We come now to a passage in this essay that is among the most misused by interpreters who do not pay attention to context, but rather interpret every verse as if it stood alone.
Paul continues in what we now call Chapter 11 of Romans to insist that God's redemptive purpose is offered to all people, of all races and ethnicities, on the same basis. That being the case, God has not set aside the people of Israel nor excluded them from the offer of grace (vv. 1-2). As it has always been, it is up to people to accept the salvation offered by God, but again as it has always been, most people will say "no, thanks, I'm good." That is the very definition of sin, and it is the message of the story of temptation in the Garden of Eden.
Then look carefully at verses 3 and 4. Paul references the story of Elijah in 1 Samuel, in which the prophet cries to God that all the other prophets had been killed and the altars demolished and now he alone was left and they were out to kill him too. God replies that there were seven thousand men (sic) who remained faithful to God. We can safely assume that we can add that many women and at least that many children, probably more. So, although the majority of Israel rejected God, there remained a large contingent of faithful people.
Paul goes on to say that this is the working of God's grace, and is nothing these people could have earned by their own efforts. That is, he is reminding his readers of what he has been emphasizing all along: God offers to all God's grace through faith (not works) but not everyone accepts it.
The import of verses 7 through 10 is that God never did obligate the people of Israel to obey him. The expression "God gave them eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear" should not be read as we would now. This essay was written well before the concept of cause and effect and the great chain of being, with God as the first cause. That belongs to the Middle Ages and still tends to affect our post-modern thinking. If anything, in ancient times people thought of God as the first cause of everything. That was one reason people were convinced they had to appease their gods. At same time the Jews held what we would consider a contradictory position: that individuals were responsible for their own decisions and actions. Accordingly the passage cannot be read as saying that God made the Israelites disobedient so that the Gentiles could also participate in the Kingdom of God, but rather, that one advantage or result of the situation is that God used it to move the good news of Christ's kingdom out to the Gentile world.
After laying out the disobedience of the Jews, Paul tells the Gentiles of the church not to be proud or feel they have it made. He compares the church to a plant, originally Jewish, that the Gentiles were grafted onto. God's sovereignty means that Israel can be grafted back on, so watch out.
Verses 25 and 26 have been sorely misinterpreted because they have been taken as a blanket statement requiring no interpretation. Given all that Paul has to say, and that he often used the metaphor of the church as the new Israel, the statement that "all Israel will be saved" is best understood as referring to the total sum of Jews and Gentiles who recognize Jesus as their God.
At the end of the chapter Paul quotes Isaiah 40:13 and Job 15:8 and 41:3, verses that assert that no one can know the mind of God, whose purposes exhaust and go beyond our understanding. He concludes with a doxolgy: "For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen." That is the future God is making and that is our hope.
Thursday, January 31, 2019
Wednesday, January 9, 2019
Romans 10
I'm back from the winter break and gearing up for the new semester, glad to be able to resume the blog on Paul's letter to the Romans.
Chapter 10 is a reprise of the main point Paul has to make in his book-length essay: God offers salvation to all, Jews and all other ethnicities, on the same basis. The Jews, says Paul, were strongly committed to God, but insist on relating to him on their own terms. What they refused to accept is that "The perfection of the law (Torah) is Christ so that all who trust fully in him will be accounted as righteous" (v. 4). That is, it is trust that places your life on the line for God, who came as Jesus, that makes you right with God.
Paul continues by expanding on the concept. In verses 9 and 10 he argues that "if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. You see, with your heart you trust and become righteous and with your mouth you confess and are saved." In other words, when you trust in your inmost being that Jesus will always be who he said he is, you stake your very life on it, and you verbalize it, you come into relationship with God, who brings you into the eternal kingdom of God. Submit in humility and set to serving others. That is what "salvation" means.
In the remainder of what was designated much later than the writing as Chapter 10, Paul makes very clear that "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (v. 13)." He is quoting the prophet Joel at 2:32, again insisting that this has been God's purpose all along. He ends the section by quoting from the Torah and the prophets sections that declare that those who did not seek God (the non-Jews) found him, while of the Jews he says "all day long I (God) have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people (NRSV)," implying that they missed his coming as a result.
I have commented before to the effect that context is everything. That is, we always must take the entire context of a book into account when we interpret. That said, please keep in mind what Paul has just laid out clearly as we deal with Chapter 11, where Paul talks of the restoration of Israel and which we will take up in the next blog post.
Chapter 10 is a reprise of the main point Paul has to make in his book-length essay: God offers salvation to all, Jews and all other ethnicities, on the same basis. The Jews, says Paul, were strongly committed to God, but insist on relating to him on their own terms. What they refused to accept is that "The perfection of the law (Torah) is Christ so that all who trust fully in him will be accounted as righteous" (v. 4). That is, it is trust that places your life on the line for God, who came as Jesus, that makes you right with God.
Paul continues by expanding on the concept. In verses 9 and 10 he argues that "if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. You see, with your heart you trust and become righteous and with your mouth you confess and are saved." In other words, when you trust in your inmost being that Jesus will always be who he said he is, you stake your very life on it, and you verbalize it, you come into relationship with God, who brings you into the eternal kingdom of God. Submit in humility and set to serving others. That is what "salvation" means.
In the remainder of what was designated much later than the writing as Chapter 10, Paul makes very clear that "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (v. 13)." He is quoting the prophet Joel at 2:32, again insisting that this has been God's purpose all along. He ends the section by quoting from the Torah and the prophets sections that declare that those who did not seek God (the non-Jews) found him, while of the Jews he says "all day long I (God) have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people (NRSV)," implying that they missed his coming as a result.
I have commented before to the effect that context is everything. That is, we always must take the entire context of a book into account when we interpret. That said, please keep in mind what Paul has just laid out clearly as we deal with Chapter 11, where Paul talks of the restoration of Israel and which we will take up in the next blog post.
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