Paul’s Burden for his Brethren (Rom. 9:1-5)

 

Saint Paul, by Peter Paul Rubens

The state of online discourse today is in a very real sense – I almost hesitate using this word, but I think here it is appropriate and fitting – toxic.  People on the internet, on Facebook, on X, and other places throw their weight around using words that are clearly thoughtless, off the cuff, propelled far more by emotion than careful thinking.  Most of all, love of God and love of neighbor has very little to do with the way people talk to each other.  And increasingly what is on the internet spills out into everyday life and conversation and the results for neighborliness are devastating.  As our Lord put it to his disciples, when iniquity and wickedness abound, the love of many grow cold, and that is happening in our day.

But as I say, one of the problems is that people are not careful with their words.  The Bible, however, teaches us to be very careful with the way we use our speech.  Our Lord put it this way: “I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned” (Mt. 12:36-37).  Every idle word!  Every careless word!  Judgment!  Do we really think of our words in that light?  We should have the attitude of the psalmist, who prayed: “Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips” (Ps. 141:3).

Paul, writing to the Ephesian Christians, exhorts, “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption” (Eph. 4:29-30).  We don’t want to hurt people with our lips; we ought to want to help them, and minster grace to them, and when we don’t, verse 30 indicates that we are grieving the Holy Spirit of God.  We need to take our words seriously because God does.

And then we need to remember the words of the apostle James, that “the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell. For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison” (Jam. 3:5-8).  The tongue is a like fire, James says.  It can do good, but it can also do incredible evil.  It can hurt people in real and lasting ways.  It is a deadly poison.  Beware how you use it.  Solomon reminds us, “There is [one] that speaketh like the piercings of a sword: but the tongue of the wise is health” (Prov. 12:18).  Or, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof” (18:21).  Don’t wield your words like a soldier wields a sword, only to hurt and maim people. Let your words minister life rather than death.

I’m saying all this because the opening words of our text show us how we can be like this.  Paul wanted to say something that he knew might appear to some, especially to his kinsmen the Jews, to come across as less than true.  What Paul says here was very controversial.  Paul suffered much at the hands of Jews because they viewed him as a traitor to their religion and faith.  They were disgusted by his ministering to the Gentiles.  He had made himself unclean by his associations with them.  He was the leader of a sect.  They hated him, and I’m assuming that they probably thought that he hated them.  His words, then, would have appeared surprising.  But he reminds us that he was very serious in what he was saying.  These are measured words, careful words, true words.

What does Paul say?   He begins, “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen” (Rom. 9:1-5).

The basic statement here is that Paul carried a constant and heavy burden of grief in his heart over the unsaved state of so many of his fellow Jews.  But I want you to notice the way he frames this statement.  First, he spoke the truth in Christ.  What does that mean?  It means that when Paul said these words, he was conscious of the fact that he was speaking them in the presence of his Lord.  He didn’t say these words lightly, for the one who knew all things was listening to him and Paul was mindful of this reality.  As Paul would put it to Timothy, “I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom” (2 Tim. 4:1).  When Paul spoke, he spoke as one who stood in the presence of God.  Do we do that?  I think it would help us obey the Biblical instructions regarding our speech if we did.

Then the apostle says that the fact that he was not lying was testified to by his conscience in the Holy Spirit.  The conscience, as Lloyd-Jones points out, is something in us but at the same time objective to us, a mechanism that God has put within us to approve the right and condemn the wrong.  So when our conscience approves, that’s a good thing.  When our conscience condemns us, that’s a bad thing.  In fact, Paul will say in chapter 14 of this epistle that if we act contrary to our conscience, we are committing an act of sin.

