXX text Paul is quoting. But Paul does not render the Hebrew text of Isaiah 10:23: “For the Lord God of hosts will make a full end, as decreed, in the midst of all the earth.” This is slightly milder and more ambiguous than the LXX version Paul cites: “For the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay.”

Paul has moved, then, from proving based on the OT that God’s people in Christ are both Jew and Gentile (Rom. 9:24) to pointing out Isaiah’s prophecy that God will judge his own people (“sons of Israel”) in frightening ways (Isa. 9:8–10:21). And that same prophecy looks ahead to a time when the “remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob . . . will lean on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth” (Isa. 10:20). With the gospel, that time has arrived. Paul and other Jewish believers are that remnant and those survivors.

9:29 Paul continues the argument, based on Scripture, that the gospel outpouring he has witnessed and furthered and wishes to extend to Spain (15:24, 28) is not a betrayal of God’s word (9:6) but a glorious and necessary fulfillment of it.

Now Isaiah 1:9 is pressed into service. Isaiah famously opens with a shocking vision of God’s own people in rebellion against him (Isa. 1:2). They are full of corruption (Isa. 1:4) and ripe for judgment (Isa. 1:7–8). In quoting Isaiah 1:9 Paul is implying two things about Jewish opposition to the gospel message that is Gentile-inclusive. That opposition is (1) analogous to the spiritual decadence and deadness that Isaiah decried in his own day; it is also (2) fulfilled in Paul’s time by Jewish teaching and practice that opposes the gospel Paul and other early church leaders proclaim. Prior to Paul, John the Baptist declared that his whole generation of Jews needed to repent and find a fresh start. Next Jesus implied that few Jews hearing his message would receive it and be saved (Luke 13:23–24). Following these precedents, Paul states that a reset of God’s redemptive work through the Abrahamic heritage is direly needed, for Jewish teaching and practice had in too many quarters become as aberrant as the lives of those in Sodom and Gomorrah.

Paul explains Gentile acceptance by God and Jewish unwillingness to accept God’s saving message and work in Christ in the remaining verses of this chapter.

9:30 This is the last of seven “What shall we say?” statements in Romans (cf. 3:5; 4:1; 6:1; 7:7; 8:31; 9:14). Paul draws preliminary conclusions before restating and extending his insistence (9:1–3) that he grieves the failure of his fellow Jews to accept the gospel message (10:1–4).

His first conclusion is summary in nature. He has already argued that his apostleship’s goal is the “obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations,” or Gentiles (1:5). He has affirmed that God is the God of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews (3:29). He has also connected God’s promise to Abraham with the salvation of “many nations,” or Gentiles (4:17, 18).

Now he draws those threads together by asserting that “Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith.” Both (1) the recipients and (2) the means of their reception of righteousness are significant.

(1) “Gentiles . . . did not pursue righteousness” because this was the prerogative and gracious reward of God’s chosen people, to whom God appeared from Abraham onward. But in the coming of Christ and its aftermath many Gentiles have received righteousness.

(2) They received that righteousness by faith, not by works of the law, as Paul himself attempted to do as a Jew and as his fellow Jews are still trying to accomplish, as the next verse shows.

9:31 In contrast to the Gentiles who attained righteousness though they did not pursue it, “Israel” (the Jewish people to whom Paul belonged) sought righteousness by focusing on the law—or a “law that would lead to righteousness.” Gospel passages may hint at this, as when a ruler tells Jesus he has kept all the commandments (Luke 18:21), or when Jesus points to certain Jews’ meticulous tithing of herbs while neglecting the “weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Matt. 23:23).

In such cases, as in Paul’s own former life, people “did not succeed in reaching that law” (Rom. 9:31). Paul is not saying that no OT saints were saved. He is saying that too many were content with rules and ritual when God’s Torah was designed to lead them to God, not to substitute for God. Worse still, OT prophets witnessed to many ways in which God’s people failed to reach the law because they willfully ignored or disobeyed it. Paul stated earlier in Romans that in his own era Jews boasted in the law but dishonored God by breaking it (2:22).

Paul will put a finishing touch on this argument in 10:2–4.

9:32 Why did Israel fail to reach the law’s intent? Paul’s answer is clear: “They did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works.” Paul should know; he had followed that path himself. The problem is not that Jews hallow the Torah: Paul has already pronounced the law to be “holy and righteous and good” (7:12). It “promised life” (7:10; see Ps. 119:25, 40, 93, 107, 156: “give me life according to your rules”). Saving relationship with God came to many through the law understood as a means of grace.

But for that to happen, one would have to accept the law’s condemnation of one’s own sinfulness and inability to live up to the law. The law teaches all humans knowledge of their sin (Rom. 3:20). Rightly understood, it points beyond itself, and certainly away from the self as the source of the law’s blessing. The law in fact points to God, who grants grace to the penitent. Here we may recall Jesus’ parable about those “who trusted in themselves” and who touted their adherence to the law to prove their superiority to other people (Luke 18:9–14). The tax collector who bemoaned his sin “went down to his house justified.” The proud law keeper missed the point. This is why he also missed the blessing of forgiveness and eternal life the law was capable of mediating.

