The Significance of Terms

I am sure we all recognize the fact that in order to [get] a clear understanding of any letter or book of the Bible it is necessary for us to know something of the relative history of the time and of the circumstances under which the particular book or letter was written. Our regard for such things must sometimes reach even to the particular significance of words as they are used by the various writers. Because a word often occurs in the Bible is no reason for its having everywhere the same identical meaning. Different writers often use the same term with a different connotation. For instance:

“Flesh,” a favorite term with Paul, commonly has with him an ethical significance it seldom has in any other writer.

“Life,” in John, has generally a meaning entirely different from what the same word has when we meet with it in Genesis, or even in any of the other three Gospels.

“Know” and “knowledge,” occurring so often in John’s writings, and especially in his first epistle, have an emphasis and peculiar significance found nowhere else in the Bible, due entirely to the errors of incipient Gnosticism and Doceticism which he was combating.

The Gnostics were those who said they knew the truth and knowing it were free. They had no sin. The essential evil of matter, as they regarded it, precluded the possibility of holiness in it, of course. So the soul was pure because it was spirit, but the body followed its own nature. They gloried in a salvation by gnosis (knowledge) and were careless about their lives. They held that their spiritual natures could not become morally polluted, whatever their conduct might be, as sin inhered only in matter. Hence the strong words John uses about sin, and about true knowledge in its relation to the practice of righteousness. “He that saith I know him and keepeth not his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” “He that saith he abideth in him, ought himself also to walk even as he walked.” “Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not; whosoever sinneth (practices sin) hath not seen him, neither hath known him.”

The Docetics with the same idea of the essential evil of matter as the Gnostics had, reduced the incarnation to a mere appearance of a union between God and man. Hence John’s emphasis upon the physical reality of the incarnation, a point that the other writers do not see any need of stressing. “That which we have heard,” says he, “that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld and our hands handled, … that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you also.” The Docetics among the Christians were saying that Christ acted and suffered only in appearance. Hence John in his Gospel describes the spear thrust, which none of the other evangelists even mentions. It’s value as evidence was only recognized with the rise of heresy.

Then again, take the term “faith.” In Paul’s writings, as a rule, this word has a peculiarly strong ethical and spiritual significance, seldom found to the same extent elsewhere. He regards faith more as a moral act, than as a creedal requirement, more as a believing “unto righteousness” realized here and now, more as a loving adhesion of the soul to the living Christ, than as a supporting principle enabling us to persevere in hope and well-doing as did the patriarchs of old, —a principle giving us as it did them the assurance of things yet to be. This last, you will have noticed, is the chief meaning “faith” has throughout the Epistle to the Hebrews. The term “faith” in that letter has about the same significance as “hope” in Romans.

Romans and Hebrews Compared

In all the letters that bear Paul’s name “faith” joins the believer to Christ, makes him a partaker of his Spirit (Rom. 8:9), makes him one with the Lord—a member in his very body, so vivid is the metaphor because so close is the union felt to exist. In Hebrews, on the other hand, the ruling conception is of a Christ in heaven, a Christ external to the believer and the church, —a Christ ‘passed into the heavens and seated on the right hand of the Majesty on high,’ the ‘high priest forever, entered within the veil.’ It is the conception of Bunyan’s Pilgrim Progress and of the poet who sang,

“Jesus, our all, to heaven is gone,

He whom we fix our hopes upon.

His track we see and we’ll pursue

The narrow way till him we view.”

This may be Bunyan’s Pilgrim but it is not Paul’s gospel. It is Jesus as example, but not Jesus as life.

Again, the characteristic phrase, “in Christ,” which is everywhere met with in Paul, occurs nowhere in Hebrews; and as for, “Christ in us,” an indwelling Christ, —you would find it hard, to extract such a doctrine from that epistle, albeit Hebrews is one of the most striking and important books of the New Testament.

I mention these points because they vividly illustrate the importance of our studying the different books in the light of the varying circumstances and conceptions of their different authors. Let us take one more enlightening instance.

The Epistle to the Hebrews, we know, deals throughout with the experience of salvation from the standpoint of the divine worship and the Jewish ritual and, hence the writer calls it sanctification, for according to the teachings of the Law and, in fact, of all religions, only the “sanctified” can approach the altar or “draw near” to God. Romans, on the other hand, deals with the same experience of salvation but from the standpoint of the divine righteousness and law, and hence calls it justification. A careful study of the two epistles with mind released from predeterminations will show that both are referring to the same thing, though the terms and viewpoint are so different. This, of course, does not mean that justification and sanctification in the sense we use the terms, or in the sense they are used elsewhere in Scripture, are the same thing or refer to but one act or work of God’s free grace. Not at all. In only shows that these two terms are used differently by different writers.

