Romans - Lesson 40

Romans 9:30-31

What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal.

A. Thinking about Election: 

Let’s move on to the second stage of Paul’s argument; we will rehearse a little bit this matter of election. So, how do we think about election? 

One option is associated particularly with the theology of Karl Barth who says the elect one is Christ. If you are familiar at all with the theology of Karl Barth you know that he puts all this emphasis on Christ, that everything is focused on Christ. So, for Barth he thinks there is language in the New Testament that suggests that Christ is the elect one so that it is when we believe we become part of Christ and so we are elect. That is Barth’s way of doing it.

This is the traditional Calvinist view: God chooses, and so we believe. 

Here is the traditional Armenian view: God chooses in response to our belief. (I’m generalizing but I think it’s fair.) 

The other option I want to throw out here is related to the transition we are making now from Romans 9 into Romans 10, is that you have God electing us to be a member of the people of God. You have we as humans responding in faith that Paul says both without resolving them. 

It is an interesting transition from Romans 9 to 10. In Romans 9, you have all this emphasis where God chooses; God selects; He is the one who makes people anyway He wants; He has the freedom to do anything He wants to do; He is God. 

Then you come to Romans 9:30 and following; this whole passage is about why is Israel not saved? It is because Israel failed to believe, because Israel was blind, because Israel was ignorant, because Israel was disobedient. 

It is almost as if Paul gives us two somewhat contradictory answers to his question within two chapters. Why aren’t more Jews in Paul’s day believing? because God didn’t choose them – Romans 9. Why aren’t more Jews in Paul’s day believing? Because they have failed themselves culpably to respond to what God was doing in Christ.

There are those then who say I am neither Calvinist nor Armenian; I am not some hybrid of the two; “Calmenianism” is an impossible mixture. But rather to go back to the illustration we had the other day of the divine agency and human agency issue, some texts of Scripture say it’s God who has done it, others say it is humans who are responsible. Both are there; we can’t resolve them. So, this is another option we have to have on the table. 

Student: 
What do you call that view? The Compatibility view?

Dr. Moo: 
It is related to this. Compatibilism is a broader theological, philosophical approach to things that says full divine sovereignty is compatible with complete human responsibility. This is usually the way it is framed. Usually when we hear the phrase “compatibilism” that is what is intended.  

I think this is correct; you can’t read scripture for very long before you see page after page that God does it, He is control, He is in charge, He is sovereign, He determines the way things are. And yet throughout scripture it is equally obvious that humans are responsible, we choose and our choices matter. We are responsible for the choices, and rightly condemned for our wrong choices. 

So, compatibilism is an attempt at the more philosophical level to say that these two do work together. Some of that is above my paygrade and I’m not quite sure I follow it all but people I respect hold that view.

B. The Jews Failed to Respond to What Jesus Offered: 

Romans 9:30 – 10:21 is the next section. This is about Israel’s responsibility for her fall. Paul is giving us successive responses to the problem he has created. Why have so many people of Israel – why are so many Jews not becoming part of the new people of God if this is the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel? How do we explain this? Paul’s second answer is: Jews have themselves failed to respond to God’s grace in Christ. Paul develops this now as we’re going to see in this section. 

In 9:30 – 10:8 is characterized especially by three contrasts between righteousness related to law and the righteousness related to faith. Here Paul comes back and begins using some of the language he used earlier in Romans. If you try to follow what Paul is doing here and pay careful attention to the language he is using, as we saw in Romans 3 and Romans 4, righteousness, faith, law – these are words that are mentioned again and again. 

We haven’t heard those words very much since then; Paul kind of reintroduces them in the discussion as a way of explaining the situation of Israel in his day. Verse 30, ‘What shall we say? The Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have obtained it; a righteousness that is by faith, but the people of Israel who pursued the law as a way of righteousness have not obtained their goal. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works.’ 