Romans 9:32 ends with a tell-tale indicator that “Israel” had pursued the law in a wrongheaded way. When the Savior promised by the law appeared, they did not recognize but “stumbled over” him.

9:33 Paul returns to the Scriptures to explain how the Word of God has not failed—that Word actually prophesies the very scandal Jesus embodied. At a time when priests and prophets in Jerusalem were drunkards (Isa. 28:1, 7) and the leaders of the people “scoffers” (Isa. 28:14), God through Isaiah pointed to a stone he would lay “in Zion,” i.e., Jerusalem. That stone would cause stumbling; people would take offense. Paul sees in Jesus a fulfillment of this prophecy.

But the same prophecy (augmented with words from Isa. 8:14 LXX) contains a promise. Paul quotes the LXX version of Isaiah 28:16: “Whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” This means freedom from final judgment by reception of salvation. Paul will restate in verses following his deep desire for fellow Jews to grasp that Christ, not their keeping of the law, is their eternal hope by God’s own design.

10:1 “Brothers” suggests a pastoral appeal for readers to hear well what Paul is saying. He restates what 9:1–3 asserted: his inner longing and prayers prove he carries a heavy burden for his lost fellow Jews. It will be recalled that Jesus wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41). Paul goes to great lengths in his ministry to assure that Jews, too, hear the gospel (1 Cor. 9:20).

10:2 Paul knows well this “zeal”—he writes of himself that “as to zeal” he had been a “persecutor of the church” (Phil. 3:6). But zeal or sincerity, while perhaps admirable, can be misguided. Jesus told his disciples, “The hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God” (John 16:2).

Zeal must be deployed “according to knowledge.” This is a “knowledge” (Gk. epignōsis) of God that is genuine because he has revealed it through the gospel message and it has been received by faith. Paul refers to this knowledge over a dozen times (e.g., Eph. 1:17; 4:13; Phil. 1:9; Col. 1:9–10; Titus 1:1). The Jews of whom he is speaking, having rejected the “stone” God laid (Rom. 9:33), did not arrive at such knowledge, any more than they arrived at “that law” they thought would procure them righteousness (9:31).

10:3 Paul describes the problem. Like all humanity, Jews have a sin problem (1:18–3:20). They lack the necessary application of the “righteousness of God” that comes through faith (1:16–17). Jesus speaks of those who seek to take the kingdom of heaven “by force” (Matt. 11:12), which means entering it by means of one’s own devising. To attempt to approach God by any means other than what he appoints reveals ignorance. No one, not even Jews in their undoubted giftedness (Rom. 9:4–5), can “establish their own” righteousness. All must “submit to God’s righteousness.” By rejecting Christ the Jews were rejecting God and the saving righteousness only he can provide.

10:4 “End” (Gk. telos) in this verse could mean some kind of termination, a goal, or both.

Christ is the termination of the law in the sense that he ushers in a new age—both continuous with and different from the former age. Christ destroys the delusion (which OT writings also opposed; cf. comment on 10:8) that a sinner can be justified before God by his own merit. The gospel message rules out “law” so conceived. Jesus says as much in claiming that “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20). The loftiest possible religious and moral achievement pales next to the eternal perfection of God in his holiness.

Christ is the goal of the law in the sense that the law points and leads the way to Christ (Gal. 3:24). With all pretense of justifying oneself by law keeping aside, the way is open to be justified by faith.

“Everyone who believes” confirms that all alike, Jew and Gentile, find salvation only through faith in Christ as offered in the gospel message.

10:5 Paul wishes to show that his critique of mistaken self-confidence based on law keeping is not original to him. In fact, it comes from Moses. Drawing on Leviticus 18:5, Paul describes an approach to the law that understands it as the road to life (“shall live by them,” with “live” understood as attaining God’s promised blessing). The problem with this, as Paul has already noted, is that it is only the “doers of the law who will be justified” (Rom. 2:13)—and no mere man has ever kept the law perfectly, either in Moses’ time or since.

The view Paul describes here is not true even to Moses, who understood that a heart change was necessary to be right with God (Deut. 10:16; 30:6). The law could convict of sin and direct those seeking God toward the love of God and neighbor. It guided Israel in myriad ways toward a personal and corporate life reflecting God’s holiness and expressing devotion to him. But keeping the law was never designed to be a paint-by-number exercise in constructing a mural showcasing one’s own righteousness. That would have been a misunderstanding of what “live by them” meant. It was a misunderstanding common in Paul’s own time, as it still is today—ask many people why they think they might go to heaven and they will say something like “I try to keep the Ten Commandments” or “I think I am a pretty good person.” Personal moral status or achievement are viewed as sufficient to garner God’s approval and ward off judgment, if there be any.

10:6–7 But there is another approach to the law, one that points to the gospel message. Paul describes it first by quoting Moses to point to the “righteousness based on faith” rather than establishing personal righteousness through law keeping (which is and always has been an illusion).

