February 10, 2008

How Far Can They Fall?

"I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness? For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office: If by any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them. (Romans 11:11-14) "

1. During the Old Testament era, God did not restrict His saving grace to Jews alone. He had a chosen people in other nations, but He showed special favor to the Jews in terms of their maintaining His appointed form of public, collective worship, as well as preserving them to be the ancestral family of the predicted Messiah who would come at the appointed time. For example, there is no indication that Job was a Jew. It is possible, even likely, that he lived before Moses and was not associated with the ancestors of the Jewish people of his time.
   
   
2. In Romans 3:1-4 Paul clarifies the specific advantage that Old Testament Jews had. It related to their possession of the sacred writings, what we now refer to as the Old Testament. What a rebuke to believers in our time! We have the inspired writings of both the Old and New Testaments, but we often take them for granted and seldom study them and treasure them as the divine message that they in fact are to us. It is sadly common, even among professing strong believers, to devalue and dilute the significance of Scripture. Some devalue Scripture by misrepresenting the translation process and effectively give each individual the choice of personal preference as to which family of manuscripts and which family of translations to follow. Within this school of thought you commonly will hear the strong claim, “We believe that Scripture is God’s inspired and infallible word—in the original manuscripts.” However, they well know that we do not have a single copy of any of the original autographs. When confronted with this deficiency in their claim, these same people will point out all the differences in the various manuscript families and claim that one is as good as the other, but we cannot know which manuscript family best preserves the original message. Effectively they affirm a divine origin of Scripture, but they deny a divine preservation of those same Scriptures. What is the value of Scripture—what is the logic—if God carefully and intimately inspired the original, but then allowed that message from heaven to be corrupted and confused beyond present recognition? If God had no intention of preserving Scripture as He gave it, why bother to give it in the first place? Does God in fact promise to preserve Scripture? Indeed He does. Consider Psalm 12:6-7. Do not overlook that David refers to the “words” of the Lord, not to the generic or “big picture” “word” of the Lord. David affirms God’s intent to preserve His “words” for ever. In Galatians 3:16 Paul builds a primary argument for his theooy on the preservation of the singular form of one word from Genesis (at least in two different passages; Genesis 12:7, 17:7). Moses wrote Genesis around fifteen hundred years prior to Paul’s writing of the Galatian letter. First century Jews did not have Moses’ “original autographs,” but Paul clearly believed that God had preserved every part of the original writings of Moses, even down to a minor mark that distinguished singular from plural word forms. Further Jesus affirmed the divine preservation of Scripture. Notice his explicit statement, “…and the scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35).
   
   
3. Are we to believe from Paul’s writings in this chapter—or in other Scriptures—that God saved (in the specific sense of eternal salvation) all Jews in the Old Testament? The answer must be an emphatic no. We cannot make such a claim regarding Jews in the Old Testament any more than we could make the claim from the eleventh chapter of Romans that Paul affirmed that God would save all non-Jews, all Gentiles, in the New Testament era.
   
   
4. When Paul refers to the Jews, or to Israel, in this context, who are the people to whom he refers? Is he referring to all people who claimed familial relationship with the twelve tribes? Is he referring to all, Jews and Gentile proselytes, who embraced Judaism in his day? Or does he remain consistent and refer to a specific category of Jew that he clearly defined in Romans 2:28-29? Our understanding of Paul’s definition of the terms will impose significant theological weight onto our interpretation of this chapter. It is my belief that Paul wrote the Roman letter as a formal argumentation (not in terms of an emotional disagreement, but in terms of a formal confrontation of error and a concerted effort to refute the error so as to win those who held to that error) in the ancient dialectical form of dialogue. As such, Paul would consciously seek to define his terms early in his letter, and he would then remain consistently faithful to those definitions throughout the whole letter. If this be the case, throughout the eleventh chapter (actually, throughout the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters that form a logical and literary unit in the Roman letter) Paul uses these terms to refer to regenerate Jews who failed to fully embrace Jesus as their Messiah and follow Him in the walk of faith.
   
   
5. When Paul refers to the falling away of the Jews, is he referring to all Jews or to a certain class of Jews? By his occasional reference to himself, a Jew with documented familial pedigree, he specifically refutes the notion that he intends to indict all Jews with his teachings in this context.
   
   
6. Does Paul intend to imply that Jews, individual Jews, who were in fact God’s elect have so fallen as to lose their eternal relationship with God? This point is at least a significant part of Paul’s question in Verse eleven, “…Have they stumbled that they should fall?” Linguistic scholars/commentaries suggest that the form of words that Paul uses in this question raise this specific point. Did they so fall as to impose eternal consequences onto themselves? To this question Paul answers in the most emphatic way available to him in the language of the day, “God forbid!”
   
   
7. Does Paul in this chapter predict a future restoration of special position or favor to the Jews? This question surfaces with regularity among Bible students. I offer one simple point to the question. In Ephesians 2:14 and context Paul categorically affirmed that God broke down the racial/cultural barrier that existed in the Old Testament form of worship between Jews and non-Jews, Gentiles. Now, in the New Testament era, Scripture consistently affirms this truth. I find no passage anywhere in the Bible that distinctly—or remotely for that matter—predicts that God shall ever restore that dividing wall. Rather Scripture consistently affirms that God regards His chosen and regenerate children alike, with no partiality or distinction based on their race or the culture in which they live. Absent any remote hint at the restoration of the dividing barrier, I suggest that every individual among God’s elect in the New Testament era, regardless of race or culture, either receives blessings or severity from God in the here and now based on their faithfulness to God or their lack of faithfulness (Romans 11:22). I find no New Testament passage that remotely indicates that God has any future intent of altering this rule. God’s present—and future temporal—blessings upon His obedient children shall remain as New Testament writers affirm it to be; contingent on our response to grace, not on the coincidence of our race. And God’s reservation of eternal blessings is wholly related to divine grace—first to last—all of grace.

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