On the one hand, Paul reflecting on the situation of his day in the context of the Roman Christian church as well. Here we have these Gentiles who were not pursuing a relationship with God because they didn’t know about God, they didn’t even know about the God of the Bible. Here they have attained this righteous status that is by faith. But in contrast to the Gentiles is the people of Israel. They pursued the law as a way of righteousness but did not attain it.

C. The Law Was Not a Means to Righteousness: 

Now, do you see the interesting shift that Paul makes here? You see how he disrupts the parallelism between the two statements. Where does he do that?

Student: 
By introducing Israel?

Dr. Moo: 
No. What did the Gentiles pursue? 

Student: 
They didn’t pursue righteousness, yet Israel did. The Gentiles got it, but they did not pursue it.

Dr. Moo: 
What did Paul say Israel was pursuing? They were pursuing the law rather than righteousness. You’d expect Paul to say Israel (Gentiles) didn’t pursue righteousness but found it; Israel was pursuing righteousness but didn’t find it. That is what you would expect him to say. But instead, he says the law of righteousness. He introduces the law into it again, which by this point should be no surprise to us. Again and again, Paul is bringing in the issue of the law.

This is a controversial verse. I’d be glad to have you challenge me, ask me questions about it. In my view, what Paul is trying to say, Israel’s problem was that she became focused on the law as a means of righteousness and therefore didn’t achieve the righteousness God had planned for her. Rather than submitting to God’s righteousness in Christ (language that Paul is going to use in a moment), Israel focused so much on the law, that Israel missed the righteousness. Narrowly insisting that any righteousness had to come in and through the law. This was their absolute unchallenged framework.

So, in a sense, the law became their God; the law became elevated among the Jews to such a position that it was unassailable, it was unquestioned. And by focusing so much on the law, Israel missed righteousness and did not enter into the right relationship with God that He was making available by a simple act of faith. 

So, in this case ignorance is bliss. The Gentiles did not have the same kind of issues that Israel had because the Gentiles didn’t have all of that history. They didn’t have this fixation on the law. They just heard Christ being proclaimed and didn’t have any categories in their background and responded in faith, simple basic faith. But Israel had all this baggage that kept the Jews, again and again, from responding in the right way. 

A lot of us have had that experience. We would much rather evangelize an out-and-out heathen who has never heard of Christ than someone who has been raised in a certain church tradition which absolutely blocks their ability to truly understand the Gospel, or at least creates interference with their fair and genuine hearing of the Gospel. That seems to be what Paul is saying about the situation here with Israel.

Student: 
I think that makes sense in terms of living the life that we were talking about, “I don’t know a lot about the doctrine you’re talking about but all I know is let’s go out and help the poor.” I think we see that even now in terms of how much time is spent on strong legalistic minds. A lot of energy is spent on that. A parallel in that.

D. Not Getting Bogged Down with Theological Baggage: 

Sometimes the naiveté of the very young believer who doesn’t have all the baggage of the theological discussions and church issues in their background. It can be very refreshing. This is kind of the way the Gentiles often responded with the preaching of the Gospel, whereas, the Jews were blocked by this stuff they had learned, the framework they had established which they could not think outside of. There were boxes they had built for themselves that prevented them from seeing the truth of the gospel. 

I think here of the great biblical illustration of the beautiful irony in the story of the man born blind that Jesus heals in John 9. This guy whom Jesus heals comes before the Jewish religious leaders and basically, they tell him that he can’t see because the guy you claimed healed you doesn’t fit our pattern. Jesus didn’t qualify to be an effective and accurate teacher of Israel. So, you can’t see. 

This poor guy who was born blind, he is no great theologian or philosopher, just keeps saying that he doesn’t understand all the theology they were talking about, but all he knew was - this morning I couldn’t see and now I can see, and that I am sure about. This is an illustration of how the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day just could not accommodate Him. Their theology just would not allow someone like Jesus who was fast and loose to the Sabbath to have the miraculous power to heal somebody like that.  Paul is talking about the same issue in this context. 