Paul quotes (with slight variation) from Deuteronomy 30:11–14. In this passage Moses states that “this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off” (Deut. 30:11). People may go to great lengths imagining how to understand and comply with the law’s myriad demands—this is the point of “ascend into heaven” and “descend into the abyss.” This is overthinking what Moses says, which is not that big of a mystery—“not too hard for you, neither is it far off.”

The Israelites’ objection to Moses’ (God’s) commands that someone needed to “ascend into heaven” to obey them was tantamount to saying centuries before Christ’s incarnation, “We need to ‘bring Christ down.’” The objection that someone needed to plumb the depths of death’s “abyss” was tantamount to saying centuries before Christ’s burial and resurrection, “We need to ‘bring Christ up from the dead.’”

This is specious reasoning, according to both Moses and Paul: “Do not say in your heart” means to not think or talk like this. It is neither possible nor necessary for sinners under the law to justify themselves by the law. Only Christ can justify, and not by law but by his work and promise received by faith—as Paul will now point out.

10:8 “But what does it say?” is Paul’s appeal to the reader to pay close attention to God’s Word. When Moses said to the Israelites, “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart,” he was proclaiming the gospel in advance. Salvation was by God’s promise, received through hearing (Deut. 4:10, 36; 5:1; 6:3–4; 9:1; 13:11; etc.). But Moses had to tell the people, “But to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear” (Deut. 29:4). The wilderness generation to whom Moses preached had stonewalled Moses and God by not letting God’s Word tell them what they needed (but did not want) to hear and thereby be saved.

Paul seeks to avoid that situation among his hearers (or readers). He desires them to discern already in Moses the “word of faith that we proclaim.”

10:9 Paul sees a correspondence, a foreshadowing, in Moses’ statement that God’s saving Word “is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (v. 8). That Word has transforming potential, as Jesus recognized when he quoted Moses (“man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord”; Deut. 8:3) at his temptation (Matt. 4:4).

What Moses foreshadowed by calling people to hear, the gospel announces as fulfilled. It calls people to a trust that compels them to “confess with [their] mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in [their] heart that God raised him from the dead.”

Jesus’ lordship and his resurrection (which implies and includes his crucifixion for our sins) are the pillars of saving Christian confession. “You will be saved” is not only eschatological (eternity in heaven). It speaks to a transformed current existence, just as Moses’ call to do what God commanded (Lev. 18:5; Deut. 4:1; 8:1), rightly received, had heart-changing potential.

10:10 “The heart” is the core of the inner person, the full and real “I” convicted of sin by the law and Holy Spirit. This person hears the gospel message in some semblance of its fullness, “believes” that God raised Jesus who died for our sins, and as a result “is justified.”

Along with the heart touched and transformed, the mouth reflects an inner alteration (“out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks”; Matt. 12:34) as shown by what it confesses—“Jesus is Lord” (Rom. 10:9). This is not just lip service but brings “life to your mortal bodies” (8:11) as believers “put to death the deeds of the body” (8:13) and “bear fruit for God” (7:4).

“Is saved,” as in 10:9, refers to life both presently and in the coming age.

10:11 Once again Paul turns to Scripture for support of his argument. As in 9:33, he draws on Isaiah 28:16 (cf. comment on Rom. 9:33). By “believes in him” Paul is referring not to some generic belief in God but personal trust in the resurrected Lord Jesus as per 10:9–10. “Everyone” is apt because Paul has in mind faith “in him who justifies the ungodly”; “ungodly” describes all persons (3:23). Believing in the sense Scripture calls for holds saving promise because “to the one who does not work but believes . . . his faith is counted as righteousness” (4:5). True faith works (Gal. 5:6; 1 Thess. 1:3; 2 Thess. 1:11) but is itself not a meritorious act but a means of appropriating God’s grace sparked by hearing God’s call to trust in the gospel.

“Put to shame” is a euphemism for being found guilty at the final judgment.

10:12 “Everyone” in verse 11 gives rise to “no distinction between Jew and Greek.” Paul has already made this point repeatedly with respect to the power of the gospel to save both Jew and Greek (1:16); to “tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil,” both Jew and Greek (2:9); to “glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good,” both Jew and Greek (2:10); to both “Jews and Greeks” as “under sin” (3:9).

The equal status and need for redemption of all people before God follows from his oneness and the solidarity of human origins in Adam and Eve (5:12–21). In Paul’s view, God “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). “Bestowing his riches” refers to fruits of gospel reception such as forgiveness of sins and liberation to newness of life.

10:13 Paul turns to yet another Scripture to make his point, this time Joel 2:32 (Joel 3:5 LXX). In Joel “the Lord” refers to Yahweh, or God the Father. But in the flow of Romans 10 “Lord” refers to Jesus. Paul ascribes the same status to Jesus as Joel ascribes to God.

10:14–15 Paul is not an armchair theologian. He understands the gospel as a message to be heard, heeded, and spread, not merely parsed, perhaps defended, and at the end idly affirmed. He is a missionary and, when necessary, an apologist for the truth of the gospel message with which he has been entrusted.

