Paul's Passion

Romans – A Treatise
Chapter Nine
PAUL’S PASSION FOR HIS BRETHREN

Scripture Reading: verses 1-5

I SAY THE TRUTH IN CHRIST, I LIE NOT, MY CONSCIENCE ALSO BEARING ME WIT-NESS IN THE HOLY GHOST. THAT I HAVE GREAT HEAVINESS AND CONTINUAL SORROW IN MY HEART. FOR I COULD WISH THAT MYSELF WERE ACCURSED FROM CHRIST FOR MY BRETHREN, MY KINSMEN ACCORDING TO THE FLESH: WHO ARE ISRAELITES; TO WHOM PERTAINETH THE ADOPTION, AND THE GLORY, AND THE COVENANTS, AND THE GIVING OF THE LAW, AND THE SERVICE OF GOD, AND THE PROMISES; WHOSE ARE THE FATHERS, AND OF WHOM AS CONCERNING THE FLESH CHRIST CAME, WHO IS OVER ALL, GOD BLESSED FOR EVER.

This passage is both an exclamation of sorrow and a prayer to the Lord on the Throne on behalf of Paul’s people, the Israelites. His heart is filled with sorrow as he regards their low estate of suffering, persecution, and unbelief. The situation in Palestine today is a reminder of the anguish that must have filled the heart of Paul as he regarded his people according to flesh – the Jews, his own kinsmen. Chapters 9, 10, and 11 are an inspired treatise on this important subject.

The rather strange way in which this chapter begins seems to convey the impression Paul is approaching an extremely delicate subject that touched the tender strings of his own heart. Unlike any other part of the Epistle, chapter 9 begins almost with an apology. He says, “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit.” This is a remarkable verse. First, because of Paul’s insistence that he is not lying, but speaking the truth in Christ. What he is about to set forth will not in any way be colored by racial prejudice or undue religious zeal. Perhaps no one knew better the tragic errors that are often made through mistaken religious zeal. Was it not for this very reason Paul himself, as Saul of Tarsus, was stopped by the Lord on the road to Damascus? In Philippians 3 Paul attributes zeal to the impulse that impelled him to persecute the church. Saul of Tarsus was the prototype of the religious zealot carried forward by an unmitigated tide of religious prejudice founded on accepted tradition.

Paul graphically outlines this in 1 Timothy 1, when he says,

I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry; Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.

Therefore, in Romans 9 Paul indicates this delicate subject of the unbelief of his own kinsmen, the Jews, will be presented free from anything that would color the truth.¹One cannot but admire the grace, wisdom, and straightforward candor of this giant of the faith, Paul the apostle. He spoke the truth in Christ. He did not lie. His conscience bore witness in the Holy Spirit. He was no longer relying on a conscience formed and regulated by tradition. His conscience was now under the power of the Holy Spirit and thus he spoke.

Nor does he storm at his people because of their antipathy to his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Had he been impelled by fleshly prejudice he would undoubtedly have spoken with strong personal feeling because he was attached to the Lord with a devotion that has never been matched. However, the gentleness of Paul always arrests the attention and should be a great lesson to every true servant of Christ.

Yet his own tenderness of heart will not mitigate the tragic night of the unbelief of Israel, his people. He is so overwhelmed by its awful significance that he says, “I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.”² What an astonishing statement. We marvel at the operation of grace in this man’s heart. Remember what a rigid legalist Paul had been in his traditional religion. Entirely unbending and ruthless, in his spirit he had displayed himself capable of all the cruelty that religious bigotry could engender. His persecution of the early believers in Christ called for unhesitating cruelty. He had watched the stoning of Stephen on the street of Jerusalem, unmoved by the grace that shone in the face of that saint of God.

But later the Lord melted his heart. He was not a sentimentalist who had arrived at a softness of character because of defeat or failure. He still had all the virulence of courage that may be admired in a man, yet mysteriously he had come to feel the heart beat of the Son of God, who loved him and gave Himself for him. This radically changed him, bringing into view the awful darkness in which his people moved because they failed to recognize in Jesus his Lord, their true Messiah. They had all the real traditional advantages – the adoption, glory, covenant, giving of law, service of God, promises, fathers, and, last of all, “of whom as concerning the flesh, Christ came.” Paul’s pitying eye looked on them, and, if necessary, desired to be accursed so that he might see their salvation.

