Purpose According To Election

Romans – A Treatise
Chapter Nine
PURPOSE ACCORDING TO ELECTION

Scripture Reading: verses 6-13

FOR THEY ARE NOT ALL ISRAEL WHICH ARE OF ISRAEL: NEITHER, BECAUSE THEY ARE THE SEED OF ABRAHAM, ARE THEY ALL CHILDREN: BUT, IN ISAAC SHALL THY SEED BE CALLED. THAT IS, THEY WHICH ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE FLESH, THESE ARE NOT THE CHILDREN OF GOD: BUT THE CHILDREN OF THE PROMISE ARE COUNTED FOR THE SEED. FOR THIS IS THE WORD OF PROMISE, AT THIS TIME WILL I COME, AND SARAH SHALL HAVE A SON. AND NOT ONLY THIS; BUT WHEN REBECCA ALSO HAD CONCEIVED BY ONE, EVEN BY OUR FATHER ISAAC; (FOR THE CHILDREN BEING NOT YET BORN, NEITHER HAVING DONE ANY GOOD OR EVIL, THAT THE PURPOSE OF GOD ACCORDING TO ELECTION MIGHT STAND, NOT OF WORKS, BUT OF HIM THAT CALLETH;) IT WAS SAID UNTO HER, THE ELDER SHALL SERVE THE YOUNGER. AS IT IS WRITTEN, JACOB HAVE I LOVED, BUT ESAU HAVE I HATED.

Paul is still the courtroom attorney and in this passage he deliberately upholds the court’s honor and dignity, the right of the court to act in whatever way may seem suitable to its sovereign power.

It is in line with this that the spiritual genealogy of Israel is presented, not from a governmental point of view, but from birthright or promise. Now we briefly look at the Paul’s argument.

His assertion is they are not all Israel which are of Israel.¹ In order to set forth the legal importance of this point, he indicates it was only part of the seed of Abraham that came into blessing: “In Isaac shall thy seed be called.” Keep in mind that Abraham had another seed – Ishmael. From a fleshly point of view, Ishmael’s children were as much descendants of Abraham as Isaac’s. But while they were the seed of Abraham they were not the seed of promise,² because God declared that in Isaac the seed would be blessed. We must look beyond mere fleshly genealogy in order to have a standing under the sovereign goodness of the court. So, in a sense, Israel is divided into two sections. Those who trace lineage to Abraham may spring either from Ishmael or Isaac. If from Ishmael, blessing need not be expected, because the children of promise are from Isaac. Of course, let us remember we have not yet come to the real issue, which is found in the very last clause of this chapter, “Whosoever believeth on Him. [that is, on Christ] shall not be ashamed.” Paul is leading up to this, but he must do so by definite legal steps, in order to clearly show that in the end the only claim anyone has to blessing is to come by way of the true seed of Abraham and the true seed of Isaac – the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

But in this passage Paul is still upholding the right of the court to do what may seem right to itself, because it has sovereign authority over the affairs of men. Thus, instead of everything being traced back merely to Abraham, it is traced back to God Himself, whose sovereign will regulates the affairs of men for blessing. So in verse 9 Paul says, “For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sarah shall have a son.”³

It almost seems as though the Spirit of God would push Abraham aside and indicate that Isaac, the seed of promise, came by divine intervention and not on human lines at all. Undoubtedly Abraham was the father of Isaac; that is unequivocally stated in the Scriptures. But let us remember he was begotten at a time when, as Scripture records it, Abraham was “as good as dead.” He was senile, beyond the normal human ability to beget children. These may seem rather incidental facts, but here we are dealing with a legal argument, and nothing is incidental. Paul is seeking for a solid foundation whereby his kinsmen after the flesh, the Jews, may be brought into unbounded blessing, into which he has already been brought in association with His Lord and Savior. Therefore, nothing shall be incidental. Every scrap of evidence will be brought forward for deliberation before the court. Thus Abraham’s fleshly power to beget children is called in question and at once set aside, because God Himself said, “At this time will I come, and Sarah shall have a son.” God gave the promise, and with the promise He accorded to Abraham and Sarah the ability to bring Isaac into being at a time when they were senile – “as good as dead.”

Then immediately a new issue comes forward regarding whether, perhaps a little further down the line of genealogy, some claim on the line of flesh may be established. Whereas it may be conceded that Isaac owed his existence to an intervention of the Almighty, what about those following after? So Paul goes on to say that prior to Rebecca and Isaac having their two children, Jacob and Esau, God declared the elder would serve the younger: “As it is written, Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated.” This brings into sterling relief one of the greatest problems that confront mankind in any age – the right of God to do as He pleases in His own universe.⁴ It is Paul, the attorney, upholding the honor of the court. Thus in verse 11 Paul parentheticly presents the crux of the entire situation:

For the children, being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him that calleth.

