2    Israel’s Unbelief Is  Consistent with God’s  Plan—part 1  It Is Consistent with His Promises (9:6-13)

But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; neither are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants, but: “through Isaac your descendants will be named.” That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants. For this is a word of promise: “At this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son.” And not only this, but there was Rebekah also, when she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac; for though the twins were not yet born, and had not done anything good or bad, in order that God’s purpose according to His choice might stand, not because of works, but because of Him who calls, it was said to her, “The older will serve the younger.” Just as it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” (9:6–13)

While the major theme of chapters 9–11 is God’s dealing with His elect nation, the underlying theme, especially of chapter 9, is God’s sovereignty in doing so. It demands more than a superficial understanding. And yet, when the deepest meaning and implications of this passage are carefully considered, especially its unambiguous declaration of God’s absolute and unrestricted sovereign power, even the most devoted believer is left with some profound mysteries.

In 1948, Jews reestablished the nation of Israel in part of the ancient land that God had promised them through Abraham. In the Six-Day War of 1967, they acquired more of that land, including full control over their holy city of Jerusalem.

But the modern state of Israel is not a theocracy, with God as its sovereign Lord, or even a nation ruled by God-serving leaders. Although it contains large and influential religious groups, it is, like most nations of today, a secular state.

Some Israelis are openly atheistic. Others cherish their religious, biblical heritage and see it as the key to justify their right to the land. Some even believe the state of Israel itself is the Messiah spoken of figuratively in the Old Testament, the promised deliverer who would regain Jewish rights and influence in a world where the nation has so long been persecuted and suppressed.

One such group even draws parallels between that national view and the claims of Christians that the historical person Jesus Christ is the Messiah. It is claimed, for instance, that, like Jesus Christ, the nation of Israel was sovereignly called, or destined, into existence as its own messiah. That nation faced destruction by famine and was protected in Egypt, just as the infant Jesus faced destruction by Herod and was taken by Joseph and Mary to Egypt for protection. That nation/messiah became despised and hated by the world and was crucified, as it were, by the Romans in A.D. 70, just as Jesus had been crucified by the Romans some forty years earlier. Finally, just as Jesus was resurrected to life on the third day, the nation/messiah of Israel was raised up to national life in the third millennium (the general timing of 1948–76).

On the other hand, many religious Jews in Israel are still awaiting the first coming of their promised king, the messiah. Yet they look forward to a man who will come as their deliverer from human oppression, not from sin. They believe he will someday triumphantly enter the eastern gate of Jerusalem and that he will establish his throne in that city, setting in place their nation’s supremacy from which he will rule the world.

In the land of God’s own promise to them, few Jews acknowledge their true Messiah. They live where the prophets lived and walk where Jesus walked, but they do not truly believe the prophets (honoring only their memories) and, far worse, they reject the truth of the sacrifice of Messiah’s own life made for sin.

Many Israelis pragmatically appreciate evangelical Christians who strongly support the state of Israel. But Jewish gratitude for such Christian patronage is based largely on its power to help them achieve their own economic and political ends.

Questions that Jews everywhere might express to Christians could be phrased something like these: “If, as you say, God sent His Son to earth as the promised King and Savior to redeem Israel and the world to Himself, how could His ancient chosen people possibly have not recognized and accepted Him? How could Jews—which Christians themselves acknowledge to be God’s uniquely elect race—conceivably have rejected their promised and long-awaited Hope and even put Him to death? If the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ time, as well as the vast majority of other Jews of that day and of every age since, have not recognized Him as their own Messiah, then it is utterly irrational to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was, much less still is, who Christians claim Him to be.”

Because they assume that those very dilemmas themselves disprove that Jesus could have been the Messiah, Jews conclude that Christianity is nothing more than a perversion of the true, God-given religion of Judaism.

Two further reasons that Jews do not accept Christianity are that it supersedes the Old Covenant of Moses and that it opens the door for Gentiles to come directly to God on the same terms as Jews and thereby become full and unqualified members of the family of God without passing through the vestibule of Judaism. To accept the New Covenant in Jesus Christ was to recognize that it fulfilled and replaced the Old Covenant, that it completely nullified the ceremonies and all the man-made rabbinical traditions, and that it set aside Israel as God’s uniquely chosen nation in order to call out a new people from the Gentiles, who were thus offered equal access to God’s grace and favor.

