God's Freedom to Choose

Romans 9 in Its Soteriological Context

We have already read our Scripture text for this morning, which is why I chose to do that. As you can see, it is a lengthy one. So if you'll turn with me, please, to Romans, Chapter 9. Romans, Chapters 8 and 9, technically.

Before we once again look to the Word of God, let us ask Him to bless our time together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, once again, as we handle Your Word, we would ask that You would protect us from distraction.

You would help us to hear, to listen, to understand. And Lord, protect us from the traditions of men, from the errors of our own thinking. Lord, may we truly hear You speak. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.

Some of you are going, well, James, we know you've been gone a lot recently, but Pastor Fry is preaching through Romans and was in this section not that long ago. Well, you would be correct that I am doing a lot of traveling and that I miss some of that.

But yes, I do understand the numbering system. And since we are where we are in Romans, I realize that we already went through this once. And so I'm not seeking to go, well, I just don't think Fry got it all.

I'm going to try to take another shot at it or anything along those lines at all. Some of you may, if you're new to our fellowship or haven't been here for all that many years, you may be not aware of the fact that I have a rather unusual career path and job description.

I hate when people ask me, so what do you do? Because my only response is, do you have half an hour? Because I get to do a lot of unusual things. And one of the things I get to do fairly frequently is engage in moderated public debate.

And I remember a number of years ago, I was preparing for a debate with John Dominick Crossan. And you all who were here at the time were extremely patient, for in Sunday school, you got to learn more about John Dominick Crossan's views than you ever, ever wanted to know.

And so that has happened a lot and very frequently. It's just a weakness of mine that if my mind is in a particular area, if I'm preparing for a particular subject, that it's easier to speak on that than to try to put all that aside and do something different.

Well, this coming weekend, this coming Friday, I'll be flying to Dallas, Texas. And the first thing I'll be doing is speaking at a worldview conference specifically on the subject of homosexuality. Well, you can breathe easily.

That's not in Romans 9 anywhere, so we don't have to worry about that. But on the following Monday, so a week from tomorrow, I will be debating a professor from Dallas Baptist University specifically on Romans chapter 9.

Now, how do you debate a chapter of the Bible? It's there. It's canonical. We both agree on that. We believe it's the word of God. So how do you debate it? Well, obviously we know that if you're talking about debating Romans chapter 9, what you're talking about debating is what does this text say?

Now, when Pastor Fry preached through Romans chapters 8 and 9, he did so over the course of many, many, many weeks. And so you would look at just a few verses at a time, sometimes just one verse, sometimes just a couple of phrases from one verse, as you're seeking to open up the entirety of the meaning and talk about the relationship of this particular text to other texts in Scripture, so on and so forth.

And that, of course, is a wonderful and appropriate way of looking at these texts. But on a very practical level, you and I, because of our shared commitment to the high doctrines of the Bible and allowing the Bible to speak for itself, and in fact allowing the Bible to preach some unpopular things, especially in a world where man's will and man's autonomy has become just the idol of our society.

I mean, just a couple of days ago, a couple of nights ago, you may have seen a man that I certainly knew when I was a young person, Bruce Jenner, one of the greatest athletes of all time. And I remember that gold medal, and I remember how excited everyone was in the United States, so on and so forth.

Well, the idea of human autonomy has allowed him to think that he somehow has the ability to define his own gender over and against God's creative decree. Well, that's the result of human autonomy in the secular world, but unfortunately, the concept of human autonomy is very central in the religious world as well.

And when the Bible speaks of God's autonomy versus man's autonomy, well, there are a lot of people that don't like that. And so when we seek to speak concerning what we believe to others, they find especially this emphasis, where we start with God, and we start with his character, and we start with his attributes, and we start with his purposes.

And that's central, and then we read down from that, and man is his creature, and so we have to look at man as the creature of God, but we start with God. We are theocentric in our reasoning, in our theology, in our reading of Scripture.

We start with God. We do not start with man. Some people would say, you can't do that. And we would say, well, God has spoken, and as he has spoken, he has revealed himself, and that is the most central aspect.