Paul has been defending the proposition that God’s Word has not failed but is in fact validated, not least by various Scripture passages. Most Jews may have rejected Jesus’ messiahship, and some may reject the equal status of both Jew and Gentile before God. But Paul has responded sufficiently to such objections.

Now he presses ahead to the question of what to do with this gospel message, since “everyone who believes” (v. 11) and “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord” (v. 13) can receive the blessing of salvation.

Paul reasons swiftly: to call on him, they must believe. To believe, they must hear. To hear, someone must preach. To preach, someone must be sent. This is precisely in what Paul has been engaged in for some two decades at the time he composes Romans. He has been an agent of being sent and of preaching. And this is an honorable, indeed a beautiful development, as Scripture affirms: “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” Drawing here on Isaiah 52:7, a passage that speaks of Israel’s restoration after judgment, Paul reaches breathing space in an argument that began in Romans 9:1, defending his ministry of preaching the gospel to Gentiles in the light of the Jews’ rejection of Jesus. God’s Word has not failed (cf. 9:6). Quite the contrary: how beautiful the apostolic preaching to the Gentile world (and to Jews willing to listen), spearheaded by Paul, has turned out to be!

Yet there is a glitch. Paul discusses it through the remainder of this chapter.

10:16 The disappointment is that “they have not all obeyed the gospel.” This could be taken as another charge that the Word of God has failed. Even if it is not, it is an undeniable observation. It was foretold by Isaiah (53:1 LXX). Paul continues his pattern of noting correspondences between situations he observes or claims he affirms and citations in various portions of the OT. Far from the Word of God failing, it proves to be truthful and accurate with respect to both its own time and the future.

The verdict of the Word of God Paul stresses here is that in spite of the beauty of the “feet of those who preach the good news” (Rom. 10:15), many are not obedient to the gospel.

10:17 A major link between verse 17 and verse 16 is obscured in English. The end of verse 16 could be rendered, “Who has trusted in the hearing [akoē] of us?” Verse 17 uses the same word: “So faith comes from hearing [akoē].” Both verse 16 and verse 17 revolve around hearing, as both verses address the issue of gospel reception, and the gospel is by definition a message announced with the intention that it be heard.

Verse 17 is a powerful freestanding summary of how faith arises (through hearing a proclamation) and what makes such hearing so powerful (the thing proclaimed and heard is the “word of Christ,” which could stand for the gospel message). But how does verse 17 relate to the verses before and after?

Perhaps verse 17 is elliptical—Paul does not feel like he needs to add a final clause that would make explicit what he thinks is clear without his saying it: the word of God has not failed but is giving rise to faith wherever it is faithfully proclaimed. Disobedience (v. 16) or obliviousness (v. 18) to the gospel does not change the fact that the “word of Christ” is going forth and stirring up saving faith.

10:18 Paul explores further the issue of disobedience to the gospel. Could the problem be that people have not heard? Not really, Paul replies, citing the LXX version of Psalm 19:4. Psalm 19 begins, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard” (Ps. 19:1–3). Taken with verse 4, this is an extended depiction of the knowledge of God that Paul attributes to all humans based on what creation reveals (Rom. 1:19–23).

Yes, all people have heard enough to make them accountable through their observation of nature if they care to see God’s voice and words that go out “to the ends of the world” through what he has made.

10:19–20 These verses express incredulity that Israel could be deaf to the “word of Christ” (v. 17). First Paul quotes Moses (Deut. 32:21 LXX) from a passage in which Moses is warning Israel against turning away from God. God foresees Israel’s treachery (Deut. 32:19–21a), which includes faithlessness and idolatry. In gracious response to encourage their repentance, God tells them through Moses, “I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation; with a foolish nation I will make you angry.” Paul sees this as a prediction of Gentile inclusion in God’s people via the gospel, a significant underlying issue throughout the whole of Romans.

But it is not only Moses who testifies to Israel’s imperviousness to hearing; it is also Isaiah. Paul finds the words of Isaiah 65:1 to be an uncanny depiction of God’s openness to a people other than Israel due to Israel’s own sin and lack of holiness. The line after what Paul cites is even more suggestive: “I said, ‘Here I am, here I am,’ to a nation that was not called by my name” (Isa. 65:1c). The doubled “Here I am” underscores the great length to which God would go in striving with his people. But the next verse, still citing Isaiah 65, puts a somber exclamation point on Israel’s recalcitrance.

10:21 “But of Israel he says” could also be rendered “But to Israel he says.” In Isaiah 65, God, whom Paul is quoting here, is being as provocative and “in your face” to his people as possible in the hope they might return to him.

And no wonder. God goes on to describe a “disobedient and contrary people” who follow “their own devices” and not the Torah, who provoke God to his face, who commit blasphemies and sacrileges, and then who tell each other with unctuous self-righteousness, “Do not come near me, for I am too holy for you” (Isa. 65:2–5). Obviously Paul sees a parallel with many Jews in his own time.