These clear instances of difference, which might easily be multiplied, only go to show the importance of the suggestion made in the last lecture, that it is a risky thing to use the Bible as though it were only a dictionary of proof texts. It is that in some respects, but it is much more. It is a divine library of authors, whose works need to be studied by themselves and each in the light of its own viewpoint.

If, then, we do not have careful regard to the usage of the different writers we will surely go astray in our exegesis and among enlightened people our arguments will often provoke a smile where they ought to have produced conviction. We have a message the whole world needs, the wise as well as the unwise, the Seminary-trained Bible student and the ignorant plow-boy, and we must qualify ourselves to teach all classes.

Occasional Nature of Bible Books

I have dwelt at some length on the significance of terms, and doing so always makes me feel a heightened sense of the importance and value of Bible study. But of equally as much importance as the noting of terms in the study of Scripture is noting the occasional character of its books. We should search out the particular circumstance or event that occasioned the writing of a book and, as far as possible, we should familiarize ourselves with the conditions existing at the time it was written, so as to apprehend clearly the essential message it was intended to convey to the particular people addressed. We can then more intelligently and consistently apply that message in our own case.

I mean, for instance, that Paul’s letters were not written just because he took a notion to write or even because God spoke from heaven or in his soul and told him to write. His epistles, and about all the other books of the Bible, were born out of life. There were certain specific, existing reasons or causes for their being written, and it is in the light of these conditions or exciting causes that they are to be understood. There is simply no other way rightly to understand the books of Scripture.

The writers of the epistles had different but very definite purposes in mind when they took up their pens. They also wrote at different times and to different sorts of people, —some to Jews and some to Gentiles, some to new converts and some to old, some to those in danger of one heresy and some in view of another. So without carefully noting such facts and studying the various writings of the Bible in the light of their different settings and the different immediate historic causes of their production, no man, no matter how spiritual he may be, can understand the Bible as he ought.

Our Bible is a living book. It sprang out of human life and out of God’s contact with human life. It speaks to us in the midst of human life and it must be studied in the light of that particular state of human life in the midst of which its different books were born. It throbs with human interest, and appeals to men everywhere, because it is such an intensely human book. It is like the Savior himself who is very God—and very man. It is the humanity of the Divine Christ that brought the divine life into human lives and it is the human element in the divine Book that serves to bring its message close home to our hearts. The Bible is the book, not of scholars and theologians only, but of our own hearts and hearths. Thank God for the Bible!

The Occasion of Romans

This letter of Paul’s to the Romans then must have had its occasion. What it was is not at once so clearly apparent upon the face of the letter as are the occasions of most of his other epistles, Titus and Timothy, Philemon, Galatians, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, for example. Just to mention these is at once to recall their occasions. The occasion for the writing of Romans is not so evident as in the case of these others, but certain points are tolerably clear.

1. There had been no report of disorder and division at Rome, such as had called forth the letters to the Corinthians. I Cor. 1:11; 5:1.

2. Nor had any letter of inquiry been sent to Paul from the Roman church, as had been the case with Corinth. I Cor. 7:1.

3. Nor was the Roman church in serious danger from Judaising teachers so that he must write to them, as he did to the Galatians, in sore apprehension lest they should fall from grace, —the grace of Christ, under the yoke of the law. Gal. 1:6, 7; 3:1–3; 5:1–12.

4. They came in for no censure, but only praise. Ch. 15:14. Their faith is known “throughout the whole world.” 1:8.

Thus there seems to have been no particular cause in the Roman church itself for his writing to them. What then was its occasion? It may give us the key to the real nature of his epistle.

The occasion was that peculiar crisis in Paul’s ministry which came at this time, shortly before the Passover of about 58 A. D., the 4th year of Nero’s reign.

Paul is in Corinth, staying at the house of Gaius (Rom. 16:23). Tertius, a companion of Paul’s, receives the dictation and writes down the letter (16:22) just on the eve of Paul’s departure for Jerusalem on what is to be his final visit, with the alms collected by him in Macedonia and Achaia for the poor saints at Jerusalem. Rom. 15:25, 26.