In the minds of most Jews of Jesus’ and Paul’s day, Christianity, as it soon came to be called (see Acts 11:26), was nothing less than a heretical movement that attempted to abrogate God’s ancient covenant and promises given through Abraham and reiterated to the other patriarchs as well as the covenant and law that He gave through Moses and to David. Most Jews, therefore, considered Christianity to be the total denigration of God’s integrity and faithfulness.

Because the Judaism of his day was so deeply steeped in the legalistic works righteousness of rabbinical traditions, and because God’s plan to offer salvation on equal terms to Gentiles was a mystery not fully revealed in the Old Testament, Paul devotes chapters 9–11 of Romans to clarifying the place of Israel in the present church age.

As the apostle explained to the church at Ephesus,

In Romans 9:6–33 Paul gives four basic reasons why the gospel of Jesus Christ is not blasphemous heresy and in particular why its rejection by most individual Jews and by Israel as a nation does not impugn God’s righteous and just character, does not vitiate His revelation given in the Jewish Scriptures (the Old Testament), does not alter the means of salvation, and does not relinquish the place of Israel in His ultimate plan of redemption.

First, Paul declares that the unbelief of Israel is consistent with God’s promises (9:6–13); second, that it is consistent with His Person (vv. 14–24); third, that it is consistent with God’s prophetic revelation (vv. 25–29); and fourth, that it is consistent with God’s prerequisite of salvation by faith (vv. 30–33).

But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; neither are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants, but: “through Isaac your descendants will be named.” That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants. For this is a word of promise: “At this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son.” And not only this, but there was Rebekah also, when she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac; for though the twins were not yet born, and had not done anything good or bad, in order that God’s purpose according to His choice might stand, not because of works, but because of Him who calls, it was said to her, “The older will serve the younger.” Just as it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” (9:6–13)

As discussed in the previous chapter, Paul began his correction of Jewish false belief about the gospel of Jesus Christ by declaring his own unequivocal love for unbelieving Israel (Rom. 9:1–5). Almost inconceivably, calling the Holy Spirit as witness, he declared that, because of his “unceasing grief” over their eternal alienation from God, he would gladly sacrifice his own salvation, if doing so could redeem his fellow Jews, his “brethren, [his] kinsmen according to the flesh” (vv. 1–3). Apart from Jesus’ own statements during His incarnation, no greater human testimony of compassion and willing sacrifice for the sake of others is recorded in all of Scripture.

The apostle could not, of course, accomplish such a thing, but he was compelled to assure unbelieving Jews of his great love for them and his desire for their salvation before he declared to them the more than unwelcome news that all of their gracious and unique God-given advantages and blessings were of no avail before Him if they rejected His own Son as Savior and Lord (vv. 4–5). By implication he was saying that, in rejecting Jesus Christ, Israel rejected God and lost her status as God’s favored, divinely blessed nation. She would no longer be the apple of God’s eye, no longer be the people upon whom God would pour out His great blessings of care and protection. The question is, “Doesn’t this rejection by God constitute a violation of His promises and thereby sacrifice His integrity?” It was on the basis of such reasoning that Jews rejected Jesus as their Messiah and felt justified in that rejection because they concluded it was based on sound defense of the character of God. And, they reasoned, such almost unanimous rejection had to prove Jesus was not the Messiah.

The first of the reasons mentioned above that Paul gives for contradicting the prevalent Jewish idea that Israel’s rejection of Jesus proved he could not have been the true Messiah is that Israel’s unbelief as a nation was perfectly consistent with God’s ancient promises.

He begins by declaring, It is not as though the word of God has failed (or, more literally, “has fallen”). Paul was referring to Israel’s “adoption as sons and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises” (v. 4). The Lord had not abrogated or in any way invalidated the ultimate fulfillment of His unconditional promises to the Jews. Through Jeremiah, He had long ago assured His people that, “just as I brought all this great disaster on this people, so I am going to bring on them all the good that I am promising them” (Jer. 32:42). Through Isaiah He said, “My word … which goes forth from My mouth … shall not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it” (Isa. 55:11). Even God’s cutting off unbelieving Israel was perfectly consistent with His covenant promises to them. Chastening and punishment are elements of His divine faithfulness, integrity, and love and are not to be questioned.

