Original Meaning
AFTER PAUL’S GRAND CELEBRATION of God’s faithfulness to us in Christ (8:31–39), we would expect the theological part of Romans to be over. He can now go on to spell out the implications of that theology for Christian living, which he does beginning in chapter 12. But what about chapters 9–11? What is their place in this letter?
Some commentators have thought that Paul’s discussion of Israel in these chapters is a kind of digression or even excursus—a section that does not fit into the letter.1 Others have found a place for this section only by attaching it to Paul’s teaching about soteriology in 8:29–30; that is, chapters 9–11 is really about predestination.2 But neither view does justice to what the apostle is really about in Romans. From the beginning of the letter, he has wanted to prove that the gospel, the theme of the letter, is “the gospel of God”—good news sent by the God of the Old Testament, and thus good news that was “promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures” (1:2). Indeed, for Paul there can be no good news in Christ unless what God has done in him is part of the one master plan that the Old Testament reveals to us.
It is just for this reason that Paul must talk about Israel’s role in light of the good news of Christ. For by his day it has become clear that most Jews have not responded to the good news. Again and again Paul preached to Jews, only to see minimal response. When he turned to the Gentiles, however, the response was much greater. So he now confronts a church that is largely Gentile. How does such a situation fit with God’s promises in the Old Testament? Did not he promise to send his Messiah to Israel, to glorify his people Israel, and to bless Israel in the kingdom that was coming? How can that promise be fulfilled in a church that is largely Gentile? God seems to have promised “A” and then done “B.” Can “B” then really be tied to “A” as the fulfillment of what was promised?
These are the issues Paul is trying to answer in chapters 9–11 (he hinted at them in 3:1–8). He wants his readers to understand how, indeed, God’s work in the gospel of Christ is perfectly in accord with what he promised in the Old Testament. Jews, of course, needed this message. If they are to embrace the gospel, they must see how it is truly the fulfillment of the Old Testament. Jewish-Christians also need to be assured that their faith in Christ does not mean they have ceased to believe in the God of the Old Testament and of their Jewish heritage. But Gentile-Christians must also see a connection between Old and New Testaments in the plan of salvation. They must see that their own faith has its roots sunk deeply into Old Testament soil.
Moreover, as Paul makes explicit in chapter 11 (vv. 13, 17–24, 25), there is a practical reason why the Gentiles need to take this message to heart. They have become the majority in the early Christian church—in Rome as elsewhere. They have a tendency to brag about their status and to look down on Jewish Christians. So Paul wants to undercut their arrogance by showing that their spiritual blessings are all the result of what God has done through his people Israel.
Ultimately, then, Romans 9–11 is not about Israel—it is about God. The theme of the section is found in 9:6: “It is not as though God’s word had failed.” God, Paul argues, is consistent and utterly faithful to his promises. In order to prove this thesis, he makes three basic points about Israel in these chapters, relating to Israel’s past, present, and future. (1) God’s promises to Israel in the past are consistent with what he is now doing in saving only some Jews and Gentiles as well (9:6–29). In 9:30–10:21, Paul leaves the main path of his argument to analyze in more detail the surprising turn of events, as so many Jews have refused to believe in Jesus the Messiah while so many Gentiles do. (2) In 11:1–10, Paul turns to Israel’s present, showing that God is even now fulfilling his promise by saving many Jews. (3) The climax comes in the future (11:11–32), when “all Israel will be saved” (v. 26). Paul concludes the section with a hymn praising the marvelous plan of God (11:33–36).
The present section (9:1–5) sets the stage for this grand argument. Speaking personally, Paul contrasts Israel’s prerogatives with her plight. Promised so much (vv. 4–5), Israel stands accursed and cut off from God as a result of the gospel. The tension created by this situation drives the argument of these chapters.
The first five verses of chapter 9 reveal that Paul was deeply concerned about the matters he writes about in these chapters. These verses also reveal a fact about Paul that is easy for us to forget: He was a Jew and never lost his sense of Jewish identity or his love for his fellow Jews. In verse 1, he goes out of his way to stress the sincerity of this concern. He makes the point both positively—“I speak the truth in Christ”—and negatively—“I am not lying”—and adds the witness of his conscience as led by the Holy Spirit.
Why such a strong assertion of truthfulness? Probably because Paul well knows that many of his fellow Jews are suspicious of his loyalty and patriotism. Because he was used by God to bring so many Gentiles into the people of God, Paul was viewed by a good number of Jews as a traitor and as one who had lost any natural affection for his own people. This Paul denies. In fact, he has “great sorrow and unceasing anguish in [his] heart” (v. 2). Paul never explicitly says what has led to such deep sorrow. A few modern interpreters, convinced that Paul believes Israel is saved through her own covenant with God, think that Paul’s sorrow is motivated by Israel’s failure to extend her privileges to the Gentiles (see Contemporary Significance for more details). But what Paul says in verse 3 shows that the problem is more basic: Israel is not saved!
