Chapter 9

The Jewish/Christian Connection

Paul’s grief expressed at the beginning of the chapter has to do with the fact that there are many of his fellow Jews who have not found their way to faith in Christ. Theirs is the connection to the law as the way to be in relationship with God.

What is the connection between Jew and Christian?

The Jews are the covenant people. They were the generations of descendants from Abraham, the multitude as great as the sands of the sea or the stars of the sky. This fact must never be forgotten in Paul’s thinking because God’s promise is faithful. He does not pull back the covenant once given. Paul writes, “They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from the according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.”

The Promise of Abraham: Much resides in this beginning as recorded in Genesis 12. God invited Abraham, Sarah, and his family to set out into a relationship and covenant with God that would result in Abraham being the progenitor of a special people in a special relationship with God unlike any other that ever was. The promise would contain a land and a nation of priests with the goal of being a blessing for all the families of the earth.

Through their human descendancy the Messiah is promised for the saving of the world. The Messiah will be one of them.

Descendancy

The question that arises is about the constitution of descendancy. May makes it up. The Old Testament covenant position is that it comes through the generations of parentage. The old Jewish measure is the mother. If the mother is Jewish the child is too. Descendancy was passed on to the children, yet the first-born son was the heir. Yet even in the generations of Abraham the “rule” didn’t operate. Isaac was not the first-born of Abraham, Ishmael was. However, Ishmael was not born to Abraham and Sarah in the usual way. Hagar, Sarah’s slave was Ishmael’s mother. She was a servant and maid of Sarah who has given as a concubine to Abraham because Sarah couldn’t have children. Isaac, the child of their old age was the first born to Abraham and Sarah. Great difficulty grew around the birth. Sarah’s jealousy grew and she had Ishmael and Hagar thrown out of the family and into the wilderness. Isaac married Rebecca and had twin sons. Esau is born first and Jacob follows. In the tradition the oldest is the heir of the property, yet Jacob and his mother come to cheat Esau out of his birthright and the blessing. The promise travels down the wrong road – even God’s promise is transmitted through deceit.

The difficulty continues into the next generation. As Jacob seeks a wife he is sent to his mother’s family to find a wife. He instantly falls in love with Rachel the second daughter in the family. Laben promises Rachel and on their wedding night swaps Leah the oldest into the marriage bed. Jacob doesn’t find out until the marriage was consummated and hates Leah. Yet God produces children through Lean and Jacob. The first son comes from Leah. Rachel doesn’t have a child until Jacob already has ten sons through Leah and her two concubines. Finally Rachel has a boy, Joseph who becomes the unqualified favorite of Jacob. The story of the jealousy surrounding Joseph and many colored coat results in Joseph being sold into slavery in Egypt. Rachel produces one more son, Benjamin and dies in childbirth.

The story of the transfer of the promise of God comes through lies and deceit, through great family intrigue and jealousy that results in near murder and selling of the son. Paul uses this to say that even in the transfer of generations and promises through the “flesh” there is more. Mere genealogy is not enough. Paul traced already the story of Abraham as the recipient of the promises because of his faith. Faith becomes the issues now as it was then. The true children of Abraham where those linked with the promise transmitted through faith. It is because of this faith that Paul can write, “So it depends no on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy.”

In this vein, therefore, the gentiles become children of the promise. Abraham’s family grows to include not only those who came through the genealogy, but now also those who have been entered into the promise through their faith in Jesus Christ. Abraham is the father of the “faithful”.

The Difficult God

This God is not an easy one to deal with. God shows mercy to those he will and judgment to those he will with no seeming explanation. He points to Pharaoh and the hardening of the heart that leads to the death of the all the first-born of the land Egypt. This is a story that has always given me great concern. In the text we find God hardening the heart of Pharaoh who is then punished for his hardness of heart. Where is the justice?

There is no way around this rock. The pages of the Old Testament find us confronted with a hard God who kills over Pharaoh’s hard heart which seemingly comes from God. We are confronted with the same God who brings Joshua and Caleb to the border of the Promised Land and commands them to slaughter all of the inhabitants of the land to keep “their generations pure.” Paul is a product of his former training. He learned these stories from young on and was faced as we all are with trying to reconcile these events with a loving God. We are left with a tension that is most difficult to resolve but to say this, that we draw far different conclusions about God’s way of operating as we observe God at work in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. In our Christian approach it becomes most important to begin with the life of Jesus as the baseline for understanding God’s will for the world.

God For Us

Even given the conflict that arises as we try to deal with the difficult God, the final conclusion that is reached is that of the story of Hosea to which Paul turns in this chapter. Hosea marries a prostitute who has children of her “profession”. Hosea is put in the position of having to go out and find his wife in the brothels. His children are named names like “Not my People”. In the course of the prophecy, however, God makes it known that Hosea is continue to go out and seek them with the result he is continue to try to draw them back into the relationship with God. It is a story of the constant turning of the people of Israel away from their God, and God’s faithful and relentless attempt to gather them back. In the end they are returned to God and those who were named “Not my People,” were called “My People.” It is a story of reclamation and return to the mercy and favor of God.

Paul makes the transfer in the discussion and conflict between the Jews and Gentile who have all now become Christians “those who were not my people have become my people.” This has happened not through the genealogy of the Jewish ancestry, but through the ancestry of those who have come to share Abraham’s faith, both Jew and gentile alike.

The Remnant

Not all have come along. This has been a constant theme throughout the story of God’s intervention in the Humanity. Not all the inhabitants of the earth were saved, only a remnant (Noah and his family). Not all of the Israelites were destroyed in the Babylonian exile, a remnant remained. Not all came back from the exile, a remnant returned. Not all of the Jews followed along through the true descendancy of Abraham’s faith, only a remnant came. Paul’s point is that it does not exclude those who don’t follow from the faithful promise of God. God does not pull back his covenant. One of the tensions that Paul will deal with later is that question about what happens to those Jews who didn’t come along. For now we will have to leave that question unresolved.

We are nonetheless confronted with the stumbling block (the scandal) that is left. Paul talks about the reference to Psalm 2 in which “the stumbling block that the builders have rejected has become the chief cornerstone.” Jesus is referred to as that stone rejected that has become the very foundation of the faith in God’s promise. Those who grasp that cornerstone have become the heirs of Abraham’s promise through their faith in Jesus.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009