However, even our conscience can err.  We can not only sear it and harden it, but our conscience can be in the dark, so to speak.  Our consciences are not inerrant, they too are affected by the Fall into sin, and they need to be enlightened by the word of God.  In later chapters, when Paul address the situation of the weak brethren, he is referring to those whose consciences were not sufficiently enlightened by the gospel, which kept them in an unnecessary legalism and from enjoying their liberty in Christ with respect to certain food laws in the Mosaic Law.  So the apostle goes on to say that not only did his conscience testify to the rightness of his words, but it did so “in the Holy Ghost.”  That is, this is a conscience that is being directed, not by ignorance, but by the very Spirit of God.  Paul is speaking the truth!

Here are some lessons for us.  If we would be people who speak the truth in love, we need to learn to always see ourselves as in the presence of God.  We need to be people who listen to their consciences.  As Paul put it in other contexts – you can see that this was clearly important for him – “And Paul, earnestly beholding the council, said, Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day” (Acts 23:1).  And then, before the Roman proconsul Felix, “And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void to offence toward God, and toward men” (24:16).  And then we need to be people who are being shaped by the Spirit of God, and that means above all that we are people who are being shaped by the Word of God which is breathed out by the Spirit of God.  It is only when we are people who are conscious of God’s presence, sensitive to our conscience, and submitted to God’s Word, that we will be the kind of people who speak in a way that pleases God and ministers to people.

Now as we think about what Paul is saying here, the truth that he is communicating, I want us to first to consider the overall message of chapters 9-11, and how they connect and fit in with the previous chapters.  Then I want to look at the apostle’s flow of thought in the first five verses.  Finally, I want to draw three applications from them.  

The Context

Romans is about the gospel.  It’s been ten weeks since we’ve been in Romans, so let’s remind ourselves of the basic point of this epistle.  It is about the gospel, and the thesis statement is 1:16-17: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.”   The gospel is the good news that unrighteous people can become righteous before God through the righteousness of Christ by faith.

We’ve noted that we can divide this epistle into three basic parts: the exposition of the gospel in chapters 1-4, the implications of the gospel in chapters 5-11, and the application of the gospel in chapters 12-16.  You can see that, in chapter 9, we are in the midst of that section where the apostle is drawing out the implications of the gospel.  But in another sense, Paul is beginning a new section here.  The main point of chapters 5-8 is the assurance that we draw from our justification by grace through faith in Christ, as well as dealing with objections (in 6-7) that arise because of this teaching.  But in chapter 9 and going through 11, Paul starts something new.  And that new thing that Paul will be dealing with is the implications that arise from the response of physical Israel to the gospel, and in particular, to its overall rejection of the gospel.  

Now the teaching of the previous chapters all underline the reality that we become righteous before God through faith in Christ.  What then about those who do not believe?  What about those who reject the gospel?  The teaching of Romans leaves no room for unbelievers who are justified.  In other words, there is no category in Romans for a justified unbeliever.  We are under the wrath of God and the only way we can be delivered from that wrath is by the righteousness of Christ and the only way that righteousness can be received is the way of faith, not the way of works.  The implication is that those who reject the gospel are yet unjustified and remain under the wrath of God.  This agrees with what our Lord said to Nicodemus: “He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (Jn. 3:18).

However, many of Paul’s fellow Jews had in fact rejected the gospel.  Paul himself saw this happen over and over again in his own ministry.  Whereas the Gentiles would receive the gospel, the Jews would reject it.  Not all of them, of course (Paul being a notable exception!), but in the main this is what happened.  For example, in the 13th chapter of Acts, in Paul’s first missionary journey, this happened at Antioch: “But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy, and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming. Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth. And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed” (Acts 13:45-48).  The Gentiles believed whereas the Jews rejected the gospel.

Where did this leave them as respects their relationship with God?  Wasn’t Israel God’s nation?  Isn’t that what the Old Testament said?  Didn’t Jews have the promises of God to them?  And here we get to the real problem, a problem that Paul acknowledges in verse 6 of Romans 9: “Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect.”  You see, that’s what it looked like had happened as a result of Jewish unbelief.  On the one hand, the gospel says that those who reject it are lost.  So unbelieving Jews are lost.  On the other hand, the Jews had the promises of God to them, and those promises were gospel promises.  How could they be lost?  It looked like God was going back on his word to Israel.  It looked like God’s word had taken none effect.  This is the problem that Paul has to deal with in chapters 9-11.

