Sunday night Bible study - notes part 2

Bible study group,

We are studying "how to be the Christian that you say you have become. Obviously that leads us to the natural question of how does one become a Christian? In Romans 9:1-23 we have the clearest explanation of the doctrine of election in the New Testament. If someone ever asks you do you believe in election then the easy answer to that is yes. Now it gets a bit more complicated should someone ask you to explain what you believe election to be from a Biblical perspective. In our study time last Sunday night we tried to follow Paul's flow of thought in Romans 9. Paul starts out by saying that he knows that many of his Jewish brethren are accursed and cut off from Christ. If he could he would trade his own salvation in order that they could be saved he would. Wow! Doesn't that show us the love that the apostle Paul has for the unsaved? Now the question comes up from a silent objector - "hey Paul aren't you saying that the Jews are God's chosen people, they have the covenant , glory, temple, and even the Lord Jesus Himself was a Jew." And if the previous statement is true and yet most of the Jews aren't saved but rather cut off from Christ then that can only mean one thing - "the word of God has failed." If you miss this in Paul's flow of thought then you are going to miss the rest of Romans 9-11. So what Paul now is going to prove through a Biblical flow of thought is how the word of God has not failed. And he does this by first of all bringing in a distinction between:
1. Those who are ethnic or biological Israel and a smaller group who he calls spiritual Israel.
2. He then moves to another illustration between the descendants of Abraham and a smaller group called the children of Abraham
3. Finally Paul gives an overarching principle between the children of the flesh (ethnic and biological) and the smaller group called children of the promise.

Do you understand this part of the argument so far? It appears to the Jews that Paul's teaching is way off base. I mean how can the Jews who are God's chosen people and people of the covenant not be saved or even worse cut off from Christ. And Paul replies because not all the Jews are considered to be God's elect. What? Is this some kind of heresy that Paul is teaching? I mean if you preach like that in America you could get stoned? Paul is using a very systematic argument to show that there is a smaller group who have received His promise (the elect) but a larger group are those who are unsaved and cut off from Christ.

Many of these Jews had the following theology - since I am a biological descendant of Abraham that automatically means that I am saved. And Paul comes out and preaches something very different. He says that if you are not part of God's elect then you are unsaved and cut off from Christ. A persons election from God is not based on merit, reputation, ethnic origin, parents or anything they do whether good or bad, this is based on God's decision alone! If that upsets you and bothers you then I would ask you to examine how man centered you heart has become living in a culture that is all about "self."

Paul goes on to support this doctrine of unconditional election by using two Scriptures and two illustrations. Before we go into the Old Testament Scriptures and illustrations allow me to encourage you to study these on your own. If you are using a study Bible then you can pick up these verses in the cross reference section of your Bible. Remember that whenever a verse appears in all caps in the New Testament then it is referring you back to the Old Testament.

As Dr. John Piper writes in his exegesis of Romans 9:
Paul gives two illustrations in verses 6-9 (and another one in verses 10-13). The first is in verse 7. After Paul says, "Nor are they all children because they are Abraham's descendants," he quotes Genesis 21:12. "But: ‘Through Isaac your descendants will be named.’" The context here in the Old Testament is where God is saying to Abraham, even though you have an older son, Ishmael, he will not be the heir of the promise. Rather "through Isaac your descendants will be named (or called)." What Paul sees here is that being a physical child of Abraham, and even being the oldest, did not make Ishmael an heir of the promise to the covenant people.

Then Paul adds another insight from Genesis 18:10 in verse 9. After saying in verse 8 that "the children of promise are regarded [God says] as descendants," then he quotes Genesis 18:10, "For this is the word of promise: ‘At this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son.’" The context here is tremendously important. God had promised Abraham that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him (Genesis 12:3) and that his descendants would be like the stars in the sky (Genesis 15:5). But Abraham had no offspring and his wife Sarah was barren. What was the solution? Abraham’s answer should have been, "I’ll trust God for a child of promise. I’ll trust God that the divine promise itself is powerful enough to bring itself to pass." But instead Abraham did what he could do in his own strength: he used Hagar, a maid of Sarah, as a concubine and produced a child named Ishmael. Abraham helped God out of his dilemma. And therefore Paul produced a "child of the flesh." He was "born according to the flesh" (Galatians 4:29). That is, his position was owing to no more than what man could do.

Abraham wanted Ishmael to be the heir God had promised. In Genesis 17:18 Abraham said to God, "Oh that Ishmael might live before you!" But God said, "No, but Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac." That’s the context of Paul’s quote in Romans 9:9. God promises: "At this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son." You see the sovereign purpose of God’s word here. I make the promise, God says. And I bring it to pass. My promises are not predictions of what may come about with your help. My promises are declarations of what I intend to bring about by my sovereign power. "I will come, and Sarah shall have a son." Barren Sarah and old Abraham will have not a child of the flesh, but a child of promise.

