ELECTION, GRACE & THE REMNANT

OR, THE POINT OF PREACHING AND PROPHECY, PART 1

Walkersville Christian Fellowship

10.12.03 – Gary L. Cox

Romans chapter 9, verse 1, “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing witness in the Holy Ghost, That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow of heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh:” What we find here is a very interesting crossroads of the Gospel.  When we call upon the name of the Lord and find Christ to be our personal Savior, we become individually saved and we have the hope of eternal life for the future for all time.  It is that experience of personal salvation where I begin to recognize that God is working my personal circumstances out for the larger good of His Gospel in my life. I have this comfort and this encouragement practically and personally in the Lord and then I turn around and I want to do one thing, We say, “I want everyone in the whole world to have this personal experience that I have.”  We have this gripping desire to get everyone else personally and practically saved and in that process we run into the wall of part of God’s plan which is called the election of His grace. 

Verses 1 to 5, “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.  For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh:  Who are Israelites; to whom [pertaineth] the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service [of God], and the promises; Whose [are] the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ [came], who is over all, God blessed for ever.  Amen.”   The key phrase in those five verses is found at the end of verse 3, “my kinsmen according to the flesh.”  Here is the struggle of humanity: we are flesh and blood and we have kinsmen according to the flesh and we have an affinity for kinsmen to the flesh.  We have to understanding that in my flesh dwells no good thing.  I have to give up my inheritance in the flesh.  There is nothing of value in my kinsmen in the flesh that makes them worthy for salvation.  It’s the lack of worthiness of that reality of my kinsmen in the flesh that makes them candidates for redemption by grace.

Now what happens from verse 6 through the end of chapter 11 is Paul tries to work through this spiritual reality, “What do I do with my inclinations towards my kinsmen in the flesh as it were, and how do I process that so that I’m walking in harmony with the Gospel and the purpose of God, which requires that I lay aside any claim to my heritage in the flesh.”

Verse 6.  “Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect.  For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel.”  Here’s the cautionary effect: is there something wrong with God and is there something wrong with His Word?  Is there something ineffectual about the person and the work of God?  As he goes on he is talking about the Word of God being of none effect and he introduces a principle.  That principle is this: “They are not all Israel which are of Israel.”  The visible group that appears to have the heritage of God is not necessarily the actual group of those who have the heritage of God.  We tend to find our comfort and our sense of capability connected to the visible group that we’re associated with.  The visible appearance means nothing to God, rather it is the spiritual reality.  God has His eye trained on a group of people that are His and that group of people that are His are not necessarily as readily visible to us in the flesh.  And so it’s possible for, in the flesh, people to put on the accoutrements of God’s people.  They look like it, they act like it, they kind of associate with it but in their heart they are none of His. 

Verse 7 describes this efficacy, “Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but in Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.”  God has a family who are born, who are His seed, who are born into His family because they have heard the promise and they have received it and all of God’s children are children of promise.  There’s no affinity or affiliation that brings us into the family of God.  This is one of the most difficult matters for you and me to struggle with.  On one extreme we can struggle because we think that we should only associate with God’s people. Well that’s kind of an extreme.  That’s not really what God is asking us to do; base our relationships on those who are in God’s family.  Neither is the other extreme correct.  “I’m okay, you’re okay.  You’re trying hard, God loves you, and it’s all right.  You’re just going to fit right in there.  God will take care of you.”  We’re not to be exclusivists but neither are we to be exclusivists where we just include everybody in a big happy family of God.  We need to be attending to promise because the promise of God is very exclusive.  In order to attend to the promise of God one thing has to register in your own heart, you have to give up yourself.  You have to say, “In me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing.”  I’m empty.  I have nothing to offer.  I’m going to stop trying.  Instead of trying, I’m going to take hold of what God has made available in Christ and I’m going to rely on the work of Christ instead. 

Verses 10-14, “And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him that calleth; It was said unto her, ‘The elder shall serve the younger.’  As it is written, ‘Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.’  What shall we say then?  Is there unrighteousness with God?  God forbid.”  As we turn this corner, Paul brings up a very clear incidence of what election is all about.  He calls it, “that God’s purpose according to election might stand, not of works but of Him that calleth.”  Here we find in this whole discussion of election, the necessity that there is a work of God and not a work of man.  We finally get to this point of recognition in terms of practical reality, the purpose of God stands upon the purpose of God and not on the person of man.  Our problem is it’s so hard to escape the connecting of our sense that God’s purpose is somehow connected to me, “If I can just get in the right place I can influence God, I can change His purpose.”  We are those who need to rest in the purpose of God and not grapple for our own purposes.  Does this bother us?  Yes.  The first reason is because we tend to think we have something in it, we’re somehow a part of it. The other part we have a problem with it is we think that if one got chosen and the other one got omitted that there is somehow error, that there’s somehow wrongdoing. 

