Ver. 18.
Then the swift thought turns, and returns again. The prophecieshaveforetold an evangelical utterance to the whole human world. Not only in explicit prediction do they do so, but in the "mystic glory" of their more remote allusions.But I say, Did they not hear?Was this failure of belief due to a limitation of the messenger's range in the plan of God?Nay, rather, "Unto all the earth went out their tone, and to the ends of man's world(ἡ οἰκουμένη)their utterances"(Psal. xix. 4). The words are the voice of that Psalm wherethe glories of the visible heavens are collocated with the glories of the Word of God. The Apostle hears more than Nature in the Sunrise Hymn of David; he hears grace and the Gospel in the deep harmony which carries the immortal melody along. The God who meant the skies, with their "silent voices," to preach a Creator not to one race but to all, meant also His Word to have no narrower scope, preaching a Redeemer. Yes, and there were articulate predictions that it should be so, as well as starry parables; predictions too that shewed the prospect not only of a world evangelized, but of an Israel put to shame by the faith of pagans.|Ver. 19.toVer. 21.|But I say(his rapid phrase meets with an anticipating answer the cavil yet unspoken)did not Israel know?Had they no distinct forewarning of what we see to-day?First comes Moses, saying,[180]in his prophetic Song, sung at the foot of Pisgah (Deut. xxxii. 21), "I—the 'I' is emphatic; the Person isthe Lord, and the action shall be nothing less than His—I will take a no-nation to[181]move your jealousy; to move your anger I will take a nation non-intelligent";a race not only not informed by a previous revelation, but not trained by thought upon it to an insight into new truth. And what Moses indicates, Isaiah, standing later in the history, indignantly explains:But Isaiah dares anything(ἀποτολμᾷ),and says(lxv. 1),"I was found by those who sought not Me; manifest I became to those who consulted not Me."[182]But as to Israel he says,in the words next in order in the place (lxv. 2),"All the day long I spread my hands open,to beckon and to embrace,towards a people disobeying and contradicting."
So the servant brings his sorrows for consolation to—may we write the words in reverence?—the sorrows of his Master. He mourns over an Athens, an Ephesus, and above all over a Jerusalem, that "will not come to the Son of God, that they might have life" (John v. 40). And his grief is not only inevitable; it is profoundly right, wise, holy. But he need not bear it unrelieved. He grasps the Scripture which tells him that hisLordhas called those who would not come, and opened the eternal arms for an embrace—to be met only with a contradiction. He weeps, but it is as on the breast of Jesus as He wept over the City. And in the double certainty that the Lord has felt such grief, and that He isthe Lord, he yields, he rests, he is still. "The King of the Ages" (1 Tim. i. 17) and "the Man of Sorrows" are One. To know Him is to be at peace even under the griefs of the mystery of sin.
[167]We thus attempt to convey the force ofμέν.[168]So read; not "for Israel."[169]Cp. 1 Pet. i. 2;εἰς ὑπακοὴν ... Ἰησοῦ Χριτοῦυ; an "obedience" which means the decisivesubmissionof the sinner to the Saviour'smethod of mercy.[170]Ὁ ποιήσας: the aorist sums up acts into a single idea of action.[171]Ἐν αὐτῇ: "in the righteousness"; such seems to be the true reading. To "live in" a righteousness is to live as it were surrounded, guaranteed, by it.[172]Observe that the context in Deut. xxx. is full of the thought that rebels and law-breakers shall be welcome back when they come penitent to their God, "without one plea," but taking Him at His word.[173]Or, with an alternative reading, "that Jesus is Lord."[174]See above, ix. 33.[175]Throughout these questions we read the verbs in the conjunctive.[176]We thus represent, with hesitation, the aorist tense.[177]No doubt the immediate reference of Isai. lii. 7 is to good newsfor"Zion" rather thanfromher to the world. But the context is full not only of Messiah but (ver. 15) of "many nations."[178]The aorist gathers up the history of evangelization into a point of thought.[179]ReadΧρισυοῦ, probably.[180]So we paraphraseπρῶτος(notπρῶτον)Μωϋσῆς λέγει.[181]So we attempt to give the force ofἐπ' οὐκ ἔθνει, ἐπὶ ἔθνει.[182]Ἐμὲis emphatic in both clauses.Ἐπερωτᾶνis used of the consultation of an oracle. Our translation thus seems better than the more secondary explanation, "who sought not to do My will."
[167]We thus attempt to convey the force ofμέν.
