We are naturally Pelagian and we are not cured at our conversion, we usually become semi-Pelagian. Dr. Sproul considers ways by which people try to get around God's choosing and His electing.

Today, we continue with our study of Paul’s letter to the church at Rome. We are making a significant transition now as we move to the beginning of chapter 9 of this epistle. In a few moments, I will give some introductory remarks on this chapter’s significance in church history, but first I will take the opportunity to read the beginning of Romans 9:1–13. This is no guarantee that I will be able to cover that much today, but at least for our edification I will read that portion of the chapter. I ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the Word of God:

I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen.

But it is not that the word of God has taken no effect. For they are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham; but, “In Isaac your seed shall be called.” That is, those who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; but the children of the promise are counted as the seed. For this is the word of promise: “At this time I will come and Sarah shall have a son.”

And not only this, but when Rebecca also had conceived by one man, even by our father Isaac (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.” As it is written, “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.”

He who has ears to hear the Word of God in its fullness, let him hear it and be convicted by it. Please be seated. Let us pray.

Father, now as we continue our journey into the depth, riches, and mystery of Your grace, we ask once more that You would condescend to assist us in our frailty. When we hear these hard sayings, may we not only understand them, but may we embrace them, love them, and indeed contend for them. For we ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Sovereignty of Grace

Before I turn my attention directly to the text, let me give a few words of background about the significance of this chapter of Romans in church history. To be sure, the doctrine of God’s sovereign election is not an arcane item found rarely in obscure passages of Scripture, nor does it require the pursuit of a diligent scholar to uncover it through carefully concealed hints. Rather, the doctrine of election appears on virtually every page of the Bible from Genesis through Revelation. With all the biblical testimony to the sovereignty of God’s grace in salvation, there is no segment or section of Scripture that more definitively sets it forth or more clearly, persuasively, and convincingly lays it out before us than the Apostle does in Romans 9.

The Swiss theologian Roger Nicole, who recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday and who regularly attends worship here at Saint Andrew’s was present this morning sitting in the front of the church. He is a theologian for whom we are all profoundly grateful for his vast knowledge and contributions to the life of God’s people in the twentieth century and now into the twenty-first century. Dr. Nicole once made the observation that we are by nature Pelagian—that is, we assume by our fallen nature that we have the power to motivate ourselves, to incline our own hearts to make the decision unaided to come to Christ while we are yet in the flesh.

That assessment of our natural hostility to the sovereignty of grace, a built-in allergy to sovereign election that we suffer from in our fallen nature, is not instantly cured by conversion. The vast majority of people who have come to Christ still ride the horse of semi-Pelagianism and try to find a way to escape the full implications of the doctrine of election as it is set forth in Romans 9. I have to confess that I struggled with it for at least five years after my conversion despite being exposed to godly and able professors who tried to explain the Scriptures to me, but that built-in resistance to the sovereignty of God’s grace found root in my soul. It was not until a careful treatment of Romans 9 that I was brought kicking and screaming against my will to my initial acquiescence to pure Augustinianism.

I did that not on my own investigative ability, but I was assisted through the midwifery of John Gerstner, that great defender of Reformed theology, who forced me, again against my will, to read carefully Luther’s The Bondage of the Will and then Edwards’ The Freedom of the Will, both of which Christian classics deal at length with the content of Romans 9. It was finally looking at the text itself that caused me to throw up my hands and say: “I can fight this battle no more. I surrender, Paul. You have closed my obstreperous mouth, and now I have to embrace this doctrine, even though I don’t have to like it.”

When I was a seminary student, I had a little card on my desk upon which I had written these words: “It is your duty to believe and to teach what the Bible teaches, not what you would like it to teach.” That bothered my conscience to no end as well, because I did not like this chapter. But I was doomed to be defeated by being overwhelmed by the sheer force of the text of sacred Scripture. It then became my lot in life not only to believe this doctrine but to have to teach it and defend it against all kinds of people who held the same position I used to hold.

How People Avoid Election

When I look at this chapter, I believe it is so clear that I do not see how God in His Word could have made the doctrine of election any clearer than it is here in this great chapter of Romans 9. I wonder how I used to get around it and how my friends in the faith who still will not submit to it get around it. I will answer that question before we look at the text itself and say that there are three basic ways in which people try to get around the clarity and perspicuity of this treatment of the doctrine by the Apostle Paul.

