Romans 9:6 - Meaning and Application

The apostle has now reached his main point about the rejection of most of his fellow Jews. He has already shown his deep love for them and admitted their clear privileges. Now he argues that the setting up of the gospel did not make God’s promise to the patriarchs fail. When he says, “It is not as though the word of God has failed” (Romans 9:6), he is ruling out any thought that God’s promise has become powerless.

We should never blame any word of God for failing. Nothing God has spoken can fall to the ground, and nothing he promises can come to nothing. Both his promises and his warnings will be fulfilled, and he will still honor his law in the end, as Scripture says (Isaiah 55:10-11). This is especially true of God’s promises, which may seem unclear for a time when later events test our faith. Yet they cannot be made void. In the end, they will speak, and they will not lie.

The problem, then, is how to fit the unbelieving Jews’ rejection together with God’s promise and with the outward signs of his favor shown to them. Paul answers this in four ways: first, by explaining the true meaning of the promise in this section (Romans 9:6-13); second, by showing God’s absolute right, or sovereignty, in dealing with people (Romans 9:14-24); third, by showing that this rejection of the Jews and the bringing in of the Gentiles were foretold in the Old Testament (Romans 9:25-29); and fourth, by showing the real reason the Jews were rejected (Romans 9:30 to the end of the chapter).

Here, Paul is explaining what God meant by the promise. When people misunderstand God’s word, it is no surprise if they then complain about how he carries it out. So the meaning of the promise must be set straight first. God’s promise to Abraham, that he would be a God to Abraham and to his seed, did not mean every descendant of Abraham by blood. It was never meant to include everyone who shared Abraham’s family line as such. From the beginning, the promise was limited to certain ones, just as it was given to Isaac and not Ishmael, and to Jacob and not Esau. Even so, the promise was not made useless. In the same way, now it belongs to believing Jews who receive Christ and his gospel, while it leaves out many who refuse him. That does not mean the promise has failed any more than it failed when Ishmael and Esau were passed over.

Paul’s first point is this: “They are not all Israel who are descended from Israel” (Romans 9:6), and not all are children because they are Abraham’s seed (Romans 9:7). Many who came from Abraham and Jacob, and who belonged to the nation called Israel, were not true Israelites in the full and saving sense. They were not all God’s people in heart and life, even if they carried the name and outward standing. It does not follow that being Abraham’s physical descendant makes a person a child of God. Yet the Jews had often assumed that it did, and they boasted in that relation to Abraham (Matthew 3:9; John 8:38-39). But that assumption was wrong.

Grace does not run in families. Saving blessings are not automatically tied to outward church privileges, even though people often stretch God’s promise that way to support a false hope. Paul proves this by examples. He shows that God chose some of Abraham’s descendants and not others, and that he did so according to his own will, not according to the law of commandments to which the unbelieving Jews were so tightly bound.

First, Paul points to Isaac and Ishmael. Both were Abraham’s sons, yet Isaac alone was taken into God’s covenant, while Ishmael was rejected and sent away. Paul quotes the Scripture, “In Isaac shall your seed be called” (Genesis 21:12), which also fits with God’s earlier word that the covenant would be established with Isaac (Genesis 17:19). This did not mean that God’s promise to Abraham had failed. God, as the giver of blessing, had the right to decide where those blessings would rest. He placed them on Isaac and not on Ishmael.

Paul then explains what this teaches us. The children of the flesh, meaning those who are Abraham’s descendants only by natural birth, are not therefore the children of God. If that were true, Ishmael would have had a claim. This speaks directly to the unbelieving Jews, who trusted in their physical descent from Abraham and in outward ceremonies that Christ had already set aside. They had confidence in the flesh (Philippians 3:3). Ishmael was a child of the flesh, born through Hagar in an ordinary way, with nothing miraculous in his birth. He was born according to the flesh (Galatians 4:29), and he stands for all who look for justification, that is, being made right with God, and salvation by their own effort and goodness.