You see, Paul has to deal with this, because if God has in fact gone back on his word and his purpose to Israel, then we Christians are in big trouble.  For the whole point of chapter 8 is that the salvation of the Christian is sure and secure.  But why is it sure?  Why can we have assurance?  Because of God’s purpose: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28).  God’s purpose and promise cannot be broken.  But if Jews who have God’s promises to them can be lost, then couldn’t that be true of us?  In any case, how can we trust in a God who goes back on his word?  For that is what I’m sure Paul was hearing from his Jewish brethren.  “Paul,” they would say, “If you’re right and we’re no longer part of the people of God because we don’t believe in your Jesus, then God is not true to his promise to Israel.”  This is the problem Paul had to tackle in chapters 9-11.

In other words, the main point that Paul is seeking to prove in these chapters is that God’s word has not fallen to the ground.  God is still true to his word.  And he works his argument out very carefully in three stages that correspond to each chapter, 9, 10, and 11.  In chapter 9, he will argue that God’s word has not fallen to the ground because of the sovereignty of God’s purpose.  Paul will argue that the national election of Israel is not identical with God’s election of individuals unto salvation.  Or, as the second part of verse 6 goes, “They are not all Israel which are of Israel.”

In chapter 10, Paul will argue that God’s word has not fallen to the ground because of the necessity of God’s grace.  God’s word has always been a word of grace through faith, as Paul demonstrates through the OT, both in Romans 1:17 and in chapter 4 especially.  But he works this out in chapter 10 as well.  We are not saved by works but through faith.  This is not in fact new to the gospel.  The reason Israel was not saved was not because God had failed to be true to this word but because Israel had chosen the way of works over the way of grace.

And then in chapter 11, the apostle will argue that God’s word has not fallen to the ground because of the tenacity of God’s love.  Here Paul will argue that God is not done with Israel!  He still has a future, a glorious future, for the physical seed of Abraham.  Even though Israel by and large is in unbelief in Paul’s day, he argues that there is coming a time in the future when the nation will turn to Christ and be grafted back into the olive tree of God’s people.

So that’s the context for these verses.  Now let’s see how Paul begins his argument here in verses 1-5.  Here we come to the teaching of the text.

The Text in 9:1-5

These verses are about Paul’s grief over Israel, and it is very important for us to see what Paul is upset about.  He is grieving and sorrowing with an unceasing heaviness because his unbelieving kinsmen are unsaved.  Here is the way Paul puts it: “For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.”  Now there are people who want to soften what Paul says here and will argue that what made Paul so sad was that Israel was merely failing to measure up to God’s historical purposes for them.  They want to limit this to missing out on earthy blessings.  But that is not what the language the apostle uses here means.  He means that they were unsaved, they were on the broad way to eternal destruction, and this is what grieved him so much.

First, Paul begins by saying, “I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ.”  The verb tense that Paul uses indicates that he meant something along the lines of, “I could almost wish this,” or, “I was at the point of wishing this.”  In other words, Paul is not saying that he actually wished that he could be cut off and accursed from Christ.  Note the translation in the KJV: “I could wish.”  Not, “I wish,” but “I could wish.”  If I say, “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse,” I’m not at that moment eating a horse.  So when Paul says that he could wish, he was not actually wishing it.  So this is a hypothetical statement.  It’s hypothetical because Paul knows that nothing can separate him from the love of God.  But he’s saying that if it were possible, such is his love to his people that he would be willing to sacrifice himself for their sake.

Why?  Paul writes that it’s because they “were accursed from Christ.”  If Paul didn’t actually think his fellow Jews who didn’t believe were themselves accursed from Christ, why would he be at the point of wishing himself to be accursed for them?  It was “for my brethren” that he could wish himself to be accursed from Christ.  This was their condition.  They were accursed from Christ.  That was their malady, their sad state. 