The first, easiest, and most common way of getting around what Romans 9 teaches is by ignoring it, avoiding it, and carrying the discussion about matters of grace and sovereignty to other portions of Scripture while studiously staying away from Romans 9. That usually happens when people know enough to realize the force of this chapter.

The second way in which it is gotten around, so to speak, is to come to Romans 9 and say that Paul is not talking about God’s sovereign election of individuals unto salvation but rather God’s sovereign election of nations to a particular historic destiny. Particularly, they will say Paul is speaking about the election of Israel as distinguished from Syria, Babylonia, Greece, Rome, or any other nation of antiquity. In this understanding, the grace of which the Apostle is speaking is not saving grace but rather the grace of the promises of earthly benefits, which included the inheritance of a piece of real estate that is still very much being contested with violence even today.

The third manner in which people attempt to get around the teaching of Romans 9 is by the method we have looked at repeatedly through our study of Romans: the common view of divine election that bases election on foreknowledge. This involves God’s foreknowledge in that He looks down the corridors of time and knows in advance how people will respond when they hear the gospel. He chooses those whom He knows from the beginning will say yes to Christ, and those He knows will not respond positively to the gospel do not receive His choice of grace and salvation.

Those are the three basic ways that people get around this text. We will look at each one of these as we unfold it. So, let us now turn our attention, if we may, to the text itself.

Let me say just one more preparatory remark in case you are not a regular here or not familiar with my theological position. When I was a college professor and then a seminary professor, it bothered me to hear the ideal of a professor being someone who teaches from a position of neutrality, simply trying to give information to the students and not trying to influence their thinking in any way. That was held up as some kind of an ideal of pedagogy when I began my teaching. I did not agree with that. I felt it was my duty on the opening day of class to tell my students my basic perspective, where I was coming from. I would tell them: “I’m coming at this from a Christian perspective, from a Reformed perspective, and I’m here not only to give you information, but I’m after your minds. So, you might as well be prepared, because I’m going to do everything I can to persuade you of these truths.”

That is my duty when I stand in the pulpit of the church of Christ. I am not here to be a disinterested spectator. I am trying to persuade you of the truth of this content that we will be looking at. Forewarned is forearmed. If you do not want to listen to someone who has already been persuaded of this position, now is the time to shut your ears. However, if you want to hear the Word of God, take your fingers out of your ears and listen.

Paul’s Solemn Declaration

Paul begins Romans 9 with this statement: “I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit,” comma. Before I go past the comma, let me comment on this opening statement. Sometimes we think as we study and learn the things of God that whatever convictions we come to are put in concrete forever. But I trust that as we are more and more informed by the Word of God, as we immerse ourselves more fully in it, we should always be open to correction from the Word itself and to reproof from the Word.

From time to time, if we are really attentive to the Word of God, we will discover that we have erred in the past in our own understanding in some of these things. For many years—indeed, for decades—I have always understood this opening statement in Romans 9 as Paul’s declaring what I have always thought to be a formal oath, the taking of a vow. I have pointed to this passage on more than one occasion to give an example of a lawful vow and a lawful oath that Scripture permits, because after all, if the Apostle Paul in sacred Scripture takes an oath in his writing, then that would indicate that there are times when such oaths are indeed permissible. But to my chagrin, I learned recently that I made a mistake in my understanding of this text because of a detail of a preposition.

In this opening statement, Paul says, “I tell the truth in Christ,” en Christō. He uses the preposition en instead of the preposition pros. What I did not realize was that whenever people swore in the name of Christ historically, the preposition pros was used rather than the preposition en. So, in all likelihood, Paul is not swearing an oath here. He is not giving a sacred vow. You may not find that an earthshaking revelation, but for me it was a gospel goodie. I like those little details that come through.

Even though it falls short of a vow or an oath, nevertheless, the way Paul opens this chapter of Romans, he is giving a solemn declaration with the deepest seriousness that he is able to muster coming short of an actual sacred oath or vow. There is a reason for his concern to state this opening affirmation, because he is about to deal with some things that are very heavy and problematic for his fellow Jews.

Before Paul goes into chapters 9, 10, and 11, where he looks at the way in which God has taken the gospel from the Jews and into the gentile community and is grafting in gentiles in the place of Israel, Paul wants to make sure that as he is about to give that teaching, in case the Jewish community in Rome might read this epistle, he is speaking, as it were, through his own tears. He is not preaching or teaching his own personal anger or hostility towards his kinsmen. Quite the contrary.

