In this insightful episode, Jerry Eicher dives into Romans chapter 9, presenting a compelling commentary from an Anabaptist theological standpoint. Known as a chapter often associated with Calvinist doctrine, Romans 9 raises challenging questions about faith, the law, and God's will. Eicher endeavors to tackle these topics head-on without altering the Apostle Paul's original intent.
The episode begins with an exploration of the Apostle Paul's lament over the Israelites, descendants of Abraham, and their displacement from divine favor due to their rejection of Christ the Messiah. This serves as a cautionary tale about relying on self-righteousness and misinterpreting divine plans. Iker examines the significance of Israelite lineage and covenant history, juxtaposing it with the Apostle's assertion that righteousness exists beyond the confines of the law.
The commentary continues by dissecting the narrative of Isaac and Rebekah, highlighting God's sovereign choices made independent of human works, yet profoundly linked to His righteous will. This challenges theological systems that attempt to align divine election with human merit, encouraging listeners to reconsider foreknowledge and the nature of God’s judgments.
Eicher also addresses the infamous example of Pharaoh's heart hardening, illustrating divine intervention in human history while stressing the complexity of God's will and human free will. The episode underscores that while humans may not influence God’s decisions, these divine choices aim towards righteousness and justice.
The episode wraps up with a profound exploration of the clay and potter metaphor, depicting God’s sovereign decision-making process. Through this, listeners are encouraged to understand the vast scope of God's purpose and mercy. Ultimately, the episode highlights the paradox of God's rejection of Israel's legalistic pursuit and His acceptance of Gentiles through faith, emphasizing that righteousness is granted by faith and not by works.
Okay, this is commentary on Romans chapter 9 from an about just theological perspectives And you can also find it in unraveling the gospel. It's just published book by me Jerry Eicher exploring Romans and righteousness And of course, that's encouraged highly that you read the chapter first unless you're very familiar with it and also as an introductory to the next three chapters 9 10 and 11 and I want to do chapter 9 all three little chapters in one Podcast to keep it more together But as an observation that these are considered in adabaptor circles to be the Calvinist chapters which are considered avoided first of all largely and are considered almost unanswerable you have to Really change the meaning of things and manipulate stuff around and say the apathy didn't really say what he said But I'm not I have no intentions of doing that I think you can actually if you take the apostle literally what he's saying or what he said and don't read any perspective into it. It actually makes amazing sense in The context of what we have already been trying to do and I think Romans itself makes tremendous sense It's it's a marvel of the book. So Romans chapter 9 go through the Do commentary on the entire chapter when the apostle begins chapter 9 of Romans with a lament over the condition of Israel those who were the direct physical descendants of Abraham He is greatly distressed that the very people who should have been the closest to God Were in the process of being rejected by God this movement away from God Had been set in motion by the Jews rejection of their Messiah Christ Jesus These Jews were certain that they had God figured out Because things were so clearly laid out for them They had what they thought was Irritable proof that they were on God's side and were in fact God's children The possibility that they had misunderstood the plan was simply unthinkable This should serve as a stern warning to anyone who thinks that he can discover Either righteousness or God through his own reasonings The evidence in behind the conclusion the Jews have reached was no trivial matter These were not trivial arguments that could be dismissed as a ratings of madmen. The Jews had evidence They were Israelites. They had records in their temple that carefully recorded their ancestry There were rules and regulations to ensure the accuracy of that record There was no mistake that could have occurred on their part These records linked them back to Abraham who had been accepted by God as his chosen vessel The glory of the Lord had repeatedly visited the earth in direct connection with Abraham They had stories of God personally Walking with Abraham and even consulting with Abraham on matters of great weight There had been a conversation about the destruction of Sodom With God taking Abraham's opinion into consideration A covenant had been given to Abraham along with the promise that he and his descendants would enjoy the blessings of God forever This was why the records in the temple were so important That the records might have another interest to God Apparently never occurred to them namely to prove that the lineage of Christ Was directly connected to King David The children of Israel and only the children of Israel had been given the holy law of God This law had been given to them from the top of the burning and blazing Mount Sinai No other nation or people or person had been so favored The prophecies that the Messiah would come to redeem the Jews was so clear that even Christ himself said That he came not but for the lost sheep of the house of Israel So what was all this business about faith that Paul was preaching? Because being a Jew had absolutely nothing to do with faith The records in the temple were not there Because someone believed they were there. They were either there or there were not They were there because someone was born a Jew and lived his life as a Jew period and end of story Keeping the law had become a matter of works alone No one asks you if you believed in the promises of God