Long before Jacob proved himself a schemer or Esau proved himself a profane person, God had designated He would use Jacob as a channel of blessing through which His purposes of divine grace would flow toward mankind. God chose Jacob and rejected Esau. The question arises: “Is it not unfair that God should choose one man and reject another?” That is the great legal question raised in this chapter. Considering election we must keep in mind God’s foreknowledge.

In other words, God looked down the avenue of time and saw the response which would come from the heart of Jacob and the lack of response from the heart of Esau. On the basis of His foreknowledge regarding their behavior as freewill agents, God was able to lay His plans accordingly. In view of that, no one shall call in question the right of the Almighty to do as He pleases. The same thing is true in the Gospel. By His foreknowledge, God can and does see what our response will be to His call in the Gospel, and, on the basis of that response or the lack of it, He has made His plans accordingly. It is not an easy subject to understand. It is a shock to the rebel mind but a great consolation to the obedient.

Footnotes:
¹Paul had not yet spoken plainly that Israel, through their rejection of Christ, was at that time itself rejected by God, although that thought dominated his mind. Before saying that unsayable thing, he would move to soften it by showing that what he was about to say did not apply to every Israelite. Paul stressed the fact that not all of Abraham’s children were Jews, that some were associated with Israel who were not really Israelites in the true sense, and that such a condition had extended back all the way to Abraham, Ishmael not being counted as Abraham’s seed at all, a fact which he would immediately stress.
² With what deliberate caution Paul approached the dreadful announcement he was obligated to deliver to his beloved kinsmen. He first laid the logical support of what he had to say by citations from the Old Testament Scriptures, and then built up the premises upon which he would rest his conclusion. He spells out the deduction to be made from the history of Abraham’s sons, only one of which, namely, Isaac, was his true seed, all the others being rejected. Paul was saying that not merely the fleshly children of Abraham are His seed, but the children of the promise. This reference to the promise pointing to Genesis 12:3, where not Jews only, but “all the families of the earth” were to be blessed. “Children of promise” ... has in view the fact that Isaac was not born in the due course of nature, but in respect of God’s promise which was providentially fulfilled when both Abraham and Sarah were long past the age of child production. This fact regarding Isaac is typical of Christians who, in another sense, are children of Abraham, by promise, as stated thus by Paul: “Now we brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise .... And if ye are Christ's, then are ye Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 4:28; 3:29). Here is Paul’s argument: just as Ishmael did not inherit though a literal son, the Jews of Paul’s day might not inherit, unless their claim was founded on something other than fleshly descent from Abraham. Only those who received and accepted God’s promise to Abraham of the Seed which is Christ and honored and obeyed Him. Now that He had appeared upon the earth, only those persons (the Christians) were the true children of Abraham and heirs according to the promise.
³ In distinction from all the other sons of Abraham, Isaac was the child of promise; and Paul here left nothing unsaid with reference to it, citing the very passage that recorded God’s promise (Gen. 18:10). Christ is the antitype of Isaac; therefore Jesus Christ (along with the spiritual seed who are “in him”) has the same preference over all the fleshly descendants of Abraham that Isaac had over his fleshly brothers. God’s righteousness, the great theme of Romans, was ever before Paul’s mind; and his purpose in these verses was to show that God’s actions in the calling of the Gentiles and rejection of Israel were in no degree blameworthy, but righteous. Even the rejection of Israel as a favored nation and the admission of Gentiles to the kingdom of God did not in any sense exclude Jews, the only injury to them in such actions being the destruction of their sinful pride. All of the marvelous blessings of the kingdom of Christ were available to both Jews and Gentiles alike, without preference, and upon the same terms. The blessings and privileges of the new kingdom were far superior in every way to anything the Jews had enjoyed under the old system.
⁴ This passage details another restriction upon the identification of who are, or are not, children of Abraham, all of the posterity of Esau being cut off, despite the fact that they were not merely children of Abraham, but of Isaac as well; and their being cut off did not derive from some visible reason for it, such as a rebellion, or refusal to honor Isaac; they were totally excluded even before the birth of Jacob and Esau. The proposition Paul was establishing by presenting these facts is that it was not by natural descent alone that the Jews themselves were reckoned to be children of Abraham, because the group identified as Jews were far from being his only natural descendants. There was a separation in the immediate family of Abraham when Ishmael was cut off, and there was another separation in Isaac’s immediate family when the Edomites (children of Esau) were cut off. But a dramatic new factor was involved in the separation of Esau and his descendants from the recognized posterity