Romans 9

Starting in Romans 9, Paul begins to address an issue that the readers of his letter would surely bring up. He has been presenting the glorious truth of the gospel of God's grace and salvation through faith in Christ. It is a life changing message. It is a message accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit. The problem is that it is the Gentiles who are responding in faith while only a remnant of the Israelites are responding. The greater part remain in unbelief. This is especially troubling because Abraham, the father of the Jews, was promised that his descendants would be like the grains of sand. These were the people of God! We may ask the same thing in our day. Why, if the gospel is so powerful and life changing do so many people remain in unbelief?

Romans 9 starts out with Paul expressing his great sorrow that his brother Jews had not received Christ by faith. After all, God incarnate came through the Jewish line--Jesus Himself was a Jew according to the flesh! (vss 1-5). Every true believer similarly experiences anguish of heart over those who are perishing in their unbelief, especially when they may be friends and family.

The apostle takes comfort, however, in the fact that God's word has not failed. He points out that not all the sons of Abraham were a part of the sacred covenant that God made with his people. God's promise was that the blessing would come through Abraham's son Isaac and not his son Ishmael. Likewise God chose Isaac's son Jacob for the blessing over Esau. So, in the physical sense, not all of Abraham's descendants were a part of the covenant. Likewise, in the spiritual sense, God never promises that all people will be saved.

Secondly, Paul takes comfort in his sorrow in that God is sovereign over salvation and that He has a purpose for all he does. He allows people to remain in unbelief and uses it for his own purposes. For instance, in allowing people to willfully remain in their sin, He demonstrates his great patience in forbearing their injustices toward Him in their refusal to honor Him for His grace. And so we see learn of God's longsuffering and mercy in the way he deals with His enemies. Likewise, we learn that God is truly just in the judgment that He eventually executes toward His enemies after bearing patiently with their injustice for a long time. And He uses this to demonstrate to the objects of his mercy how great their salvation is in that they have escaped such a fate.

At the end of Romans 9, the real issue of unbelief is presented. The unbelieving Jews stumbled over faith as the means of righteousness. The gospel promises that God will count us as if we were righteous because of Jesus' righteousness and not our own. And Jesus' righteousness is credited to us as a gift through faith in Him. This means that God does not value the righteousness we have in and of ourselves through the things we do. This is what the unbelievers objected to. They believed that their works, their deeds and actions, were good enough to make them acceptable before God. They rejected Christ because of their pride!

The truth is that our works can not justify us before God. As Paul presents in the earlier chapters, the problem is that inwardly we are sinners. Selfishness, self-centeredness and hatred dwell in our hearts. And the heart is what our works are judged by. Therefore, we need grace to be forgiven and accepted by God. And that grace comes by believing in Jesus as our Savior and trusting in His righteousness and not ours.