In offering to become himself “cursed and cut off from Christ” for the sake of his fellow Jews, Paul implies that Israel herself stands under this judgment. By refusing to accept Jesus as the Messiah and the fulfillment of God’s plan of redemption for them, most Jews have cut themselves off from God’s people and from the salvation he promises to his people. The Greek word for “cursed” is anathema, a word transliterated into English that describes someone who is excommunicated. In the New Testament, it refers to a person excluded from God’s people and under sentence of damnation (see 1 Cor. 12:3; 16:22; Gal. 1:8–9).
Many interpreters are disturbed at the idea that Paul would really wish to be damned for the sake of his people. Some therefore seize on the fact that the Greek verb used at the beginning of verse 3 is in the imperfect tense to suggest that Paul means only that he used to pray that way, or that he would pray that way if he could (the NIV translation “I could wish” suggests this notion).3 But these interpretations are too subtle. We should simply let Paul’s wish stand as a way of indicating his deep love for his fellow people. Whether he thought the request could be granted is simply not in view.
While obscured in the NIV translation, Paul describes Jews in the last part of verse 3 as his (lit.) “kinspeople according to the flesh [sarx].” As so often in Paul, sarx connotes a worldly or human point of view (see comments on 8:1–13). By contrast, Paul now will describe his fellow Jews from the standpoint of the divine promise. They are, first, “Israelites” (NIV “the people of Israel”). The name is important. In many Jewish intertestamental books, foreigners use the word “Jew” as a simple national designation, but when Jews speak about themselves and their special position in salvation history, they call themselves “Israelites.”4
As Israelites, Jews have been blessed with “the adoption of sons … the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises.” Most of these prerogatives are clear enough, but a couple deserve fuller treatment. Paul’s claim that the Jews enjoy “adoption” (huiothesia) is striking in light of 8:16, 23, where he has applied that blessing to Christians. Probably he thinks of Israel’s “adoption” as a national blessing that does not confer salvation on individual Jews (see, e.g., Ex. 4:22; Deut. 14:1; Isa. 63:16; Hos. 11:1).5 But Paul’s application of the same word to regenerate believers and to Israel “according to the flesh” within the space of twenty verses summarizes the tension between Israel’s promises and the church’s blessing that infuses these chapters.
We find a parallel situation with the next blessing, the “divine glory” (or simply “glory”; Gk. doxa). In its context here, Paul is undoubtedly referring to God’s presence with the people of Israel (see, e.g., Ex. 16:7; 24:16; 40:34–35). But the reader of Romans will not have forgotten that Paul has just attributed this characteristic to Christians (8:18, 30).
After breaking his syntax, Paul concludes in verse 5 with two final blessings enjoyed by Israel: “the patriarchs” and the Messiah. The patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob especially—are significant not so much in themselves but because God entered into a solemn covenant with them. This covenant was to be valid between God and their descendants forever. Paul returns to this same point in 11:28, which forms then something of an inclusio with this mention of the patriarchs here in the opening verses of Paul’s argument about Israel.
The greatest blessing promised to Israel was the Messiah, that is, the Christ. From a strictly human point of view (“according to the flesh” here again; NIV “the human ancestry”), the Messiah was to arise from the people of Israel. But from the divine point of view, he is more; indeed, he is God. At least, this is the reading found in several English translations (NIV; KJV; NASB; JB; NRSV). Note, for instance, the NRSV: “From them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.” Here the Messiah is identified as “God.”
Other English translations do not make this identification. Note, for instance, the RSV: “Of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ. God who is over all be blessed for ever. Amen” (see also NEB; TEV). As may be obvious from these conflicting renderings, the issue is how to punctuate the verse. Since most ancient manuscripts do not have punctuation, modern interpreters have to decide whether to put a comma or a period after “Messiah.” The issue is complicated, but both the syntax and the context favor the comma.6 This verse, therefore, deserves to be numbered among those few in the New Testament that explicitly call Jesus “God.”
Bridging Contexts
PAUL AS MOSES AND MARTYR. The reader of Romans who knows his or her Bible well will immediately spot in verse 3 one of those allusions to the Old Testament that we have underscored as especially important in Romans. In Exodus 32, the people of God fall into idolatry by fashioning a golden calf and worshiping it. When Moses discovers the sin of the people, he earnestly pleads with God not to destroy the people:
The next day Moses said to the people, “You have committed a great sin. But now I will go up to the LORD; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.”