You do not start with man and reason out from man to try to come to conclusions about God. That would be backwards. And as we engage in conversation with others, they will find our position to be rather unusual.

And they may ask us, well, why do you believe these things? And many of you will give testimony that it was the careful study and listening to what Paul says in Romans chapter 9 that was sort of the final straw, the straw that broke the camel's back and convinced you that, yes, indeed, salvation is of the Lord.

Salvation is fully within his hand, and he has the right to use me as his creature in any way he sees fit. But there are many people, obviously, we all know, that do not agree on that subject. And so when we have opportunity of speaking, we don't have multiple weeks of meetings to get to go slowly through everything.

Sometimes we only have a few moments. I have often had the situation, given the amount of traveling that I do, of engaging in conversation with someone in the seat next to me. Now, I'm not one of those jabberboxes.

Don't get me wrong. I would much rather sleep than anything else. But there are times when I've got my Bible out or I've got a Greek text out or a Koran out. That's always a real big hit on an airplane.

And a conversation will begin. And you only have a certain amount of time. Unless you're flying to South Africa. Then you've got plenty of time. But normally there's a time limitation involved. And so we have to be able to sort of do a flyover, but do it accurately and do it in a proper fashion.

And so here's the plan for today. This morning I want to sort of give you an idea of what I'm going to say. I only have 20 minutes in the debate to make the positive presentation. So I've got about twice that this morning.

And so I won't have to talk as fast. And I'll be able to say a little bit more. But how might we look at Romans 8 and 9 and summarize that message? If you're talking to someone and you can tell they have a respect for and a belief in the Word of God, there are certain places that we are naturally attracted to to be able to sit down with someone and say, well, reason with me.

Listen to what the scriptures say here. Let's really enter into this text. Romans 8 and 9 would be one, obviously. John chapters 6 and 10 would be another text we might want to be thinking about. Obviously Ephesians chapter 1.

These are texts that come to our mind. But how might we be able to communicate this text rather than just simply reading it? How might we be able to explain it to someone, giving the background, and most importantly, showing the consistency of the presentation as we read it on the page of scripture?

Because in my experience, that is what truly causes the child of God to stop and go, alright, I need to take seriously what the Word of God is saying here. I need to deal with what is being said here in the pages of scripture.

How would we go about doing that? Then this evening, what I would like to do is to deal with the objections that people raise to the reading that I will provide this morning. The many different kinds and avenues of trying to get around, in essence, obviously that's my conclusion, get around the clarity of the presentation of this text of scripture.

Now we began back in Romans chapter 8, because as you all know, or certainly should know, chapter and verse divisions came long, long, long, long, long after the time that the Bible was written. And most of the time, they sort of do follow natural breaks of thought, but other times they introduce divisions that we really shouldn't necessarily be seeing in the text.

And so I start at verse 28, obviously verse 28 is related to what came before it, so on and so forth, we have to start somewhere. But we recognize, and I don't have time today to spend a lot of time on it, but I think it is important to establish the fact that Romans chapter 9 does not just pop out of nowhere, and that the context of Romans chapter 9 is distinctly soteriological.

What do I mean by that? Well, soteriology is the study of the doctrine of salvation. Soter is a savior. Soteros is that Jesus is our savior. That's a term that's frequently used, especially in the pastoral epistles, Titus and places like that.

And so soteriology is the study of God's work of salvation. It's not how man saves himself. It's not how God provides salvation. It is God's action of saving his people. And so to establish that, we begin in Romans chapter 8, and we have what is known in verses 28 through 30 as the golden chain of redemption.

And obviously we could spend a tremendous amount of time on that, but you need what you need to focus on. I'm going to hit the high points, the things that you want to communicate to somebody else to make sure that they have a foundation upon which to hear what is being said in chapter 9 itself.

And so when you consider the fact that many Christians see Romans 8 as the pinnacle of Christian revelation, especially as you get toward the end of the chapter. You know, who will separate us from the love of God?

There is this tremendous, it's almost like Handel's Hallelujah Chorus in scriptural form. When you consider what's being said here, it truly is dealing with tremendous themes, but it does so in the sense of what God is accomplishing.