Our own day has witnessed irrefutable proof that, although God has punished the nation for its unbelief, He has not allowed the many trials and dispersions of His people—the deportation of Jews from Israel, first by Assyria in 722 B.C. and by Babylon in 586, and subsequently by Rome, partially in A.D. 70 and all but entirely in 132—to obliterate Israel as a distinct people. After nearly two thousand years (by 1948), the Lord reestablished her in her own land and she was recognized by the world community as an independent and sovereign state.

God’s bringing Israel back into her own land, however, does not prove that, as a nation, she is once again pleasing in His eyes. And, as already mentioned, mere physical descent from Abraham has never made an individual Jew a member of God’s holy family. But as we will see, her salvation will come, along with the kingdom that God promised.

As Paul continues to explain how Jewish unbelief does not discredit God’s Word, he writes: They are not all Israel who are descended from Israel; neither are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants, but: “Through Isaac your descendants will be named.” That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants.

But even being in the line of Isaac through Jacob, who became Israel, did not make a person a true child of the promise. They are not all Israel who are descended from Israel. Not all physical Israelites are true heirs of the promise (see the discussion of Romans 2:28–29 in the previous commentary volume).

Because Jews were so familiar with them, Paul chooses familiar Old Testament texts to support his point. The first male descendant of Abraham was Ishmael, whom he had by Hagar, the Egyptian maid of his wife Sarah. Disbelieving God’s promise that Abraham would have an heir through her, the barren Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham as another wife and insisted that her husband would father a male heir through her (Gen. 16:1–3). As soon as Hagar became pregnant, however, Sarah became resentful and jealous. In due time Ishmael was born, and, had he been Abraham’s only son, would have become the only heir. Sarah soon demanded that Hagar and her newly-weaned son be driven out of the household (vv. 4–6).

Although Ishmael was a son of Abraham, and although Sarah was past the age of normal child-bearing, it was through her, Abraham’s true wife, that God gave assurance that the true son of His promise would be born: “Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; and I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. … My covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you at this season next year” (17:19, 21; cf. 18:10–14).

It was to that specific passage that Paul referred when he reminded his readers of God’s declaration to Abraham that through Isaac your descendants will be named. As Abraham’s son, Ishmael would receive his own special blessings from God (Gen. 17:18), but he was not and never could have been the heir of God’s promise. After Sarah died, Abraham had six other sons by a new wife, Keturah (25:1–2); but, like Ishmael, none of those could have been the heir of promise.

Not only could the descendants of those sons not be the children of God’s promise, but even the privileged descendants of Sarah through Isaac could not become full heirs of the promise merely by their physical lineage.

God has always known that Jews would be spiritually dead and cut off from the promise and from salvation. Neither are they all children because they are Abraham’s descendants states the same truth. Because some Jews reject Jesus does not prove He is not Messiah, nor does it denigrate the integrity of God. He knew there would be unbelieving Jews throughout all Israel’s history.

To illustrate that reality, Paul turns back to Isaac. Because Isaac was Abraham’s only child of the divine promise of Genesis 17:19–21, Paul here refers to Isaac’s children as Abraham’s descendants (the Jews) and therefore the only true children of God in a racial sense. The entire nation of Israel was elected and brought into divine privilege.

It was not the children of the flesh, Abraham’s other children by Hagar and Keturah, but the children of Isaac, the child of promise, who were the descendants of the promise. The point is that, just as not all of Abraham’s physical children are to inherit the promise of belonging to the people of God physically, only those of Isaac, so neither do all of Abraham’s children through Isaac belong to the people of God spiritually. The unbelief, sin, rejection, and hostility of Israel toward Christ is not proof He is not Messiah. To the contrary, they fit perfectly with God’s promise, which anticipated that not all Jews would believe in Jesus and be saved.

That truth was remarkably illustrated during the time of Elijah. Because of the continual threats against his life, not only by the priests of Baal but by also by King Ahab and Queen Jezebel of Israel, Elijah became convinced that all Israel had become apostate. Later in the book of Romans, Paul reminds his readers of the prophet’s fearful complaint and of God’s assuring reply: “‘Lord, they have killed Thy prophets, they have torn down Thine altars, and I alone am left, and they are seeking my life.’ But what is the divine response to him? ‘I have kept for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal’” (Rom. 11:3—4; cf. 1 Kings 19:10, 18). In other words, even during the ministry of that great miracle-working prophet, the vast majority of Israel was thoroughly and openly pagan.

