“But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. For this is what the promise said: “About this time next year I will return, and Sarah shall have a son.”” -Romans 9:6–9
Having established that the covenant had not failed but was being misinterpreted by the Jews, he explains that the plan of God is not according to their biological ancestry but according to the sovereign will of God.
As an example, he points to Abraham who had two sons. One was accepted, the son of promise, and one was rejected, the son of the flesh. The witness to Paul’s argument is the Scripture itself (Genesis 18:10, 14).
This is only the beginning of Paul’s proofs. He will not only demonstrate the case for God’s sovereign election by highlighting Abraham, but will go on to include examples from Isaac’s son’s Jacob and Esau.
For reasons that can only be attributed to the pride of our flesh, the thought that it is God, and not we ourselves, who superintends the plan for human redemption, causes many to bristle at the idea, even professed believers. But were it not for grace, none would be saved. Let us recall what Paul so eloquently established previously:
“For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith.” -Romans 3:20–27
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