Paul says, “I tell you the truth in Christ.” In other words, he is saying: “I’m speaking as a Christian who embraces and loves alētheia, the biblical concept of truth, the truth that is embodied in Christ Himself, who is the way, and the truth, and the life. I’m speaking in Christ, as a Christian.”

He continues, “I am not lying, and my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit. In other words: I’m speaking in Christ; I’m speaking in the Holy Ghost, and I’m speaking to you out of the depths of my own conscience. My conscience bears witness to me that I speak the truth.” Paul is saying, “There is no deceit or malice. I’m speaking the sober, unvarnished truth to you in Christ and by the Holy Spirit.”

Paul’s Grief for Israel

What is the truth that Paul declares so solemnly here? Listen to what he says: “That I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart.” He introduces this portion of the text by a solemn affirmation that he is a man who is deeply pained. He is going through what the we could call dolor. Remember the Via Dolorosa? It is the way of grief, the way of pain. He says, “This grief, this pain is not a passing thing, but it is a grief that attends my life and perturbs my heart continually.”

Think back to Jesus as He approached Jerusalem and considered the way in which the people of that city had hardened themselves against the Word of God. Christ cried out in lament, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Matt. 23:37). It is for this reason that Jesus is known as a man of sorrows acquainted with grief.

It is interesting to me what the editor of Tabletalk magazine, for whom I work as a dutiful laborer, assigned to me recently. If you think I have anything to do with selecting the articles that I write for that magazine, you are completely wrong. I write according to what I am assigned by parson Parsons. I tell the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bears witness to me. I was surprised that the assignment I just received last week for my next Tabletalk article has to do with grief. The editors wanted me to write anecdotally out of my own personal experience, and they asked me to reveal ways in which I have personally experienced grief in the pages of that article that is to come. I have not yet decided what to write, but as I contemplated that, the first thought that came to my mind was the loss of my father when I was seventeen years old. I was stricken with grief that has not completely left my soul since that time.

When I looked back over the years of my life, I thought, “When have I really experienced grief?” I thought about the loss of my friend Jim Boice, not simply because a friend was lost but because a comrade was taken out of the battle in which we find ourselves today. When I began to search my heart for my grief experiences in this world, I discovered that almost all of them were associated with departures from biblical truth that I have seen take place in the church over several decades. That is what causes me to mourn inwardly, and in that sense, I feel like I can relate to the Apostle Paul because he loved his fellow Jews. He cared about their well-being. He cared profoundly about them. When they did not respond to Christ as their Messiah, Paul was grieved continually in his heart.

If I can be personal, I have many friends in this town and in this country whom I love dearly who are not Christians. I am not mad when I see them. I do not want to go to them and say, “What’s wrong with you?” It just hurts that they do not know the Savior. They do not know what they are missing. They are still alienated from their Redeemer. We all know what it means to grieve over friends and relatives who do not know Christ.

This is how Paul begins this important chapter: “I have this great sorrow, this continual grief in my heart.” As if this solemn declaration of his personal concern for his countrymen were not enough, Paul escalates his personal description of his pain to a degree unprecedented in his writings or that I can find in anyone else’s writings.

Willing to Be Anathema

Listen to what Paul says here: “For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, who are Israelites.” Do you hear that? Paul is saying, “I love these people so much, I care so deeply for their condition, which is a condition of being lost, that if I could do it—if they could be brought to redemption by my being accursed—I’d be willing to give up my own salvation for my brothers and sisters according to the flesh.” Remember, Paul introduced this by saying: “I tell you the truth, I’m not lying, my conscience bears witness to what I’m saying here. I am willing to be accursed for the sake of my brethren according to the flesh, who are Israelites.”

I cannot imagine too many things that I would not be willing to do to see my friends come to Christ. But I have never said I would be willing to trade my salvation for theirs. I do not have that much love, I think, for anyone. But the Apostle did. Do you realize what Paul is saying here? He is not saying, “I would be willing to be at loss for some of the benefits that I receive from the Father.” He is not saying, “I’d be willing simply to lose my reputation if it would be mean winning some of my friends to Christ.” The word that Paul uses here is that he would be willing to be anathema, under the very curse of God, delivered to total destruction.