Paul is the apostle of the nations. He has been an ambassador of Christ in that capacity for about 25 years. From Jerusalem round about even unto Illyricum, clear up into what is now the Balkan Peninsula, he has fully preached the gospel of Christ. He has operated first from Antioch as headquarters, and then from Ephesus. And now having no more place in all these eastern regions, and longing to fulfill his ministry, he, like the far-seeing Christian statesman he was, now proposes to make Rome itself the basis and center of a new evangelistic effort, with Spain and “the utmost bounds of the west” for its goal. Rom. 15:22–24, 28.

Romans, then, was written to intimate to the saints of the Imperial City his long-cherished desire to see them. “I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you and was hindered hitherto” (1:13). What had hindered the feet of this messenger of Christ? The very thing that has hindered many of God’s servants in our own day, —a controversy. Time and strength had been occupied defending his churches from the legalists and his calumniators so that he could not go about in accordance with his great commission. The world must go without the gospel because some one feels he must bind the law upon Paul’s converts. It is not the law that has bothered us, but it has been its exact equivalent, a legalistic conception of the gospel and of the New Testament, and it has done us much harm.

But for Paul, as for us, the controversy is now practically over and victory is won, so he writes this letter to prepare the church at Rome for his approaching visit. 1:17. He wants to interest them directly in his work and impart to them his doctrine, for he has never yet preached among them. He therefore in this letter launches out to set before them for their edification, such an exposition of his gospel as would make it fully known to them.

We may well thank God today for that combination of circumstances in Paul’s life which led the dear apostle to dictate such a letter. It is a moment of calm. The real storm of the Judaistic controversy is over. Paul’s mind is free. The moment is propitious and in the providence of God he now dictates a comprehensively developed exposition of those principles for which he has stood all these years and which he had argued with such polemic vehemence in his letter to the Galatians. Romans then, may be said to signalize the victory of Pauline Christianity over the Judaistic reaction. It is, so to speak, the manifesto and doctrinal apologetic of his gospel, by which the great apostle of the Gentiles at this crisis in his ministry, when he feels that his work in the East is done and he is reaching out for the new and unevangelized fields of the West, seeks to establish relations with the Christian community in the capital of the Gentile world.

The Readers Addressed

And just who are the people to whom he writes? They are Gentiles, that is, believers of Gentile origin. For he regards them as within the special province of his apostolate. See Ch. 1:5, 6, 13; 15:15, 16, and also 11:13–32 where he addresses them as “you Gentiles” in distinction from Israel of whom in this epistle he generally speaks in the third person and whom he calls “my kinsmen,” not “your kinsmen” nor “our kinsmen.” 9:3.

But the Gentiles addressed were not like ordinary Gentiles, —such as the idolatrous Galatians, Ephesians and Corinthians had been. They were people of a different type; Gentiles indeed, but Jewish in religious education and ideas. We see this very clearly from several facts.

1. Their entire familiarity with the Old Testament scriptures is everywhere assumed. Romans is almost as full of O. T. quotations as are Matthew and Hebrews, books written especially for Jews.

2. Again, Jewish objections to points in the argument of the epistle are repeatedly recognized and carefully answered. Jewish difficulties are met. In fact, the letter reads in many essential parts like the appeal of a Christian Jew to Jews. Were it not for the plain references to his readers as Gentiles one might easily imagine that the epistle was “designed to win Jewish Christians to the Pauline standpoint, to overcome their prejudices and to wean them from dependence on legal righteousness.”

3. Then again the express statement in Ch. 7:1–5 shows their Jewish education. In view of all these facts, therefore, and of the moral culture and intellectual enlightenment which the whole tone and matter of the epistle imply as existing among the people addressed, it is evident that they were not late converts from idolatry but must have long been instructed in the truths of revealed religion.

The only class of people of Gentile origin that answers to this description are the proselytes, people that had been converts from heathenism to Judaism. That this class was very numerous in Rome is natural, for we know from history that Jews were in the Gentile capital in large numbers, and Acts 2:10 tells us that at Pentecost “sojourners from Rome, both Jews and proselytes,” were present. It is altogether likely that these on returning to Rome from the experiences of the day of Pentecost spread the gospel there and were the real founders of the church in that city. The Roman Catholic contention that St. Peter was its founder is absolutely baseless. Had he been in Rome when Paul wrote, or had this church there owed its origin to him, it is inconceivable that Paul; in a letter of this nature would have made absolutely no allusion to the fact. Rome is to him a city where no apostle has ever preached. Ch. 1:11, 15.