or if you love the righteousness of God more than your own righteous Such questions or foolishness in the ears of the Pharisees You either obey the law or you did not if you did not obey the law. You were not a child of Abraham In the mind of the Jew the failure of this carefully constructed plan Namely that God loved only the nation of Israel because only the nation of Israel had the laws of God Did not exist The possibility did not even register in their minds The upside was that keeping the laws of God Big one pure in the eyes of God and Since the Jews were the only ones who had the law and kept the law They were the only ones loved by God The circle was complete they perfect sense and sealed the deal Which of course is a problem if you know anything at all about the corruption of the self But that was not something the law focused on Telling people to obey the law was the job of the law Which would somehow have been undone if they had been told in detail About their inability to obey the law without corrupting it Paul did not use self corruption as an argument in his attempt to convince the Jews that the gospel of Christ was the truth I suppose This is because of the difficulties involved, but I'm guessing and I'm guessing based on what was done Not on the basis of an explanation from the apostle We do know that the argument was taken to a whole new level that of the righteousness of God Where does the righteousness of God exist or rather? comforting Does the righteousness of God in come from himself or From the law we have been through these arguments in connection with the penal substitutionary atonement model Which makes the same mistakes as the Jews The righteousness of God is not established by keeping the law but exists above and beyond Any law the righteousness of God is established by his own character and will This is the part that Paul focused on with the Jews the part about the will of God being the righteousness of God This is a hard still to swallow Because we want God to be subject to some kind of standard that we can understand The Jews were no different from us in disregard They could understand the law They could make sense of God if he was logical and methodical and acted according to well established patterns The Jews had those patterns those patterns said that God was just Because the law was just and God behaved according to the law The apostle upset the apple cart by asserting that God is just in and of himself All the way through completely and utterly the implication is that God's will is righteous Regardless of the course of action chosen There is no way to hold God accountable Except by appeal to his own will This conclusion did not and does not go down well To establish the principle the apostle takes the Jew through the Old Testament Since that was the only source of authority the youth recognized And he proceeds to show the Jew that this is how things have always been The problem was that they had not been paying attention The first Old Testament illustration the apostle presents is the birth of Isaac Before the birth of Isaac there was confusion created by the birth of Ishmael from Sarah's maid This had been Sarah's idea Which she presented to Abraham When it became clear to both that the promised son was not appearing Perhaps Sarah thought that Abraham might have misunderstood God and missed the point That they were to do what was legally and morally possible in any case Ishmael was born and God rejected him because the child was not born of both Abraham and Sarah That birth would have required the power of God to overcome Sarah's barrenness Not the seed of another woman provided in substitution This is the point the apostle focuses on to establish that God was under no obligation To accept a child who was a legal child According to the rules of the day, but who was not conceived in direct accordance with his promise The argument is a bit thin, but it is there if you look hard enough namely That illegal descendant of Abraham coming down through the centuries has many steps involved in this birth that are not under the direct supervision or direction of God God not only wants personal faith from each individual the apostles says But God also wants each individual to be born of his personal attention and approval something like that Therefore God has the right to present his promise To someone who is not a direct descendant of Abraham and to grant grace and mercy to that individual Obviously the Jews would have wandered a little more proof than this So the apostle continues His next example is the generation of Israelites that followed Abraham and Sarah Namely Isaac and Rebecca in this case Rebecca was also barren for a time, but eventually conceived twins These children Struggled with each other in the womb so much so That Rebecca Went to inquire of the Lord as to the cause Apparently the problem was so bad that Rebecca feared her balls would be torn to pieces Rebecca was told that there were two nations in her womb in two classes of people When the children were born one nation would be stronger than the other and in a reversal of the Order of the day the older would serve the younger This decision of God the apostle claims Was made while the children were in the womb and had done neither good nor bad works I mean both were shall we say kicking and screaming away or scratching The decision was made by God entirely with the material at hand Which was the existence of two children still in their original essence? You could say that only their selves Existed at this point to add insult to injury the apostle goes on to tell his readers That not only did God make his decision as to who would be stronger than the other and who would serve the other But God also decided whom he loved and whom he hated While the children existed only as an emerging self This analysis By the apostle cause much anger and uproar not only in his day right up to our own for here is the problem The choice of whom should be the