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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadSpurgeon Verse Expositions - Romans 9:26 - 9:32
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The Jews thought that God must certainly save them. They thought they had a birth claim. Were they not the children of Abraham? Surely they had some right to it. This chapter battles the question of right. No man has any right to the grace of God. The terms are inconsistent. But that same grace delights to save and bless even the perverse and rebellious who will yield to its blessed power.
Rom_9:26. And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, ye are not my people; there shall they be called the children of the living God.
That In the very same place where their sins made it patent and palpable they were not God’s people — in that very same place shall men confess that they are the children of the living God. Oh! what has not grace done?
Rom_9:27-29. Esaias also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved: For he will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth. And as Esaias said before, Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodoma, and been made like unto Gomorrha.
God has a people, then, even in Israel with all its rejection; and he Always will have, for he will never make the seed of Abraham to be as Sodom and Gomorrha. He will love his own, and glorify himself in the midst of his people.
Rom_9:30. What shall we say then?
Why, say this: —
Rom_9:30. That the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith.
For thousands of years they worshipped brutish idols and blocks and stones. Their philosophy was mixed with filthiness. Their lives were abhorrent to God. Even these at last have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith, for the Gospel being preached among the Gentiles, they have believed in Jesus, and they are saved.
Rom_9:31. But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness.
Israel followed after the law of righteousness with many ceremonies and external washings, and wearings of phylacteries and bordered garments.
Alas poor Israel
Rom_9:32. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling-stone;
And God is determined that they that are of the law shall not inherit it. He has made it a sovereign decree that the believer shall be justified and saved, and none else. They sought it not by faith, But as it were by the works of the law.