[168]So read; not "for Israel."
[169]Cp. 1 Pet. i. 2;εἰς ὑπακοὴν ... Ἰησοῦ Χριτοῦυ; an "obedience" which means the decisivesubmissionof the sinner to the Saviour'smethod of mercy.
[170]Ὁ ποιήσας: the aorist sums up acts into a single idea of action.
[171]Ἐν αὐτῇ: "in the righteousness"; such seems to be the true reading. To "live in" a righteousness is to live as it were surrounded, guaranteed, by it.
[172]Observe that the context in Deut. xxx. is full of the thought that rebels and law-breakers shall be welcome back when they come penitent to their God, "without one plea," but taking Him at His word.
[173]Or, with an alternative reading, "that Jesus is Lord."
[174]See above, ix. 33.
[175]Throughout these questions we read the verbs in the conjunctive.
[176]We thus represent, with hesitation, the aorist tense.
[177]No doubt the immediate reference of Isai. lii. 7 is to good newsfor"Zion" rather thanfromher to the world. But the context is full not only of Messiah but (ver. 15) of "many nations."
[178]The aorist gathers up the history of evangelization into a point of thought.
[179]ReadΧρισυοῦ, probably.
[180]So we paraphraseπρῶτος(notπρῶτον)Μωϋσῆς λέγει.
[181]So we attempt to give the force ofἐπ' οὐκ ἔθνει, ἐπὶ ἔθνει.
[182]Ἐμὲis emphatic in both clauses.Ἐπερωτᾶνis used of the consultation of an oracle. Our translation thus seems better than the more secondary explanation, "who sought not to do My will."
ISRAEL HOWEVER NOT FORSAKEN
Romansxi. 1-10
A PEOPLE disobeying and contradicting.So the Lord of Israel, through the prophet, had described the nation. Let us remember as we pass on what a large feature in the prophecies, and indeed in the whole Old Testament, such accusations and exposures are. From Moses to Malachi, in histories, and songs, and instructions, we find everywhere this tone of stern truth-telling, this unsparing detection and description of Israelite sin. And we reflect that every one of these utterances, humanly speaking, was the voice of an Israelite; and that whatever reception it met with at the moment—it was sometimes a scornful or angry reception, oftener a reverent one—it was ultimately treasured, venerated, almost worshipped, by the Church of this same rebuked and humiliated Israel. We ask ourselves what this has to say about the true origin of these utterances, and the true nature of the environment into which they fell. Do they not bear witness to the supernatural in both? It was not "human nature" which, in a race quite as prone, at least, as any other, to assert itself, produced these intense and persistent rebukes from within, and secured for them a profound and lasting veneration. TheHebrew Scriptures, in this as in other things, are a literature which mere man, mere Israelite man, "could not have written if he would, and would not have written if he could."[183]Somehow, the Prophets not only spoke with an authority more than human, but they were known to speak with it. There was a national consciousness of divine privilege; and it was inextricably bound up with a national conviction that the Lord of the privileges had an eternal right to reprove His privileged ones, and that He had, as a fact, His accredited messengers of reproof, whose voice was not theirs but His; not the mere outcry of patriotic zealots but the Oracle of God. Yea, an awful privilege was involved in the reception of such reproofs: "You only have I known;thereforewill I punish you" (Amos iii. 2).
But this is a recollection by the way. St Paul, so we saw in our last study, has quoted Isaiah's stern message, only now to stay his troubled heart on the fact that the unbelief of Israel in his day was, if we may dare to put it so, no surprise to the Lord, and therefore no shock to the servant's faith. But is he to stop there, and sit down, and say, "This must be so"? No; there is more to follow, in this discourse on Israel and God. He has "good words, and comfortable words" (Zech. i. 13), after the woes of the last two chapters, and after those earlier passages of the Epistle where the Jew is seen only in his hypocrisy, and rebellion, and pride. He has to speak of a faithful Remnant, now as always present, who make as it were the golden unbroken linkbetween the nation and the promises. And then he has to lift the curtain, at least a corner of the curtain, from the future, and to indicate how there lies waiting there a mighty blessing for Israel, and through Israel for the world. Even now the mysterious "People" was serving a spiritual purpose in their very unbelief; they were occasioning a vast transition of blessing to the Gentiles, by their own refusal of blessing. And hereafter they were to serve a purpose of still more illustrious mercy. They were yet, in their multitudes, to return to their rejected Christ. And their return was to be used as the means of a crisis of blessing for the world.
