The Romance of Romans-Part 69

Romans Chapter 11 cont'd

In the same way today, there is a remnant of believing Jews who are a testimony of God's gracious choice. Now we've got to be consistent in our thinking. Salvation by grace and salvation by works are, by definition, mutually exclusive. We can't have it both ways. On this issue it's "all or none". So yes, what I am saying here is that the Jews, as a whole, have not obtained what they have been seeking, but a divinely select remnant of Jews have now obtained it through Messiah Jesus and the rest of the nation has become spiritually blinded. The prophetic scripture confirms this, "God has given them a spirit of slumber, they have eyes but cannot see, and ears but they cannot hear." David also prophesied this, "May their fellowship circle be deluded by a false security as a judgment for their hardness. Let their eyes be blinded and their ability to walk uprightly be taken from them."

Comments:

Throughout Romans, Paul has been retelling and re-framing the Big God-Story of international history and the history of Israel through the lens of hindsight provided by the Person and Work of Jesus Christ and his gospel. New realities and spiritual dynamics in both heaven and earth were inaugurated when Messiah came, bled the ground red and rose again...prophecies came to pass, paradoxes were resolved, mysteries were unveiled and choices of human hearts took on new weight. God, in Christ, had come "in person" onto the scene of the human drama to show forth a newly integrated puzzle picture that was only understood in its bits and pieces before this essential fulfillment of all that the Hebrew prophets foretold came to pass. Honestly, wouldn't we expect some new insights into the scriptures if God were to come among us and explain them himself? And so...he did.

Heb 1
¹Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, ²but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

Paul has been laying out some heavy news regarding the spiritual condition of both Jews and gentiles who are without Christ. For some, what he has been saying about Israel seemed blatantly contrary to the promises God made to their nation in the past. There is an implied generalized accusation hanging over the apostle, that if what he is saying is true, then God himself is a deceiver and this, of course, is nonsense. This categorization allowed many Jews (and gentiles) to scoff at the gospel and quickly dismiss it as an error. (Isn't it amazing how a little strategic spin on "truth" by the reorganization of "facts" can lead whole people groups astray?!)

In the passage above, Paul quotes Dt 29 and Ps 68 to defend his points biblically. Aspects of Ps 68 that refer to the sufferings of the Messiah Jesus on the cross may be cryptic in nature. But the reference to Dt 29 and the larger context of both chapters 28 and 29 go right to the main and plain heart of the covenantal contract that God initiated with Israel after he had delivered them from slavery in Egypt.

People in that culture clearly understood the sovereignty of a conquering king and his method of exercising his right to unilaterally dictate the terms of the national covenant that contained both the blessings of cooperation and the curses of non-cooperation. There is nothing cryptic about Dt 28 and 29, except in how it would actually play out in the distant future in the Big God-Story of the Messiah's coming and the implications of his gospel for all the nations of the earth. (By the way, the use of the word gospel in the NT was borrowed from the Greek world. It was used to refer to the messengers, "evangelists", who were personally sent ahead of a king to announce his soon arrival to the cities he intended to visit in person. It wasn't primarily "good" news...it was, even more essentially, "big" news.)

Dt 28:
⁶⁸And the LORD will bring you back in ships to Egypt, a journey that I promised that you should never make again; and there you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer."

This little sentence above hints at the danger of a future situation in which the nation would be capable of violating the will of God's heart to the point that it could appear that he was not being faithful to his promise to save the nation. This is the stern and sober warning embedded in the covenant promises outlined in the context of Dt 28-29. For Jesus, Paul and the apostles to declare that the warnings of Moses had come to pass in their generation can never be construed as anti-Semitic or unbiblical. Just read again what Moses himself prophesied.

Dt 28
¹"And if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. ²And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the LORD your God...
¹⁵"But if you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you...

Dt 29:4 But to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear... (When the writers of the NT quote an OT verse, it is often like a button that we might push on our computer screen that opens up a new window of text that sheds more light on the text we are presently reading. I belive that Paul's quote in Romans 11 of Dt 29:4 should obviously lead us back to the whole context of Dt 28-29. And these passages give prophetic insight into and biblical context for the main points that Paul goes on to make in Romans 11.)

²²And the next generation, your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a far land, will say, when they see the afflictions of that land and the sicknesses with which the LORD has made it sick— ²³the whole land burned out with brimstone and salt, nothing sown and nothing growing, where no plant can sprout, an overthrow like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger and wrath— ²⁴all the nations will say, 'Why has the LORD done thus to this land? What caused the heat of this great anger?' ²⁵Then people will say, 'It is because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, ²⁶and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them. ²⁷Therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, bringing upon it all the curses written in this book, ²⁸and the LORD uprooted them from their land in anger and fury and great wrath, and cast them into another land, as they are this day.' ²⁹"The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.

In the time of Jesus, much of the Jewish leadership and nation put their trust in their many religious and cultural traditions, thereby becoming self-righteous...others had compromised and mixed their faith with the corrupt Roman culture...while still others had turned to violence in seeking to establish the kingdom of God. These biases blinded them to receiving God's sent One and even from understanding the prophecies or heeding the clear warnings of their own patriarchs and prophets.

But many others, both Jews and gentiles, welcomed, believed and received Jesus for who he was and is and began a revolution that was paving the way for the renewal of all creation through the salvation of God in Christ Jesus the Lord.