Paul’s Grief and God’s Sure Word

…for all, to go to destruction. This was the act of one who was drawing the Jews into ready obedience as with a net, and beating back the slanders of the foolish. For some of the Jews thought that the inspired Paul had, as it were, lost his mind and was setting himself against the laws given through Moses. That is why he writes to those who had believed, “For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you” (2 Corinthians 5:13).

So, he says, I for my part would very gladly choose to be accursed from Christ, if only I could save those of my own blood (Romans 9:3). Then he adds, as if to show that the cause of his grief over them is quite able to work such a disposition in him, so that he might not seem to have said something harsh and jarring in offering his own life in exchange for the life of others: For first, he says, they are Israelites; theirs are the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the worship and the promises; and from them, according to the flesh, comes Christ himself (Romans 9:4–5).

Now if they had been among those who had not known from ancient times the One who is God by nature and in truth, if the law given through Moses had not become for them the steward of their closeness to him, if they had not sprung from the root of the holy fathers and been made heirs of their good name, if they had not been the first to practice the ways of worshiping God and had not grown rich in the hopes of the promise, then one would have grieved over them more moderately. But since “theirs are the fathers,” and the rest (Romans 9:5), and since, when their affairs were all but running before a fair wind, they have fallen into an end no one expected and have missed their hope, how is what has befallen these wretched people not truly dreadful?

“But it is not as though the word of God has failed” (Romans 9:6). The statement is exact. For he says that the word of God has by no means proved false, that is, that it cannot fall away from the truth. For the God of all, as everyone agrees, promised Abraham at the beginning that he would be the father of many (Genesis 17:4–5), and again, “I will surely multiply your offspring like the stars of heaven in number” (Genesis 22:17).

Abraham, then, had to be shown to be the father not of those from Israel alone. For the nation that came from him was one, but the nations throughout the whole earth are past counting, and they too have been reckoned as Abraham’s children, if indeed they are of the promise and “walk in the footsteps of the faith” he had “in uncircumcision” (Romans 4:12), as it is written. For as blessed Paul himself says somewhere, “The promise to Abraham that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the law are heirs,” he says, “faith has been emptied and the promise made void” (Romans 4:13–14).

Since, then, the offspring of Abraham has been reckoned as being in Isaac, that is, according to promise (Romans 9:7–8), for this is the word of promise, “About this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son” (Romans 9:9), it would surely be plain that the children of the flesh would not, simply and in every case, be counted as children of God (Romans 9:8). Rather, it is the children of the promise, that is, those who come through faith, who would have that honor for themselves.

“And not only so, but also Rebecca, by one…” (Romans 9:10).