And so you have that golden chain, and God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God. And then he says, to those who are called according to his purpose. And you might want to say to someone, we need to be very careful that we listen to the audience and that we listen to the direct objects of verbs.

Now you might not want to say that, because unfortunately in our day, there may be a lot of people who don't know what a direct object of a verb is. I'm old enough that I had some really strict, very strict, I'll stop with the nodding of the head already, some very strict English teachers.

And they made sure that we understood what verbs were and what direct objects were and indirect objects and all the rest of that fun stuff when it comes to English grammar. And so you might turn folks off when you talk about the subject of direct objects, but in reality it's very important.

Because when we look at what we have here in Romans chapter 8 in the golden chain, God is the one who is acting and we need to see who is being acted upon. What is the direct object of his actions? And so, for example, we have this people that are mentioned here.

He mentions those who are called according to his purpose. There's a specific people here. There's a specific audience. This isn't just some vague type of, well, whoever wants to get involved. God is the one who calls these people according to his purpose.

And then he says, for those whom he foreknew. And I don't know if you want to get into the discussion, but it will almost always end up coming up. Please notice something. There is a difference between foreknowledge and foreknowing.

Foreknowledge is a noun. It's something that God possesses. Foreknowing is a verb. It is something that God does. And it has a direct object. For those whom he foreknew. And automatically, people start going, oh, that just means God looks down the corridors of time and sees what men are going to do.

But the problem is that's not what the term means. And if you have time to go back in the Old Testament and talk about what the term to know means, Adam knew Eve. That does not mean that he simply got her business card and her phone number and her address and her email address and so on, friended her on Facebook, that kind of thing.

When Adam knew Eve, the result was children. And so this is an intimate knowledge. This is not merely intellectual recognition of the existence of Eve. And there's other places in the Old Testament where God knew Israel.

Knew it alone. And in fact, it says, of all the nations, you alone have I known so strong is the concept of choosing to enter into relationship there that some translations don't even bother using the word knew.

They use the term chose. He chose Israel to enter into relationship with them. And this term to foreknow, whatever it means, it has to be an action on God's part and it has a direct object. There's a certain people, those who are called in accordance with purpose, God foreknew them.

He chose to enter into intimate relationship with them. And as a result, those whom he foreknew, it says he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his sons that he would be the firstborn among many brethren.

So here you have that term predestination. Those whom he foreknows, he predestines. And he predestines them for a purpose. To be conformed to the image of his son. Well, what does that involve? There would be some who would say, all predestination is is that everyone who believes in Jesus will be conformed to the image of his son.

It's impersonal. It's just an overall choice that if you believe, you will be conformed. But that's not what it says. It says he foreknew them and he predestined them for a purpose and that is that they would be conformed to the image of his son.

What is involved in being conformed? The image of Christ. Well, the entirety of the concept of salvation is involved. Everything is involved. I have to be forgiven of my sins. I have to be adopted in the family of God.

I have to have that heart of stone taken out and a heart of flesh placed in. I have to be made a new creature in Christ. It is all right there. The purpose of God is that when he saves someone, he saves them for a purpose and it is according to his purpose at the end of verse 28.

And so you have predestined, those whom he predestined, then he called. This is not just some vague calling. This is a specific calling because it is the same group that is predestined who is also called.

We call this the effectual call. That is God, by his Spirit, draws his people unto himself. Those whom he called, he also justified. If justification is not a soteriological term, I don't know what it is.

I mean, we are in the book of Romans, are we not? Are we in the book that chapters 3 and 4, chapter 5 begins, justification by faith. This is all about how it is that we have peace with God and that proper relationship with him.

And those whom he justified, he also glorified. That is the final conclusion that is going to be ours. It is a certain fact because God is working out his purpose. Here you have the golden chain. And then you have the courtroom.

The courtroom, beginning in verse 31. What then shall we say these things if God is for us? Who is against us? Who is the us? The same audience is all the way through here from beginning to end. He who did not spare his own son but delivered him over for us all.

And who is the us all? It goes back to verse 28. Those who were called to his purpose, foreknew, predestined, justified, glorified, etc., etc. If God is for us, who is against us, he delivered him over for us all.