We seem to see the look and hear the voice of the Apostle, once the mighty Rabbi, the persecuting patriot, as he begins now to dictate again. His eyes brighten, and his brow clears, and a happier emphasis comes into his utterance, as he sets himself to speak of his people's good, and to remind his Gentile brethren how, in God's plan of redemption, all their blessing, all they know of salvation, all they possess of life eternal, has come to them through Israel. Israel is the Stem, drawing truth and life from the unfathomable soil of the covenant of promise. They are the grafted Branches, rich in every blessing—because they are the mystical seedof Abraham, in Christ.
Ver. 1.toVer. 6.
I say therefore, Did God ever thrust[184]away His people? Away with the thought! For I am an Israelite, of Abraham's seed, Benjamin's tribe;full member of the theocratic race (Ἰσραηλίτης), and of its first royal and always loyal tribe; in my own person, therefore, I am an instance of Israel still in covenant.God never[184]thrust away His people, whom Heforeknewwith the foreknowledge of eternal choice and purpose.[185]That foreknowledge was "not according to their works," or according to their power; and so it holds its sovereign way across and above their long unworthiness.Or do you not know, in Elijah,in his story, in the pages marked with his name,what the Scripture says? How he intercedes before God,on God's own behalf,against Israel, saying(1 Kings xix. 10),"Lord, Thy prophets they killed, and Thy altars they dug up; and I was left solitary, and they seek my life"? But what says the oracular answer(ὁ χρηματισμὸς)to him? "I have left for Myself seven thousand men, men who(οἵτινες)bowed never knee to Baal"(1 Kings xix. 18).So therefore at the present season also there proves to be(γέγονεν)a remnant,"a leaving" (λεῖμμα), left by the Lord for Himself,on the principle of(κατὰ)election of grace;their persons and their number following a choice and gift whose reasons lie in God alone. And then follows one of those characteristic "foot-notes" of which we saw an instance above (x. 17):But if by grace, no longer of works;"no longer," in the sense of a logical succession and exclusion;since the grace proves(γίνεται), on the other principle,no longer grace. But if of works, it is no longer grace; since the work is no longer work.[186]That is to say, when once the grace-principle is admitted, as it is here assumed to be, "the work" of the man who is its subject is "no longer work" in the sense which makesan antithesis to grace; it is no longer so much toil done in order to so much pay to be given. In other words, the two supposed principles of the divine Choice are in their nature mutually exclusive. Admit the one as the condition of the "election," and the other ceases; you cannot combine them into an amalgam. If the election is of grace,nomeritorious antecedent to it is possible in the subject of it. If it is according to meritorious antecedent,nosovereign freedom is possible in the divine action, such freedom as to bring the saved man, the saved remnant, to an adoring confession of unspeakable and mysterious mercy.
This is the point, here in this passing "foot-note," as in the longer kindred statements above (ch. ix.), of the emphasized allusion to "choice" and "grace." He writes thus that he may bring the believer, Gentile or Jew, to his knees, in humiliation, wonder, gratitude, and trust. "Why did I, the self-ruined wanderer, the self-hardened rebel, come to the Shepherd who sought me, surrender my sword to the King who reclaimed me? Did I reason myself into harmony with Him? Did I lift myself, hopelessly maimed, into His arms? No; it was the gift of God,first, last, and in the midst. And if so, it was the choice of God." That point of light is surrounded by a cloud-world of mystery, though within those surrounding clouds there lurks, as to God, only rightness and love. But the point of light is there, immovable, for all the clouds; where fallen man chooses God, it is thanks to God who has chosen fallen man. Where a race is not "thrust away," it is because "God foreknew." Where some thousands of members of that race, while others fall away, are found faithful to God, it is because He has "left them for Himself on the principle of choice of grace." Where, amidst a widespreadrejection of God's Son Incarnate, a Saul of Tarsus, an Aquila, a Barnabas, behold in Him their Redeemer, their King, their Life, their All, it is on that same principle. Let the man thus beholding and believing givethe wholethanks for his salvation in the quarter where it is all due. Let him not confuse one truth by another. Let not this truth disturb for a moment his certainty of personal moral freedom, and of its responsibility. Let it not for a moment turn him into a fatalist. But let him abase himself, and give thanks, and humbly trust Him who has thus laid hold of him for blessing. As he does so, in simplicity, not speculating but worshipping, he will need no subtle logic to assure him that he is to pray, and to work, without reserve, for the salvation of all men. It will be more than enough for him that HisSovereignbids him do it, and tells him that it is according to His heart.