This concludes Paul’s case for the success, not failure, of God’s Word. The reason for disobedience to that Word must be found somewhere other than in God or the saving message about Christ.

11:1 Chapters 9–10 were taken up by the question of whether God’s Word has failed since so many of his own chosen people have not responded to the gospel message. In chapter 11 Paul takes up a different though related question: “Has God rejected his people?”

Paul’s initial response is autobiographical, emphatically rejecting the notion. He is Exhibit A of God’s faithfulness to those of Abrahamic descent, as his own connections with Israel, Abraham, and the tribe of Benjamin make clear.78

11:2 To back up his claim in verse 1, Paul draws on key Scriptures. “God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew” (cf. 8:29) resembles two passages, 1 Samuel 12:22 and Psalm 94:14. Moreover, right after the famed new covenant passage in Jeremiah 31:31–34, God strongly denies that the “offspring of Israel” could ever “cease from being a nation before me forever” (Jer. 31:36). Under no circumstances, God continues, would he ever “cast off all the offspring of Israel for all that they have done” (Jer. 31:37).

God’s covenant people are assured of remaining his people even as the gospel era has dawned and despite most among his people’s ranks preferring to look the other direction or even to oppose the gospel message.

For further support Paul turns to the Elijah narrative in Scripture.

11:3–4 In this quote from 1 Kings 19:10, 14, Elijah shows how easy it is to be unduly pessimistic about God’s command of a situation. Things looked unspeakably bleak in Elijah’s day, with prophets slaughtered (1 Kings 18:13), altars toppled (1 Kings 18:30), and Elijah’s life threatened by Jezebel (1 Kings 19:2).

But Elijah’s horizon was too narrow. God had a reply for him. “Reply” translates chrēmatismos, a Greek word referring to a divine or oracular utterance (cf. Prov. 31:1 LXX; 2 Macc. 2:4). God spoke to Elijah personally and directly. He assured Elijah that a great multitude remained who were not like the false prophets but were faithful to God: “Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him” (1 Kings 19:18). God’s purposes are intact even when circumstances seem adverse.

11:5 Paul draws a lesson from the ninth-century-BC reign of Ahab, ruler of the northern kingdom who at the behest of Jezebel opposed Elijah. Just as in that time, so also in Paul’s does “a remnant” remain. The word “remnant” occurs dozens of time in the OT, often describing a tiny minority of God’s people who remain after a time of persecution or captivity or during eras of apostasy. For example, in Jeremiah’s time, just before the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem (587 BC) and the deportation of much of Judah’s population to Babylon, God promises, “I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply” (Jer. 23:3).

Paul stresses that such a remnant is the result of God’s choosing and grace. Behind Scripture’s repeated assurance that “out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant” is the consistent affirmation that “the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this” (Isa. 37:32). Paul’s assurance lies in God, not himself or a people.

11:6 Paul leverages the indubitable fact that God has preserved a remnant, and that this remnant endures by his choice and grace, into a confessional declaration. While “his people” (v. 1; the Jews) may tout their faithfulness to God as their basis for his favor, Paul has already shown (in ch. 4 and elsewhere) that God’s favor is “no longer” (as many supposed and taught) “on the basis of works.” That would make God’s grace, the very ground of the favor shown to Israel through the centuries, into a mechanism upheld by human effort.

But God’s promise to save and preserve rests on grace, not human effort, and this is true even for “the adherent of the law” (4:16).

11:7 Paul’s “What then?” is the last of eleven such rhetorical queries found in Romans, a pointer to its dialogical tone for its first eleven chapters. The expression signals that Paul will draw an inference from previous verses.

His conclusion matches a point made earlier: “Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law” (9:31). They failed because (1) “they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works” and (2) they rejected (“stumbled over”) Jesus as the Messiah (9:32).

Just so in 11:7: “Israel failed” because it was looking for the wrong thing in the wrong manner. “The elect” remnant found God faithful, but overall the people “were hardened,” caught in their own waywardness, as Paul will now detail.

11:8 Again Paul turns to Scripture (“as it is written”) to explain why he thinks most Jews are not responding favorably to the gospel message. It is a syndrome that goes back to Moses’ and Isaiah’s time. Moses recounted all the ways God had saved and blessed Israel in their liberation from Egypt and wilderness wanderings (Deut. 29:5), yet they remained stubborn in their hearts. Isaiah lamented their “spirit of deep sleep” and the confusion of their prophets (Isa. 29:10) resulting from their phony piety and cold hearts (Isa. 29:13).

As Romans 1:18–32 affirmed, when people of any persuasion turn away from God, their powers of discernment and moral reasoning suffer. This is punitive but also redemptive in that it may jolt people into repentance.

11:9–10 Paul turns to Psalm 69, a psalm of David with many reverberations in the life of the Son of David and Son of God in the NT. The verses he cites (Ps. 69:22–23) are a renunciation of David’s foes. But in the larger context of Psalm 69 we see foreshadowings of Jesus’ life and foes. Psalm 69:9 speaks of Jesus’ zeal for the temple (John 2:17), which won him many enemies. Psalm 69:21 foretells Jesus’ thirst on the cross (Matt. 27:48). Psalm 69:25 informed the apostolic decision to replace Judas Iscariot with Matthias (Acts 1:20).

