WHAT IS THE PLACE OF THESE CHAPTERS IN THE ORDER OF THE ARGU- MENT ?
Early in the discussion, Paul had asserted that the messianic salvation had been decreed to the Jew jirst (i. 16 ; ii. 10: compare John i. 11). In the face of this stood the fact that the Jewish peo- ple generally had rejected the offer of God in Christ. Paul him- self, after offering the Gospel to the Jews at Antioch in Pisidia, had said : “It was necessary that the word of God should Jirst have been spoken to you; but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles” (Acts xiii. 46 ; compare Acts xviii. 6). The Jew had fallen under the judgment of God (Rom. ii. 1, 2). Resting in the law, making his boast of God, claiming to be a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, and having the
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form of knowledge and of the truth in the law, he had made him- self a scandal in the eyes of the Gentiles by his notorious depray- ity, and had proved himself to be not a Jew, since his circumcision was not of the heart (Rom. ii. 17-29).
Notwithstanding these facts, the Jew claimed that because he was a Jew God could not reject him consistently with His own election and covenant promise. If the Gospel were true, and Jesus really the Messiah, the promises made to the Jewish people, who rejected the Messiah, were nullified. Or, if the election of God held, Israel was and forever remained the people of God, in which case the Gospel was false, and Jesus an impostor. “Thus the dilemma seemed to be: either to affirm God’s faithfulness to His own elect- ion and deny the Gospel, or to affirm the Gospel, but give the lie to the divine election and faithfulness.” (Godet.)
Paul must face this problem. It lies in the straight line of his argument. Hints of it have already appeared in chs. ii. 1 sqq. ; iv. 1. The discussion necessarily involves the truth of the divine sovereignty and election.
In studying Paul’s treatment of this question, mistake and mis- construction are easy, because the truths of divine sovereignty and elective freedom require to be presented in their most absolute as- pect as against man’s right to dictate to God. The parallel facts of man’s free agency and consequent responsibility, which are equally patent in these chapters, are, at certain points, thrown into the shade; so that, if the attention is fastened upon particular passages or groups of passages, the result will be a one-sided and untruthful conception of the divine economy, which may easily run into a challenge of God’s justice and benevolence. The assertion God must act according to my construction of His promise and de- cree, can be met only by the bare, hard, crushing counter-statement God is supreme and does as He will, and has the right to do as He will. This assertion, we repeat, does not exclude the element of individual freedom; it does not imply that God will do violence to it; it is consistent with the assumption of the most impartial just- ice, the most expansive benevolence, the tenderest mercy, the pur- est love on God’s part. The argument merely sets these elements aside for the time being and for a purpose, only to emphasize them at a later stage. As Meyer aptly says:
136 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. [Cu. XI.
“As often as we treat only one of the two truths: ‘God is absolutely free and all-efficient,’ and ‘Man has moral freedom, and is, in virtue of his propet self-determination and responsibility as a free agent, the author of his salva- tion or perdition,’ and carry it out in a consistent theory, and therefore in a one-sided method, we are compelled to speak in such a manner that the other truth appears to be annulled. Only appears, however ; for, in fact, all that takes place in this case is a temporary and conscious withdrawing of attention from the other. In the present instance Paul found himself in this case, and he expresses himself according to this mode of view, not merely in a passing reference, but in the whole reasoning of ix. 6-29. In opposition to the Jew- ish conceit of descent and works, he desired to establish the free and absolute sovereign power of the divine will and action, and that the more decisively and exclusively, the less he would leave any ground for the arrogant illusion of the Jews that God must be gracious to them. The apostle has here wholly taken his position on the absolute stand-point of the theory of pure dependence upon God, and that with all the boldness of clear consistency ; but only until he has done justice to the polemical object which he has in view. He then returns (vv. 80 sqq.) from that abstraction to the human moral stand-point of practice, so that he allows the claims of both modes of consideration to stand side by side, just as they exist side by side within the limits of haman thought. The contemplation—which lies beyond these limits—of the metaphysical rela- tion of essential interdependence between the two—namely, objectively di- vine and subjectively human, freedom and activity of will—necessarily re- mained outside and beyond his sphere of view; as he would have had no oc- casion at all in this place to enter upon this problem, seeing that it was in- cumbent upon him to crush the Jewish pretensions with the one side only of it—the absoluteness of God.”