To return a little on our steps, in the matter of the Apostle's doctrine of the divine Choice: the reference in this paragraph to the seven thousand faithful in Elijah's day suggests a special reflection. To us, it seems to say distinctly that the "election" intended all along by St Paul cannot possibly be explained adequately by making it either an election (to whatever benefits) of mere masses of men, as for instance of a nation, considered apart from its individuals; or an election merely to privilege, to opportunity, which may or may not be used by the receiver. As regards national election, it is undoubtedly present and even prominent in the passage, and in this whole section of the Epistle. For ourselves, we incline to see it quite simply in ver. 2 above; "His people, whom He foreknew." We read there, what we find so often in the Old Testament, a sovereign choice of a nation tostand in special relation to God; of a nation taken, so to speak, in the abstract, viewed not as the mere total of so many individuals, but as a quasi-personality. But we maintain that the idea of election takes another line when we come to the "seven thousand." Here we are thrown at once on the thought of individual experiences, and the ultimate secret of them, found only in the divine Will affecting the individual. The "seven thousand" had no aggregate life, so to speak. They formed,asthe seven thousand, no organism or quasi-personality. They were "left" not as a mass, but as units; so isolated, so little grouped together, that even Elijah did not know of their existence. They were just so many individual men, each one of whom found power, by faith, to stand personally firm against the Baalism of that dark time, with the same individual faith which in later days, against other terrors, and other solicitations, upheld a Polycarp, an Athanasius, a Huss, a Luther, a Tyndale, a De Seso, a St Cyran. And the Apostle quotes them as an instance and illustration of the Lord's way and will with the believing of all time. In their case, then, he both passes as it were through national election to individual election, as a permanent spiritual mystery; and he shews that he means by this an election not only to opportunity but to holiness. The Lord's "leaving them for Himself" lay behind their not bowing their knees to Baal. Each resolute confessor was individually enabled, by a sovereign and special grace. He was a true human personality, freely acting, freely choosing not to yield in that terrible storm. But behind his freedom was the higher freedom of the Will of God, saving him from himself that he might be free to confess and suffer. To our mind, no part of the Epistle more clearly than this passageaffirms this individual aspect of the great mystery. Ah, it is a mystery indeed; we have owned this at every step. And it is never for a moment to be treated therefore as if we knew all about it. And it is never therefore to be used to confuse the believer's thought about other sides of truth. But it is there, as a truth among truths; to be received with abasement by the creature before the Creator, and with humble hope by the simple believer.
Ver. 7.toVer. 10.
He goes on with his argument, taking up the thread broken by the "foot-note" upon grace and works:What therefore? What Israel,the nation, the character,seeks after,righteousness in the court of God,this it lighted not upon(οὐκ ἐπέτυχεν),[187]as one who seeks a buried treasure in the wrong field "lights not upon" it;but the election,the chosen ones, the "seven thousand" of the Gospel era,did light upon it. But the rest were hardened,(not as if God had created their hardness, or injected it; but He gave it to be its own penalty;)as it stands written(Isai. xxix. 10, and Deut. xxix. 4[188]),"God gave them a spirit of slumber, eyes not to see, and ears not to hear, even to this day."A persistent ("unto this day") unbelief was the sin of Israel in the Prophets' times, and it was the same in those of the Apostles. And the condition was the same; God "gave" sin to be its own way of retribution.And David says(Psal. lxix. 22), in a Psalm full of Messiah, and of the awful retribution justly ordained to come on His impenitentenemies,"Let their table turn into a trap, and into toils(θήρα),and into a stumbling-block, and into a requital to them; darkened be their eyes, not to see, and their back ever bow Thou together."
The words are awful, in their connexion here, and in themselves, and as a specimen of a class. Their purpose here is to enforce the thought that there is such a thing as positive divine action in the self-ruin of the impenitent; afiatfrom the throne which "gives" a coma to the soul, and beclouds its eyes, and turns its blessings into a curse. Not one word implies the thought that He who so acts meets a soul tending upwards and turns it downward; that He ignores or rejects even the faintest enquiry after Himself; that He is Author of one particle of the sin of man. But we do learn that the adversaries of God and Christ may be, and, where the Eternal so sees it good, are,sentencedto go their own way, even to its issues in destruction. The context of every citation here, as it stands in the Old Testament, shews abundantly that those so sentenced are no helpless victims of an adverse fate, but sinners of their own will, in a sense most definite and personal. Only, a sentence of judgment is concerned also in the case; "Fill ye up then the measure" (Matt. xxiii. 32).