strongest Can be incorporated into almost any theological system as can the choice of who should serve whom? What causes the problem is the statement that God loved the one child and hated the other We want to know the basis for this for all the obvious reasons This affects every single planet on earth very deeply The King James has a translation according to Election which the Reformed faith takes to mean an arbitrary selection by God based on sheer chance a much more accurate translation would be According to his choice into quote meaning the choice of God This directly links God's election to his will and nature Since he does all things according to the console of his own will so This is a righteous choice because God is righteous But it is not random as we understand random Because the choice is connected to God in what he wants This may or may not help in terms of human comfort Because we still do not like the idea that God is only answerable to his own will Shouldn't he wait for the twins to make some kind of choice regarding works or better? Yet for the twins to do some kind of work to impress God This thinking is deeply ingrained in the human psyche and is I suppose where the foreknowledge argument comes from in relation to this problem I am told that the understanding of the early church was that God looked at the fetuses Forming in the womb and could see into the future and knew what kind of works each would do and made His choice based on that the problem is that this is still a choice based on the works of man even though the works are delayed it seems to me to defeat the Apostles arguments are not surprised however that the early church would take this position They were quite immersed in Greek philosophy and would have felt the need to affirm the absolute necessity of God knowing Everything in the future down to the smallest detail They felt that God would not be a God worthy You'll be in God under any other circumstances This is Greek thinking and it does not allow for God to be God That is to choose not to know something if he so chooses Consequently, I disagree with the foreknowledge of works Rejected into the future as the basis on which God decides whom he will love and whom he will hate The text does not require this and there is no mention of foreknowledge and either the Old Testament story of this incident or India fossils text I Would rather think that we should accept a simple reading of the text in Which God looks at the babies in the womb and loves the one and hates the other on this reading? What can this mean on what basis does God make his decision? I think randomness is ruled out because God is not random He is who he is and who he is was present when he decided to love one baby and hate the other that being said One quick assumption we make should be dispelled The text says nothing about the permanence of that hatred or love if the conditions under which the choice was made changed The point is the existence of the choice Which was based on what the children? It was not based on what the children had done. I think the stage for this was set back in chapter 8 where the apostle speaks of those who love God and Consequently all things work together for their good these people Those who love God have been foreknown by God since the beginning of time We have foreknowledge attributed to a type of people those who either will or perhaps can love God and not to Particular individuals who have chosen to love Why can't we have God look at the babies in the womb and see what he foreknew? That is to see in real time Which one of them was the type of being who would return his love? Because the love of each child is not a word, which is the point the apostle is trying to make Coupled with the idea that such love or hate is not permanent Should the underlying conditions change? The theory fits the overall scripture for there is no guarantee that even the type of person Who is inclined to love God would persist in salvation? moreover This is not a difficult phenomenon to observe in real life. There are vast stretches of times in vast cultures that seem untouched but a gospel Until conditions are reached where they are inclined to accept the truth Maybe that just makes things worse. I Feel very much in the company of Augustine and his condemnation of infants who were not baptized That position was clearly wrong and hardly defensible, but anyone But I suspect there is truth in the perspective that God loves or hates infants based on their essence Having said that I'm aware that there is a great danger involved in trying to figure out God and as a result Straying from what he has clearly said about himself God has clearly revealed himself as one who is working diligently to bring all people To a state of being where they can believe and trust in him Another point that should be made is that salvation is how we are inclined to apply this love and hate Which may not have been the original application of God in loving and hating the two children in Rebecca's wound It may well have been a matter of choosing who would receive the birthright and Consequently who would become the lineage through which the Messiah would come? This choice of birthright resulting from his initial love and hatred would have been much less Negotiable or changeable later the same I believe does not apply to salvation Since there remains the possibility of the self Turning to God while the breath of life remains The apostle simply will not compromise his position And God does what he thinks is best according to his own choice And there is no injustice in that choice because there is no injustice in God the Apostle goes on to say that this choice of God cannot be influenced or decided in Consultation with anyone else nor can it be directed in its implementation? after Input from the fallen self therefore our will or what we choose to do Did not influence or affect what God did or offered to us? This means that the nature of the offer was not changed