The Subject of the Letter

We now have, I think, a fairly clear grasp of the situation and are prepared to enter upon the epistle itself. Sufficient time does not remain this evening for us to more than point out that, in keeping with the character and the experience of the man we have been studying, the great subject of his letter.—his “Gospel”—is “The Righteousness of God.” Righteousness was Paul’s great theme as it had been his great problem, and now he has the necessary occasion for giving an ordered exposition of it. To him it was a three-fold problem, at once legal, moral and religious, and it was expressed in three great and pressing questions.

1. How can the guilty be forgiven and God be righteous?

2. How can the sinful be made holy so as to manifest God’s righteousness?

3. How are we to square the righteousness of God, and his consequent faithfulness to his word to Israel, with the fact of Israel’s apparent rejection?

The first of these vital questions, How can the guilty be forgiven and God be righteous or just? was the legal aspect of the problem and Paul found its solution in the death of Christ for the sinner.

The second question, How can the sinful be made holy so as to manifest or fulfill God’s righteousness? was the moral aspect of the problem and Paul found its solution in the life of Christ in the believer.

The third question, If God be righteous and faithful, how about Israel? was the religious or national aspect of the problem and Paul solved it by the doctrine of the election of grace.

The legal and moral problems, relative to a man’s forgiveness and his becoming holy, arose out of the needs of Paul’s own mind and heart before his conversion. The religious and national problem arose out of the facts of his subsequent ministry.

Lecture IV.

PART 1

The Problem of Israel

The exposition of Paul’s gospel as given us in his Epistle to the Romans, in so far as it relates to Christian experience and living, falls into three main divisions.

The first of these, setting forth his teaching as to Justification, and solving the legal problem referred to at the close of the last lecture, occupies chapters 1–5. The second, presenting his teaching as to Sanctification, and solving the moral problem, occupies chapters 6–8. The third, giving a practical application of the truth to the believer’s life (1) in the church (2) in the world and (3) in his everyday contact with his fellow Christians, occupies chapters 12–15.

Coming between the second and third divisions is a section all by itself, having a beginning and conclusion all its own. This entire section may be lifted clear out of the Epistle without in the least breaking the chain of thought or detracting from the practical and spiritual value of the letter to us as an exposition of the gospel. Let us then first dispose of it so that we may conclude our lectures with Paul’s essential message.

These chapters (9–11) are a treasure within the Epistle. They have to do, not so much with the legal or moral problem of how sinners may be saved from sin, as with the answer to the historical and religious problem of the unbelief of the Jews, the people whom God had elected to be his agent of blessing to the world in the gospel age but who were now as a whole rejecting that gospel.

Israel’s unbelief was a very disconcerting fact to many in the apostolic age, and it constituted a great problem. In the minds of both Jews and Gentiles it easily led to a measure of skepticism regarding Christianity. The chosen people without a part in the kingdom of God! Impossible! Paul in his ministry was therefore met with such objections as these: The Jew said, “Your teaching of faith-righteousness implies that God has gone back on his law-covenant. His word to Israel as a nation counts for naught.” The Gentile said, “If your gospel be true God’s election of Israel has failed, for they are everywhere rejecting your message.”

God Justified

The 9th chapter, which begins with a reference to his own intense sorrow at Israel’s condition and a rehearsal of their ancient privileges (1–5), is Paul’s attempt to explain the situation as not involving any unrighteousness or unfaithfulness on the part of God. He will justify God against all creaturely and carnal assumptions of privilege. And this he does by showing, first that God’s election to any calling has never included all the physical descendants of an elect person.

“The word of God” to Israel as Abraham’s seed, that in them all the nations of the earth should be “blessed” (and which they were mistaking to be a reference to the blessing of a political reign over the nations, under the Messiah), has not failed he says, for “Israel” does not mean everyone who belongs to Israel. V. 6.

Not all Abraham’s children were included in the original promise, but only Isaac; nor all of Isaac’s children, but only Jacob. God made free choices then in relation to membership in the line to the Messiah, thus illustrating the fact that his eternal purpose was an “election of grace,” not of works. vs. 7–13. Ishmael and Isaac. Esau and Jacob had done nothing either good or bad to determine God’s election to position at that time, and so also now it is not the Jews’ observance of the law nor the Gentiles’ non-observance that determines God’s election of them to blessing and salvation in Christ. Election to salvation or a place in the kingdom is for all who believe on Jesus—Jews or Gentiles, “for there is no difference.” God’s election in this matter is “in Christ,” not in the Law, nor in birth in the line of physical descent from Abraham.