But then also in themselves, and as a specimen of a class, the words are a dark shadow in the Scripture sky. It is only by the way that we can note this here, but it must not be quite omitted in our study. This sixty-ninth Psalm is a leading instance of the several Psalms where the Prophet appears calling for the sternest retribution on his enemies. What thoughtful heart has not felt the painful mystery so presented? Read in the hush of secret devotion, or sung perhaps to some majestic chant beneath the minster-roof, they still tendto affront the soul with the question, Can this possibly be after the mind of Christ? And there rises before us the form of One who is in the act of Crucifixion, and who just then articulates the prayer, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." Can these "imprecations" haveHissanction? CanHepass them, endorse them, as His Word?
The question is full of pressing pain. And no answer can be given, surely, which shall relieve all that pain; certainly nothing which shall turn the clouds of such passages into rays of the sun. Theyareclouds; but let us be sure that they belong to the cloud-land which gathersround the Throne, and which only conceals, not wrecks, its luminous and immovable righteousness and love. Let us remark, for one point, that this same dark Psalm is, by the witness of the Apostles, as taught by their Master, a Psalm full of Messiah. It was undoubtedly claimed as His own mystic utterance bythe Lambof the Passion.Hespeaks in these dread words who also says, in the same utterance (ver. 9), "The zeal of Thine house hath eaten me up." So the Lord Jesus did endorse this Psalm. He more than endorsed it; He adopted it as His own. Let this remind us further that the utterer of these denunciations, even the first and non-mystical utterer,—David, let us say,—appears in the Psalm not merely as a private person crying out about his violated personal rights, but as an ally and vassal of God, one whose life and cause is identified with His. Just in proportion as this is so, the violation of his life and peace, by enemies described as quite consciously and deliberately malicious, is a violation of the whole sanctuary of divine righteousness. If so, is it incredible that even the darkest words of such a Psalm are to be read as a true echo from the depths ofman to the Voice which announces "indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, to every soul of man that doeth evil"? Perhaps even the most watchful assertor of the divine character of Scripture is not bound to assert that no human frailty in the least moved the spirit of a David when he, in the sphere of his own personality, thought and said these things. But we have no right to assert, as a known or necessary thing, that it was so. And we have right to say that in themselves these utterances are but a sternly true response to the avenging indignation of the Holy One.
In any case, do not let us talk with a loose facility about their incompatibility with "the spirit of the New Testament." From one side, the New Testament is an even sterner Book than the Old; as it must be of course, when it brings sin and holiness "out into the light" of the Cross of Christ. It is in the New Testament that, "the souls" of saints at rest are heard saying (Rev. vi. 10), "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" It is in the New Testament that an Apostle writes (2 Thess. i. 6), "It is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them which trouble you." It is the Lord of the New Testament, the Offerer of the Prayer of the Cross, who said (Matt. xxiii. 32-35) "Fill ye up the measure of your fathers. I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes, and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth."
His eyes must have rested, often and again, upon the denunciations of the Psalms. He saw in them that which struck no real discord, in the ultimate spiritual depth, with His own blessed compassions. Let us notresent what He has countersigned. It is His, not ours, to know all the conditions of those mysterious outbursts from the Psalmists' consciousness. It is ours to recognize in them the intensest expression of what rebellious evil merits, and will find, as its reward.
But we have digressed from what is the proper matter before us. Here, in the Epistle, the sixty-ninth Psalm is cited only to affirm with the authority of Scripture the mystery of God's action in sentencing the impenitent adversaries of His Christ to more blindness and more ruin. Through this dark and narrow door the Apostle is about to lead us now into "a large room" of hope and blessing, and to unveil to us a wonderful future for the now disgraced and seemingly rejected Israel.
[183]I borrow the phrase from the late Prof. H. Rogers'Supernatural Origin of the Bible inferred from Itself, a book of masterly thinking and reasoning.[184]We attempt to express the aorist thus, with hesitation.[185]See above, p. 237.[186]This last sentence, "But if of works, etc.," is only doubtfully supported by documents. But it bears, to our mind, strong internal marks of genuineness. It is at once too difficult, and toodeeplyrelated to the context, to look like the insertion of a scribe.[187]The aoristssum upthe manifold history.[188]Such a combination of citations is a significant witness to the Apostle's view of the O. T. as, from its divine side,one Bookeverywhere.