Verse 14.  “What shall we say then?  Is there unrighteousness with God?  God forbid.”  I know that most of us would never say that out loud but that’s the instinctive response of the human nature to the question about God’s purpose standing according to election.  “Not of works but of Him that calleth.”  The question is, “Is God unrighteous?  Is there unrighteousness with God?”  In verse 15 and 16 we find the answer, “For He said to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.  So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.”  That’s the essence of the election of grace: whom God wills He has mercy on.  When you look at these verses in the context of the entirety of Romans, you find this statement necessary: you have an option, you can save yourself and everyone who is capable of saving himself shall be saved or you can let God bring salvation according to His wisdom and His purpose and His design and His understanding.  There it is.  It’s going to be by my understanding or by God’s understanding.  How much hope do we have in my understanding?  Zero.  How many can be saved by the strength of God’s grace?  All that He chooses and the choosing is His and here is the big important thing: and you and I have no business sitting in judgment on it.  Is there unrighteousness with God?  The answer to that is, “It’s not yours to ask.”  If I tried to answer it, it would be foolish because I am only one of you and I don’t have the answer. 

He goes on and he gives an illustration in verses 17-24.  “For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, ‘Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew My power in thee, and that My name might be declared throughout all the earth.’  Therefore hath He mercy on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardeneth.  Thou wilt say then unto Me, ‘Why doeth He yet find fault? For who hath resisted His will?’  Nay but, O man, who are thou that repliest against God?  Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, ‘Why hast thou made me thus?’  Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?  What if God, willing to shew His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had afore prepared unto glory, Even us, whom He hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?”  

Paul does not answer the question, “Is it a fault that God has found in me if I’m just doing what I’m only able to do by my own weakness because God chose to set me apart for a vessel of wrath?  Am I opposing His will?”  The opening verse of chapter 9 says, every man and woman and child that insists that their understanding, that their perspective no matter how limited it is, every person with that tendency, they are walking as a man in the flesh and the flesh is demanding the spirit to give an account.  That’s the height of rebellion.  He gives us this beautiful little picture of the potter.  As the vessel is being made if a mistake happens or whatever the potter stops the wheel, he can smash up the ball of clay and start over.  We can recognize the absolute authority of the potter over the vessel he’s making. 

And to this question that Paul asks, he does not answer the question.  He rather answers the context.  But the context is the whole premise of this whole election discussion and that is this:  it is not for you and me to debate with God, to question God or to hold God accountable to some standard of our judgment.  It is rather for us to surrender to God and worship Him as He is. God is after stimulating our hearts so that we surrender our opinion and our way. And I dare say every bit of conflict that you and I have in our lives is centered around us not getting our way in some way, shape or form.  What God does by this starkness of this distance is He makes us recognize that there is no hope except in God.  It’s that absolute understanding that there is no hope except in God that stirs in us the passion to go after God. 

Verse 24, “Even us, whom He hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?”  At this particular point Paul spends the rest of the chapter discussing this whole issue of calling, those who He called.  There is a very specific sense of the call of God on our life.  If we don’t hear the call of God, we will never come to God.  So the issue and the essence is that God is working through the call and that is why preaching takes on such a prominent means because He calls us through the preaching of His Word.  But in this picture, look at this contrast between those who in the flesh are someone and those who are nothing in the flesh but who finds God. 

Verse 25, “As He says in O’-see, I will call them My people, which were not My people; and her beloved, which was not beloved.  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’.”  If you think about the calling of election in our lives for salvation, if the promise came strictly through Abraham’s physical seed then it was no longer a promise, but rather it was an inheritance of the flesh.  So the key would have been, be born of Abraham and the sorrow would have been to have missed out because I wasn’t born of the seed of Abraham.  So for those tracking along the flesh, we always find that the flesh works elitism in groups and it tends to work a control group and those that can’t get in and that makes the group that’s in the flesh feel their earthly superiority. There is always the capacity for men in the flesh to create their own election that has nothing to do with the election and purpose of God.  What we find here is this snapshot of those who were excluded because they weren’t part of Israel, those were excluded who are now included because of the work of Christ.  So what happens is, in the election of grace, the exclusive small group of the Jews is now expanded to include all the Gentiles.  Though we don’t understand everything, we all can recognize that expanding the grace of God from a narrow group of Jews only so that it might encompass the entire entire world also; that’s enlargening the group and there’s a greater hope and more opportunity given to more people. 

The next verse is from Isaiah. Romans 9 verse 27, “Isaiah 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.”  Here we find this important picture of human difficulty.  When you are in the place of God’s elect, you are in the minority; you are in the remnant.  And being in the remnant, there is a tremendous emotional burden on you to feel as if somehow you are in the wrong group.  The picture here is transferring your trust from the feelings of your association to the claims of God through His clear teaching and preaching. 

Verse 29 continues, “Isaiah said before, ‘Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodom and been made like unto Gomorrah.’  What shall we say then?  That the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith.  But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness.”  The wrapping up of the teaching on the election of grace has to do with this understanding with where righteousness comes from and where the attainment of it is.  The Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, find themselves possessing righteousness, even the righteousness of faith.  That’s an incredible picture for us to understand because it helps us understand the great pressure point that we walk in.  If we are trying in any way to press after and pursue after righteousness on our own, we are more than likely departing into some form of error. 

Verses 32 and 33, “Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law.  For they stumbled at that stumblingstone; as it is written, ‘Behold, I lay in Zion a stumblingstone and rock of offense; and whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed.”  The election of grace is mounted on the stone of stumbling.  It’s Christ alone.  It’s Christ instead of us.  And He did what we couldn’t do and it’s an offer that’s free to the whole world.  The question is, “Will we have the humility to fall on the stone and be broken and let the work of Christ be our only hope and our only claim?”  That’s the path where the election of grace becomes personal, experiential salvation for God’s people.