Sinners are righteous and the religious are not. Weird.

Romans 9 14-end

As we’ve said in the last 2 weeks, Paul is dealing with some very heavy issues here concerning Israel’s place in the redemptive history (God’s plan from Adam to the present to save people). Why is Paul spending so much time and energy on this subject?
-He was accused of hating Israel and being a traitor.
-The issue of God’s faithfulness after a promise was in question. Paul’s readers in Rome, though mostly gentile, were a mix of Jew and gentile. They were aware of the fact that God made a promise to Israel that salvation would be theirs and that He would always be faithful to them. Now Paul comes along and says, “Israel has rejected the Messiah and now salvation has been made available to anyone who embraces Jesus. And now God has made a promise that nothing can separate those in Christ from the love of God.” So the question is, if God has shifted focus from Israel to anyone who embraces Jesus, has He forsaken His promise to Israel? And if so how do we know He won’t forsake us for someone else in the future?
So what do we make of this? Paul solidifies that God has not forsaken His promise to Israel by showing that God never promised salvation to all of Israel but only to few within national Israel who embraced true faith. This is what the OT prophets called the Remnant. God has now extended that promise beyond the confines of one nation or even one culture. Theologian Douglass Moo says that if even a minority of Jews responded to the gospel and joined in God’s redemptive plan then there is no contradiction or breaking of God’s promise. God will always be faithful to Israel, and there will always be those descended from Abraham that embrace true faith in God.

14-29
What Paul is discussing here is this: Does God have the right to choose one people group to have mercy on, to reveal his glory to, etc, and not choose others? The answer is clearly yes.
This section is often used as a proof-text for hyper Calvinism. Those who would use it as such say, “See, God chooses some and not others.” I have a problem with this. In studying for this I discovered that most, if not all, of the texts that hyper-Calvinists use that speak of God choosing only some people are not talking about individual salvation, but about God’s choosing of one nation over another. That applies here. We know from the context (vs 6-13) that Paul is talking about God selecting Israel to be in a covenant relationship with Him. These passages about choosing need to be understood in the context of God’s sovereign choosing of one nation over another, and in this sense the nation had nothing to do with being chosen. Even the individuals Paul mentions are representative of nations.
Again, this section should be understood in the context of how God lays out his plan in the world, not in individuals. God has the right to choose Israel, and to save only a remnant among them (14-23, 27-29). God also has the right extend the invitation gentiles (24-26).
The idea that God chooses some for salvation and not others, and that if God has not selected you it is impossible to come to salvation does not line up with numerous other portions of scripture (John 3:16, Romans 10:13, 1 John 2:2, 2 Peter 3:9, 1 Tim 2:3-6, Acts 16:30, Acts 7:51, Gal 2:21, Matt 23:37).

Vs 30-33
So Paul has just spent some time talking about how God can extend salvation to whomever He wants, and does so. What is the result? Paul now begins to discuss what has played out as a result of the fact that God chose Israel to bring about salvation and then, when they (in general) rejected it, extended the offer to everyone.
The result is this: those who were not trying to please God by works or by being legally righteous are now righteous in God’s sight simply by faith while those who for eons had been trying to obtain rigid legal righteousness still aren’t righteous!!! In fact the ability to become righteous by faith has become a stumbling block to them that causes anger and resentment. Why? Because they can’t switch gears from thinking about righteousness in terms of works and deeds. They are still shooting at the wrong target.
Imagine it like this: Suppose IU were the only university or college in the country and is therefore beyond prestigious. Graduating from IU puts you at instant rock-star status and guarantees you are better than 99% of the country. Since it was established someone in your family from each generation has gone there. Now you’re in your SR year, you’ve been working your tale off for 4 years and a week before graduating IU sends out a national advertisement that says, “Hey, we’re switching up how we do things at IU. From now on, all you have to do to get a degree from IU is email us that you want one. In fact, you don’t even have to be a student here. Sooo….anyone at all, just email us and you’ll have a degree from IU.” Of course you would be ticked. That’s what’s going on here.
For the gentile this offer is amazing. For the Jews, the gospel of grace is a stumbling block. They say, “That’s not fair! My ancestors and I have been working for righteousness and now you say anyone can be called righteous! I was told ‘this’ is what’s expected of me, and that’s what I’ve been striving for.” So, why didn’t this work? The Jews were given the law, so if they were striving to keep the law why weren’t they righteous? 1. Nobody has kept the whole law. 2. They missed the whole point of the law. The law was never intended to bring salvation but to show our need for a savior. In giving the law God was not saying, “do these and you’ll be saved.” He was saying, “Put your trust in me. Have faith in me. You want to see how holy I am? You want to see what legal perfection looks like? Here! See how perfect I am? Put your trust in me.”

Application: Don’t we tend to do this very thing? “I grew up in Christian home so I must be a Christian. I live a pretty good life so I must be good with God.” Just like the Jews we have a tendency to take our focus off of God and put it on ourselves. I’m good enough, I’ve done enough, I’m right with God because I…
Religion cannot save, church membership cannot save, parents with faith cannot save, being good cannot save, playing by the rules cannot save, getting baptized cannot save, giving money cannot save, serving the poor cannot save, no amount of reading and praying can save you. Like the Jews that Paul references we tend to put our focus on these things and feel little superior to those who don’t when in reality, as good as some of those things are, they are meaningless in the discussion of salvation. The only question pertinent to that discussion is “what do you do with Jesus? Do you stumble over Him or trust Him alone to save you?
There is a guy named Bob Harrington who was known in the 60’s as the chaplain of Bourbon Street. For several years he had a pretty awesome ministry to musicians, singers, performers, gamblers and prostitutes in the French Quarter. He wrote a book and said the easiest people to bring to Jesus were the prostitutes because they already knew they were sinners. He said you don’t have to convince them they are drowning, just throw them a life jacket and they grab it. He said it was much harder talking to “good people”. He even talked to some deacons in churches who could not answer the question of why they were saved. But getting them to the point of embracing Jesus was very difficult because, he said, they have so much religion they don’t think they need Jesus.