of Abraham. The Jews could have justified the exclusion of the Ishmaelites, etc., and the preference for Isaac; upon the premise that Isaac was the only legitimate son, the only son of his true wife, the only son of a free woman, or such; but, in the exclusion of part of Isaac’s posterity, no such distinctions were visible, Esau being not merely the son of Isaac’s lawful wife, but his firstborn at that. This shows that the choice of Jacob was altogether a sovereign act of God, not dependent upon anything that either Jacob or Esau had either done or left undone, the election coming before either of them was born. Before discussing the doctrine of election, as it is called, which surfaces in these verses, it is important to note exactly what the Lord said with reference to the election of Jacob in preference to Esau. “And the Lord said unto her [Rebekah], Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger” (Gen. 25:23). There is no problem regarding what God did. The problem lies in the reasons people suppose God had for doing it. God’s sovereign act of choice between Rebekah’s twins took place before their birth; but God’s decision was absolutely not capricious. Paul had already pointed out that God “foreknew” all people; and that foreknowledge on the part of God is revealed in the above citation from Genesis to have been the reasonable and righteous basis of God’s election of Jacob. God foreknew everything concerning the unborn twins, but He chose to tell Rebekah a part of what was foreknown. First, two DIFFERENT kinds of people were about to be launched into the stream of history, one weak, the other STRONGER. In the light of such knowledge, could God have chosen the weaker? And what is meant by “two manner of people”? Esau’s life quickly followed the pattern God had foreseen. He was a profane person and a fornicator (Heb. 12:16). Thus, Esau was rejected and Jacob chosen because of God’s foreknowledge of what would take place in the lives of both of them. When Isaac blessed his sons, the Scriptures relate that he did so “by faith concerning things to come” (Heb. 11:20); and it is arbitrary and contrary to reason for anyone to suppose that God made choice between those brothers without taking into account the “things to come.” Nothing in the election of Jacob and the exclusion of his brother had any bearing upon the eternal destiny of either, each individual having still been left free to choose the direction of his life; but it was concerned primarily, if not totally, with the building of the nation of the covenant people. It appears impossible to view Paul’s words here as teaching that God determines the destinies of people before they are born, as taught by some. For example, on p. 25 of his book, The Epistle to the Romans, John Murray, stated: “We are compelled, therefore, to find in this word a declaration of the sovereign counsel of God as it is concerned with the ultimate destinies of men.” It should be remembered that Paul’s entire argument here is to the effect that other factors besides fleshly descent had always been involved in determining the seed of Abraham. God’s election was a factor in it; but that factor entered into the determination as a consequence of other factors. Esau was rejected because of what God knew he would become and of what Esau’s character would produce in the lives of his posterity. “Not of works” ... means “not of fleshly descent,” as noted by Murray (Ibid., p. 14): “’Not of works’ and ‘not of natural descent’ are correlative and point to the same principle. Thus the apostle can adduce the one in an argument that is mainly concerned with the other without any sense of incongruity.” This expression is just another way of saying that God’s election of Jacob came without regard to deeds of the unborn twins, there having been none at the time of the election. It cannot mean that the election was decided without any regard to deeds they would perform in the future, which deeds were truly foreknown of God and plainly formed the righteous basis of the election. If the election was “not of works,” what was it of? It was of the sovereignty and foreknowledge of God. In other words, it was not on account of works that either might do, but Jacob would trust God and obey Him. Those who do this God always selects as His beloved. “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” ... was not written of Isaac’s sons before they were born, but centuries afterward, not a quotation from Genesis, but from Malachi 1:2f. God’s foreknowledge of what the Edomites would become was proved to be accurate by the sins and excesses of that people who came, in time, to deserve the denunciation recorded by Malachi. As individuals, Jacob and Esau were not the principal concern of the election, but the nations which they would produce. Despite that, the election had to begin with individuals. As R.L. Whiteside (A New Commentary on Paul’s Epistles to Saints in Rome, p. 199) noted, “The selection of Jacob was the selection of a people rather than an individual.” This harmonizes with Genesis 25:23, where the “manner of people” looms as God’s great consideration. If Esau had been made the patriarch instead of Jacob, Israel would never have continued long enough to deliver the Messiah to mankind; but the overruling providence of the all-wise God interposed to prevent such a thing from taking place. God’s choice did not determine the eternal destiny of either twin, their subsequent lives determining that; but God’s choice did determine which would be the patriarch of Israel. So, for these reasons we reject the idea that God ever chose any man to eternal life or death before he was born.