BaptistWay Bible Series for November 4: Christâs love extends to all
Posted: 10/26/07
BaptistWay Bible Series for November 04
Christ’s love extends to all
• Romans 9:1-7; 10:1-13; 11:1-2, 25-32
Christ Church, Rockwall
Perhaps you have noticed so far that the weight of the Apostle Paul’s argument in Romans extends the ever-widening circle of God’s salvation story beyond the particular story of Israel. A longer shadow is cast on the notion that God’s righteousness is tailored exclusively to the people of Israel.
Paul repeatedly makes the case for universal salvation in Christ, meaning that God’s righteousness is available to the whole world regardless of ethnic distinctions or nominal association with specific religious practices. Even the physical practice of circumcision, a distinctive religious rite of the Jews, is rendered of no enduring significance if it is not accompanied by faithfulness to Torah.
Paul stresses that circumcision is a spiritual matter of the heart based on whether a person keeps the law’s requirements, not based on whether a person is a Jew or Gentile: “For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart—it is spiritual and not literal” (2:28-29).
Again, when it comes to keeping the commands of God’s covenant, Paul is radically redefining the notions of inclusion and exclusion, insiders and outsiders. To interpret his view as many commentators have is to at least question the theological significance of their no longer being any distinctions between Jews and gentiles. If these distinctions are truly leveled, then what of the Jewish identity and practice remains in light of the revelation of Christ?
It is no wonder why the question was posed, “What advantage is there to being a Jew” (3:1)? All along, Paul reiterates the reasoning that not all those who are called “children of Abraham” are actually the “seed” of Abraham. This means it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as descendants (9:8). All people of “Abraham’s seed” then are “the children of God,” not based on the accidents of biology but based on the promise of God’s choice to deliver salvation to the world through Israel.
Notice how passionate Paul becomes now about his relationship to his fellow Jews. At times, he almost sounds defensive. Perhaps he is aware of his growing reputation as a renegade among his people who may be questioning the credibility of his witness. He wants to demonstrate to them his message is trustworthy.
First, he expresses the inward anguish he feels in his heart concerning his own people’s relationship to Jesus the messiah as the fulfillment of Torah. Listen to his dramatic lament again: “For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh” (9:3). This is an interesting twist in Paul’s presentation, given he has just proclaimed “absolutely nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:39).
Paul is beside himself that his own people, who had been bearers of the covenants, the giving of the law, the promises and the patriarchs, and the Messiah according to the flesh (9:4-5), could not make these connections to the coming of Jesus, who Paul considered the fulfillment of Torah. What he desires to make known is that Jesus is the new and promised gift of God within the overall salvation story God initiated through the people of Israel.
Without the understanding of the Jewish story, Jesus as messiah is incomprehensible. Paul no more can give up Christ in order to save his people than his people can give up the Torah in order to embrace Jesus as Christ. To be clear, Christ can only be appreciated within the Jewish scheme of salvation and the context of Torah. Perhaps to understand Paul rightly, Jesus is the living, breathing embodiment of the Torah. The goal of the Torah is accomplished in Christ. The righteousness that proceeds from both is God’s righteousness. For Paul, to know Christ is to comprehend the goal of the Torah.
Paul’s personal conflict about the relationship between the coming of Jesus and his fellow Jews is one inherited by the church across time. A partial summary of this conflict is found in the writings of essayist Michael Wyschogrod.
Kendall Soulen summarizes: “Wyschogrod makes clear that Christian claims on behalf of Jesus of Nazareth are problematic from the perspective of Jewish faith. The claim that Jesus was the Messiah is difficult for Jews to accept because Jesus did not perform a key messianic function: he did not usher in the messianic kingdom. More difficult by far, however, is the Christian claim that God was incarnate in Jesus. For a Jew to subscribe to this belief would mean a grave violation of the prohibition against idolatry.”
Nevertheless, Wyschogrod does not think Jews are entitled to dismiss the Christian claim about God’s incarnation in Jesus out of hand. “To reject the incarnation on purportedly a priori grounds would be to impose external constraints on God’s freedom, a notion fundamentally foreign to Judaism.”
Sadly, the Jewish “no” to Jesus as the fulfillment of the Torah has generated devastating historical consequences. The Jewish people have been victimized by anti-Semitism that has resulted in incalculable deaths and the threats of millions of others. Especially troubling is the various ways the Christian story has been used as a weapon of mass destruction against the Jews, including the Nazi’s infamous use of Christian tradition during the Holocaust to murder millions of Jews.
Christians who are eager to be faithful to Christ must learn to be faithful to the history from which Christ came. This at least means engaging our Jewish brothers and sisters in dialogue about our shared holy history, not the least of which are the writings we both deem to be sacred. At the same time, we must help each other honestly understand the distinctions of what makes us different.
If Israel is God’s first love, and if God chose Israel in the mystery of God’s love to be a blessing to the entire world, then we Christians must be vigilant about falling into any traps of a spiritual superiority complex. It wasn’t because Israel was superior to all other peoples that God chose them. God’s divine election of Israel was an unconditional election, rooted in God’s love. Even Paul asks: “Has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham … God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.” (11:1-2)
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