[183]I borrow the phrase from the late Prof. H. Rogers'Supernatural Origin of the Bible inferred from Itself, a book of masterly thinking and reasoning.
[184]We attempt to express the aorist thus, with hesitation.
[185]See above, p. 237.
[186]This last sentence, "But if of works, etc.," is only doubtfully supported by documents. But it bears, to our mind, strong internal marks of genuineness. It is at once too difficult, and toodeeplyrelated to the context, to look like the insertion of a scribe.
[187]The aoristssum upthe manifold history.
[188]Such a combination of citations is a significant witness to the Apostle's view of the O. T. as, from its divine side,one Bookeverywhere.
ISRAEL'S FALL OVERRULED, FOR THE WORLD'S BLESSING,AND FOR ISRAEL'S MERCY
Romansxi. 11-24
THE Apostle has been led a few steps backwards in the last previous verses. His face has been turned once more toward the dark region of the prophetic sky, to see how the sin of Christ-rejecting souls is met and punished by the dreadful "gift" of slumber, and apathy, and the transmutation of blessings to snares. But now, decisively, he looks sunward. He points our eyes, with his own, to the morning light of grace and promise. We are to see what Israel's fall has had to do with the world's hope and with life in Christ, and then what blessings await Israel himself, and again the world through him.
Ver. 11.
I say, therefore,(the phrase resumes the point of view to which the same words above (ver. 1) led us,)did they stumble that they might fall?Did their national rejection of an unwelcome because unworldly Messiah take place, in the divine permission, with the positive divine purpose that it should bring on a final rejection of the nation, its banishment out of its place in the history of redemption?Away with the thought! But their partial fall[189]is the occasion of God'ssalvation(ἡ σωτηρία)for the Gentiles, with a view to move them,the Jews,to jealousy,to awake them to a sight of what Christ is, and of what their privilege in Him might yet be, by the sight of His work and glory in once pagan lives.
Observe here the divine benignity which lurks even under the edges of the cloud of judgment. And observe too, thus close to the passage which has put before us the mysterious side of divine action on human wills, the daylight simplicity ofthisside of that action; the loving skill with which the world's blessing is meant by the God of grace to act, exactly in the line of human feeling, upon the will of Israel.
But would that "the Gentiles" had borne more in heart that last short sentence of St Paul's, through these long centuries since the Apostles fell asleep! It is one of the most marked, as it is one of the saddest, phenomena in the history of the Church that for ages, almost from the days of St John himself, we look in vain either for any appreciable Jewish element in Christendom, or for any extended effort on the part of Christendom to win Jewish hearts to Christ by a wise and loving evangelization. With only relatively insignificant exceptions this was the abiding state of things till well within the eighteenth century, when the German Pietists began to call the attention of believing Christians to the spiritual needs and prophetic hopes of Israel, and to remind them that the Jews were not only a beacon of judgment, or only the most impressive and awful illustration of the fulfilment of prophecy, but the bearers of yet unfulfilled predictions of mercy for themselves and for the world. Meanwhile, all through the Middle Age, and through generations of preceding and following time also, Christendom did little for Israelbut retaliate, reproach, and tyrannize. It was so of old in England; witness the fires of York. It is so to this day in Russia, and where theJudenhetzeinflames innumerable hearts in Central Europe.
