UNDERSTANDING GOD’S PURPOSES

Romans 9

(Taken From Encountering the Gospel’s Power, by John Stott)

            Certain questions are perennial in college dorms and seminary classrooms.  These questions often deal with the purpose of life, the nature of God, and what difference it all makes anyway.  One of the more jarring questions for Christians revolves around what happens to those outside the Christian faith.  “No one comes to the Father except through me,” said Jesus Christ in the fourteenth chapter of John.  Those words are warm and comforting the Christian believer ---- until they encounter a dear friend who happens to be a non-Christian.  Then an onslaught of similar questions explodes:  What about those who have never heard about Jesus?  What about good people to happen to believe in another religion?  Are all these people eternally lost?  What about the unbelieving Jews Paul addressed?

            Paul treats these questions with respect.  Indeed, he had one been one of those Jews devoted to the ancient faith of the Hebrews.

OPEN

Suppose a friend says to you, “I think your Christianity is much too exclusive.  People travel on all kinds of spiritual journeys, and I think that God accepts them all.”  How would you respond?

STUDY

Read Romans 9:1-18.  Is it wrong to question God?  Paul is not addressing someone who asks sincerely perplexed questions, but rather someone who “quarrels” with God, who talks back or answers back.  Such a person manifests a spirit of rebellion against God a refusal to let God be God and acknowledge his or her true status as a creature and sinner.  Instead of such presumption, we need, like Moses, to keep our distance, take off with our shoes in recognition of  the holy ground on which we stand, and even hide our face from him (Exodus 3:5).  Similarly, we need, like Job, to put our hand over our mouth, confess that we tend to speak things we do not understand, despise ourselves, and repent in dust and ashes (Job 40:4; 42:3,6).

1. What phrases here show the intensity of Paul’s concern for the Jewish people (vv. 1-3)?

2. What privileges had God already granted the Jews (vv. 4-5)?

3. Four questions outline this chapter.  (See verse 6 [a statement], 14, 19, and 30.)  How would you phrase each question?

4. When and why have you asked a question similar to one of these?

5. Focus on verses 6-13. Does being a descendent of Abraham guarantee a spot in God’s family?  Why of why not?

6. How do the examples of Moses, Pharaoh and a potter help answer the question about God’s justice?

Verse 13 says, “Jacob I loved, Esau I hated.”  This bald statement sounds shocking in Christian ears and cannot possibly taken literally. Although there is such an emotion as “holy hatred,” it is directed only to evildoers and would be inappropriate here.  God put Jacob above Esau – as individuals, not just in the sense that Israelites were God’s people, not Edomites.

            We have to remember that Esau forfeited his birthright because of his own worldliness (Genesis 25:29-34) and lost his rightful blessing because of his brothers deceit (Genesis 27), so human responsibility was interwoven with divine sovereignty in their story.  We should also recall that the rejected brother was circumcised and therefore in some sense too a member of God’s covenant and promised lesser blessings.  Nevertheless Esau illustrates the key truth of “God’s purpose according to election.”  So God’s promise did not fail.

            Read Romans 9:22-33.  Few preachers maintained balance better than Charles Simeon of Cambridge in the first half of the nineteenth century.  He ministered at a time when there was much controversy surrounding the doctrine of election.  In defense of his commitment to both election and individual freedom, Simeon would sometimes borrow an illustration from the Industrial Revolution: “As wheels in a complicated machine may move in opposite directions and yet subserve a common end, so may truths apparently opposite be perfectly reconcilable with each other, and equally subserve the purpose of God in accomplishment of man’s salvation” (Preface to the Horae Homileticae in 21 volumes [1832], p.5).

7. What examples do you see of God’s wrath and his mercy in verses 22-24?

8. How had the prophets Hosea and Isaiah prepared the Jewish people for the possibility that belonging in God’s family was not simply a matter of biological heritage (vv.25-29)?

9. Focus on verses 30-33.  What relationships do you see here between faith, works, Jews and Gentiles?

10. What do you learn about Jesus Christ from verse 33?

11. How have you seen in Christ in one of the ways described here?

Summary: Paul began this chapter with the paradox of Israel’s privilege and prejudice (vv. 1-4). How cab her unbelief be explained?

            It is not because God in unfaithful to his promises, for he has kept his word in relation to Israel within Israel (vv. 6-13).

            It is not because is unjust in his “purpose according to election,” for neither his having mercy on some nor his hardening of others is incompatible with his justice (vv. 14-18).

            It is not because God is unfair to blame Israel or hold human beings accountable, for we should not answer him back, and in any case he has acted according to his own character and according to Old Testament prophecy (vv. 19-29).

            It is rather because Israel is proud, pursuing righteousness in the wrong way, by works instead of faith, and so has stumbled over the stumbling block of the cross (vv. 30-33).

            Thus this chapter about Israel’s unbelief begins with God’s purpose of election (vv. 6-29) and concludes by attributing Israel’s fall to her own pride (v. 30-33).

APPLY

This chapter speaks several times of God’s mercy.  When and how have you seen God’s mercy at work?

Paul speaks of people who did not come into God’s family because instead of trusting in the “rock” they stumbled over it (vv. 32-34). Who among your friends and family seem to have made that same mistake?

Mentally select one of these people who do not yet believe.  Try to see Christianity from that person’s point of view.  How do you think he or she sees the Christian faith?

PRAY

Spend time praying for people you know who have not yet trusted Christ.  Ask God to extend his mercy to them and draw them into faith.  Ask him to show you how you might become part of that mercy.