Romans Chapter 10/11
But did God give fair warning to the Jews about this irony of the Gentiles receiving something from God that they would reject? Actually he did! He prophesied through Moses, "I will make you jealous by blessing the outsiders, and I will make you angry by blessing those who are ignorant." Again he clearly spoke through Isaiah, "I will be discovered by those who aren't seeking me and I will reveal myself to those who didn't even ask." But about the Jews he sighed, "I have been stretching out my helping hands to a nation who just take me for granted- familiarity has bred contempt!
CHAPTER 11
So has God rejected the Jews wholesale? No way! I myself am a Jew, a natural descendant of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin. No, God has not given up on his chosen people. Remember the lesson of Elijah who miscalculated the number of faithful Jews in his own day and complained to God in prayer, "Lord, they have killed all the prophets and torn down all your altars. I am the only faithful one left in the land and they are now trying to kill me!" But God corrected his limited view by answering, "I have reserved for myself seven thousand people who have not compromised their faith to worship Baal." In the same way today, there is a remnant of believing Jews who are a testimony of God's gracious choice.
Comments:
Here at the end of chapter 10 and throughout chapter 11, Paul comes back around to address this vital question/theme that is woven into the fabric of his entire letter: If the life and message of Jesus the Messiah implies that Jews are not automatically in a right relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by being faithful to their religious traditions...then God must somehow be unfaithful to his own scriptural promises to the Jewish people, or an outright liar...unthinkable and unbelievable blasphemy.
Yet, throughout Romans, Paul has gone to great lengths to reframe these promises and remind his readers of very specific prophecies from the Jewish scriptures (like the two above that came through Moses and Isaiah) that warned the Jewish nation of the peril of not recognizing the Messiah when he would actually arrive on the scene. His point is that the Person and Work of Jesus confirmed and fulfilled the very scriptures that had been neglected, overlooked and edited out of the minds of the Jewish teachers and leaders...and therefore, the Jewish nation...by the time of Christ's appearance. The message of Jesus is anything but either unscriptural or anti-Jewish...he is and was the hope of Israel and thereby...every person, people group and the whole of God's creation.
True Jewish-ness or being a part of biblical "Israel", as Paul has set forth over and again in this incisive letter, is simply not about ethnicity...it is about, and was always foreseen as, a divinely sovereign and grace-based supernatural birth that results in a spiritual heart transplant for anyone who truly believes in Messiah Jesus. Besides...just to remove two more obstacles to faith...there has always been a "remnant" of enthic Jews who have believed in and followed Jesus that, by itself, ranks as a sign of God's faithfulness to his prophetic promises to the ancient patriarchs and king David. Furthermore, a powerful case can be made that there are yet-to-be fulfilled prophecies about many more ethnic Jews coming to embrace Jesus as Messiah who will, through faith in him, return to the commonwealth of Israel before the return of Jesus. Even in our own generation, many thousands of ethnic Jews all over the world have come to faith in Jesus.
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