The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1-23, 2nd ed.

Top Highlights

“The first privilege of Paul’s kinsmen is that they are ‘Israelites.’²⁴ The word is redolent with a blessed antiquity and a glorious future (Is 49:3; 56:8; 66:20; Joel 2:27; 4:16 MT; Ob 20; Ps 25:22; 53:6; 130:7f). It sums up all the other privileges in its richness (see p 21). Its promissory import is evident from Paul’s use of it in Rom 11:1f: ‘I say therefore, has God rejected his people? No indeed! For I myself am an Israelite, from the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.’ To be an ‘Israelite’ is to be among the people of God, and God does not reject his people. What could be more auspicious than to be called an ‘Israelite’!” (Page 31)

“These three realities overlap in the present context so that we can say God’s glory and his name consist fundamentally in his propensity to show mercy and his sovereign freedom in its distribution.²⁸ Or to put it more precisely, it is the glory of God and his essential nature mainly to dispense mercy (but also wrath, Ex 34:7) on whomever he pleases apart from any constraint originating outside his own will. This is the essence of what it means to be God. This is his name.” (Pages 88–89)

“Whether the second ‘Israel’ in 9:6b is the Church or the believing portion of empirical-historical Israel, the point there is this: the privileges given to Israel can never be construed to guarantee the salvation of any individual Jew or synagogue of Jews, and therefore the unbelief of Paul’s kinsmen cannot immediately be construed to mean that God’s word of promise has fallen.” (Page 24)