by our action even the action of refusal The offer remains the same What we have affected by refusing to love God is not God or God's love But our condition in that we have continued our fallen condition after the rejection Nor was the offer of salvation and offer that was suspended or in any way Unformed before the offer was made to us in this sense our Acceptance of the offer did not change the offer in any way that is the offer remains contaminated by the self which contaminates everything it touches This reality of contamination was in fact why the death of the self had to occur on the cross of Christ The death had to occur before the self could accept the offer without transferring the Contamination even though the acceptance itself did not change the offer based on what the apostle told us about God hating he saw and loving Jacob before the children were born There is reason to believe that God observes the emerging self in the womb and makes decisions based on what he sees These decisions have nothing to do with what the self has yet done or accomplished the apostles next example for the new ish people is the case of Pharaoh and Who ruled the land of Egypt near the end of the captivity of the nation of Israel? These were brutal times and it could be said that Pharaoh was a brutal ruler According to the apostle this is this was a choreographed event over a long period of time In which God had first chosen a particular type of man to sit on the throne of Egypt A man God knew would accomplish what he wanted accomplish which meant being cruel This was done by God and a man was chosen by God Who was the type of man capable of doing such things? Furthermore the apostle claims that when Pharaoh wavered in his cruelty during the plagues that were poured out on the land of Egypt God came to his side and hardened Pharaoh's heart so that the cruelty would continue This was done by God because God wanted to demonstrate his great power a power that could not have been demonstrated Had Pharaoh succumbed to the pressure of the plagues and let the children of Israel go This example is not considered to the problematic in theological circles because Pharaoh could have done evil things of his own Volition before God chose him to sit on the throne of Egypt God would have chosen to make a bad man worse which is more Agreeable in our thinking I suppose, but there are other valid considerations These questions can turn concern the effect of outside influences on the choices of the self What does God do with them? We can answer this question to some extent because we know what God has done God has written the desire for righteousness into the natural nature in which each self is wrapped Namely his body and his general well-being Things simply go better and life is more enjoyable when the right choices are made In this sense free will is not as free as we might think Free will is not a God To whom one must bow the knee in fact God always overrides free will when the purpose of righteousness is served The very reality that we have an inclination within us That leads us to make right choices is such an override God wants us to make right choices God wants us to love him more than ourselves Why not? Overwhelmed the self with inclinations to choose God and to love God is this even possible The Reformed faith seems to think so with its doctrine of irresistible grace The idea would be to flood the bastions and sweep away any Resistance of the human will but is it even possible? Would a life of bliss and joy and happiness produce a will in the self that always chooses the right thing? We need not ponder this question too long The answer lies in the experience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden Are Adam and Eve not surrounded by irresistible grace? Certainly with all that was good and holy There was no want or need yet. They chose themselves over God as far as I can tell base first on the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve live and a great deal of academic thought applied to the question Irresistible grace does not work to set a permanent course for a free will Surrounding the self with bliss does not overwhelm the urge seek one's own way Nor is there any indication that God desires or has chosen such a state of Eden I see no reason to believe that God did not know in the Garden that the fall was coming He certainly made every preparation for a fall and made no effort to stop it This does not mean that God will not interfere with man's choice by adjusting the surrounding tendencies to make choices Surely this would have happened to Pharaoh when the whole land of Egypt was under the grip of the plagues There is plenty of Inclination there to stop the whole thing, but God intervened. We are not told how God intervened Only that Pharaoh's heart was hardened This could easily have been done that counter incentives applied at just the right time It could have been a favor at concubine throwing a fit or a strong Counselor advising against acquiescence The list could go on and on, but the point is obvious God intervenes in human affairs and human decision all the time when it suits his purposes in this sense God makes the self do what he wants, but God does not make the self What the self is in his essence there is a vast difference and there is no Indication here in the fossil examples or anywhere else in scripture that such a thing is happening or has ever Happened the self is unrighteous and has always been unrighteous The path to the moment of self denial is Aided and abetted by God, but the choice to love is always free The apostle therefore Bullily told the Jews that they had no reason to complain about God's acceptance of the Gentiles by faith Nor did the argument that they were helpless objects in the hands of an almighty God carry any weight The objection was that if their works did not change the will of God And they were not to blame for their condition To conjure this point the apostles deeper into his argument