Paul uses the same word when he writes to the Galatians as they are being seduced to depart from the gospel of justification by faith alone. In the first chapter of Galatians, the Apostle writes, in essence, “If anyone preaches unto you any other gospel than that which you have received, even if it is an angel from heaven, let him be anathema, let him be damned.”

When the gospel was at stake, the enemies of the gospel could provoke the wrath of the Apostle such that he would look at them and say, “Damn you for destroying the gospel.” That is the worst kind of curse that could ever be delivered against a human being. It goes back deeply into the Old Testament.

At the time of the conquest of Canaan, God put the Canaanites under the ban and forbade the people of Israel to spare them or to take their goods as bounty. He said, “I want this place destroyed and the goods of the Canaanites burned, because I have delivered them over to absolute destruction.” That is what it means to be anathema.

Paul said, “I’d be willing to call down the curse of God on my own head, to be placed under the ban, to be placed under the anathema of the Lord if that’s what it would take to win my kinsmen according to the flesh, Israel.”

What Belongs to Israel

We cannot miss the significance of Paul’s language when speaks of his kinsmen kata sarka, his kinsmen “according to the flesh.” The Apostle had two different sets of kin. He had his natural kin, and he had his supernatural kin. The supernatural kinship that he enjoyed was the brotherhood of all who are in Christ. Remember, chapter 9 follows chapter 8, and at the heart of the discussion in chapter 8 was Paul’s exposition of the glorious work of Christ in securing for us our adoption into the family of God.

Paul was commissioned to be the Apostle to the gentiles, and every gentile who came to Christ and was converted was a kinsman to the Apostle Paul according to the Spirit. That person was a spiritual brother or sister to Paul, participating in the adoption God had wrought. But now he is talking about his original kinfolk, his blood brothers, his nation, his kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites.

Let me just say that there is no way we are going to finish this entire text tonight, but listen to what Paul speaks of with regard to his kinsmen according to the flesh who are Israelites. This is so rich. Listen to what Paul says: “Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises.” That list is not exhaustive, but let us look at what he mentions.

The Adoption

We think of adoption almost exclusively in New Testament categories. It is that great benefit that all who are justified receive when they are pronounced just by God and welcomed into the family of God, into the church through adoption, as we have seen. But this idea of the adopted children of God goes far back into the pages of the Old Testament. Israel was the adopted son of God.

Do you remember the strange application of Old Testament prophecy used by Matthew when, after Jesus is born and the threat by Herod comes against the infants through the slaughter of the innocents, the angel warns Joseph in a dream to flee from Bethlehem and not to return to Nazareth but to go into Egypt until the threat is removed. We are told that Joseph took Mary and the babe and fled into Egypt until such time as the threat of Herodian persecution was over. Then he was instructed to return to Israel, fulfilling the Old Testament prophecy, “Out of Egypt I called My son” (Hos. 11:1; Matt. 2:15). Christ personifies the adopted people of Israel. The original reference points back to the exodus, when God redeemed His people from the yoke of slavery under Pharaoh and called them, this nation, His son.

The Israelites are the ones to whom it pertains to enjoy sonship. It is heart wrenching to Paul that the adoption of which he has been speaking, including bringing us into the kingdom of God and the fatherhood of God in Christ, is missed by the original son, Israel.

The Glory

What else pertained to Israel? The glory. I had a friend in high school who was a tremendous athlete. He excelled in several sports, but his best sport was ice hockey. We played on the same team. Hockey was my favorite sport, though it was my least proficient sport. I was like a wounded duck out there on the rink. This friend of mine could skate circles around me and could shoot with either hand. He was tremendous. When my friend would score a goal in a game, he would raise his stick on high and look to the fans and say, “My people, my people.” I would say, “Jimmy, what are you doing?” He would say: “It’s glory. I’m basking in the glory.”

We finally grew up and away from ice hockey, and he took up golf. I had never played, and he got me to play golf. We started playing golf when I was in seminary, then I went on to graduate school and lost touch with him.

About ten years later, I got a call from my friend out of nowhere from Connecticut. He said: “R.C., I’m coming to Pittsburgh. Let’s get together.” I said, “For what?” He said: “I want to recover the glory. We’ve got to go back to those golf courses.” We have such a superficial understanding of glory.

The Greek word for glory in this text is doxa. We get the word doxology from it. When we sing the Doxology on Sunday morning, we are giving glory to God. The Latin equivalent is the word gloria, and we sing the Gloria Patri:

Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.

We attribute supernatural majesty to God, the God whose glory is so brilliant and so refulgent that human eyes are not permitted to behold it.

