Lesson 33
The Epistle to the Romans
World English Bible translation
Today's Scripture
9:22
What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known,
endured with much patience vessels of wrath made for destruction, 9:23 and that he might make known the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory, 9:24 us, whom he also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles? 9:25 As he says also in Hosea,
"I will call them ‘my people,’ which were not my people;
And her ‘beloved,’ who was not beloved."
9:26 "It will be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’
There will they be called ‘sons of the living God.’"
9:27 Isaiah cries concerning Israel,
"If the number of the children of Israel are as the sand of the sea,
It is the remnant who will be saved;
9:28 For He will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness,
Because the LORD will make a short work upon the earth."
9:29 As Isaiah has said before,
"Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us a seed,
We would have become like Sodom,
And would have been made like Gomorrah."
Today's Lesson
One
of Paul's stated goals for the Epistle to the Romans is to show that
God is revealing through Jesus Christ a righteousness that is by faith.
God had always chosen people on the basis of grace and faith. The
people that he chose were not perfect people. Many of them were not
nice people or even what we would consider good people. God chooses
people for His own reasons and by means that perplex our understanding.
Paul
uses this section of his epistle to demonstrate through Old Testament
scripture that God has promised His salvation of grace to all people.
The righteousness that is revealed through the death and resurrection
of Jesus Christ is a new revelation, but it is the same righteousness
that God had always expressed to His people.
He
first uses two quotations from the Hebrew prophet, Hosea. God had
spoken through His prophets of the time when His salvation would be
available to all the nations of the world. Though Israel was called
"The People of God" there would come a time when a new people would be
brought into relationship with the living God. "I will call them 'my
people,' which were not my people."
Paul
could have chosen from an abundance of places in the Old Testament from
which to make this point. There are many times under the Old Covenant
when God had promised to bring "the nations" or "the Gentiles" into a
new relationship. What was widely assumed was that God would bring them
into the Mosaic covenant. Even many in the early church assumed that
when the Spirit began to be poured out on the Gentiles that God would
first have them be made complete Jews of the covenant. This was the
most contentious issue in the first century church.
But
Paul's point is not just that the Gentiles would be brought to
righteousness but that many within the physical nation of Israel would
be excluded from righteousness. For this idea he turns to two passages
from the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah had written of "a holy remnant" which
would be saved. Isaiah had originally uttered these prophecies to
explain that although the nation of Israel would be defeated and
enslaved that God would protect a remnant, a smaller number within the
whole, to be preserved and saved.
But
even in the text of Isaiah, "the holy remnant" was widened to express
the idea that Paul is incorporating here. The remnant was not just
those that would be saved from physical death in battle. The remnant
were those who were the true nation of God within the larger nation of
Israel. They were those that had been chosen by God and those who
remained faithful under adverse conditions. Though everyone else may be
destroyed utterly, the remnant of faithful would remain because they
were protected by the power of God.
Paul's
point is that through the Old Testament prophets God had already
revealed that there would come a time when the Gentiles would be
redeemed and brought into a covenant with God. These same prophets had
also written that a large portion of Israel would be lost through
faithlessness and unbelief. Old Testament prophets had prophesied the
changes that were beginning to take place in the early church.
We
are often unprepared for the changes that God makes in our lives. We
want God to be safe and consistent. God is consistent, but He is
consistent to His own ways and not to our understanding. We are
constantly asked to re- assess what we know of God because God is
continuing to reveal Himself to us. There are some things that we can
be sure of. There is much more that God has yet to reveal about Himself.
Are
you open to the continuing revelation of God in your life? Is your mind
open enough that God can still surprise you with His presence?
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