Romans 9 Studies

For those who may wish to ‘study’ this chapter, the following simple resources are provided for you. Each chapter is divided into a number of studies and each study or passage has a simple four-Part, verse-by-verse approach, to help you take in and think further about what you have read.

Passage: Rom 9:1-13

1  I speak the truth in Christ – I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit – 2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, 4 the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises.

5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, for ever praised! Amen.

6 It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. 7 Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. On the contrary, ‘It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.’ 8 In other words, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring. 9 For this was how the promise was stated: ‘At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son.’[c]

10 Not only that, but Rebekah’s children were conceived at the same time by our father Isaac. 11 Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad – in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: 12 not by works but by him who calls – she was told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’ 13 Just as it is written: ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’

A. Find Out:

1. What does Paul feel for Israel? v.1-4a
2. What 8 benefits do they have? v.4,5
3. What has NOT happened? v.6a
4. Why hasn’t it? v.6b,7a
5. How does he first show this? v.7b,8
6. How does he show this again? v.11,12

B. Think:

1. What was the main point Paul finished with in Chapter 8?
2. How might the Jews’ question have been seen to be contrary to this?
3. What point is Paul therefore making in Chapter 9?

C. Comment:

Paul apparently turns away to a new subject, his anguish for his fellow Jews who don’t believe, but soon we see it is really a continuation of his argument in Chapter 8. There he had declared that God is sovereign in control, and nothing can separate us from His love. In case anyone should say, “Well the Jews contradict that because God called them into being, but most of them disregard Him now”, Paul shows that throughout their history the sovereign call of God was relentlessly working out God’s purposes in them.

God’s purpose, he says, wasn’t with every person descended from Abraham. The first point to note is that it was with those descended by promise or by faith who are the ones He is really concerned with. Second, within that God chose particular parts of the family of faith, e.g. Jacob instead of Esau. Oh no, he says, God’s sovereign purposes were clearly being worked out in them. The fact that many of them didn’t believe is irrelevant to this.

Throughout the whole history of Israel, God was sovereignly working, choosing men who would respond to Him, men who would be men of faith. God chooses who He will, not just accepting men because they had the name Jew, but because they would be His sons in reality, sons by faith.

D. Application?

1. God looks for people of faith, not people of natural descent.
2. God never fails or makes mistakes!

Passage: Rom 9:14-21

14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses,

‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
    and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’

16 It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. 17 For Scripture says to Pharaoh: ‘I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’ 18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.

19 One of you will say to me: ‘Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?’ 20 But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? ‘Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?”’ 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?

A. Find Out:    

1. What question was Paul raising? v.14
2. What had God said to Moses? v.15
3. What does life depend upon? v.16
4. What does Pharaoh’s case reveal? v.17,18
5. What 2nd question does Paul foresee coming? v.19
6. What is his answer to that? v.20,21

B. Think:

1. What key word keeps cropping up in this passage?
2. What does it indicate?
3. How would you summarise this passage?

C. Comment:

Remember Paul has just been talking about the way God chose particular people in the early history of Israel. But, he says, someone might claim that God is unjust, rejecting some and choosing others. No, he replies, God says He has the right to choose who He will save. Note it is that way round, not who He will judge, for ALL have sinned, ALL deserve punishment, but God chooses who will receive His MERCY. Mercy is undeserved relief from what we do deserve. God chooses people from the great masses of the entire world that deserve His punishment, instead to receive His grace and become a holy people.

But, comes Paul’s next question, isn’t that unfair, why does God still blame us when He has the power to do this? Paul’s answer to his own question is not to explain in great detail why God chooses those He knows will respond, but simply to say, “Don’t be silly, He is God!” The Lord is so great and mighty in power, knowledge and wisdom that we, who lack all these things, just aren’t in the same league! We have no right to question Almighty God, indeed it is foolishness to do so, just as Job found out. (see Job 42:3). We would do well sometimes to harness our foolish thoughts and words that follow.

D. Application?

1. We ALL deserve God’s judgement. The wonder is that He doesn’t destroy us but instead saves us.
2. here is NEVER room to criticize God!