In a subtle way, David’s call for a curse on his enemies articulates the condemnation earned by those who oppose the Son of David. So these verses characterize not only Jewish opposition to God’s means of grace in Christ but also God’s verdict. They also point to the cost of snubbing the Son of David, Jesus Christ, the “stumbling block” they have refused to acknowledge (recall Rom. 9:33), to Paul’s great grief and consternation.

11:11 But none of what Paul has been describing about the Jews’ hardness leaves them without hope in God. They did not “stumble in order that they might fall”—their hardening (v. 7) had a twofold positive goal.

First, “their trespass” (opposition to Christ) opened the door for the Gentiles to receive salvation. This is displayed dramatically and explicitly in Acts when Paul and Barnabas preach in a synagogue at Pisidian Antioch. Their message stirs great interest (Acts 13:44). But jealous Jews oppose it, contradicting and “reviling” Paul (Acts 13:45). As a result, “Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, ‘It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you [Jews]. Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles’” (Acts 13:46).

For the Gentiles’ part, “when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48). “Appointed to eternal life” is language one would expect to be applied to children of Abraham. It is now true of Gentiles through their trust in Jesus Christ, precipitated by Jewish hostility toward the gospel.

Second, Jewish rejection of the gospel and Gentile reception has the potential to “make Israel jealous” and encourage them to reconsider.

11:12 Paul marvels at the vast potential in the situation he describes. “Riches for the world” means the fruit of gospel expansion beyond the very limited confines of Jewish communities in the Roman Empire. God’s blessing to the Jews is so powerful that even when they err, there is widespread benefit!

“Their failure” resulted in the gospel’s spread to the Gentiles. Paul holds out hope that this failure is temporary. When Israel (the Jews) finally does come to its senses and recognize its king, “how much more will their full inclusion” in the people of God, united with Gentile believers, signify?

11:13–14 In this discourse, analyzing Jewish coolness toward the gospel, Paul knows he has been speaking mainly to Gentiles. Since he is “an apostle to the Gentiles” by God’s choice long ago (cf. Acts 9:15), he is playing up his “ministry” (Gk. diakonia), the sphere of service to which God has assigned him. This puts the spotlight on himself.

But the intent is not self-glorification; it is rather evangelization. He hopes to stir up “my fellow Jews,” his Jewish brethren, to jealousy and “thus save some of them.” “Jealous” in Romans 11:14 could mean exactly what it sounds like: Jews’ wishes to benefit from the gospel in the ways they see Gentiles flourishing because of their adoption by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through faith in Christ. But it could also connote “make them zealous.” Many are complacent in their perceived spiritual adequacy. The sight of Gentiles engaged and rejoicing in answering the gospel call may have the positive effect of reminding Jews that God is worthy of their full engagement and zeal, even at the cost of confessing Jesus as Messiah and Lord.

11:15 Paul argues from the lesser to the greater. If “their rejection”—meaning both the Jews’ rejection of Christ and God’s temporary and strategic rejection of them by going around them to the Gentiles—translated into “reconciliation of the world,” how much greater will be their “acceptance” of Christ and God’s reacceptance of them into full fellowship with him? It will be a resurrection-like mighty divine act, a cause for praise of God and new hope for Israel.

By “reconciliation of the world” Paul does not mean universal salvation. He is referring to Gentiles everywhere coming to personal faith and thereby being reconciled to God.

11:16 This verse draws on priestly imagery (Num. 15:17–21). Israel was commanded, “Some of the first of your dough you shall give to the Lord as a contribution throughout your generations” (Num. 15:21). This would have the effect of sanctifying the “whole lump” of bread dough, from which they could then eat with God’s full blessing. Another image communicates the same idea: the relation between root and branches (Job 18:16; Jer. 17:8; Hos. 9:16). A holy root means holy fruit.

The “dough offered as firstfruits” may be understood as the remnant, in former times or presently as with Paul, who laid hold of God truly by faith. “The root” may be a synonymous reference or a reference to the patriarchs. Both expressions suggest that God’s guidance of some in Israel to saving faith ensures a larger movement to messianic faith in times to come.

11:17–18 Since 9:1, Paul has had Israel under the microscope. But none of what he has said means that Gentiles should be complacent or gloat. Paul will now explain why.

“Some of the branches were broken off” refers to those who were Abraham’s descendants only outwardly, not inwardly (2:28–29). They were children of the flesh rather than of the promise (9:6–8). They esteemed lightly the blessing of God’s covenant with Abraham and paid the penalty of hardening and divine disapproval.

The rest of 11:17 depicts Gentile inclusion into Abrahamic blessing. The “you” is singular; Paul wants readers to reflect on their own personal attitudes. The “nourishing root” may be thought of as the messianic blessing through the seminal means of grace described in 9:4–6, including the patriarchs and the Christ.