How will he not also with him, with Christ, freely give us all things? And then, if you want to have the specific identification made then in verse 33, we are told, who will bring a charge against the elect of God, against God's elect people?

So who is this people? The elect of God. You may not like the term. You may not like the phrase. It's right there. That's Paul's own terminology. He was not embarrassed to utilize that terminology. And so he asks the question.

He uses law court language. Who will bring a charge? Who is it who will file charges against God's elect because God is the one who is the justifier. God is the justifying God. He is the one who has declared them to be innocent in his sight.

So if the judge has already rendered the verdict in the person of Jesus Christ, who will bring a charge in light of the fact that the judge has already rendered the verdict of innocent based upon the work of Christ?

And even more than that, when you look at verse 34, who is the one who will bring a charge of condemnation? Who is the one who will condemn the elect of God? Christ Jesus, the one who died, rather who was raised again, who is the right hand of God.

What is he doing? He is interceding in behalf of us. He is our intercessor. He intercedes for us. So how can anyone bring a charge of condemnation against the elect of God in light of the fact that the Father has declared us innocent?

The Son in our place stands before the Father. His finished work, this brings back a lot of the images that we had in Hebrews 7 and 9 and 10 and so on and so forth. The same idea, the finished work of Christ, our union with Him, standing in the presence of God.

Therefore, how on earth could anyone bring a charge of condemnation against the elect of God? And so that then is what brings up this entire section of praise that begins in verse 35. Who will separate us in love of Christ?

And we don't have time to go through all of these things, but the point is that when we get to the end of chapter 8, what prompts the questions and what prompts the transition of topic into chapter 9 is this tremendous work of salvation itself.

This is a soteriological passage, but here's, and this is where it's so important. I have found this to be extremely useful down through, well, I guess I can use terms like I used to say years. Now I can talk about decades.

Down through the decades and talking to people about this. When you establish the context of a particular passage of Scripture, it makes all the difference in the world. And my dear synergistic friends, my dear Arminian friends, my dear friends who like to call themselves biblicists or whatever else, it is almost painful to listen to them try to remove these texts from being distinctly soteriological and to try to find some way of getting around what is being said in these texts.

It really is painful. When we establish the context, we give ourselves a basis for a meaningful presentation. And how do we do so? Well, when we get into chapter 9, what takes place here? Well, the objection obviously came to the Apostle Paul over and over and over again.

Okay, Paul, that sounds wonderful. Oh, that sounds great. You're talking about all this stuff that God has done. Oh, that just sounds fantastic. There's just one little problem, Paul. You are a minority of the Jewish people who believe this.

You represent a tiny little group. The majority, I mean, does Gamaliel believe this? Let's look at the great leaders, the great rabbis in Jerusalem who know the law backwards and forwards. They don't believe this.

They're not jumping on board with you. Yeah, there's been a few priests over here. But look, most of the people who are giving you problems are Jews. So, Paul, if this is what God has always intended to do, if this is the fulfillment of all of these promises, what gives?

How come the majority of the Jewish people reject the message that you're presenting? And so Paul begins in those first five verses of chapter 9 to say, you need to understand, I love my kinsmen according to the flesh.

I am not lying despite the harsh things I've had to say about my enemies amongst the Jewish people. I could wish myself to be accursed, to be anathetized, separated from God if it would just result in their salvation.

I mean, the privileges that they have. Consider the privileges. To whom belongs the adoption of sons and the glory and the covenants and giving the law and the term that's used here is the highest form of worship.

Latrewell, the temple worship, and so on and so forth. And they're the ones that receive the promises. And theirs are the fathers. And in fact, the greatest privilege that is theirs is that from whom is the Christ according to the flesh who is God over all, blessed forever.

I mean, the Son entered into human experience through the lineage of the people of Israel. The Messiah came from them. And what privileges are theirs? But that then leads to what I believe to be the very key issue.

If you do not start here, you will never make heads or tails out of what the rest of chapter 9 is about. And what you'll discover, just as with John chapter 6 or any of the other texts, our non-reformed friends, what they do is they're not going to be able to walk straight through this text.