Footnotes:
¹ With this chapter, one section of Romans ends and another begins. The eighth chapter concluded Paul’s outline of the complete acceptance of the Gentiles into God’s kingdom. He extended to them the most extravagant assurance of their justification and providential support leading to their ultimate glorification in the presence of God himself, such blessings being far superior to anything ever known before, by either Jews or Gentiles; and now that Paul had finished speaking of those good things, the thought of his own people, the Jews, in their condition of rebellion against God and of rejecting the Messiah, pressed upon his heart. The Jews, who should have been the first to receive those great blessings, and who should have led all the world in their acceptance of them, had, through their leaders, rejected the Savior; and the great majority of them had followed the blind leadership. Paul’s overwhelming emotion of grief and sorrow bursts through in the moving words of the first paragraph (Rom. 9:1-5). This and the two following chapters deal with the problem of Israel’s rejection of the Christ. This chapter may be outlined thus: 1) Paul skillfully introduced the problem of Israel’s attitude of rejection toward Christ, affirming his love for his own nation, and showing his appreciation of what God had done through them (Rom. 9:1-5). 2) God’s rejection of Israel, due to their rejection of the Messiah, was shown to be consistent with God’s promises and his sovereignty (Rom. 9:6-24). 3) The rejection of Israel was specifically foretold by the Jewish prophets (Rom. 9:25-29). 4) Conclusions from this line of reasoning (Rom. 9:25-30). In his book, Commentary on Paul’s Letter to Romans, p. 291, Moses E. Lard called this chapter “emphatically the artistic chapter of the Letter.” Paul’s subject, the rejection of Israel and the calling of the Gentiles, was repugnant as any that could be imagined for Jewish minds, and this necessitated great skill and tact on his part in daring to launch into a discussion of it. Paul’s discernment, knowledge of God’s Word, and skill in presenting such painful disclosures are apparent in every line. Every word of Paul’s message was adorned by the evidence of his rich and overflowing love for his race and nation. “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 9:1). Although in no sense an oath, Paul here spoke in the most dogmatic and convincing manner possible, thus emphasizing the utmost accuracy and solemnity of what he was about to say. The use of both positive and negative statements for the sake of emphasis is common in Scripture. For example, Isaiah has this: “Thou shalt die and not live” (Is. 38:1). Likewise, in the New Testament, there is this: “He confessed and denied not” (John 1:20). “In Christ ... in the Holy Spirit” ... These terms are synonymous. In other words, a person never being “in” Christ or the Holy Spirit unless he is in both.
² “That I have great sorrow, and unceasing pain in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren's sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” Paul, if he had been of a mean and vindictive spirit, had more than sufficient reason to hold bitterness against his Jewish kinsmen because of their unrelenting persecutions and harassment of his ministry and apostleship. On one occasion, forty of them had bound themselves with an oath not to eat or drink until they had murdered him; and emissaries from the Jews in Jerusalem had dogged his every step on the mission field. They had preferred charges against him before kings and governors; and yet, despite all this, his love for Israel was undiminished. How noble are Paul’s thoughts in such a context as that which frames them here. A few Bible scholars have pointed out that Paul here omitted a clause which is essential to his meaning, that being “I have great grief and continual sorrow in my heart ON ACCOUNT OF MY COUNTRYMEN.” However, for Paul that was the unspeakable thing, and he could not at that point in this letter bring it out; and thus he approached it from a different angle. In his book, Commentary on Paul’s Letter to Romans, p. 292, Moses E. Lard the following regarding this amazing fact: “His countrymen had repudiated Christ; that was the fact which caused his grief and sorrow; that any person should do this is painful enough; that one’s own kin should do it is exquisitely so. The apostle does not yet name the fact that gave him pain, but conceals it until he can bring it out with better effect.” “I could wish” ... is the key to understanding Romans 9:3. As Charles Hodge wrote in his book, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, p. 297: “The expression is evidently hypothetical and conditional, ‘I could wish, were the thing allowable, possible, or proper.’” Paul’s grief was like that of Jesus who “had compassion on the multitude” (Matt. 9:6), and like that of Moses who said, “Blot me out of thy book, I pray thee” (Exo. 32:32); and yet it was not possible for Paul to do the thing which he mentioned, nor should his statement here be viewed as a true expression of what he actually desired to do. That this is true appears from God’s response to the similar request of Moses. The Lord said, “Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book” (Exo. 32:33). That Moses truly felt such a desire and expressed it to God in prayer is a scripturally-authenticated fact; and we may credit Paul with exactly the same emotion here. How great is such love. “Anathema” ... is used only five times in the New Testament, the other instances of its use being in Acts 23:14, 1 Corthians 12:3 and 16:22, and Galatians 1:8, 9. It means “accursed” and implies eternal death as well as physical death. After a careful and critical study of the New Testament texts where this word is used, Charles Hodge declared (Ibid., p. 296) that “An anathema was a person devoted to death as accursed.”