Now what does that mean?  What does it mean to be accursed from Christ?  The word for “accursed” is the word anathema.  It was the word that Paul uses in his letter to the Galatians in speaking of those who were teaching a false gospel.  Paul writes, “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8-9).  Paul is clearly not saying that such false teachers are just missing out on some temporal blessings from God.  These are men who stand under the curse of God.  To be under such a curse is to be unsaved (cf. Gal. 3:18).  To the Corinthians, Paul will write, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema” (1 Cor. 16:22).  This is a serious thing.  It will not do to say that Paul is saying anything less than that his unbelieving relatives are unsaved and under divine judgment.  That is why he is grieving.

This is further underlined by what he says at the beginning of the next chapter: “Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved” (10:1).  I’ve heard some people argue that these are just ignorant people who need to be saved from their ignorance and that’s it (2).  But that is a ridiculous interpretation.  They were ignorant, but they were also “a disobedient and gainsaying people” (21), as Paul describes them at the end of the chapter.  In any case, to be saved in chapter 10 means having the righteousness of God (3-4, 9-10), and that is the same thing as to be justified.  To be unsaved then, means to lack this righteousness.  It means to remain in a state condemned before God.  That is to say, accursed!

Now of course the Jews weren’t the only ones in this position.  Of course there were a lot of Gentiles who were also in that condition.  So why was Paul so broken up over the Jews?  Well, for several reasons, and he lists them out for us here in verses 3-5.  

Because they were his kinsmen.

We are to love our neighbor as ourselves.  But that begins with the neighbors nearest us, doesn’t it? And it is of course most natural for us to do so.  It begins in our homes, and then extends to our family and extended relatives, and then to others in the various spheres of influence that we inhabit.  Paul was a Jew, a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee, one who had been raised up at the feet of the distinguished rabbi Gamaliel.  He had at one time be so zealous in the traditions of the fathers.  He loved his people.  And that’s why it broke his heart to see so many of them unbelieving and lost.  

Because they were Israelites.

Lloyd-Jones pointed out something that I hadn’t really considered until I read his sermon on this passage. It is this: why did Paul say Israelite instead of Jew or Hebrew?  I don’t think it’s just a matter of varying his language.  I think there is a specific point that Paul is getting at here.  Whereas “Jew” would have referred perhaps primarily to the racial identity of Paul’s kinsmen, and “Hebrew” to their distinct language, “Israelite” points us back to the promises of God which had been given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Remember that Jacob was renamed “Israel” by the angel who wrestled with him.  But later at Bethel, God explained to him why he gave him that name.  It was because of the promises that God had first given to Abraham, and now was passing on to Jacob: “And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel. And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins; And the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land” (Gen. 35:10-12).  This was something very special.  These were the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!  These were men who loved God and who were loved by God.  Abraham, the man of faith, and yet so many of his descendants unbelieving!  It broke Paul’s heart.

Because they had the adoption.

This is not what Paul had been talking about in the previous chapter when he says that through the Holy Spirit we have been given the spirit of adoption (8:15-17).  Rather, Paul is referring to the reality that God announced to Moses, when he said: “I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God: and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians” (Exod. 6:7).  Throughout the OT, Israel as a whole is referred to as being the son of God.  For example, in Hosea, God speaks through the prophet, “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt” (Hos. 11:1).  It pointed to the fact that the nation of Israel had a special place in the eye of God.  They were not just another nation.  Because the nation was God’s son, they had the word of God and the worship of God.  They were special.   This reality again caused Paul’s heart to be broken over their unbelief.

Because they had the glory.