They cannot follow the author. They have to anticipate what he's going to say, come up with some other kind of concept, try to read it in, maybe jump to something later on, then read it back into it. They cannot just walk through the text with the author.

Because if you start with verse 6, the rest of the chapter is going to make perfect sense. If you try to jump into the rest of the chapter and say, well, this came from the Old Testament here and that came from that, and so I'm going to set up all these contexts and then come back to verse 6, you're going to end up with a real mess on your hands.

But it is not as though the Word of God has failed. See, Paul knew. Paul knew what the objections were. He had heard them over and over and over again. It is not as though the Word of God has failed. He had heard that in public debate, I bet you in Ephesus and places like that.

He had heard rabbis saying, Paul, you're saying God's Word has failed. You're saying the promises have been abrogated. He says, no. You need to understand something. They are not all Israel who are from Israel.

It's literally, for not all the ones from Israel, these are Israel. Now, you can put the term descendant in there if you wish. For they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel, nor are they all children because they are Abraham's descendants, but through Isaac your descendants will be named.

So, what is the point? I mean, if you ignore Paul's own setting up of what he's going to illustrate, are you really, really trying to understand him? Are you really trying to understand what he's communicating?

Here's the question. What does he mean when he says, they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel? Well, this is something that the objector, it's always good to know what the objector is objecting to, this is something the objector would have had a hard time arguing with because the entire history of Israel, as Paul is going to demonstrate, had shown us the reality that just being a part of the direct lineage, just being able to trace something back to Abraham was not enough.

There were many times where God said, the promise goes this way, not that way. And he's going to give illustrations. And what's he illustrating? That God has the right to determine freely by His own purposes, for His own glory, exactly how His promise is going to be fulfilled.

Well, what promise? Well, there are many people who say, well, this isn't just about salvation. This is about much more than that. Well, that's true. It isn't just about salvation. It is about much more than that.

But it includes salvation. That's where our friends basically jump off the ship and try to say, this has nothing to do with salvation. It has nothing to do with salvation. It has to do only with Israel being called to bring God's message to the nations and positions of service and so on and so forth.

But the problem is that ignores the reality that to be used of God in that way, to have the proper relationship with Him, well, what did David? David's heart had to be changed. There had to be that relationship with God.

In fact, if you remember, what do you get right at the end of this chapter but that same terminology used over and over again by the prophets? The remnant. The remnant. The remnant. Notice, for example, in verse 27, Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, though the number of the sons of Israel be like the sand of the sea, it is what?

The remnant that will be saved. God had always had His elect people. He always had that remnant. Even in the darkest days of Israel where apostasy was everywhere, He had His remnant. And it was a remnant, as He will remind us in chapter 11, by grace.

God was accomplishing His purpose. And so what is the question that is being answered by the apostle here? The question is, Paul, why are there so many Jews that say no to Jesus as Messiah? Does that not mean that the Word of God has failed?

Are you not substantively changing the promises that God made to Israel? And Paul's answer is going to be God has always been free. The history of Israel shows this. And this willingness of God to save that remnant, to draw them unto Himself, to justify them, to adopt them, to forgive them.

This is all satirological language. To have mercy upon whom He has mercy and to harden whom He hardens. The history of Israel itself shows that God has always operated in this way. Therefore, you have no stance.

You have no place to stand to object to the fact that God has chosen to now continue to save that remnant, but He has now brought that entire message to the whole world, Jews and Gentiles alike. And the illustrations that come after this fulfill that specific objection and fulfill Paul's purpose in answering it.

If you don't start there, then you're going to end up with all sorts of confusing stuff about, well, this is down Malachi someplace and this is over here and this is about Israel and that's about Egypt and you're just left completely lost as to what Paul's point is.

That is why some of you have read a book that I wrote many years ago, many years ago now, called The Potter's Freedom. And one of the amazing things that I was responding to, Dr. Norman Geisler's book, Chosen but Free, and one of the amazing things was there was never a single place where Dr. Geisler went through Romans chapter 9 to explain what it said.

He would address portions of Romans 9 under all sorts of different topics. But he could never walk right through the text and what he would end up saying about one portion would be contradictory to what he said about another portion.

