Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Embody the kindness and justice of God, who works through both Jew and gentile to show mercy

Commentary on Romans 9:1-5

Erin Heim

Paul closes Romans 8 with the triumphal declaration that nothing “in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:39), which makes his dire tone in 9:1 an abrupt shift in attitude from his previous rhetorical heights. The abrupt shift in tone and subject between chapter 8 and chapter 9 has even led to many commentators dismissing Romans 9–11 as a digression, insisting that Paul’s discussion of Israel was not integral to the message of the letter as a whole. Most commentaries written in recent years, however, have recognized Paul’s discussion of Israel as essential to his wider theological project in Romans; what is at stake is not a peripheral issue of how Israel relates to “the church.”

Rather, Paul in these chapters insists that God’s very character is on the line. In fact, it is worth noticing that Paul never mentions “the church” (ekklēsia) in Romans 9–11. Instead, Paul is concerned to show that God’s promises are trustworthy, and that God is faithful and merciful to his people. Within these three chapters, Paul is concerned to address how God demonstrates faithfulness to Israel (for example, 9:6, 14; 11:1), how God is at work in both Jews and gentiles to bring salvation (9:16–18, 24–26; 10:4, 12–13; 11:11–12, 25–32), and therefore how gentiles ought to relate to Jews (11:17–34).

Romans 9:1–5 is Paul’s introduction to the three chapters in which he addresses these important questions, and these five verses pick up themes he has already introduced elsewhere in the letter (1:16–17; 3:1–3, 21–26; 7:1–6, 7–13; 8:12–17). He begins this portion of the letter by expressing his deep and heartfelt anguish for his “kinsfolk according to the flesh,” even going so far as to wish he could cut himself off from Christ for their sake (9:1–3). When Paul speaks about his “kinsfolk according to the flesh,” he is speaking about his own religio-ethnic identity as a Jew.

Paul’s kinsfolk according to the flesh

Preachers would do well to notice that for Paul, Judaism is an ethnic identity and a religious worldview. Even as a follower of Christ, Paul’s worldview remains essentially Jewish, and this is clear even in this short excerpt from Romans 9. Here are some of the ways in which a preacher might notice Paul’s Jewish worldview:

Paul divides the world into “Jews” and “gentiles,” and “gentile” is not an ethnic self-designation, but rather a Jewish way of labeling someone a “non-Jew.”
Paul’s Christology (which is a Jewish category) is in line with Jews’ Messianic expectations of a ruler arising from the “seed of David” (Romans 1:3) and the “root of Jesse” (15:12). In Romans 9:5, Paul glosses the more particular lineage of the Messiah with the inclusive assertion that the Messiah comes from the Israelites according to the flesh.
Even more fundamentally, Paul affirms here that the God of Israel is “God over all” (9:5), and that the God of Israel blessed Israel with adoption, the covenants, the law, worship, promises, and the patriarchs (9:4–5).

The danger of supersessionist theology

Gentile Christian interpreters of this passage are sometimes quick to gloss over the privileges of Israel, or to adopt a supersessionist theology that affirms that God has passed over Israel and that these blessings now belong to the (gentile) church. However, this attitude is precisely what Paul is attempting to counter in these three chapters.

Paul asks three different times whether God has reneged on his promises to Israel (9:14; 11:1, 11), and admonishes the gentiles not to boast over the “natural branches”—in other words, Israel—because the gentiles have been grafted into God’s cultivated olive tree by God’s power and God’s kindness (11:22–23).

In post-Holocaust Christian interpretation, and with antisemitism on the rise globally, Christian theology’s indebtedness to Judaism is still an important reminder. For the preacher, this ought to at least temper the Christian tendency to caricature Judaism or to speak about it as a foil to Christianity.

The danger of Christian Zionism

Conversely, at this political moment, it will also not do for Christians to co-opt Paul’s words in Romans 9:1–5 in order to uncritically support the modern state of Israel. As seen in many contemporary geopolitical contexts, the use of religion to justify a state’s actions most often results in a domestication of that religion’s ideals in service of a nationalist ideology.

In the case of Christian Zionism, this entails a theological framework that rationalizes support for the modern state of Israel no matter what. This harmful theological lens blinds Christians to any injustices perpetrated by the state of Israel; Christian Zionism allows little room for Christians to imagine the flourishing of non-Jews in Israel and Palestine. Munther Isaac, an Evangelical Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem, argues that Christian Zionism is rooted in fear, promotes fear, and dehumanizes Palestinians. Isaac writes, “In the theology of Christian Zionism, Palestinians are often viewed as an irrelevant after-thought.”¹

So if Christian Zionism is not a helpful antidote to antisemitism, how ought gentile Christians to understand Paul’s promises to the Israelites in Romans 9:1–5? Taking a leaf from Paul’s book, we ought first to seek to embody the kindness and justice of God, who works through both Jew and gentile to show mercy (11:32). The people of God in all times and places are called to be agents of justice and mercy. In so doing, we bring the message of the God of Israel to our neighbors—both Jew and gentile.