Romans - Lesson 38

Romans 9:1-5 

I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit— I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.

A. The Tension between God’s Promises and Israel’s Plight: 

For Romans 9-11, it is fairly easy and uncontroversial and so it should be easy to get through. (laughter)

Student:  
I can remember when I was a boy and reading, “All Israel shall be saved.” My eyes just about popped out of my head, thinking what in the world did I just read?!

Dr. Moo:  
There are several texts like that in here, I think. 

Just some general comments first. As you look back at the history and interpretation of Romans, Romans 9 through 11 have sort of been the abandoned stepchild sometimes, if I may use that illustration. Paul has put it here but we are not quite sure why. Really, we should just move right from Romans 8 to Romans 12 because we don’t quite understand why Romans 9-11 is here.  

Here’s where the kind of emphasis you have in the New Perspective makes a valid point. These chapters are here and Paul has spent a lot of time talking about Israel, its past and history and its future. Romans is not simply a letter about individuals becoming saved; it is also about God’s bigger plan and how that plan is working with Jew and Gentile together. We’ve seen that this has been a concern of Paul from the beginning of the letter, to show that the gospel Paul preaches fits with God’s Old Testament word and promises. For Paul, there can be no Good News if the message he is proclaiming about Christ doesn’t have continuity with the Old Testament. 

In my view, in Romans 9-11 Paul needs to reflect on this whole matter of the way salvation history has unfolded. Paul is sort of saying, here is how I understand what God has been doing and here is why I think the gospel and the situation that it has created fits with what God has been doing. Romans 9:1-5 kind of sets up the issue in which Paul contrasts the situation of Israel, the reality of Israel, with the promises and privileges that God gave to Israel. This launches Paul into the key issue here.

No one can read very many pages in the Old Testament without coming to realize that God made a lot of promises to Israel. When He talked about a Messiah to come, when He talked about blessing His people, when He talked about the pouring out of the Spirit, when He talked about things like being children of God and experiencing glory – those were promises given to Israel. 

In Paul’s day in the Roman Christian community however, we have a situation in which most of the people who are experiencing glory and becoming children of God and filled with the Spirit are Gentiles. So, how can this be fit together then? God promises Israel all of these blessings; now He turns around and He seems to give them to the Gentiles. Yes, there were some Jews but there were a lot of Gentiles. 

It is like, me as a father promising my son, Jonathan, a new bicycle for Christmas. Then Christmas morning comes along and no bicycle for Jonathan, but my son, David, has a bicycle. David is going to say to me, I’m glad you changed your mind on that, Dad, that you went back on your word. And Jonathan is going to say, Dad, how could you go back on your word like that?  How could you give what you promised to me to my miserable, no-good, younger brother? 

This is the kind of issue we have Paul facing here in Romans 9-11. Paul has to show how there is a correlation between what the Gospel has produced –  a lot of Gentiles being saved but not many Jews – and what the Old Testament teaches. 

Questions on the general framework of what Paul is doing here? Why we have Romans 9 through 11?

Along the way we are going to have to ask some questions; in my neck of the woods we say, how does this preach in Peoria? If Paul is talking about these issues of salvation history and Israel, how do we preach that in a way that is relevant and useful to people in our church?  We’re going to be addressing ourselves to that as we go, but we have to figure out what the text is doing first. 

B. Paul’s Concern for His People:

A couple of comments on the details of Romans 9:1-5.  Paul’s strong passion and concern about the matter comes across very clearly in verses 1-3. ‘I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish.’ He so far as to say, I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people.  

I think the NIV gets the sense of the Greek here pretty well. ‘I could wish’ that. There is a form of the verb used here in the Greek that has the sense of: I am not really wishing this because I know that it is inappropriate and not according to the will of God, but if it were possible, I might wish this. 

Who does this remind you of by the way? Moses, yes, it reminds us of Moses. Remember when Moses intervenes on behalf of the people of Israel. He tells God to take him but spare the people. Paul is sort of putting himself here almost in the shoes of Moses in the way he talks about his concern for the people. 

C. Greek Manuscripts and Their Writing Style: 

Paul goes on to talk about all these things God has given Israel, all the things He has promised Israel, culminating in the Messiah – look at the end of verse 5 – the Messiah, in the NIV, comma ‘who is God overall praised forever.’ Here is one of these verses that may call Jesus Christ God. I say may because the issue here is a matter of punctuation.

I say it may because the issue here is a matter of punctuation. Most of you will know that the vast majority of the Greek manuscripts we have contain no punctuation at all. They are written in capital letters without any breaks between the words. If you go to the British museum and look at Codex Alexandrinus for instance; you will see that every line has, I think, eleven letters with no breaks for words, far less any punctuation or verse numbers or titles or paragraph numbers, or anything of the sort. That is just the way they wrote manuscripts in those days. 

The point is then, and it’s a good thing to remember, all of the punctuation, verse numbers, the paragraphs, those are decisions that editors make. We on the translation committee spend a lot of time figuring out where to put paragraph breaks and how to punctuate, where to put a period or a comma. These are all decisions that translators have to make.

This is another place where it is really important to compare English translations to see where the differences are in the way those divisions are being made. There are a couple of Bibles now being published that I think are really useful that remove all verse numbers, paragraph breaks, titles, even chapter headings. Sometimes this is a nice Bible to have along with your other ones because when we pick up a Bible and open it up, immediate we are going to predisposed to read chapter 8 in isolation from chapter 9 but maybe that is not what Paul intended. Paul didn’t make that division; Paul didn’t put a big break in there. Human editors have done that t Was that the right choice or not. Sometimes it is good to cut through all of that and read the Bible more in the way God first gave it to His people, in a sense.

D. The Title of God Ascribed to Christ?:

The point then here is that there is considerable debate about whether after the word, Christ or Messiah, here, we put a period or a comma. Is Paul saying (NIV) “the human ancestry of the Messiah comma who is God over all forever praised?” Or is he saying, “the human ancestry of the Messiah period God who is over all, be forever praised.” In the former case, the word God is applied to Jesus; in the latter case, it is not. It is a matter of trying to figure out what Paul intended here and what the best sequence is and how to punctuate. There is a tendency in modern scholarship to go with the comma as we have in the NIV, but it certainly isn’t a unanimous decision.

I have provided on the PowerPoint the results of the most through discussion of this word God as a title of Christ in the New Testament. In Murry Harris’ book in which he draws these conclusions, he says in his estimation, the word ‘God’ is applied to Jesus 

• pretty certainly in John 1:1 and John 20:28, 
• very probably in the text we are looking at now Titus 2:13, Hebrews 1:8, and 2 Peter 2:1,
• probably in John 1:18. 

In each case, it is a matter of debate about the interpretation, the exegesis of the text. Harris’ book is certainly by far the most important on this particular issue of title ‘God.’ 

Obviously, our understanding of the deity of Christ rests on many other foundations. This isn’t the only evidence nor is it even perhaps the most important evidence. But, as far as it goes, here is the evidence that in my view Murry Harris, one of my own teachers and mentors, has done a great job in sorting it out for us. 

Student:  
This is a translational question: is it “God blessed for the ages,” Jesus Christ is “God blessed,” in the sense of the blessed God? 

Dr. Moo:  
There are several ways to translate, depending on how you punctuate. The most likely two options are what you have in the NIV the human ancestry of the Messiah or Christ comma who is God overall comma forever praised. That is the most likely way to take it if we have a comma here. You have Christ called God over all, and then it’s said that He is forever praised.

With a period, the idea would be God, who is over all. May He be forever praised. Assuming a verb there ascribing praise to God the Father obviously in that case.