No doubt there is more than one side to the persistent phenomenon. There is a side of mystery; the permissive sentence of the Eternal has to do with the long affliction, however caused, of the people which once uttered the fatal cry, "His blood be on us, and on our children" (Matt. xxvii. 25). And the wrong-doings of Jews, beyond a doubt, have often made a dark occasion for a "Jew-hatred," on a larger or narrower scale. But all this leaves unaltered, from the point of view of the Gospel, the sin of Christendom in its tremendous failure to seek, in love, the good of erring Israel. It leaves as black as ever the guilt of every fierce retaliation upon Jews by so-called Christians, of every slanderous belief about Jewish creed or life, of every unjust anti-Jewish law ever passed by Christian king or senate. It leaves an undiminished responsibility upon the Church of Christ, not only for the flagrant wrong of having too often animated and directed the civil power in its oppressions of Israel, and not only for having so awfully neglected to seek the evangelization of Israel by direct appeals for the true Messiah, and by an open setting forth of His glory, but for the deeper and more subtle wrong, persistently inflicted from age to age, in a most guilty unconsciousness—the wrong of having failed to manifest Christ to Israel through the living holiness of Christendom. Here, surely, is the very point of the Apostle's thought in the sentence before us: "Salvation to the Gentiles, to move the Jews to jealousy." In his inspired idea, Gentile Christendom, in Christ, was to be so pure, so beneficent, so happy, finding manifestly inits Messianic Lord such resources for both peace of conscience and a life of noble love, love above all directed towards opponents and traducers, that Israel, looking on, with eyes however purblind with prejudice, should soon see a moral glory in the Church's face impossible to be hid, and be drawn as by a moral magnet to the Church's hope. Is it the fault of God (may He pardon the formal question, if it lacks reverence), or the fault of man, man carrying the Christian name, that facts have been so wofully otherwise in the course of history? It is the fault, the grievous fault, of us Christians. The narrow prejudice, the iniquitous law, the rigid application of exaggerated ecclesiastical principle, all these things have been man's perversion of the divine idea, to be confessed and deplored in a deep and interminable repentance. May the mercy of God awaken Gentile Christendom, in a manner and degree as yet unknown, to remember this our indefeasible debt to this people everywhere present with us, everywhere distinct from us;—the debt ofa life, personal and ecclesiastical, so manifestly pure and loving in our Lord the Christ as to "move them to the jealousy" which shall claim Him again for their own. Then we shall indeed be hastening the day of full and final blessing, both for themselves and for the world.
Ver. 12.toVer. 14.
To that bright coming day the Apostle points us now, more directly than ever:But if their partial fall[190]be the world's wealth, and their lessening(ἥττημα), their reduction, (a reduction in one aspect to a race of scattered exiles, in another to a mere remnant of "Israelites indeed,")be the Gentiles' wealth,the occasion by which "the unsearchable wealth of Messiah"(Eph. iii. 8) has been as it were forced into Gentile receptacles,how much more their fulness,the filling of the dry channel with its ample ideal stream, the change from a believing remnant, fragments of a fragmentary people, to a believing nation, reanimated and reunited? What blessings for "the world," for "the Gentiles," may not come through the vehicle of such an Israel?But[191]to you I speak, the Gentiles[192]to you, because if I reach the Jews, in the way I mean, it must be through you.So far indeed as I, distinctively I(ἐγώ),am the Gentiles' Apostle, I glorify my ministryas such; I rejoice, Pharisee that I once was, to be devoted as no other Apostle is to a ministry for those whom I once thought of as of outcasts in religion. But I speak as your own Apostle, and to you,if perchance I may move the jealousy of my flesh and blood,[193]and may save some from amongst them,by letting them as it were overhear what are the blessings of you Gentile Christians, and how it is the Lord's purpose to use those blessings as a magnet to wandering Israel.[194]His hope is that, through the Roman congregation, this glorious open secret will come out, as they meet their Jewish neighboursand talk with them. So would one here, another there, "in the streets and lanes of the City," be drawn to the feet of Jesus, under the constraint of that "jealousy" which means little else than the human longing to understand what is evidently the great joy of another's heart; a "jealousy" on which often grace can fall, and use it as the vehicle of divine light and life.
He says only, "some of them"; as he does in the sister Epistle; 1 Cor. ix. 22.[195]He recognizes it as his present task, indicated alike by circumstance and revelation, to be not the glad ingatherer of vast multitudes to Christ, but the patient winner of scattered sheep. Yet let us observe that none the less he spends his whole soul upon that winning, and takes no excuse from a glorious future to slacken a single effort in the difficult present.
Ver. 15.