by using the example of the potter Making pottery from a lump of clay This was an example with which the children of Israel would have been very familiar They would have often seen the potter at work Spinning his will on which he pressed a lump of clay to form a vessel Does not the potter have power over the clay the apostle asked to which the answer is an obvious? Yes The clay has no power to object to the kind of pottery The potter makes from it for the potter makes his decisions Based on the type of clay under his hands This is usually a lump of clay from which the potter breaks pieces of the size he needs for his vessels Since the consistency of clay is not the same The potter makes his decisions based on what the clay is at the moment. There could be several issues involved Coloration Consistency and texture needed for each proposed vessel the resulting vessel could then be used for either an honorable place in the home Such as on the dining room table or a dishonorable one such as the slop bucket This is all done at the will of the potter not at the will of the clay Nor is the clay asked to attempt to be the proposed vessel such a suggestion would be impossible for the clay to carry out Just as it is impossible for us to change or make ourselves into what we should be Because we cannot see with the eyes of the potter It should be noted that the pesky spectrum of fatalism rises in this conversation The instinct the apostle is trying to quell in the opening question The objection was whether we were helpless and doomed because our works could not influence God's decision The apostle has answered this effectively But has he left us deeper in the depths of fatalism by attributing God's choice to our state of being Rather than to our actions is a wrong kind of clay not the end of the matter Does the helplessness of what we are not drag us deeper into despair than even our works? We seem no less capable of changing our state of being than of changing our actions The answer would be negative and this is why The nature of clay Can be changed by natural forces beyond its control the same wood and does apply to God with us There is the natural weathering process where rocks and minerals are broken down Changing the mineral composition of the clay and altering the clay There is the movement of water which affects the moisture content plus Anticity and Compaction properties of the clay. There are the natural processes of soil formation including the Cumulation of organic matter and the action of microorganisms which can alter clay properties All of this is to say that clay can be changed Which means that we can be changed by processes beyond our control With the one caveat that is different from clay We have a will and clay does not We can allow the processes of life to change us which translates Into these external inclinations and influences that life imposes on us There is absolutely every reason based on the long history of mankind To believe that God does spend an Immensive amount of time and effort in molding nations and people Into the type of clay from which he can build vessels fit For the highest honor Namely the kind of clay that is willing to love and submit to this lordship and salvation. I Do not know who made this quote, but it is well said Because God is merciful and declares the inn from the beginning He acted in a mysterious and somewhat preparatory Fashion with respect to prior pagan religion and spiritual day the world over therefore Any similarities these beliefs hold with authentic Christianity are Considered in light of and in the context of a spiritual preconditioning agent thus Having the way to Christ the fullness of light and truth and a quote There is no shame in these attempts the apostle assures the Jews For even the failed attempts of God to influence a nation or a people do not result in a useless action This is what the making of the dishonorable pottery means in the apostles example God takes the clay Which resists even natural changes in its composition and makes vessels out of it that serve God's purposes even if they are eventually destroyed in this way the glory of God is manifest in all of his actions in God is fully revealed as both just and holy The Jews should have known this from their own scriptures the apostle argues these scriptures clearly Stated that God would call to himself of people who had not been his people That God would call if people beloved who had not been called beloved as Father evidence of how God works the apostle quotes the prophet Isaiah's Who declared that the children of Israel would one day be like the sand of the sea But that would not be what would save them from eventual destruction Instead it would be the work of God behind the scenes that would preserve a remnant that would not fall away in the example of the clay This would mean that God would not allow the consistency of the lump of clay to Deuteriate to the point where none of the clay could be used for God's highest purposes We are not told what these calculations and means were but they are of such immense dastness that we might not understand them even if they were explained to us This is in keeping with the God with whom we are dealing This is why things are the way they are the apostle tell the Jews God is God and there is nothing you can do about it You might as well get with the program and what is the program? The program is that the Gentiles? Who were not part of the chosen people of God? Who did not keep the law? Have been granted the righteousness of God Even the righteousness that comes to them by faith at the same time the nation of Israel Which vigorously pursued the righteousness of the law failed to obtain the righteousness of God because it sought this righteousness Not by faith that by its own best thinking The paradox is there for all to see the very God who will fence us By rejecting our righteousness is the very God who has the righteousness in the means to say us all peoples of the world
