Romans 9:1-5 Commentary

God has graced my wife and me with a number of close Jewish friends, as well as casual acquaintances. God has immeasurably enriched our lives through these dear people whom we both like and love very much.

But I’ve never been able to join Paul in saying something like, “I could wish that I myself were cursed [anathema*] and cut off [apo] for the sake of” (3-4a) my Jewish friends. As much as I long and pray for those friends’ both temporal and eternal well-being, I’m not yet prepared to trade their eternal wellness for mine.

Paul doesn’t describe the exact source of his grief in this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson. So wise preachers may want to at least mention that from which the apostle’s anguish rises: widespread Jewish rejection of Jesus as Messiah.

Preachers may want to point to a couple of things about that rejection. The gospels especially blame Jewish religious leaders for fomenting that rejection. When the gospel writers use the word “Jews” or “Jewish,” it’s generally code for those leaders.

What’s more, of course, while Jesus’ apostles had hoped and prayed the Spirit would convince many Jewish people of Jesus’ Messianic role, Jewish rejection remained persistent and widespread. By the time Paul writes to Rome’s Christians, relatively few Jews have received God’s grace with their faith in Jesus Christ as Messiah.

Things haven’t, in fact, actually changed much in the intervening 2,000 years. In 2020 Pew Research released its report on Jewish Americans. It found that of the nearly 6 million American adults who self-identify as Jewish, only approximately 300,000 identify themselves as followers of Jesus. While those numbers are debatable, they may startle people who assume even fewer Jews believe in Jesus. Yet this sad fact remains: of Americans who are Jewish, only about 5% consider themselves to be Jesus’ friends.

Perhaps-similar percentages in the Roman Empire caused Paul deep pain. In verse 2 he insists he carries with him everywhere he goes lype megale (“great sorrow”) such that he’s never free of adialeiptos odyne (“unceasing anguish”) about Jewish rejection of Jesus as Messiah. The Message paraphrases him as claiming he carries “a huge sorrow” and has “an enormous pain deep within” him.

Paul’s pain over Jewish rejection of Jesus as Messiah is profound. In fact, he uses the same Greek word (lype) to describe the word Jesus uses in John 16:6 to describe his disciples’ agony at the prospect of his leaving them to return to the heavenly realm.

It’s in some ways regrettable the NIV somewhat loosens the link the apostle feels to his fellow Jews. Its verse 3, after all, translates him as speaking of them as his “people” and “race.” The NRSV seems to get closer to the more literal depth of Paul’s feeling toward Jews by using familial terms. After all, in Romans 9 the apostle refers to them as literally “my own brothers and sisters” [adelphon mou] and “my own flesh and blood” [syngenon mou kata sarka].”

So Paul’s agony isn’t like the grief we may experience when a fellow Canadian, Briton or Australian dies. It’s not even like the mourning people may feel when someone who’s especially admired and appreciated dies. No, Jewish rejection of Jesus as Messiah feels to Paul like the sudden death of a remarkably close family member. It is, quite simply, sheer agony for him.

However, Jesus’ 21^st century friends may not share the apostles’ agony over rejection of Jesus as Messiah. At least part of this may stem from a misunderstanding of just what Jesus came to rescue us from. We generally think of that salvation as being from hell’s eternal separation from God. But hell seems to play less and less of a role in many Christians’ thinking.

It’s easy for at least some of our fellow Christians to forget that Jesus the Messiah rescues us not merely from hell, but also from a kind of misdirected life. Jesus came to save from the eternal death that is hell, but also for the life for which God created us. Without the Holy Spirit, we naturally live for ourselves, hating both God and our neighbor. Without the Spirit, it’s tempting to live in either fear or indifference toward not just the future, but also our neighbors’ wellness.

Jesus the Messiah came to restore our love for God and our neighbor, as well as empower us to do radical things like unconditionally love, forgive, and pray for our enemies. Jesus’ followers anguish over rejection of Jesus as Messiah arises in no small part from the way non-Christians miss out on the blessings that come with such a life of discipleship.

It may help Jesus’ friends to remember that God shares Paul’s deep anguish over all people who reject Jesus as Messiah. The Scriptures insist God doesn’t want anyone to either fail to live the life for which God created us or live in eternal separation from God. In fact, we might say our anguish over unbelief is deeply rooted in God’s anguish over it.

Of course, it’s always tempting for God’s adopted children to either overlook or try to explain away the Scriptures’ testimony to God’s longing for God to rescue all people. It can be easy to forget that 1 Timothy 2:4, for example, insists God wants all people to be saved and come to a saving knowledge of the truth. It’s not easy to remember how in 2 Peter 3:9 the apostle insists God doesn’t want anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance. While Christians debate just whom God will save, we may never forget that God passionately longs for all people to receive God’s amazing grace with our faith in Jesus the Messiah.

In fact, in verses 4-5 Paul describes the startling lengths to which God went to summon Jewish people into such a faithful relationship with the Father through Jesus Christ the Son. “Theirs,” the apostle writes there, “is the adoption to sonship [huiothesia], theirs the divine glory [doxa], the covenants [diathekai], the receiving of the law [nomothesia], the temple worship [letreia] and the promises [epangeliai]. Theirs are the patriarchs [pateres], and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.”

This list of God’s graces to Paul’s fellow Jews points to a number of things. It helps reveal God’s shocking generosity to people who’d always struggled to love, serve and worship the living God. God didn’t just grace Jews with one or two gifts in order to draw them to himself. God graced them with a startling variety of signs God intended to point them to Jesus as Messiah.

Some of those graces, such as the appearance of God’s doxa (“glory”) as well as God’s epangeliai (“promises”) and diathekai (“covenants”) were supernatural. Others were, like the pateras (“patriarchs”), human. Some other of God’s graces to Jews were linked to human activities such as letreia (“temple worship”) and nomothesia (“receiving of the law”).

Paul’s list of God’s graces to Jews also links a number of things that otherwise might have seemed to have little to do with each other. We might wonder what tied God’s adoption of Jewish people as God’s children to Jesus’ Jewish ancestry. God’s dearly beloved people might also wonder what the patriarchs had to do with temple worship. Paul strongly hints that what bound all of them together was the way they pointed to Jesus as God’s Messiah.

On top of all that, this list of God’s graces remind Jesus’ friends that those links to Jesus as Messiah are, without the Spirit’s help, naturally looser than we sometimes like to claim. Some Christians simply can’t understand why some Jews reject Jesus as Messiah. Without God’s grace that is the gift of the Holy Spirit, verses 4-5’s graces’ link to Jesus as Messiah are not obvious.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

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The Jews for Jesus website cites a number of cultural, historical and theological reasons why most Jews reject Jesus as Messiah. It notes, among other things, “Many rabbis and religious leaders believe Jesus cannot be the Messiah because he did not fulfill the job requirements. Some Jewish leaders assert that Judaism does not believe Jesus was the Messiah because he did not fulfill messianic prophecies like this one: ‘Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,  nor shall they learn war anymore (Isaiah 2:4).’

“Far from establishing world peace, Jesus himself said that he came to divide ‘father against son, and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother (Luke 12:53).’ In fact, there has arguably been more bloodshed in the name of Jesus than there has been peace.”