Romans 8 to 12

In a recent five-sermon series, Dave Stone and Kyle Idleman, of Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, took their congregation through Romans 8. They offered five key words - one for each sermon in the series. The five words, in order, were: Freed, Empowered, Adopted, Transformed, and Loved. These five words, just to think about them without even hearing the accompanying sermons, offer great hope, relief, peace, comfort, and excitement. And that's a fair representation of Romans 8 to today's Christian audience. But did Paul's audience (the church at Rome) get these feelings when they read or heard this portion of his message to them?

The church at Rome was large, a mixture of Jewish believers, Gentile believers, and some say even Jewish not-yet-believers. This makes perfect sense when we see how Paul addressed that particular audience through his epistle (consider the differences in chapter 1, 2, and 3, for starters). By the end of chapter 8, Paul asks a series of rhetorical questions. Verse 31 is the big one: If God is for us, who can be against us?

The Gentiles in Paul's audience, upon understanding the logic of his arguments made in the first half of this letter, would have been feeling relief, peace, comfort, excitement, hope, awe, and all the rest. But the Jews receiving this letter for the first time could not yield just yet to those happy sensations. Here's why:

The Jewish tradition, while it may be hard to grasp for Gentiles, was the core of a Jewish person. To consider true something so radical as Paul's gospel (which in reality was not so radical but rather the logical and prophesied extension of the Old Testament Scriptures which had been misinterpreted and misapplied by the Jews as a whole, especially during the 500 year historical time gap between the end of the Old Testament and the arrival of John the Baptist and Jesus) seemed a great leap of faith for these Jews. They would be leaving behind (at least to some extent) all they had ever known for the sake of something new - a faux pas of the grandest kind, since it related to spiritual things. But Paul was able, in Romans, to systematically remove the legs of the Jewish stool to cause their system of works righteousness to fall, leaving only Paul's gospel - Christ's righteousness by grace through faith alone - as the stool that extended to God.

The Jews understood this and appreciated it, but it left them with a question of grave importance. What about Israel? The Jews were so certain of God's promises to them as a nation that this gospel of Paul's seemed to be making God's promises to Israel null and void. Picture the Roman Jews and Jewish Christians puzzling over the reason for Jewish disbelief (as a whole) in their Messiah. This was simply not possible if God was being faithful to His people. So before the Jews could feel that comfort of knowing the truths Paul proclaimed in Romans 8, they had to gain a little better understanding of what Paul thought of God's promises to Israel. It was a good thing for them to be curious here before falling wholeheartedly into the arms of Jesus Christ. Taking a true leap of faith requires understanding; the Bereans of Acts 17:11 understood this well.

So Paul explains in Romans 9-11 that not all Israel is Israel. God's promises to Israel have not failed, because God's true people, the "Israel of God" he speaks about in Galatians 6:16, has never consisted in the whole of the physical Jewish people; rather, the Israel of God is made of up a remnant of Jewish people, along with a vast multitude of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. Paul offers three reasons for Jewish disbelief, roughly corresponding with the three chapters of Romans 9, 10, and 11.

First, Paul explains the doctrine of election. We don't have time to get into it now, but the hard reality is that God chooses some to believe the gospel and so be saved and not others. A key word in Romans 9 is "mercy." We might think election is unfair or unjust; we might think it is unjust for God to love Jacob and hate Esau. But if we're thinking in terms of fairness or justice, we're missing the point. Salvation is not about fairness and justice for us - if it were, we'd all be condemned. Rather, salvation is all about God's mercy, and He chooses some as vessels of mercy and others as vessels of wrath. Reason number one for Jewish disbelief is God's sovereign election.

Second, moving into chapter 10, Paul shows that Jewish disbelief is due to their stubborness. The Jews heard the message of the gospel, for God had always been faithful to send preachers who did indeed do exactly what God asked them to do (consider Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel for starters). But the Jews simply would not belief. They have no excuse.

Third, Paul gives us a glimpse of God's eternal plan in chapter 11. A third reason for Jewish disbelief lies in this once-mysterious-now-revealed-truth that God has used the Jews to bring Jesus into the world and thereby bring salvation to the Gentiles through hardening them. But God is not finished with the Jews. Gospel reception by the Gentiles will make the Jews jealous, and they will turn to Christ for salvation and be grafted back into their original Olive Tree root. So their disbelief, as a nation, is part of God's eternal plan to save people and bring glory to His name.

Finally, all of this ties in to Romans 12, for Paul begins the lifestyle application portion of his epistle by appealling to God's mercy as the primary motive for us to love one another. Why should we love? Because God has shown us mercy. Some commentators will say that you can jump right from Romans 8 to chapter 12; you can just skip the hard stuff of Romans 9-11, because it's inapplicable to our present-day lives. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Romans 12 begins, "Therefore I urge you brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices..." In view of God's mercy. Paul uses the word mercy 5 or 6 times in his letter to the Romans, but not once before chapter 9. You can't skip this section.

The hardest questions of our day involve the gospel and why some people believe and others don't. The answers to these questions lie in Romans 9-11; before the Jewish people, as the Israel of God, could rest in the love of God, from which nothing can separate them, they needed to see the mercy of God as the reason for their belief. They don't get justice but mercy. And it becomes the core of who they are. No longer is tradition at their core, but mercy. We are the same way. Before we, as the Israel of God, can experience those feelings of comfort, hope, awe, and relief, which Romans 8 brings, before we can rest in the love of God from which nothing can separate us, we need to see the mercy of God as the reason for our belief. We don't get justice but mercy. It becomes the core of who we are. No longer do we trust in our works, but in God's mercy through Christ Jesus. So now we can pck up in Romans 12, "In view of God's mercy...."