So Moses went back to the LORD and said, “Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.” (Ex. 32:30–32)
Moses’ identification with the people is so strong that he is willing to suffer damnation with them, if that should be God’s will for him. Paul likewise identifies with Israel to the point of offering to become “cursed” for them. The many direct references and allusions to the Moses story throughout these chapters (e.g., Rom. 9:14–18; 10:19; 11:13–14) make it almost certain that Paul sees Moses as a model for his own intercessory position between God and Israel. This suggests, in turn, that Paul saw himself, like Moses, as a critical figure in salvation history.7
But the careful reader will also note that Paul goes one step further than Moses: He offers to suffer God’s curse on behalf of Israel. In the context, it is clear that this “for the sake of” (Gk. hyper) means “in place of.” Paul offers himself as a substitute for the people of Israel. Feeding into this idea may well be traditions from the intertestamental period. The severe persecution that came on the Jews at the time of Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 168 B.C. resulted in many martyrdoms among the Jews. To find meaning in these terrible deaths, some Jewish authors speculated that the suffering of these martyrs had an atoning value for Israel. By their suffering, the martyrs were blotting out the sins of Israel and bringing salvation and blessing to the people. Perhaps the most famous passage is 4 Maccabees 17:17–22:
The tyrant himself and all his council marveled at their [the martyrs’] endurance, because of which they now stand before the divine throne and live the life of eternal blessedness. For Moses says, “All who are consecrated are under your hands.” These, then, who have been consecrated for the sake of God, are honored, not only with this honor, but also by the fact that because of them our enemies did not rule over our nation, the tyrant was punished, and the homeland purified—they having become, as it were, a ransom for the sin of our nation. And through the blood of those devout ones and their death as an atoning sacrifice, divine Providence preserved Israel that previously had been mistreated.
By reflecting these Old Testament and Jewish traditions in his prayer, Paul suggests that he also faces a time of crisis in the life of God’s people. The threat does not come from a secular tyrant, as in the Maccabean period, but from the people’s own sin, as in the days of Moses. Yet these stories, the reader knows, both had happy endings: The people of God were preserved and God’s plan went forward. So also, perhaps, Paul foreshadows the positive end of his own struggle over the salvation of God’s people.
Contemporary Significance
IN THESE VERSES, Paul sets up the tension that will generate the argument of the following chapters: God has blessed Israel and promised them many more blessings (vv. 4–5), yet Israel stands accursed before God (v. 3). This is not the place to anticipate the ins and outs of the argument that unfolds in these chapters. But it is the place to introduce one issue that we will touch on repeatedly as we follow Paul’s logic: the status of Israel in light of the gospel.
Interpreters have traditionally assumed that the plight of Israel that drives Paul’s theologizing is her failure to accept God’s gift of salvation in Christ. Many Jews, of course, did accept that gift, and Paul wants us to remember them (see 11:1–10). But the majority have not, so Paul laments the situation of Israel as a whole throughout chapters 9–11.
But a strong revisionist movement today has challenged this traditional view of Israel’s plight. Nothing Paul says in these chapters, its advocates argue, suggests that Israel is no longer the people of God, destined for judgment. To be sure, Israel has sinned. But her sin has not separated her from God, for God’s love for his people is unbreakable and his covenant promise irrevocable. Rather, Israel’s sin is the sin of selfishness. Seeking to keep God’s grace all to themselves, Jews have refused to acknowledge that God had sent Jesus to offer salvation to Gentiles. It is this failure on the part of Jews to recognize what God has done in Christ for the Gentiles and through Paul in preaching to the Gentiles that brings him sorrow.8
Integral to this interpretation of Israel in Romans 9–11 is the assumption that God’s covenant with the people of Israel is salvific and eternal. The Jewish people are saved through their own “Torah covenant,” while Gentiles are saved through the “Christ covenant.” This so-called “bi-covenantal” view arose toward the end of the 1800s but has become especially popular in the last decades of the twentieth century.
Two factors external to the text have propelled the popularity of this alternative interpretation. (1) The first is the Holocaust. Here, many Jews and Christians agree, is the shocking logical conclusion of the church’s insistence that salvation can be found only in Christ. By excluding Jews from salvation, Christians in effect deny the value of Judaism and open the door to persecution. To be truly “Christian,” then, the church needs to repudiate her exclusivistic views. (2) Also involved is the pluralism of our age. Every religion, so we are taught, is but a different way to the same God. Judaism must be seen as valid as Christianity.
We have discussed both these trends elsewhere in the commentary, and we will deal with their specifics in light of the exegetical evidence elsewhere in chapters 9–11. But I want to get this broad concern out on the table as we begin working through these chapters. Our interpretation of Scripture is always affected by factors external to the text—from the specifics of our own personalities and backgrounds to the generalities of cultural movements and influences. The contemporary significance of Romans 9–11 will depend considerably on our recognizing these influences and on our ability, by the Spirit’s help, to let the text speak to and through them.
As I have argued earlier in this commentary, I am confident that God can enable us to hear him speak in the midst of all our personal and cultural prejudices. But we must actively seek to let him do so—by humility, by a willingness to listen, and, most of all, by seeking the Spirit’s help and guidance.