E. Challenging Your Presuppositions and Narrowness: 

Student: 
Do you have any practical advice to keep us from blinding presuppositions?  Seriously, I fear that – that I’m really not giving this text it’s justice because of my own presuppositions.

Dr. Moo: 
I think study and prayer, and I don’t think those are antithetical.  Sometimes I hear: “all your study, where is that really going? It’s not really just seeking God’s Spirit by prayer to understand the text.”  I don’t see any way to separate those two in my own experience. It is study guided by, informed by, inspired by the Spirit that I claim in prayer. 

So, I think there, if we are open to God’s Word, if we are going to be the kind of people who to say not “I’m going to read this to confirm what I believe,” but, “let me pray that God would teach me from this Word; let me try my best to really be open to what He is saying.” If you’d only do that, you’d all be Calvinists, too.” (laughter)

Student: 
I was going to come at the from the other way!  How can we convict the Calvinists with their staunch presuppositions…

Dr. Moo: 
With the truth. (laughter)  

I think the other thing that helps here in a very practical way is either to find fellow clergy, or fellow people who are fairly theologically astute, who differ from you, to get engaged in conversation with.  In my experience, I have learned a lot more about the strengths and weaknesses of Calvinism and Armenianism by sitting in the White Horse Inn at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School as a student, debating with my Armenian friends for hours. The problem a lot of us face is that we get very closed in with our own denominational structures, we spend all our time with people that we already agree with. Let’s face it we don’t have time to do any more than that. I realize that time is the tyrant here. But to the degree that you can cultivate and spend time together …

That is one of the benefits of a program like you are in here. Very similar with the DMin (Doctor of Ministry) program I’ve taught in Trinity for many years.  You get Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Bible Church folks all thrown into the same class and suddenly they begin talking with each other. Sometimes, you can almost see lights going on when suddenly a Lutheran will turn to a Baptist and say, you are not as bad as I thought. 

I think that is a healthy way to help us identify where some of our narrowness might be. I make assumptions about this text that I didn’t even realize I was making now that I hear someone else talking about it.   

If we can’t do that personally which I think is by far the best thing, then the other thing that you can do is to read books that are deliberately not in our own tradition to make us think. Find good books. If I’m preaching through Romans, I’m going to find a good commentary from my denomination and then I’m going to find a commentary that is from someone completely off the wall, like Moo or somebody, and read them too. That is going to help my narrowness perhaps in thinking about the text only in one way.  

I personally put no limits on what I read. I read out and out atheists, I read Bart Ehrman, people who are antithetical to the faith, who are atheists, who hate Christianity. I read them. Partly because I want to be able to respond to them, of course, because I know other people are reading them. That’s why you might want to read a Brian MacLaren because you might have someone in your church who has read Brian McLaren.  

There are people I read that I don’t like to read because I get so irritated, I lose my sanctification. I won’t even mention a couple of people for whom that is true for me, but sometimes I feel I have got to do it because I have people in my Sunday school class who ask – how about what Brian McLaren says? If I am going to respond to Brian McLaren, I have to take the ownership to have read him, not just do it second-hand or hear a rumor about him because that’s not fair.  

In working on the commentary on Romans, I came to Romans 9. I remember this very particularly. I talked earlier about this view on corporate election about God working in history, not so much in terms of our individual salvation. That was a view I was unfamiliar with; I had an immediate reaction against it. I remember reading and re-reading and re-reading Charles Cranfield’s commentary that takes that view just to where I could get to the point of really understanding what he was saying. I was trying to get my prejudices out of the way a little bit so I could be fair in hearing what he was saying and then evaluate it against the text. It took me quite a while to do that. I realize for most of us, we don’t have the luxury of all that time. I’m in a different situation than most of you.

But I think there are ways, wherever you are in ministry, that you can try to keep yourself from becoming narrow in that way. Not that you should give up your denominational distinctives or theological perspectives that you have learned and found to be faithful to scripture over the years. Just know what other people are saying, trying to look at the bigger world out there sometimes.