“Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed. For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sarah shall have a son. And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) It was said unto her, the elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I love, but Esau have I hated.” Romans 9:6-13
How ironic is it that the very next reference Paul cites in Romans 9:14-18 is the passage in Exodus where God instructs Moses to speak these unambiguous words to Pharaoh, “For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.” How ironic is it when Moses’ message to Pharaoh also turns out to be Paul’s message to Israel? Just as God had a purpose in raising up Pharaoh, he had a purpose in raising up Israel and both of them misinterpreted God’s action. Certainly we may assume that any “raising up” that God does is for a purpose and just as one may rightly interpret the meaning of God’s action, so one may misinterpret the meaning. Pharaoh misunderstood God’s purpose in raising him up and Israel misunderstood God’s purpose in raising her up which, as I have said, turns out to be essentially the same purpose for both of them: “that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth…” The message is that God is God and his purposes for creation, God’s intentions, his final cause for humanity and thus his final cause for all creation will not be restricted or dependent upon Israel’s interpretation of her glorious domain and privilege in creation any more than God’s will could be circumscribed by Pharaoh’s interpretation of his place of privilege. Both Pharaoh and Israel are alike in that they have both misinterpreted God’s intentions and they both acted upon their misinterpretations and yet God’s will is done on earth anyway. Jumping ahead to chapter 11 Paul writes:
“What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded… I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy… For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?” Romans 11:7,11,15
Pharaoh is lifted up only to misinterpret his elevated state and then he is brought down; so Israel is raised up as God’s wife, given the gifts of God, bequeathed the promise of Abraham only to misinterpret what it means to be God’s elect, God’s chosen people, and then to fall into the forgetfulness of grace, to mistake their empirical state of being as the summation of their reality and thus to fall backward upon himself. But Paul is keen to assert that this should not be a surprise – it is not as though God made a blunder and then around the time when Cyrenius was the governor of Syria he began to scramble about to fix his mistake. Paul writes with exactness in Romans 9:6:
“Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel…”
God has not erred. Nor is it the case that God had a great script but lousy actors; it is the matter of sin, the sin that God has decided to banish to oblivion through Abraham’s faith and Abraham’s family. All that is wrong in the world through Adam’s disobedience and his unfaithfulness, his fascination with the empirical and his forgetfulness of grace, God will repair through the faith of Abraham. The word of God has taken effect and the resurrection of Jesus the Messiah is all the evidence you need to see not only the word of God, but also the direction in which the word of God is heading and it is not the direction Israel had thought. With his comment “Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect…” Paul anticipates the interpretation of events that may come from a Jewish listener or even from a Roman pagan. Such a debater may have said something like this: “Given that God had made a grand promise to Abraham and given that most Jews know little to nothing about Jesus it seems that your God’s word is not very effective.” His interlocutor may continue: “After all that rigmarole about a blood covenant with God in the desert and Egypt, and then the Torah and a fiery mountain, after all those favors and advantages one would think that Israel would have been ready for their long awaited Messiah once he actually appeared and yet Paul is emphatic: not only did they not recognized Jesus to be the Messiah, they quite officially rejected him and crucified him. End of story.”
But the problem is that such arguments, whether they were made by Jews or even Roman pagans in order to weaken the appeal of Christ – they simply have repeated Israel’s mistaken interpretation that God’s promise to Abraham is absolutely limited to empirical Israel. And we know that in fact somehow the promise to Abraham took a back seat to the covenant of the Torah which had been taken as a quid pro quo – keep the Torah and you will be saved and the essential signs that one is keeping the Torah, those signs that are sure badges identifying the children of Abraham are circumcision and the dietary laws of the Torah. And of course this is where Paul lays down the law in an apostolic statement that is final and not open to revision:
“Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel…”
Not all who claim they are Israelites are in fact Israelites; there is a merely empirical Israel, an ethnic Israel, a national Israel and that Israel is the one Paul opens up chapter 9 with in a litany of sorrow when he writes:
“I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, (2) That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. (3) For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh…”
That is not the Israel that will be saved and from here on Paul differentiates between two Israels and it is imperative that you keep this in mind in order to understand Romans: there is the Israel according to the flesh, what I have called the merely empirical Israel, and then there is the Israel according to God’s promise to Abraham which now Paul distinguishes from ethnic Israel. And he draws upon the history of Israel to show that this is nothing new, that God has always related to his people not in accord to the expectations of the common sense or the world’s expectations but according to his own will which is grace and peace and life for the elect, that is for those who are children of Abraham who do the works of Abraham. So Israel now has two meanings. Paul has and will refer to the “true Israel” but that should not be taken as a subset of the merely empirical Israel because the “true Israel” is made up of both Jews and gentiles who believe that the Jesus who was crucified under Pontus Pilate is the Messiah of the “true Israel” and furthermore that God raised him from the dead, body and all, on the third day after his crucifixion. Paul moves his case forward:
“Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.” Romans 9:7-8
And now we are about to come upon those verses that have generally been overshadowed by the dated arguments between Calvinists and Armenians which are largely fruitless and distracting from what Paul is opening up for the Church in these verses which is the right understanding of the covenant of promise, election, and Israel. And the hinge verses are 7-9:
“In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed. For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sara shall have a son.”
It is from this verse that the truth hangs like grapes from the vine: “but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.” The children of the flesh, the physical family of Abraham is not by that fact counted as the seed, the heir of the promise, but rather it is the children of Isaac, the child God promised who are counted for the seed of Abraham. “This is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sara shall have a son.” And we know the rest of that narrative because for Paul it is one of the few narratives that became canonical to him and the Church opening up the meaning of Jesus the Messiah. The narrative is the story of how Abraham did not wait for the child that God had promised but fathered a child through Hagar whom we know as Ishmael. But God kept his promise and against all odds Sarah conceived the child of the promise and gave birth to Isaac. Paul gives, as he puts it, an allegorical interpretation to the narrative: Hagar is a slave; Sarah is a free woman. Hagar’s child is the son of a slave, born according to the flesh; Isaac is the son of the free woman born through the promise of God. Hagar represents the Mt. Sinai, the Torah and this present Jerusalem ruled over by apostate Jews and pagan Romans – she and her children are enslaved. But the Jerusalem which is above is free and she represents Sarah the once barren mother of Isaac, the child of promise. Paul ends his narrative of Sarah and Hagar with the exile of Hagar and her son from Abraham’s family and the declaration:
“So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.” Galatians 4:31
The family in question is Abraham’s true family that has been brought into existence through Isaac, the child of the promise. So there you have it. God word has not failed and he has brought forth the promises he made to Abraham and in particular Isaac, his only son Isaac who married Rebecca and the narrative continues with these neuralgic words concerning love and hate and the destiny of two unborn children:
“At this time will I come, and Sara shall have a son. And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” Romans 9:9-13
Once again Paul is making the strong point that God’s finality is the result of his free choice and divine power. God’s freedom and power are shown in God’s attitude toward Rebecca’s twins, Esau and Jacob. Before the twins were born, before they had done good or evil and thus before it may be thought that either one had merited God’s favor or distain, God reversed the common sense order things by revealing to Rebecca that the elder would serve the younger. According to Paul this shows and safeguards the divine principle that God’s purposes, God’s intentions depends upon God’s will and election; it is not based upon human achievement that Paul calls works. The point here is that God’s final causes for creation is not based upon human achievement or even a human contribution that from a common sense point-of-view may sway God’s purposes. The truth is that all the works righteousness in the world nor all the sum of evil in the world circumscribes, limits, directs or determines God’s intentions for his creation which is summed up in grace and peace and everlasting love.