So what is a child of promise (child of God)? A child of promise is an heir of God’s saving grace, not because of ethnic origin or physical birth but because of God’s sovereign word. The birth of Isaac is a picture of how every child of God spiritually comes into being. The decisive work is God’s work. Not Abraham’s and not Isaac’s and not ours. But God’s.

So what is the answer to the problem that the apostle Paul creates for us in Romans 9:1-5? Has the word of God failed because many Israelites are accursed and cut off from Christ? Have the promises of God come to naught? The answer is no. And the reason Paul gives three times is that the promise of God itself accomplishes its purpose, and that purpose is make for himself a true Israel. The promise and purpose of God was never that every Israelite would be guaranteed salvation. The promise was: God will see to it that the true Israel is brought into being and saved. And we have seen, and will see again; this true Israel includes Jews and Gentiles.

Keep moving in the argument and in Paul's illustration of why God's word has not failed as we study verses 10-13.

Paul is still illustrating that within the physical descendants of Israel there is a true Israel chosen by God. Here, more clearly than ever, Paul makes it plain that God’s election – God’s free and unconditional choosing of the children of promise – is what guarantees that the word of God does not, and never can, fail. Bible study group this is where we can grab hold of the assurance that the grace that brings us to God in justification by faith alone will keep us unto glorification throughout eternity!

Let’s start reading at verse 10. "And not only this, [not only do we see the point in the case of Isaac and Ishmael] but there was Rebekah also [the wife of Isaac], when she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac." Notice what Paul is doing here. He is pointing out two things that make the choice of Jacob over Esau an even more compelling illustration of God’s unconditional election than the illustration of Isaac and Ishmael.

The first is that Jacob and Esau were twins. They were in the same womb. This draws attention to the fact that the distinctions between them were minimal. The conditions of their birth are going to be almost identical. So any choice between them would be based on God, not on them.

The second difference from Isaac and Ishmael is was that Jacob and Esau were conceived of the same parents. Notice the words in verse 10, "conceived by one man." Somebody might have said about Ishmael, "Of course God didn’t choose him as a child of promise. He didn’t have a Jewish mother. Hagar was a Gentile." But Paul says, "No, you missed the point, and I will clarify that with Jacob and Esau. They were in the same womb and had one father, not two different fathers." He is systematically doing away with the human distinctives that might constrain God’s election of one over the other. He is saying that election is based on God, not man.

Then in verse 11 he makes this unconditionality of his election crystal clear: "For though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad" – skip to the main clause in verse 12 – "it was said to her, ‘The older will serve the younger.’" The quote from Genesis 25:23 simply makes clear that God decides the destiny of these two sons and the nations they represent before they are born. And to make it even clearer for us, Paul does not just say, they were not yet born when God decided their destinies, he also says, "they had done nothing good or bad." And to remove the possible objection that he chose the older because the older deserves it, he chose the younger.

This is why we speak of the biblical doctrine of unconditional election. God chose Jacob over Esau before they were born or had done anything good or bad. It was not their behavior or their attitude or their faith or their parents that moved God to choose Jacob and not Esau. The choice was unconditional. It was rooted in God alone and not in man.
This Teaching Nullifies Neither the Genuineness of Our Choices Nor the Necessity of the Obedience of Faith

Before we look at the rest of the text let me make sure you are not jumping to unwarranted and unbiblical conclusions. This teaching of Romans 9 does not contradict the truth that Jacob and Esau and you and I make choices in life and will be held responsible for those choices. If Jacob is saved he will be saved by faith. And if Esau is finally condemned, he will be condemned for his evil deeds and unbelief. Our final judgment will accord with the way we have responded to the gospel in this life. Which means that our final entry into heaven or to hell is not unconditional. To be finally saved we must have believed. And to be lost we must have sinned and not believed. No one will stand on the precipice of hell and be able to say, "I don’t deserve this."

Just one text to show this: Romans 2:7-8, "To those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; 8 but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury." In other words, unconditional election does not contradict the necessity of the obedience of faith for final salvation, or the necessity of the disobedience of unbelief for damnation. What unconditional election does is knock from underneath salvation every ground of human boasting, and replaces it with the unshakable electing love and purpose of God (v. 11b).

The will to believe is saving, and the will not to believe is damning. We are held responsible for both. But underneath both is God’s free and unconditional election of who will be saved and who will not. The elect believe. The non-elect do not believe. We are not sovereign, self-determining, autonomous beings. Only God is. God renders certain the belief and unbelief of men without undermining their personal accountability. This is not something the finite mind can fully understand because it is an infinite principle that resides in God and His ways are higher than our ways.

(all footnotes, commentaries and ministry resources have not been listed in these study notes)