So he chopped Romans 9 up and would address it not as one complete argument as Paul presents it, but as bits and pieces. That obviously is a clear demonstration, a clear indication, I'm sorry, of eisegesis, reading something into the text that is not there itself.

So what's the first illustration he gives? How do you demonstrate that they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel? Nor are they all children because they're Abraham's descendants? Well, what's the first promise?

Through Isaac, your descendants will be named. Through Isaac, your descendants will be called. Verse 7. And so we know that there was another possible line but it's rejected. It's not going to be Ishmael, despite what all the Muslims say today.

God has the right to say Isaac. Was it because Isaac did something good in God's sight? Was it because Isaac was worthy? Because Isaac made himself better than Ishmael or something like that? No. Neither the Old Testament text nor anything else would indicate to us it is God's freedom to have the line of promise go through Isaac and not through Ishmael.

So notice the explanation. And notice how many times the Old Testament is quoted in this text. It's helpful if you have a translation that indicates that in some fashion. But then what you're going to be given over and over again are apostolic interpretations of these Old Testament texts.

So, how does Paul interpret? Through Isaac, your descendants will be named. That is, verse 8, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of promise are regarded as descendants.

He knows there are other children of the flesh. But there is this promise. And God is in charge of determining to whom that promise is given and to whom it is not. And fundamentally, what people don't like about Romans 9 is God gets to make that decision, not man.

God makes that decision, not man. And that is what causes man to rebel and to find ways around this. For this is the word of promise, verse 9, at this time I will come and Sarah will have a son. So, God had said, sure, you've already got Ishmael, but that wasn't my purpose.

That's not my plan. My purpose is going to stand, and when I return, Sarah is going to have a son. It was a miracle. It took a miracle, but God accomplished it, because God can do things like that. But that's not the only illustration he gives.

And not only this, verse 10, but there is Rebecca also. When she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac, for though the twins were not yet born. It's almost difficult to translate this, because Paul is bending over backwards to make sure that we understand what it is he's communicating here.

Before the twins were born, and before they had done anything good or bad, in order that, and then you have God's purpose brought out here, in order that God's purpose according to His choice, His choice, His will, not man's, but God's, according to His purpose might stand, or remain, or abide, and then I guess he figured I really need to nail this down, because man will always find a way around it.

Not from works, but from the calling one. The calling one, that's the same root that we have in the term elect. The elect of God. That's the same root that we have in those whom He called. So he sets up a complete disjunction.

It's not by what they did. God isn't going, oh, you know, Jacob, I just really like that guy. I don't like macho men like Esau. I don't like hairy hunters, and good sportsmen. I like accountant types.

That seems to be like what he was like. So I'm against that, and I'm just going to... It had nothing to do with them. It had nothing to do at all with what they did. It was not from works. Instead, it's from the one...

It wasn't from them. It was from God. If you want the answer to the question why the one over the other, the answer is in God, not in them. Not because of works, because of Him who calls. It was said to her before they came along, the older will serve the younger, just as it's written, Jacob I love, but Esau I hated.

Now, immediately, people are going to object and say, well, wait a minute, wait a minute, what you have in verse 13, and everybody can look at, that's from Malachi 1, that's about nations, and that means Paul's argument goes out the window.

But if you allow the apostle to determine what these texts mean, if you allow the apostle to interpret his own meaning, what is he saying? God had the freedom to choose Jacob over Esau. And I've said it many times before.

I'm going to say it again now. You've heard it before. I know it's nothing new, but I hope you have heard it with the fullness of your heart. If someone can read verse 13, and all the stuff we'll talk about tonight, but, well, you know, when you use hatred and love, that's just to choose someone over someone else.

It doesn't have anything to do with hatred. Look, I don't have any problem with the fact that when Jesus said, you know, hate your father and mother, he didn't actually mean that you were to walk up to your father and mother and slap them around and call them names and so on and so forth.

I understand that. But all of that is just a way to get around one amazing reality. And that is, I firmly believe that if what bothers you about verse 13 is Esau I hated, you don't know what you need to know biblically about the sin of man.