“Do not be arrogant” spotlights that human tendency to revel in the misfortunes of others and to think of oneself as better. Paul warns Gentiles not to fall into the same trap the Jews did. They came to think they had God over a barrel: they were his people and he was dependent on them. But salvation by God is always radically dependent on God.

11:19 This verse pictures an arrogant Gentile who presumes to trust in Christ and then states with irritating smugness, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” This hardly reflects Christian gratitude for divine grace, humility in the face of blessing undeserved, or dismay at the plight of the broken branches (as Paul has earlier exhibited). It is a dangerously self-privileging remark.

11:20 Paul overlooks the arrogance in verse 19 and comments on the remark’s objective accuracy. Yes, Gentiles were grafted in. Yes, the Jews were faithless and fell. But anyone who stands “fast through faith” does so because of grace, not personal ability or achievement or merit. For that reason, pride (like that on display in v. 19) is never wise or warranted. Rather, the statement is as true in Paul’s day as it was for Solomon that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. 1:7). Wise believers, Jew or Gentile, have learned that the true “circumcision” are those who “worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh” (Phil. 3:3).

11:21 This statement recalls Paul’s earlier statement that God is not partial (2:11). The apostle has also firmly established the equal proclivity to sin of all humanity (1:18–3:20) and man’s fallen solidarity in Adam (5:12–21). Therefore, in the same way that hard-hearted Israelites were not spared in former times, “neither will he spare” Gentiles who make the same miscalculations about God and their own presumed righteousness.

11:22 The lesson to be learned is one of balance. Some want to cast God in a purely lenient light. Others want to highlight his severity (especially against other groups). But both characteristics are equally true of God in his majesty.

God is severe against those who challenge his call to turn to him by denying that they need such a change—which is to say they deny they need God. God has shown himself kind to Gentiles through the spread of the gospel. But they need to continue in the same walk of dependent faith that they began (cf. Gal. 3:1–6). Otherwise, deluded Gentile believers will find themselves outside of God’s covenant blessing in the same way and for the same reason that overconfident Jews did.

11:23 As Paul continues to address a hypothetical self-confident Gentile, he projects what God is capable of coaxing out of Jews who at Paul’s time of writing are largely gospel-hostile. God can graft them back into the tree from which he broke them off “if they do not continue in their unbelief.”

“God has the power” to do this. His “power” has seen significant mention already (1:4, 16, 20; 9:17, 22). It is easy to overlook that, in comparison with God, any human and in fact all humans taken together are powerless. “No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can avail against the Lord” (Prov. 21:30). In all matters of human existence, but especially with respect to well-being before God, he holds all the aces. God’s redemptive sovereignty is a sheet anchor of Paul’s theology.

11:24 Here Paul summarizes and completes his grafting analogy with a terse and beautifully symmetrical sentence. The “wild olive tree” is non-Abrahamic humanity. The “cultivated olive tree” is the Abrahamic heritage. Paul holds out hope that rebellious Israel (10:21), the “natural branches,” will rejoin their native community of blessing, transformed as it now is by Gentile inclusion in keeping with the fulfillment of messianic promises.

The next few verses give reasons for Paul’s hope.

11:25 To give understanding that can help his readers avoid arrogance, Paul explains a “mystery.” In his usage this term often refers to a previously unknown truth on which God has now shed light by revelation. “Brothers” points to Paul’s friendly and collegial regard. “Partial hardening” means that not all Jews reject Jesus as their messiah. It is also “partial” with respect to duration: it will persist “until the fullness of the Gentiles” has arrived. This could mean the full number of non-Jews that God has appointed to be saved (cf. Acts 13:48).

11:26 Once the process described in verse 25 has run its course, “all Israel will be saved.” Interpreters debate what this means.79 Clearly Paul does not think Israelites, whether in OT times or his own era, will all be saved. He has been lamenting lost Israel since the beginning of chapter 9, and chapter 2 details ways in which Jews have gone astray.

He could be thinking of a time to come when large numbers of Jews will awaken to faith in Jesus as the promised messiah. This cannot be ruled out, since the gospel message certainly holds this potential. It is also possible that he is using “Israel” to include both (1) true Jews since Abraham, who like Abraham through faith know circumcision of the heart by the Spirit, not the letter (2:29), and (2) Gentiles who have become children of Abraham through faith in Jesus Christ. An example of the former group would be Paul, the other apostles, Timothy, and other Jews who have confessed faith in Christ. An example of the latter group would be the Roman believers, mostly Gentile, whom chapter 11 has been describing as grafted into the cultivated olive tree.

Whatever the proper interpretation, all the redeemed will owe their status to the “Deliverer . . . from Zion.” He will bring about a new level of godliness—he will “banish ungodliness”—among God’s people, in keeping with the prophecy in Isaiah 59:20. This applies to both earthly and heavenly life.