God’s glory was revealed to Israel in ways it was not revealed to the other nations.  They had the very presence of God in glory in the tabernacle and then in the temple.  God’s glory was revealed preeminently upon Mt Sinai to all the nation.  God showed his glory to Moses there in a very special way as well.  Israel had a front row seat to the glory of God in their history.  They had the glory.  And yet they turned away from him who was the very express image of that glory: “and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father” (Jn. 1:14).  And it broke Paul’s heart.

Because they had the covenants.

This refers to God’s covenants to Israel through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David.  These covenants were not mutual agreements that God entered into with Israel.  Rather, these were sovereign and gracious commitments on God’s part to bring about his redemptive work through this family and this nation.  In them, God promised the land of Canaan to Abraham and his seed.  He set them apart for his own special possession.  But above all, he promised to bring about a Messiah, a Savior through the family of Abraham.  He promised to bring a King for his people who would deliver them from all their enemies.  Through these covenants, God was working out his redemptive plan not only for Israel, but for all the nations.  The fact that God had committed himself to this nation in this way, was a remarkable gift of grace, which made their unbelief all the more grievous.

Because they had the giving of the law.

The psalmist sums up the essence of what Paul is getting at here when he writes, “He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation: and as for his judgments, they have not known them. Praise ye the Lord” (Ps. 147:19-20).  They had God’s law, which means that they had God’s word.  They had the oracles of God (Rom. 3:1-2) which was a tremendous advantage to them.  This law and this word should have pointed them to Christ.  Our Lord himself put it to the disbelievers in his day: “Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?” (Jn. 5:45-47).  Even with all that, they did not want to come to Christ to find life in him (5:20).  And that was incredibly sad to Paul.

Because they had the service of God.

This is summed up at the beginning of the ninth chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews: “Then verily the first covenant had also ordinances of divine service, and a worldly sanctuary. For there was a tabernacle made; the first, wherein was the candlestick, and the table, and the shewbread; which is called the sanctuary. And after the second veil, the tabernacle which is called the Holiest of all; Which had the golden censer, and the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein was the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant; And over it the cherubims of glory shadowing the mercyseat; of which we cannot now speak particularly. Now when these things were thus ordained, the priests went always into the first tabernacle, accomplishing the service of God” (Heb. 9:1-6).  Again, what a privilege!  No other nation had the true religion as Israel had it.  But even though they had the service of God, they did not know his Son when he came.  And that broke Paul’s heart.

Because they had the promises.

Many of these things overlap.  In Eph. 2, Paul talks about the covenants of promise (12).  Here Paul reminds them that not only did God enter into a covenant with them, but he remind them that the content of those covenants were promises, all of which pointed to Jesus and the salvation he came to accomplish.

Because theirs are the fathers.

Again, I think that Paul is thinking of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the patriarchs.  They had a rich heritage, men who, like Abraham, rejoiced to see the day of Jesus and saw it was glad (Jn. 8:56).  And yet, when Jesus came, his descendants rejected him.

Because from the fathers, as pertaining to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever.

Ultimately, all these things, the law, the covenants, the promises, the glory, the adoption, all these things pointed to Jesus.  God adopted the nation of Israel, showed them his glory, entered into covenant with them through which he gave them these great promises, gave them his service, in order to bring into the world the Christ, the Lord Jesus.  In other words, all these great benefits in some way or other pointed to the salvation that would come through him.  This is why our Lord told the Samaritan woman, “Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews” (Jn. 4:22).  And yet, despite all that, he came to his own and his own received him not (Jn. 1:10-11).  For these reasons, the apostle was broken-hearted over his kinsmen who not only had such privileges but threw them away.

We need to pause here to admire one of these great statements in Scripture, a statement which points to the greatness of the person of Christ in terms of his divinity.  Now there are those who want to deny that “God” here refers to Christ.  They want to argue that this is either a doxology to the Father, or that it is saying that Christ is the one who is blessed by God, that is, the Father.  But this is not a reference to the Father but to Christ.  This is one of those passages that clearly denotes the deity of Christ which is why the Unitarians and the Jehovah’s Witnesses and others like them have to deny the clear meaning of this text and bend it according to their own theological system.  