The self-righteousness and national pride of many of the Jews had blinded them to this truth and they thought that the election was of physical descent, “of works,” “of him that willeth,” and “of him that runneth,” etc. They seem to have come to feel that their nation had something of a claim of right upon God, giving them, as Jews, a title to his kingdom and blessings which he was bound to respect.

John the Baptist had warned some of them against such an idea (Matt. 3:9). Jesus had taught against it (John. 5:39, 40), and now Paul seeks to overthrow it in this chapter by recalling God’s ways in Israel’s own past history, where Isaac was chosen before Ishmael, and Jacob before Esau; the first-born, who had done no evil and who also possessed any natural rights there were, having been superseded by the younger brother who had done no good to merit it. God thus had shown that his elective purpose from the beginning was based not on human merit, or demerit, nor in birth, but on his free grace alone. Vs. 7–13.

As further illustrating the truth of God’s freedom to elect men to salvation by a way of pure grace, in Christ, involving as it did the acceptance of some Israelites (viz., those who believed) and the rejection of others (viz., those who disbelieved), Paul refers to what God said to Moses in Exod. 3:19, “I will show mercy and compassion upon whomsoever I choose to show it.” He was not bound to save all Israelites (or even any Israelites) on the mere ground of their being Israelites and keepers of the law. Considerations of grace become a sovereign. Grace is his prerogative. Demands at such a court are not likely to be welcomed. Dictation is not man’s prerogative. Pleas of privilege and pride of power are not in court before God. Vs. 14–22.

Not, of course, that God as Sovereign of the kingdom would choose or act arbitrarily in either ‘showing mercy’ or ‘taking vengeance.’ That is not Paul’s meaning. His whole point here is that in saving sinners God is utterly untrammeled and uncompelled. Throughout chapter 9 up to verse 29 he is simply maintaining God’s freedom against Jewish presumption. “Vessels of mercy” and “vessels of wrath” were all chosen suitably, but they were also chosen sovereignly. The potter (God) does not have to treat the whole lump (Israel) alike. He has the right to make of one part (the believing) a vessel unto honor, and of the other (the unbelieving) a vessel unto dishonor. V. 21. In reality God’s displeasure finds, not makes men “fitted to destruction.” It is the presence or absence of the spirit of humble dependence upon God and trust in his grace that really determines in any age what disposition shall be made of men.

It may not be amiss right here to note that people who, in connection with any blessing or favor, try to influence God on the principle of coercion and demand, as of right, are departing from the true spirit of religion and will suffer many a disappointment and bitter lesson. Jesus never acted on that principle with his Father and neither did Paul or any of the other apostles with their Master.

Another point Paul brings out in this 9th chapter is that God is free even to withhold from an incorrigible man or a “gain-saying people” his just judgment upon their sin and perversity, in order that a purpose of mercy regarding others might be fulfilled. He had done this with Pharaoh and he had done it with disobedient and rebellious Israel. He was still doing it. The disobedient were not yet “destroyed from among the people,” as he had warned them through Moses they would be. Deut. 18:15; Acts 3:22. His “much long-suffering” had spared them that a “remnant” might be saved. Had not God’s prophets, too, foreseen the existing situation of the calling of the Gentiles into the kingdom and the rejection of all but a remnant of Israel? Verses 22–29.

Paul’s contention is that God is not to be blamed because a perverse and rebellious people had misinterpreted his purpose and misunderstood his ways. Psa. 95:7–11. There is no unrighteousness with God. Ch. 9:14. His word to Israel, as to its true meaning and intent, has not “come to naught” by the unbelief of the nation. For his mind and purpose for them had a spiritual and universal content, while their conception of it had been largely political and national.

So much for the Divine and for us largely speculative side of the question. Paul now turns to man’s side, the moral aspect of the situation, and points out that Israel’s national stumbling had a specific cause in themselves and that they deserved their rejection. 9:30–10:21.

Israel’s Rejection Deserved

The paradoxical fact before us is that Gentiles, who were out of the way of righteousness which introduces to the kingdom (ch. 14:17), have obtained that righteousness, while Israel, intent upon a law of righteousness, has missed the mark. And why? Because they have rejected the way of faith, which the Gentiles have taken, preferring that of works. 9:30–32.