Passage: Rom 9:22-29

22 What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath – prepared for destruction? 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory – 24 even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? 25 As he says in Hosea:

‘I will call them “my people” who are not my people;
    and I will call her “my loved one” who is not my loved one,’

26 and,

‘In the very place where it was said to them,
    “You are not my people,”
    there they will be called “children of the living God.”’

27 Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:

‘Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea,
    only the remnant will be saved.
28 For the Lord will carry out
    his sentence on earth with speed and finality.’

29 It is just as Isaiah said previously:

‘Unless the Lord Almighty
    had left us descendants,
we would have become like Sodom,
    we would have been like Gomorrah.’

A. Find Out:

1. How did God deal with those who were to be destroyed? v.22
2. Why did he do this? v.23,24
3. Who, through Hosea, did God say He was calling? v.25
4. What would they become? v.26
5. Who in Israel did He say He would save? v.27
6. Who had they deserved to be like? v.29

B. Think:

1. What appears to be God’s point in not destroying straight away those who deserve to be destroyed?
2. How is God’s purpose far bigger than just Israel?
3. How was it limited in respect of Israel?

C. Comment:

Pursuing the subject of God’s sovereignty in choosing who He will, Paul makes the suggestion that God doesn’t instantly destroy everyone who deserves that, so that those who are saved can see even more clearly how wonderful His mercy is. How? Well, the longer we have to observe the lives of the godless of this world the more we realise we ALL deserve death. And as we realise that and observe what God has done through Jesus for us, we realise more and more how wonderful that is.

Isn’t it wonderful, says Paul, that God called people to Himself from the Gentiles, from those who had known nothing of Him. He took them and made them His sons. Then, he says, look at Israel; merely because they are Israel that doesn’t mean they are safe; indeed it is exactly the opposite, they all deserve to die, but even from them God calls a remnant who will respond to Him.

The message comes again and again, ALL (including Jews) deserve to die, but the wonder is that God in His mercy DOES save some, those who respond to His Son, Jesus.

D. Application?

1. Look at people, understand, and worship God.
2. From Gentile AND Jew God saves a remnant.

Passage: Rom 9:30 – 10:4

30 What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; 31 but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. 32 Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the ‘stumbling stone.’ 33 As it is written:

‘See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble
    and a rock that makes them fall,
    and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.’

1 Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. 2 For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. 3 Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. 4 Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.

A. Find Out:

1. 1hat had the Gentiles done and obtained? v.30
2. What had the Jew done and obtained? v.31
3. Why had that happened to Israel? v.32
4. What was Paul’s yearning? v.1
5. What was the problem with the Jews? v.2,3
6. What was God’s righteousness? v.4

B. Think:

1. How had the Jews sought to be righteous?
2. How were the Gentiles now righteous?
3. What was the key the Gentiles had but the Jews hadn’t?

C. Comment:

Having just emphasised that the Gentiles who hadn’t known God previously were now coming to know Him, Paul now contrasts Jew and Gentile in answer to a question that might arise in the minds of his readers.

We might put it today, “It’s a bit funny isn’t it that Gentiles who didn’t go looking for righteousness found it, while Jews who actively pursued it, didn’t find it?” Not really, replies Paul, because righteousness in God’s eyes only comes by faith, by receiving it from Him, and the Jews didn’t have faith. Instead they had a self-centred religion whereby they endeavoured by self effort to keep God’s rules.

There is a very real challenge here to the church today not to be legalistic, focusing on rules and ignoring real relationship. It is very easy to set up a religion made up of do’s and don’t and in fact experience and know nothing of God. Even “believing in Jesus” can become an intellectual matter of assent to mere information. Instead it is to be a dynamic key to a life of faith whereby we live daily in the knowledge of His presence, communing with Him, sharing with Him in a living, loving, real, daily relationship.

D. Application?

1. Is our religion rules or relationship? Where is daily faith?
2. Come to God today and simply receive the wonder of, His grace to live today, and allow the love and joy of His presence to fill you.