From the very time of the Fall, long before God’s covenant with Abraham, God established that the only way a person can become righteous before Him is by faith. The writer of Hebrews explains that, in regard to Adam’s own sons, the sacrifice of Abel was accepted by God because it was offered in faith and that the sacrifice of Cain was rejected because it was not offered in faith: “By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks” (Heb. 11:4).

Isaac also is an excellent illustration of the true child of God because, long before he was even conceived, he was divinely chosen among the descendants of Abraham to be the heir of promise. His becoming the spiritual child of God was just as sovereignly and supernaturally preordained as his becoming the physical child of Abraham. That sovereign election, made effective through faith, is true of every person who has been saved, both before and after Isaac.

Even before Jesus met Nathaniel, He said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” (John 1:47). “Indeed” translates alēthōs, which means genuine. In other words, of the multiplied thousands of Jews in Israel at that time, Jesus identified Nathaniel as a true, genuine Israelite—declaring by implication that most other Jews were not, no matter how impeccable their genealogy from Abraham. Nathaniel was spiritually without “guile,” without deceit or pretense, a spiritual descendant of Abraham who trusted in God rather than in his human lineage or works.

In stark contrast to Nathaniel, the religious leaders who confronted Jesus while He was teaching in the Temple treasury (John 8:20) were incensed by His declaration that they needed to receive His truth in order to be free. “We are Abraham’s offspring,” they replied, “and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, ‘You shall become free’?” When Jesus explained that He was speaking of freedom from sin, from which only He, God’s Son, could deliver them, they indignantly appealed to presumed righteousness based on their physical descent from Abraham. But Jesus said to them, “If you are Abraham’s children, do the deeds of Abraham. But as it is, you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God; this Abraham did not do” (see vv. 8:32–40). A few moments later, He called those unbelieving Jewish leaders sons of their “father the devil” and charged that, by their rejection of Him and His gospel, that they were “not of God” (see vv. 43–47).

Paul’s assertion in Romans 9 echoes what Jesus said to those unbelieving Jews in the Temple and what he himself had emphasized some years earlier in his letter to the Galatian churches: “Even so Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham” (Gal. 3:6–7).

Paul’s point in Romans 9:6–33 is that Israel’s rejection of Jesus as the Messiah did not prove Jesus was not of God but, to the contrary, that unbelieving Israel and Israelites were not of God. Their rejection did not abrogate God’s promise but simply gave further evidence that His promise had always been to those who believed as Abraham believed, not to those who were merely his physical progeny. At the end of the chapter in Galatians cited above, Paul reiterates that “if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Gal. 3:29).

God’s just and righteous character does not allow the possibility of His failing in any of His promises. In addition to the primary problems of love of sin and lack of faith, the great obstacle for the Jews of Paul’s day, as with the great majority of Jews today, was failure to understand the true meaning of God’s promises.

The prophets repeatedly made clear that, just as only Isaac, the elect son of Abraham, would be the physical heir of promise, so only a divinely elected remnant would qualify as the recipients of God’s promise to Abraham. Near the end of Romans 9, Paul wrote that “just as Isaiah foretold, ‘Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left to us a posterity [a remnant], we would have become as Sodom, and would have resembled Gomorrah’” (Rom. 9:29).

As noted above, Paul’s reference to God’s word of promise was His declaration to Abraham that at this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son (see Gen. 18:10, 14). As seen earlier, in His previous statement of that promise, the Lord even told Abraham that the son’s name would be Isaac (17:19, 21).

God always raises up, at the right time and place, those whom He chooses to use in His divine plan. The Lord led Ruth to return to Judah with Naomi, her mother-in-law, in order that she might become an ancestor of King David. Mordecai sensed that truth when he told his niece, Esther, “Who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14).

God’s supreme raising up of the right person at the right time was the sending of His own Son to bring salvation to Israel and the world: “When the fulness of the time came,” Paul reminded the Galatians, “God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4–5).

And not only this, Paul continues with a second illustration of this truth, but there was Rebekah also, when she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac. Although she lived in the land of Padan-Aram, God specifically chose Rebekah not only to become Isaac’s wife but to bear him twin sons. Yet, instead of allowing those twins to be equal heirs of Isaac, the Lord sovereignly chose Jacob above Esau—even when the twins were not yet born, and had not done anything good or bad, in order that God’s purpose according to His choice might stand, not because of works, but because of Him who calls, it was said to her, “The older will serve the younger.”