11:27 To Isaiah’s prophecy in verse 26 Paul adds a portion of Jeremiah 31:33 (“and this will be my covenant with them”) and 31:34 (“when I take away their sins”). The Jeremiah phrases are from the new covenant prophecy (Jer. 31:31–34). To apply this when “all Israel” (Rom. 11:26) is under discussion supports the idea that “Israel” in this context includes new covenant believers, i.e., Gentiles, as well as Jews who believe in the one who established that covenant, Jesus:

“This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matt. 26:28)

“This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” (Mark 14:24)

Likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” (Luke 22:20)

11:28 “They” are Jews who could and should be saved by the gospel but as yet are not. “For your sake” would mean that their opposition vindicates God’s wisdom and compassion, in contrast to his own people’s hostility toward Gentiles. “For your sake” could also be translated “because of you.” In that case Paul would be pointing to Jewish hostility toward accepting Gentiles as worship partners.

But God’s election of a nation in Abraham has continuing implications even as Paul seeks to spread the gospel despite Jewish opposition. God’s faithfulness to the patriarchs guarantees his unwavering commitment to the patriarchs’ descendants.

11:29 One reason for God’s unwavering commitment (v. 28) is that “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” “Gifts” would include the countless promises made to his people and the blessings extended to them going back to Abraham and even before, to Noah and to Adam and Eve in the garden. They would also include God’s written Word (3:2) and the specific blessings listed in 9:4–5. The “calling of God” is his summons that brought Israel into being. But it is not only a common call; this call translates into an awareness, arising in people called to faith, of the presence of God and their responsibility to respond. There is a particular call to faith in Christ through the call of the gospel (cf. 1:1, 6, 7; 9:24). Both God’s gifts and his calling of Jews to faith in Christ remain in force and will not be revoked.

11:30–31 Paul draws an analogy between God’s mercy on the Jews and his mercy on Paul’s (Gentile) Roman audience. Prior to their reception of the gospel message, the Romans were “disobedient to God.” As Paul reminded the Ephesians and as is true of all non-Christians, they were without “hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12).

But as Paul writes to them, God has shown them mercy. “Because of their disobedience” refers to the Jews’ rejection of the gospel, which opened the door for Gentiles (like the Romans) to be at the forefront of early church expansion.

Paul foresees a similar process lying ahead for Jews. “They too have now been disobedient” (Rom. 11:31)—they have rejected the gospel. But as Gentiles continue to receive that message and prosper in the faith, the result may be that “they also may now receive mercy.” Jews may turn to Christ in the future in ways that Paul and the Romans do not presently observe.

11:32 Jew and Gentile alike are “consigned to disobedience.” Paul has already described the law’s role in this: God gave the law “so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God” (3:19). Using the same word translated as “consigned” (Gk. sunkleiō), Paul also writes, “The Scripture imprisoned [sunkleiō] everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe” (Gal. 3:22). He adds, “Now before faith came, we were held captive [sunkleiō] under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed” (Gal. 3:23).

No one likes to be accused of wrongdoing. But God kindly pulls back the curtain on human sin so “that he may have mercy on all” who own up to their sin and accept God’s sole sufficient remedy.

11:33 The remainder of the chapter is doxology—praise to God. While interpreters highlight puzzles, conundrums, and perceived inconsistencies in chapters 9–11, Paul’s conclusion highlights God’s grandeur in showing mercy to all when none deserved it.

Jesus once said that the person “who is forgiven little, loves little” (Luke 7:47). Paul knows he has been forgiven a great deal (“though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent . . . I received mercy”; 1 Tim. 1:13). His appreciation and love for God come out in this section.

“Oh, the depths” is a statement that human understanding is inadequate to do justice to God’s “riches and wisdom and knowledge.” “Unsearchable” and “inscrutable” do not mean nothing at all can be known; by the Scriptures and his Spirit God reveals much, to say nothing of his self-disclosure in the created order (see, e.g., Ps. 19:1–6; Rom. 1:20). But human knowledge cannot begin to match, let alone exhaust, God’s knowledge.

11:34–35 Verse 34 leans on Isaiah 40:13 LXX and points to God’s incomparable intelligence. It also highlights the absurdity of any human giving God advice. Romans 11:35 draws on Job 41:11: “Who has first given to me, that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine.”

Both Job and the audience of Isaiah were blessed by God but then subject to deprivations and judgments they considered unfair. “After they question God’s righteousness while asserting their own, God gives them revelation that they find difficult and unsatisfying.”80 Paul has worked through these difficulties in his own life and ministry setting. He has arrived at a fresh and joyful apprehension of God’s superiority, justice, and perfect righteousness shown in his mercy through Christ. The ascription of praise in the next verse follows naturally.

11:36 “All things” pertains most of all to the matters covered since 9:1. Much lies beyond human ken. Some of what Paul has written is unlikely to find friendly reception by either Jews or Gentiles. But in the end it is not the verdict of the readers or the public that matters most; it is the verdict of God. So it is both wise and fitting for Paul to end this section with an “Amen” to God’s gloriousness, since he is the ultimate origin (“from him”), means (“through him”), and goal (“to him”) of all that both fills and transcends the universe.