And why was that? Because, owing to their self-conceit and wilfulness, they were blinded to God’s way of grace. Bent on establishing their own righteousness before him, they did not recognize nor submit themselves to the righteousness of God. They deemed the Mosaic system to be eternal and so failed to see its end, its terminus and goal, in Jesus Christ. They stumbled at the old stumbling block marked in Isa. 8:14 and 28:16, —the demand for trust in God as the basis of salvation. 9:32–10:4.

This word of trust and faith is the word we preach, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved: for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” It is by the preaching of it that this “word” of life is brought to the heart and mouth of the sinner as the atmosphere comes to the lungs. Man does not make it; he breathes it and lives. Ch. 10:5–10. It is God’s gift, God’s word. And it is as free for all as the air they breathe. There is no distinction between Jew and Gentile in point of need and no distinction in that the same Lord over all waits to save all and on the same conditions. This is the gospel era, the time of the kingdom of God, when the grace of God, having appeared to save all men everywhere, must be preached to all. The voice of the Spirit-filled preachers of this life-giving “word of Christ” is to go “into all the earth and their words unto the ends of the world.” 11–18.

And did Israel not know that the era of their special privilege would pass away and that God’s purpose would embrace the Gentiles? If they did not understand this they were culpably ignorant, for both Moses and the prophets had asserted it. 19–21.

Has God then cast off his ancient people? is the question. “Far be the thought,” Paul replies, for many Israelites, himself included, have seen the truth and accepted it. This is proof that God has not so turned to the Gentiles that his back is toward the Jews. No, he is inviting all alike. He had, it is true, once shut out Gentiles, as such, in order that he might separate Israel to himself for a purpose; but now that the time is fulfilled and he is accepting Gentiles he is not excluding Jews. The basis of relationship now is different from before, that is all. And it is a basis quite as well suited to the Jew as to the Gentile, viz., faith in Jesus Christ, the one Lord of both. And, as in the days of Elijah, when all seemed to have left Jehovah and Elijah was told that there were 7,000 in Israel that had not forsaken God, so now, as seen in Paul himself and others, there was a remnant still, a “first fruits” (11:16), a remnant elected by grace, not on the ground of works (vs. 5, 6). The faithful 7,000 had been “the Israel of God” then as the people of the believing “remnant” now are. The rest, the many, are rejected because of their unbelief, in accordance with the predictions of Isaiah and David. 11:1–10.

Their Rejection Not Final

But is their rejection absolute and final? Are they without hope? V. 11. Paul says they are not. As we missionaries in India have reason to believe that the conversion and consequent elevation of the “unclean” outcasts will provide an object lesson to the caste Hindus which will in time commend the faith to them and result in their conversion in large numbers where hitherto only individuals have obeyed the gospel, so Paul, supported by intimations in the prophetic scriptures, sees a purpose of grace even in the hardening of Israel. Their rejection of the gospel has led to its passing to the Gentiles. And from the words of the prophets he gathers that the divine purpose is thereby to provoke the unbelieving nation to jealousy and thus finally to save them. Having saved all he could by the first direct preaching of the gospel, God means to produce by the conversion of the Gentiles a reaction in the rest that will result in their conversion too. There is no reason why they should not be “grafted in again” to the body of God’s people, “if they continue not in their unbelief.” 12–24. For the Lord is a God of infinite grace. He willeth not the death of any, but that all should come to repentance and he works to that end. He has “shut up all (not every man, but Jews and Gentiles) unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all. O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!” Vs. 32, 33.

The mass of the Jews may be “enemies” to him for the Gentiles’ sake, since they opposed the giving of the gospel to the Gentiles (1 Thess. 2:14–16), but they are also “beloved for the fathers’ sake” in whom he chose the nation. That calling, so far as it relates to a place in the kingdom, still stands. He does not go back on it. Vs. 28, 29. The Jews, therefore, may still be saved. But only on one condition, —that they accept the gospel. If they are saved at all, they will be saved as Paul and all the other apostles were. They will enter the kingdom by becoming Christians, members of the Messianic society, the church of God, whose calling is a heavenly one and whose destiny is eternal glory.