God did not choose both sons to continue the physical line of promise but sovereignly elected Jacob and passed over Esau before they were even born. And just as He chose them without any regard for what they would do in their lives, but purely that God’s purpose … might stand with no regard for any human work, so God has chosen some Jews, not all, for salvation.

Unconditionally, and completely apart from any consideration of human merit, God elects those who will become His heirs of promise. Jacob and Esau not only had the same father and mother but were born at the same time. Technically, Esau was born slightly ahead of Jacob, but God purposely disregarded that fact, telling their mother that, contrary to the custom of those days, the older will serve the younger (cf. Gen. 25:23).

Esau’s own life and the lives of his descendants give clear evidence that they rejected God. And God’s statement that Esau would serve his younger brother extended to their progeny as well. There is no biblical record of Esau’s being personally subservient to Jacob, but much evidence that the nation of Edom, which descended from Esau, was often in direct or indirect subservience to and in conflict with the nation Israel, which derived from Jacob, whose name was later changed to Israel.

The Edomites soon became idolatrous, and centuries later the prophet Amos declared to them: “Thus says the Lord, ‘For three transgressions of Edom and for four I will not revoke its punishment, because he pursued his brother with the sword, while he stifled his compassion; his anger also tore continually, and he maintained his fury forever. So I will send fire upon Teman, and it will consume the citadels of Bozrah [the ancient capital of Edom]’” (Amos 1:11–12). Obadiah warned them that, “because of violence to your brother Jacob, you will be covered with shame, and you will be cut off forever” (Obad. 10).

Because He is a God of truth and justice, the Lord did not condone Jacob’s and his mother’s later deceit of his blind father in order to receive the blessing of the first-born. Yet, as He often does, God used Jacob’s deception to fulfill His own divine purposes—which He would have accomplished perfectly in any case, without sinful human intervention.

Jacob’s sin did not abrogate God’s promise in the least degree, but it brought many painful and unnecessary problems to Jacob himself and to many others. Unlike his twin brother, Jacob sought God and had a heart for God, but he suffered because of his lack of trust in God to accomplish His own purposes in His own holy way and in His own divine time.

Paul’s next statement, summarizing what he has just written, is quoted from Malachi 1:2–3 and seems shocking and completely contrary to most people’s view of God’s impartiality: Just as it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” But just as God’s prediction that the elder Esau would serve the younger Jacob did not directly apply to those two individuals but rather to their descendants, so the Lord’s declaration here seems to apply in the same way. The book of Genesis mentions no divine hatred of Esau himself. Obadiah’s declaration that God hated Esau was written over a thousand years after Esau lived, and the most reasonable interpretation of the prophet’s statement would seem to indicate that the Lord’s hatred is against Esau’s idolatrous descendants. In the same way, the Lord’s love of Jacob would refer to Jacob’s descendants, who, although often rebellious and sometimes idolatrous, were His sovereignly elected people through whom the world’s Redeemer would come.

In an analogous way, through the illustrations of Isaac and Jacob, Paul shows that out of the loins of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would come an elect remnant of redeemed Jews and that others would remain in unbelief and thereby forfeit the spiritual promises of God.

But Paul has already declared unambiguously that God’s justification for choosing Jacob over Esau was not based on their personal characteristics or works but solely on the basis of His divine and infallible prerogative (v. 13)–a mystery that our finite human minds cannot fathom. Out of their loins came two nations, one of whom God chose for divine blessing and protection and the other whom He chose for divine judgment.

Paul has already established the absolute necessity for human faith in salvation, Abraham being the spiritual father of all those who trust in God (Rom. 4:11). But the power of salvation is entirely from God’s grace, and the primary purpose of salvation is to give Him glory.

Self-centered man rebels at such a notion, and even many Christians vainly try to explain away the clear truth that God is God and that, by definition, whatever He does can be nothing but just and righteousness. He needs no justification for anything He does—including calling some men to salvation and not calling others. He has always acted thus.

We can only acknowledge with Paul, with full belief but with far from full understanding, that “God is faithful, through whom [we] were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Cor. 1:9).