Now they will say that “God” in the NT always refers to the Father and “Lord” to Jesus.  And in general, when the Father and the Son are referred to together, this is the way the NT writers do it.  God is generally the term reserved for the Father.  But not always.  So, for example, in Acts 20, Paul addresses the elders at Ephesus and says, “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood” (28).  Now I know that some would dispute the reading here and argue that it should read “Lord” instead of “God,” but the earliest and best manuscripts read this way.  So Paul had no difficulty in using this language with reference to Christ.

Also, passages such as Tit. 2:13 and 2 Pet. 1:1 are unambiguous references to Jesus as God.  Of course this should not surprise us, given that Paul elsewhere describes Jesus as “in the form of God” and “equal to God” (Phil. 2:6), as “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), as well as referring to Jesus as Lord in those OT passages that are clearly referring to the God who is over all (cf. Rom. 10:13; Phil. 2:10-11).  This accentuates his rejection by his own people, for they have rejected the very one who shares the divine nature with God the Father. 

As the Son of God, Jesus is equal with the Father (Jn. 10:30-33).  The Lord Jesus is the one who is over all, who is Lord of all, and who, as one with the Father, is God blessed forever.  Anything less than that confession is a falling short of the full NT confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God.  The confession of Jesus as God didn’t have to wait decades to happen; it was there from the very beginning.  It is a confession that we must make if we are going to be a church that is true and faithful witnesses to Jesus.

Application

There are three points of application that I believe we must not miss in this text.

Don’t let a theological system of God’s sovereignty dull your heart for the lost.  

I believe in God’s sovereignty in salvation and over all things.  I am going to argue that in Romans 9 we have some of the clearest teaching in all of the Bible for the unconditional election of individuals unto eternal salvation in Christ.  You cannot get around God’s sovereignty in these verses without eviscerating the text and mangling its meaning.  Paul is the original Calvinist, the Augustinian before Augustine, the fountain at which all who drink of the doctrines of grace must come.  But this man who was so resolute with respect to the doctrines of grace wept over sinners, and he wept over them because they were lost, separated from Christ, and under the wrath of God.  He prayed for them and evangelized them.  Therefore, if our perception of God’s sovereignty in salvation hardens our hearts against the lostness of men, something is wrong with our thinking.

Did Christ o’er sinners weep,

And shall our cheeks be dry?

Let floods of penitential grief

Burst forth from every eye!

Don’t let religious privileges dull your heart to God.

This was the problem of the Israelites.  Look at all the privileges they had!  And yet, it was wasted on them.  But this is not a problem unique to the Jews.  It’s a problem in every age for every people.  It’s a problem in the church.  You can grow up in church and yet for all that lose your soul and go to hell.  As J. C. Ryle put it, “The saddest road to hell is the one that runs under the pulpit, past the Bible, and through the middle of warnings and invitations.”  But how many people take this path!

To see that this applies to people who grow up with the Christian gospel ringing in their ears, consider the apostle Paul’s words to the Corinthians:

“Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; And did all eat the same spiritual meat; And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ. But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand. Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents. Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer. Now all these things happened unto them for examples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:1-12).

Do you stand in a good church?  Take heed lest you fall!  Do you stand with a good understanding of Scripture and the gospel?  Take heed lest you fall!  Do you stand in a good home with godly parents who teach you the right way?  Take heed lest you fall!  Don’t hear without hearing. Understand your sin and your need of redemption and flee to him and put your trust in him as Savior and Lord!

Don’t let false theologies dull your heart to the glory of Christ!

Again, note how Paul ends here: “Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.”  Can you say, “Amen” to that?  Don’t let anyone convince you that Jesus is just another prophet, or that Jesus is just a creature albeit a highly exalted one.  Jesus is nothing less than the Second Person in the Trinity, coequal and coeternal with the Father and the Spirit.  He is over all, he is God, he is blessed forever.  Amen.