Paul has a habit in saying NO. We know that we died to sin and that we do not need to live in sin any longer. Paul tells us to say NO to sin and temptation. Simple! So when Paul asks "Has God rejected his people?" I like his equally blunt answer: "No!" But Paul did not make this statement easily. He struggled with the objection that this gospel entails, betraying his heritage and his nation. I can see him sitting there weighing up the situation: the Jews have turned their backs on the Messiah ‘Has God abandoned Israel?’ Then Paul answers a resounding NO. But at his first answer it was somewhat limited: he is an Israelite. He knows that he has not been abandoned and other Jews like himself who have responded to the gospel are a remnant of Israel who has listened to God. But Paul is also unsettled about the notion that all the rest could be thought of as abandoned. We see hints of this in his words in 11:2a: ‘God has not abandoned his people whom he foreknew.’ How could/can God choose people and then write them off? God is a God of compassion and promises, isn’t He?
The expressions, "by no means!" or "absolutely not," which are in our bibles, are an emphatic denial which Paul utters nine other times in Romans after posing a ludicrous theological question (such as, in 9:14, "Is there injustice with God?"). Although Paul treats the questions as empathetic, still he makes us consider them, just for a moment, so he can show how crucial is their denial. We need to know why the question is so important, if we are to know why the emphatic denial is utterly crucial, for Christians and Jews alike.
Paul will have no part in a theology that implies God will not keep promises. If God will not prove faithful to promises made throughout Israel's history, Christians have no good reason to expect God will keep the ones made to us through Christ in the past or even today. God’s fidelity remains a bedrock in Paul's theology, something he learned early as a Jew and had confirmed through his encounter with Christ.
Paul poses his key question ("Has God rejected his people?") after having summed up the situation as similar to one described in Isaiah, where God waits patiently for a disobedient and unresponsive people. Paul doesn't develop much of an argument in response to the question. It's pretty simple for him. God cannot have rejected the people "whom he foreknew" (11:2), simply because "the gifts of grace and the calling of God are irrevocable" (11:29). Paul can confidently claim that "all Israel will be saved" (11:26) and will experience "full inclusion" (11:12) in God's salvation. This is good news for all people in this world. There is hope for everyone. God will wait for us, however long it takes. You might be thinking ‘He’s not going to get me!’ ‘We’ll see!’ All people will be saved. God is faithful.
Paul’s road to towards these confident assertions is out of the struggles he had with God and scripture. The same struggles we have today, when faced with a difficult situation or two similar situations and the outcome of both is different. When we search the bible for answers and find ourselves at odds because our hearts knows something of God but scripture is pointing us to something else and we struggle to find peace. To find answers. If claims about God’s fidelity and less-than-satisfying arguments about the details of God’s master plan concerning Jews who have not embraced Jesus cause Paul to struggle, why should we expect to have all our questions answered for us. Why should God just give us everything on a plate.
It’s about living with the tensions and promises of God. If you read all of Romans 11, you will read that Paul informs his readers that they would never be able to figure out what God was up to, and he called this situation a ‘mystery.’ Paul is referring to something that makes no sense on the surface but will finally one day, when God's purposes have been worked out. This mystery involves the ‘disobedience’ in which, Paul believed, some of his contemporary Jews dwelled. It involves the ‘disobedience’ of people today and as a result, the salvation of all is reliant on God's mercy and grace.
Paul's main emphasis, once again, is on God. The conclusion of the "arguments" laid down throughout Romans 9-11 comes in 11:32. However God works, and for whatever reasons God works, God works so that God "may be merciful to all" (11:32).All the handwringing in these Roman chapters, aren't just about figuring out "the status of the Jewish people"; it's about reaffirming that God calls people, all people, out of wrath, judgment, and sins, to prove God's righteousness and loyalty.
Once again we find a passage primarily about God's faithfulness, less about the successes and failures of people's faith. God is merciful.
Anyone who has presided over the funeral of a child or helped a person through a difficult situation knows how this works. We can't pretend to know all the answers, and we often make things worse by trying to explain things. But we can, we must! trust that God will be merciful. Why do we trust in this mercy? Because, ‘the gifts of grace and the calling of God are irrevocable’ and in the end, God is merciful. We might not understand how everything will work out, but God will see to it. Faith rests on hopes like this.
The bedrock, anchored in the faithfulness, the love, the mercy of God should be the central movement of any sermon. There are plenty of other things that life throws our way to make us doubt them. But we do ourselves no favours in trying to make theological sense of our circumstances and our future unless we have a God whose character rings true to statements like these.
The main point Paul says is ‘when it comes to accomplishing salvation, everything is in God's hands, not in ours, not in the hands of the church, nor in those of Israel.’ In God’s hands.
The theology of Romans magnifies God’s grace and extols His sovereignty. We should never lose the wonder of our salvation or the greatness of God. No matter how deep the valley, or difficult the battle, a vision of greatness puts joy in our hearts and strength in our soul. God knows what he is doing even if we don’t fully understand it.
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