Romans: 10: A Crushing Blow to Paul
Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.
Does anything bring more pain to a new Christian than family rejection? A teenager converts to Christianity. Her parents overreact, assuming their daughter has fallen for some weird cult. They slap away all her attempts to present the appealing facts of the gospel. What is good news for her is seen as bad news by the family.
Some new Christians can melt down the walls of suspicion and hostility. But others are treated like diseased persons by other family members and forced to live in a state of emotional quarantine. Anyone who has lived through such an experience can understand the agonizing dilemma Paul faced. Members of his own race, the Jews, were rejecting the gospel he had committed his life to.
Rejection by the Jews was a crushing blow to Paul, and he interrupted his letter to the Romans to consider the dilemma. These three chapters (9-11) contain some of his strongest words ever, including an offer to forfeit his own relationship with Christ for the sake of his race (9:3).
The issues discussed here apply to non-Jews as well, for they raise basic questions about God. Had he given up on the Jewish people, ignoring the promises he had made to them in Old Testament times? If so, couldn’t he also break promises made to us today?
For Paul, a Jew who called himself an apostle to the Gentiles, no other issue was so important to resolve. He couldn’t rest until he had linked the brilliant theology set forth in Romans to God’s past, present and future activity among the Jews.
Reflection:
Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.
Does anything bring more pain to a new Christian than family rejection? A teenager converts to Christianity. Her parents overreact, assuming their daughter has fallen for some weird cult. They slap away all her attempts to present the appealing facts of the gospel. What is good news for her is seen as bad news by the family.
Some new Christians can melt down the walls of suspicion and hostility. But others are treated like diseased persons by other family members and forced to live in a state of emotional quarantine. Anyone who has lived through such an experience can understand the agonizing dilemma Paul faced. Members of his own race, the Jews, were rejecting the gospel he had committed his life to.
Rejection by the Jews was a crushing blow to Paul, and he interrupted his letter to the Romans to consider the dilemma. These three chapters (9-11) contain some of his strongest words ever, including an offer to forfeit his own relationship with Christ for the sake of his race (9:3).
The issues discussed here apply to non-Jews as well, for they raise basic questions about God. Had he given up on the Jewish people, ignoring the promises he had made to them in Old Testament times? If so, couldn’t he also break promises made to us today?
For Paul, a Jew who called himself an apostle to the Gentiles, no other issue was so important to resolve. He couldn’t rest until he had linked the brilliant theology set forth in Romans to God’s past, present and future activity among the Jews.
Reflection:
.
I don’t think that I’ll ever fully comprehend the dynamics of the Judeo-Christian theologies. In chapters 9 and 10, Paul painfully admits that, on the whole, the Jews did not believe in Christ. Despite all the advantages of Old Testament history, they stumbled over the ‘stumbling stone’ (9:32). Later in chapter 11, Paul goes back over that history and asks whether it was futile. Will the Jews come to believe in Christ some day? Did their tragic experience produce any advantage for the rest of the world? Chapter 11 concludes with Paul proclaiming God’s mysterious ways of working on Earth.
I don’t think that I’ll ever fully comprehend the dynamics of the Judeo-Christian theologies. In chapters 9 and 10, Paul painfully admits that, on the whole, the Jews did not believe in Christ. Despite all the advantages of Old Testament history, they stumbled over the ‘stumbling stone’ (9:32). Later in chapter 11, Paul goes back over that history and asks whether it was futile. Will the Jews come to believe in Christ some day? Did their tragic experience produce any advantage for the rest of the world? Chapter 11 concludes with Paul proclaiming God’s mysterious ways of working on Earth.
1 comment:
"The main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things." I've heard a favorite radio pastor say this more than once. The statement applies here in that the Jewish nation as a whole missed the point of all that God was doing through the ages as He continually gave Word-pictures of the coming Christ. Jesus as the Risen Lord was/is the point of all that God has ever been communicating to the people who are His Image-bearers.
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