Their Looked-for Spiritual Restoration

What then becomes of the Jewish, national, political hope? All such earthly, material considerations are swallowed up in the excelling glory of the true Divine hope. Having thus “begun in the Spirit” by becoming partakers of the Holy Ghost, converted Jews like Paul and the rest are not going to be “perfected in the flesh” by lapsing to lower levels. God’s order is ‘first that which is natural, then that which is spiritual’ (1 Cor. 15:46). T’were a subversion of the Divine order and a degradation of Christianity for Christian Jews to cling to political hopes. They shall never be realized.

What then, says one, is the meaning in 11:25, “For I would not, brethren, have you ignorant of this mystery, lest ye be wise in your own conceits, that a hardening in part hath befallen Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in; and so all Israel shall be saved.”

It means simply this, I think, that the hardening spoken of in verse 7 as happening to the unbelieving part of Israel, was to be expected to continue until the Gentiles in their full strength should come into the divine favor, when the remaining Jews, provoked by the sight and the sense of their own loss of God’s favor, should turn from their unbelief and acknowledge their Messiah, as so many “myriads” of their co-religionists had already done. Acts 21:20. Gentile Christianity would provoke them to jealousy with the result that they too would be saved and enter the Messianic Kingdom. Compare Matt. 13:41, 47–50. Paul here seems to have in mind not only the eternal destiny of individuals but also, and perhaps especially, the broader, historical question of Israel’s preordained place as a people in the Messianic kingdom. But respecting any supposed restoration of the Jews as a body to God’s favor little has been revealed except this, that it can be only through their obedience to the gospel. This is absolutely certain and clear from the entire New Testament. Paul’s word “so” in the clause, “and so all Israel shall be saved,” apparently points to the same fact, for it means “in the manner described,” namely, by their being grafted in again through obedience to the gospel. Verses 20–24. “Shall,” too, in the same phrase, is not a dogmatic or absolute assertion, as some have supposed, but a relative one, being plainly dependent upon the qualifying “if” in verse 23, “If they continue not in their unbelief.”

We do not know what a great influx of Jews there may have been into the Christian Church after the days of Paul and the destruction of Jerusalem. It may be that Paul’s expectation was largely realized. In any case the deliverance he refers to in verses 25 and 26, even if spoken of Israel as a whole, is a religious and ethical one. It has here no political significance whatever and nothing to do with any assumed return of the Jews to Palestine.

We should pray and hope for the conversion of the Jews that remain to this day and we should welcome any prospect of it. Their very continuance until now would seem to indicate that the Divine purpose has something yet in store for them, although it may be that he has upheld them all these centuries only as an abiding witness to the truth of his Word. But who has fathomed the wealth that lies in the wisdom and knowledge of God? “How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out! For of him, and through him, and unto him, are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.” V. 36.

Paul in the 15th verse of this chapter also asks (he does not assert) whether the receiving of the Jews, completing as he here conceives it will the evangelization of the world, will not also conclude the mission of the gospel and bring about the final consummation long desired, even life from the dead, at the Lord’s return. Sayings of Jesus like that of Matt. 23:39 may have prompted Paul’s hope in this connection. Only a believing people anywhere could say of the glorified Jesus, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.”

“Believest Thou the Prophets?”

In concluding this part of our subject I should like to offer a suggestion or two in regard to certain Old Testament prophesies concerning “Israel” and “Jerusalem.”

1. God’s word or his words, we know, “can not be broken.” That is, he does not go back on them. And yet we must confess that they may be rendered void by the non-fulfillment upon man’s part of conditions that are implied in them even if not directly expressed. For instance, at the giving of the law to Israel, God was on the point of setting aside apparently unconditional promises made to them and transferring their fulfillment to one small section of them, namely the descendants of Moses. He was only turned from his purpose by the intercession of that man of God. Exod. 32:9–14. Later on also, when provoked by Israel’s unbelief, he cut off a whole generation of them from their promised inheritance, saying to them, “Doubtless ye shall not come into the land, concerning which I sware to make you dwell therein … your carcases shall fall in this wilderness … and ye shall know my breach of promise.” Nu. 14:30–34. Such instances as these clearly show that God’s word, spoken or written, can be rendered inoperative or made void by man’s presumption.

Again, God’s word to King Hezekiah by the mouth of Isaiah the prophet was most positive and explicit: “Thus saith Jehovah, Set thy house in order; for thou shalt die [i. e., of this sickness], and not live.” Isa. 38:1. And yet the king’s prayer brought about a condition which resulted in the abrogation of the prophecy. For yet another instance take the word of the Lord to Nineveh by Jonah. It was clear and positive: “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” Jonah 3:24.