Yet in terms of Israel, God allowed His glory to dwell in the midst of the people. The focal point of that glory in the Old Testament was the glory of God that hovered over the mercy seat, over the ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies. When the ark of the covenant fell into hands of the conquering Philistines and was captured, the cry of the people went up: “Ichabod, the glory of God has departed” (1 Samuel 4:21). It was connected in Israel to the shekinah, that outward blazing light that manifested His glory and made God a consuming fire.

When the glory departed from the gates of Jerusalem, the people saw the glory of God rising up from the city and departing. At the birth of Jesus during the visitation of angels to the shepherds outside of Jerusalem, in the midst of their announcement, the glory of God flooded the landscape. The glory of God was shining all around.

That doxa, that gloria pertains to Israel. It was to Israel that God first manifested His glory, where he invested His glory in the community that He formed out of the slaves in Egypt. Paul says: “I’m constantly grieving in my heart for my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, because it belongs to them to have the adoption. It belongs to them to have the glory of God.”

The Covenants

To the Israelites belong the covenants. The covenant with Adam, the covenant with Noah, the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the covenant with Moses, the covenant with David—these covenants that we inherit all come from the Jews, not from the gentiles. They come from Paul’s kinsmen according to the flesh. These covenants belong to them.

The Law

To Israel pertains the giving of the law. The law did not come through Hammurabi, but through Moses. The law did not come from Babylon, from Phoenicia, from Egypt; it came from God to the people of Israel through the mediatorial work of Moses. That is where the law came from. We owe our law to the Israelites.

The Service of God

When Paul speaks of the service of God, the word there is latreia, which means the worship of God. We did not get our instructions on the bringing of sacrifices of praise to God in solemn assembly, in corporate worship, from the Greeks or the Romans. The principles of worship that shape our devotion even to this day were born in Israel when God delivered to His people the principles by which He was to be worshiped, adored, and sanctified.

The Promises

I recently heard J. Vernon McGee on the radio, and he said that the problem with people in the church today is they sing this old gospel song “Standing on the Promises” while they are sitting on the premises. Dr. McGee had a way about him, did he not?

Those promises we stand on did not come de novo out of the minds of Paul, John, or Peter in the New Testament era. The promises of God came through centuries of prophetic utterances going all the way back to the protoevangelion in Genesis 3, when God promised that the seed of the woman would come and crush the head of the serpent, and in the process His own heel would be bruised. The thousands of promises of the One who would come out of Israel, out of the root of Jesse, out of loins of David, all of those promises of the coming kingdom pertained to the Israelites.

Paul says: “All these things—the adoption, the glory, the covenants, giving of the law, the worship of God, the promises of God—all of these have come through my kinsmen according to the flesh, Israel. Wonder ye, then, at the weight of my tears?”

Salvation Is of the Jews

Paul continues to speak of Israel, “of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen.” There is no earthly way that I can treat that sentence in a minute or two. So, we will stop with the “of whom” and “from whom” and “the fathers . . . according to the flesh, Christ came.” Lastly, what pertains to the Israelites is Jesus, a Jew, from the seed of David.

Just this week I got a letter from someone asking me a question that, frankly, I hear all the time. It said: “Dr. Sproul, you frequently quote Martin Luther, and obviously you’re a fan of him and hold him in high esteem. Yet we hear that in his later years, he became viciously antagonistic to the Jews in Germany, so that he became exhibit A for all the worst kinds of anti-Semitism. Some people even say that he sowed the seeds for the Holocaust and that Hitler was just following in the train of Luther with his hatred of the Jews.”

It is true that at the end of his life, Luther lashed out against Jews for various reasons in the sixteenth century, and in a manner that was not really all that unusual in the polemics of that day. But earlier on in his ministry, Martin Luther wrote a magnificent essay on the debt that the church of Christ owes to the Jews, in which Luther pointed out the biblical principle, “Salvation is of the Jews.” In that essay, which is often overlooked in the debate, people fail to hear Luther saying we have nothing except for the legacy of Israel. Let us pray.

O Father, we thank you for this glorious chapter, which is introduced by a solemn vow from your Apostle to the gentiles for his heartfelt love and grief for his kinsmen according to the flesh. As we continue to study this chapter and the next two that flow out of it, may we be ever mindful of the pain that drips from the pen of the Apostle as he speaks of these things. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.