Romans 9:1-5 Commentary

It’s sometimes easy to forget that the Spirit did not inspire the Scriptures’ authors like Paul to insert periods, commas, semi-colons, paragraph breaks or chapter headings into what they wrote. Biblical punctuation is the product of the work of editors, not the Holy Spirit.

Just before this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson opens, the apostle makes a glorious profession of faith: “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). We naturally assume that’s the end of his sentence. So we can feel free to insert a paragraph break and new chapter heading.

In fact, countless scholars assert that Paul moves into a new section of his letter to Rome’s Christians when he begins chapters 9. But what if he, instead, essentially professes that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. I speak the truth in Christ – I am not lying, my conscience confirms it.” Stop. Breathe.

Or perhaps better yet, just keep on reading: “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I wish that I were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel …” Closely linking Romans 8:38-39 to Romans 9:1 and following gives added poignance to both Romans 8’s profession and chapter 9’s subsequent lament.

How expansive is God’s triumphant love? Does it just triumph over both heavenly and earthly powers? Or does that love ultimately also triumph over human refusal to receive God’s grace with obedient faith? Can Israel’s disobedience separate her from God’s love in ways that nothing else Paul lists in verses 38-39 can?

And what about Israel’s spiritual intransigence? How can Paul jive his assertion of God’s undefeated and undefeatable love with Israel’s hardheartedness? How can he begin to explain her faithlessness – especially in the face of all that blessings that God has graciously showered on her?

Romans 9:1-5’s preachers might lay those realities next to each other in a message on it. After all, while the Church may prefer to race past this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson to Romans 11:25-32’s resolution, there is great pastoral profit in sitting with its anguish. After all, while at least some of our hearers may not fully share the apostolic anguish over Jewish people’s fate, at least some of Christians feel great pain about their own loved one’s lack of faith.

On the one hand, Paul believes with all his heart that nothing can separate God’s dearly beloved people from God’s love in Jesus Christ. On the other hand, it seems to him as though some of his own “brothers” (adelphon), members of his “own race” (synagon mou), “the people of Israel” (Israelitai) have done precisely that. By their lack of faith in Jesus, his fellow countrymen seem to have put space between God’s love and themselves.

In verse 2 Paul sobs that this unbelief cause him “great sorrow” (megale lype) and “unceasing anguish” (adialeptos odyne). In other words, his own “family members’” unbelief doesn’t just sadden him. Israelites’ unbelief also causes him unrelenting distress. It causes Paul, as The Message paraphrases verse 2, enormous pain that’s both deep within him and from which he is never free.

Of course, in this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson Paul never explicitly identifies the people whose unbelief causes him such profound misery. That’s one reason why preachers might consider publicly reading beyond Romans 9:1-5. Preachers might at least include Romans 9:30-33 to explicitly identify the source of Paul’s bitter sorrow and ceaseless grief.

That anguish is so profound that it leads Paul to make one of the Scripture’s most poignant and mysterious claims. “I could wish (euchomen),” he asserts in verse 3, “that I myself were cursed (anathema) and cut off from Christ (apo tou Christou) for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel.”

This wish seems to suggest that Paul would to be willing to go to hell if it would somehow result in Israel’s salvation. That startling deduction is part of the reason that verse 3 requires some homiletical observations. The apostle’s wish in some ways echoes Moses plea to God on Israel’s behalf in Exodus 32:32: “Please forgive their sin – but if not, then blot me out of the book of life you have written.” What’s more, “Cursed and cut off from Christ” may echo Paul’s earlier assertion that nothing can cut off from Christ those whom God loves in Christ.

Where, then, might this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s preachers land with verse 3’s mysterious and poignant lament? Perhaps here: Jewish unbelief so deeply pained Paul that he would have been willing to go to almost unhuman lengths if it resulted in God saving Jews.

Since Paul’s grief echoes God’s, preachers might ask ourselves and our hearers if unbelief grieves us anywhere nearly as deeply as it did the apostle. The Christian parents and grandparents of people who were baptized but never faithfully received its promises might share some of that grief. Though I can’t imagine going to the lengths to which Paul was willing to go to ensure my loved ones’ eternal wellness, I would certainly be willing to give up nearly everything in exchange for it.

After all, those who fail to believe don’t just, or perhaps even primarily, risk their eternal well-being. Unbelievers also miss out on the great joy and purpose that a faithful reception of God’s grace offers already here and now.

Some unbelievers share the kinds of immense blessings that Paul’s fellow Israelites had enjoyed. “Theirs,” writes the apostle in verses 4b and following, “is the adoption as sons (huiothesia) … the divine glory (doxa) … the covenants (diathekai) … the receiving of the law (nomathesia) … the temple worship (latreia) and the promises (epangeliai). Theirs are the patriarchs (pateres).”

It’s as if God’s varied expressions of God’s grace to God’s Israelite people only serves to deepen the apostle’s pain. They aren’t just members of his ethnic family and his fellow citizens. Those unbelieving Israelites are also the beneficiaries of almost countless acts of God’s grace.

But just when Paul may be exhausted by listing these graces and Jewish rejection of them, the Spirit grants him the energy to add one more gift. It is, in some ways, the coup de grace. From God’s Israelite people is “traced the human ancestry of Christ (ho Christos to kata sarka), who is God over all (on epi panton Theos), forever praised! Amen” (5b).

So these Jews whose unbelief so deeply pains Paul aren’t just members of his extended family. Those who have placed themselves in danger of being eternally separated from God’s love are also adopted members of the incarnate Son of God’s extended family.

Preachers will, at this point, want to weigh how much to delve into the Spirit’s inspired answer to these expressions of Paul’s anguish. Preaching is first, foremost and always good news.  But in our eagerness to get to that good news of God’s saving purposes for “all Israel” (Romans 11:26), we shouldn’t race too quickly past this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s deep lament. Wise preachers will sit and spend time with not just a grieving Paul, but also all people whom others’ unbelief deeply pains.

Illustration

Part of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson is Paul’s lament for his extended family that is the people of Israel. In an unpublished essay that Robert Salters shared with members of the Center of Theological Inquiry at Princeton Theological Seminary in the fall of 1999, he wrote, “The regular lament is a stylized complaint to God: it’s plaintive, it often acknowledges sin (as Lamentations does—’five difficult poems expressing sadness and anger’); it sometimes protests innocence (as Job does), and always or almost always has praise somewhere.

“The Book of Common Prayer general confession is a lament form with self-confession and affliction, but no accusation. Lamentations has to do with the fall of Jerusalem, ‘the greatest calamity in the history of the people of Yahweh.’ The terrible trauma of this event included ‘the devastation of a confident people, the loss of statehood, the collapse of the economy, the destruction of social structures, the relocation of many families, the removal of religious props, and the dashing of theological hopes’.”

Brain Daley’s observation (Brian was another member of CTI that fall): “Jesus’ ‘Eloi, Eloi’ lament from Psalm 22, his god forsakenness – that’s the NT fall of Jerusalem. At Tenebrae monks would (some still do) sing all of Lamentations between Wednesday and Saturday of Holy Week. They reserve this singing for Holy Week.

“Christians otherwise don’t lament much. For one thing we tend to worship only on Sundays–the festival of resurrection. For another, given the resurrection we ‘do not mourn as those who have no hope.’ Third, for these and other reasons, the lectionary practically rubs out lament.”