Nothing whatever is said of possible qualifying conditions, and yet as an actual fact a change in the people resulted in the non-fulfillment of the “word of prophecy.” For “Jehovah repented of the evil which he said he would do to them and he did it not.” 3:10. At this, you will remember, Jonah got offended, for it reflected upon his veracity as a prophet. He evidently had more regard for the letter of God’s word than he had for the spirit of it. He was a strict and consistent literalist in this matter. But he learned better. May we not hope the same of some others today?

From these clear instances of the non-fulfillment of Divinely inspired words and prophecies, I think we may rightly deduce the principle that Divine inspiration does not require that every statement made by God through his prophets regarding either a person or a people must be fulfilled, when the attitude or condition of that person or people renders non-fulfillment more to the glory of God than fulfillment. The reason why every prophecy concerning Jesus himself was fulfilled doubtless was that he kept his will and life in all respects in perfect accord with God. Had he done otherwise the Scriptures concerning him could not all have had fulfillment. This would seem to be implied in Luke 22:37. Thus it seems clear that there may he specific prophecies in the Old Testament regarding the Jews and Jerusalem that have lapsed through their disobedience and never shall be fulfilled. They serve as a standing witness to them and the world of what might have been.

2. But, again, if we will observe the time when some others of these prophecies regarding Israel and the Jews were given, I think we shall see that not a few of them, that today are being referred, by millennialists to the Jews as yet to be fulfilled, were fulfilled long ago in the return of the Jews from Babylon and the acceptance of the gospel by Israelites in the days of the apostles. An example of this kind of prophecy is Hosea’s word in Hos. 3:4, 5, “The children of Israel shall abide many days without king and without prince and without sacrifice, and afterward shall they return and seek Jehovah their God and David their king, and shall come with fear unto Jehovah and to his goodness in the latter days.” “David their king” is evidently an analogical expression having reference to the Messiah, Jesus the Davidic king, to whom they were to gather “in the latter days,” the Christian era which began with Pentecost and will end with the Parousia or second coming of Christ. In the light of the plain references to Israel and the “twelve tribes” in the New Testament it is difficult to believe that the apostles had any idea of “lost tribes.” See James 1:1, Acts 26:7, Rom. 11:1.

3. Again, and finally, if as we are surely bound to admit, God foreknew and from the beginning had in mind his New Testament people (Rom. 9:23–26), they must have been a subject of Old Testament prophecy. This is all the more sure when we reflect upon the fact that a spiritual people are much more to God and his prophetic Spirit than a fleshly people could ever be. But in speaking of the New Testament church and kingdom to carnal Jews how could he describe their spiritual elevation and excelling glory other than under figures with which they themselves were familiar? There was no other suitable way. We therefore read, among other figures, of the Lord’s house established above the mountains, a city with walls and wells of salvation and gates of praise, a peaceful kingdom where wolves and lambs, leopards and kids lie down together, etc.

God has had to educate men much as we educate children, by employing first that which is natural and discernible by the natural senses, then that which is spiritual and discernible by the mind. He has educated mankind in the earlier stages partly by ceremonial laws and partly by promises. Systems of laws and ordinances have had their place and rightly claimed obedience until their purpose has been served, that is, until the practical lessons they were designed to teach have been learned or until the higher, spiritual truths they have concealed under “the protecting husk of symbolism” could be apprehended or received without disguise. Then their work was done and men were no longer bound by them. The material shadow has given place to the spiritual substance. In the same way there were promises made under the old dispensation which were but symbols of deeper and more spiritual blessings that in the moral childhood of the race would not and could not have appeared attractive. We interest a child and secure his obedience by motives that would not appeal to an adult. So in the moral childhood of humanity God, who looked forward to maturity, made some promises under material forms that meant something else. They were not delusions but illusions, “some better thing” having been provided to take their place. This is the great lesson of the Epistle to the Hebrews which some folks who would still contend for the material, political, national shadows need to learn. Only the child that has refused to advance to manhood can feel disappointed at the Father’s substitution of life eternal for long life, a spiritual offspring for a numerous literal seed, “an inheritance among the sanctified” for one among olive yards, vines and fig trees, and a priest-king upon a throne in the heavens for one ruling with a literal rod of iron in his hand in Palestinian Jerusalem.