The true children are the children of the promise, and they are counted as the seed. They do not receive that place because of any merit in themselves. It is purely because God has promised it and freely gives it of his own good pleasure. Isaac was such a child of promise, as Paul shows by quoting Genesis 18:10. He was not only one who had been promised, like many others, but one who was brought into being by the power of that promise. In that way, he is a picture of all who are now counted as the seed, true believers who are born not by human will or natural power, but by God. They are born from the imperishable seed, the word of promise, through God’s special promise of a new heart (Galatians 4:28). Isaac was conceived through faith (Hebrews 11:11). In the Old Testament, God was already teaching these great truths of salvation, not with plain words, but through meaningful examples and acts of providence. Those signs were not as clear to them then as they are to us now, since the veil has been removed and the types have been explained by what they pointed to.

Second, Paul points to Jacob and Esau (Romans 9:10-13). This case is even stronger. It shows more clearly that the physical descendants of Abraham were not, simply because of birth, included in the promise. Only those whom God had appointed in his sovereignty were included.

There was a difference between Ishmael and Isaac before Ishmael was cast out. Ishmael was the son of the slave woman, born long before Isaac. He had a rough and fierce nature, and he mocked or mistreated Isaac. So someone might think God had those things in mind when he told Abraham to cast Ishmael out.

But with Jacob and Esau, it was not like that. They were both sons of Isaac and the same mother, and they were conceived at the same time. The difference between them was set by God’s plan before they were born, before they had done any good or evil. They were both struggling in their mother’s womb when it was said, “The older will serve the younger.” This was said without regard to any good or bad works done or even foreseen, so that God’s purpose in choosing would stand. The point is that God chooses some and passes by others freely, by his own absolute and sovereign will, giving his favor or withholding it as he pleases.

Paul further explains this difference with a quote from Malachi 1:2-3. There the words are about the nations that came from Jacob and Esau, not just the two men themselves: “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” Israel was brought into God’s special covenant, given the land of Canaan, and blessed with striking displays of God’s care, protection, provision, and rescue. The Edomites were left out, with no temple, altar, priests, or prophets, and with no such special kindness or care.

So God made a difference between those two nations, both of which came from Abraham and Isaac, just as he first made a difference between Jacob and Esau, the heads of those nations. In this way, the choosing of one and the rejecting of the other was meant to point beyond itself to a greater choosing and rejecting.

Some understand this as meaning the choosing and rejecting of conditions or qualities. In other words, God chose faith as the condition of salvation and rejected works of the law. Arminius and John Goodwin read it this way. But this stretches the Scripture too far, because Paul is speaking throughout about persons, not about kinds of people or about conditions. He says, “He has mercy on whom he will have mercy,” not on what kind of quality he will have mercy. Also, this view does not fit Paul’s objections in Romans 9:14 and Romans 9:19, or his answer about God’s full authority over human beings.

Others take it to mean the choosing and rejecting of particular persons, some loved and others hated from eternity. But Paul is speaking of Jacob and Esau as ancestors, Jacob representing one people and Esau another. He is not saying that God condemns anyone, or plans to do so, simply because he chooses to, without any reason related to their own guilt.

A better understanding is that Paul is speaking of the choosing and rejecting of whole peoples considered as groups. His purpose is to defend God’s justice, mercy, and faithfulness in calling the Gentiles into the church and covenant, while allowing the stubborn part of the Jews to continue in unbelief and so shut themselves out. In this way, they lost the blessings that belonged to their peace. Still, Paul’s reasoning here also fits the way God deals with individual people, because giving saving blessings is similar to giving church privileges.

God’s choice of the younger Jacob over the older Esau, crossing the normal order, showed that the Jews, though they were Abraham’s natural children and the church’s firstborn, would be set aside. The Gentiles, like the younger brother, would be brought in their place and receive the birthright and blessing. The Jews, as a nation held together by the ceremonial law, the temple, and the priesthood, had long been God’s favored people, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. They were marked out by God’s mighty works among them and for them.

But when the gospel was preached and Christian churches were planted, that national body was left aside and their church system was broken apart. Christian churches, and later Christian nations, became their successors in God’s favor and in those special privileges and protections that came from that favor. Paul’s purpose here is to clear up the justice of God in this great change.