God’s Mercy and Election in Romans 9

SPEAKER 01 : 0:05

So we’re exploring this passage in Romans chapter 9 of how God saves Israel. And how he goes about it is not by a physical line of descendants, but those who believe. And remember how people come to believe. People don’t come to believe because they choose God. Rather, they come to believe because they’ve been brought into God. trials and circumstances and difficulties that cause them to call up to God for mercy, and God, having arranged those trials and difficulties and having arranged the circumstances that will lead a human being to call up to God, God then gives them mercy and grace. And so Paul is able to say in chapter 9, verse 11, For the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him who calls, it was said to her, The older shall serve the younger, referring to Esau and his children. I mean, referring to Jacob and Esau. so that the firstborn, Esau, was not the one that God chose for his mission, but Jacob was the one. Now, all of this should help us to get our mind around the idea and the truth that God is the initiator of our salvation. Election is not about God choosing one person and rejecting another. It’s not about God predestining some to be saved and the rest to be lost. That is horrendous and horrific. It is that God so loved the world, and how he goes about loving the world is to bring various people to the end of their resources, and then they call out to him, and he gives them mercy. Now, why does he not do that with all? He will do it with all. some in this life and all in the judgment. How do I know that? Because every knee will finally bow in the judgment, according to Isaiah 45 and Philippians and Romans 14, because they will finally have come to an end of themselves and admit and acknowledge and joyfully make the commitment that in God alone is their righteousness and strength, as it says in Isaiah 45. So, you see, we need to start rejoicing in election. Not that we are saved and others are lost, but that God has elected the whole world. This is what we will see, as I mentioned, in the future. As I mentioned, we shall see this in Romans 9, 10, and 11. But you say, yes, but Colin, what about that verse that says, Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated? How can God speak that way of himself, that he loves one and hates the other? Well, look, we need to be careful how we translate, or rather how we interpret Scripture. This doesn’t mean hate in the sense in which it means in the Western languages. It means to love less in the sense not of loving less for salvation, but loving less for a certain commission that a person has been given. Take, for example, what Jesus says in the book of Mark. I’m sorry, not the book of Mark, but the book of Luke. Luke 14, verse 26, If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. What an astonishing thing for Jesus to say, but what does he mean? He means, if you put your mom and dad or your wife or children before me, you cannot be my disciple. And that is why Jesus points out in other places that there will be a rift in family life, because the man who finds Jesus will put Jesus before everyone else in his family, and that may upset his wife or his children or his parents. But it has to be, because we’ve come to love Jesus supremely. But it does not mean that we literally, in the Western sense, hate our family. Not at all. Remember what Jesus said in the book of Mark. In chapter 7, verse 9, All too well, he said, you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition. For Moses says, Honor your father and your mother. In verse 11, but you say, if a man says to his father or mother, whatever profit you might have received from me is common, that is a gift to God, then you no longer let him do anything for his father or his mother. So there were some people who said, sorry, mom and dad, can’t help you because I’ve committed this gift to God. Well, that, according to Jesus, is wrong, because he said, Then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother. So Jesus is urging us to take care of our parents. And, of course, you remember on the cross that he saw his suffering mother, and he said to John, Behold your mother, and mother, behold your son. See how careful Jesus was. So what he’s saying here helps us to understand here and in Luke what it means when he says that you are to love God so much that it’s like as if you hated your parents because you were not loving them as much as God. But nevertheless, you take care of them and you love them most assuredly. And this is how we must understand what it says in Romans chapter 9. Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated. The point is that Paul is making here is that God has chosen the younger one, Jacob, to serve him and to witness for him. He was to take him through that terrible—well, he already had taken him through that terrible wrestle with God, remember, where God led Jacob to wrestle in his mind and heart with God until he found the blessing from God. Not that God was reluctant to give that blessing, but that God was creating a situation in which Jacob would call out desperately for it. Now, Did God literally, in the Western sense, hate Esau? Not at all. If you read the book of Genesis and you go there to the story of Esau and Jacob, Esau says when Jacob wants to give him all these gifts, “‘No, keep them, brother. I have plenty. I have enough of my own.'” Well, what does that mean? It means that Esau was blessed, and certainly when the brother Jacob and Esau met, they wept over each other and hugged each other and kissed each other, and clearly a reconciliation had taken place which can only come by the Holy Spirit’s work on the lives of the two of them. So you see, Esau was blessed and being blessed and continually blessed. He had an enormous, wonderful tribe. But the point that Paul is making is that God chose Jacob for the mission that he had for him, even though he was not the firstborn. And the whole point of that is God takes the initiative. Look, we need to ponder this quite a bit, because the tendency in the Western world, especially in the United States, with a democracy where we all make our choice over a certain candidate and vote for him or her, In this Western world, with that kind of political dynamic, we have imposed that on the Bible, and we have consistently thought that the initiative in salvation is man’s, or that is a person’s, a human being. You choose God, and you can choose God to go to heaven, or you can choose hell. That is not the biblical doctrine. The biblical message is that God is sovereign, that God has gained victory over all things in the world. that God has committed the victory to his Son, and that Jesus of ours is sovereign over all the world. And you can see this clearly in the Old Testament, especially because Jesus’ victory is retroactive to the beginning of the world. You can see it in how God controls the nations and how he leads one nation to do this and another nation to do that. And you can particularly see this in the way he brings salvation to various people. He has elected all the world, and then he calls various ones or groups at different times in Earth’s history. Why at different times? Why not all together? Because one group must make the other group jealous. That is a major teaching in the book of Romans. And it’s also, by the way, especially in the book of Ezekiel. And it appears in Deuteronomy where God says, “…you shall not worship another god, for I, your Lord Jehovah, am a jealous god.” What he is saying by that is that he will not brook any other competition, because there is none. God is sovereign, and he appoints, he calls various groups or one or another individual to make jealous another group, so that the other group, seeing how that other one or that group has joy in God, wants what that other group has. I remember when I was a young teenage boy, before I became a Christian, and I worked in the advertising department of a newspaper at the age of 15 or 16, and I saw this man who was so well-dressed and so well-spoken, who never cursed or swore, who was always cheerful, and I learned that he was a Christian. And he could have only been about a year or two older than I. But something struck me about that man. Before ever I became a Christian, I felt I wanted to be like that man. That was jealousy. That is envy. That is what God puts in the hearts of people who do not know him as he blesses his believers who are vessels of mercy so that the blessing he gives to them might come upon those who do not yet have it. If you don’t believe me on this, just keep listening in, because we come to that very specifically in chapter 11 of Romans, and it’s one of God’s major ways of bringing people to himself. So, you see, we look at these verses, and we see grace in them. We don’t see law, and we don’t see a vindictive God. What shall we say then, verse 14 says? Paul says in verse 14, what shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Certainly not. In other words, Paul is thinking, okay, I know what my reader’s thinking. He’s thinking that God is unrighteous because he chooses some and not others. No, Paul says that is not the issue, because he’s going to choose all ultimately. The next verse says this, For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion. Now this verse, verse 15, makes it solidly clear what election is. It is mercy. He’s equating election with mercy or mercy with election. When God elects people, he is not a cold-hearted creator who saves one and decides to cast into hell another one just because he wants to, because he wants to demonstrate his wrath in hell and demonstrate his love by saving one or two others. No, that is not the message of the Scripture. The message of the Scripture is that when you see God electing people, he is demonstrating his mercy. And people say, oh, I want that election too. I want to be elected. Why aren’t I elected? You are elected, and that is the good news. And so we turn our hearts to God because of election. We don’t run away from it. We say, oh, dear God, I thank you that my salvation is in your hands and not mine. That’s the beauty of it all. If you think salvation is in your hands, you will be forever stressed. But if you rest in God, an active rest that enjoys him, that meditates with him, that reads his word, that follows him, that is trusting in God’s initiative for you. Well, thank you, everyone. This is Colin Cook here, and I’ll see you next time. Cheerio and God bless.