For if the throwing away of them,their downfall as the Church of God, wasthe world's reconciliation,the instrumental or occasioning cause of the direct proclamation to the pagan peoples of the Atonement of the Cross,what will their reception be, but life from the dead?That is to say, the great event of Israel's return to God in Christ, and His to Israel, will be the signal and the means of a vast rise of spiritual life in the Universal Church, and of an unexampled ingathering of regenerate souls from the world. When Israel, as a Church, fell, the fall worked good for the world merely by driving, as it were, the apostolic preachers out from the Synagogue, to which they so much longed to cling. The Jews did anything but aid the work. Yet even so they were made an occasion for world-wide good. When they are"received again," as this Scripture so definitely affirms that they shall be received, the case will be grandly different. As before, they will be "occasions." A national and ecclesiastical return of Israel to Christ will of course give occasion over the whole world for a vastly quickened attention to Christianity, and for an appeal for the world's faith in the facts and claims of Christianity, as bold and loud as that of Pentecost. But more than this; Israel will now be not only occasion but agent. The Jews, ubiquitous, cosmopolitan, yet invincibly national, coming back in living loyalty to the Son of David, the Son of God, will be a positive power in evangelization such as the Church has never yet felt. Whatever the actual facts shall prove to be in the matter of their return to the Land of Promise[196](and who can watch without deep reflection the nation-less land and the land-less nation?) no prediction obliges us to think that the Jews will be withdrawn from the wide world by a national resettlement in their Land. A nation is not a Dispersion merely because it has individual citizens widely dispersed; if it has a true national centre, it is a people at home, a people with a home. Whether as a central mass in Syria, or as also a presence everywhere in the human world, Israel will thus be ready, once restored to God in Christ, to be a more than natural evangelizing power.
Let this be remembered in every enterprise for the spiritual good of the great Dispersion now. Through such efforts God is already approaching His hour of blessing, long expected. Let that fact animate and give a glad patience to His workers, on whose work He surely begins in our day to cast His smile of growing blessing. {301}
Now the argument takes a new direction. The restoration thus indicated, thus foretold, is not only sure to be infinitely beneficial. It is also to be looked for and expected as a thing lying so to speak in the line of spiritual fitness, true to the order of God's plan. In His will, when He went about to create and develop His Church, Israel sprung from the dry ground as the sacred Olive, rich with the sap of truth and grace, full of branch and leaf. From the tents of Abraham onward, the world's true spiritual light and life was there. There, not elsewhere, was revelation, and God-given ordinance, and "the covenants, and the glory." There, not elsewhere, the Christ of God, for whom all things waited, towards whom all the lines of man's life and history converged, was to appear. Thus, in a certain profound sense, all true salvation must be not only "of" Israel (John iv. 24) but through him. Union with Christ was union with Abraham. To become a Christian, that is to say, one of Messiah's men, was to become, mystically, an Israelite. From this point of view the Gentile's union with the Saviour, though not in the least less genuine and divine than the Jew's, was, so to speak, less normal. And thus nothing could be more spiritually normal than the Jew's recovery to his old relation to God, from which he had violently dislocated himself. These thoughts the Apostle now presses on the Romans, as a new motive and guide to their hopes, prayers, and work. (Do we gather from the length and fulness of the argument that already it was difficult to bring Gentiles to think aright of the chosen people in their fall and rebellion?) He reminds them of the inalienable consecration of Israel to special divine purposes. He points them to the ancient Olive, and boldly tells them that they are, themselves, only a graft of a wild stock,inserted into the noble tree. Not that he thinks of the Jew as a superior being. But the Church of Israel was the original of the Church. So the restoration of Israel to Christ, and to the Church, is a recovery of normal life, not a first and abnormal grant of life.
Ver. 16.toVer. 24.
But if the first-fruit was holy, holy is the kneaded lump too.Abraham was as it were the Lord's First-fruits of mankind, in the field of His Church. "Abraham's seed" are as it were the mass kneaded from that first-fruits; made of it. Was the first-fruits holy, in the sense of consecration to God's redeeming purpose? Then that which is made of it must somehow still be a consecrated thing, even though put aside as if "common" for awhile.And if the rootwasholy,holy arethe branches too;the lineal heirs of Abraham are still, ideally, potentially, consecrated to Him who separated Abraham to Himself, and moved him to his great self-separation.But if some of the branches(how tender is the euphemism of the "some"!)were broken off, while you, wild-olive as you were, were grafted in among them,in their place of life and growth,and became a sharer of the root and of the Olive's fatness,—do not boast over thetorn-offbranches. But if you do boast over them—not you carry the root, but the root carries you. You will say then, The branches were broken off—that I might be grafted in. Good:true—and untrue:because of their unbelief they were broken off, while you because of your faith stand.They were no better beings than you, in themselves. But neither are you better than they, in yourself. They and you alike are, personally, mere subjects of redeeming mercy; owing all to Christ; possessing all only as acceptingChrist. "Where is your boasting, then?"Do not be high-minded, but fear,fear yourself, your sin, your enemy.For if God did not spare the natural branches, take care lest He spare not you either. See therefore God's goodness and sternness. On those who fell,came Hissternness(ἀποτομία, notἀποτομίαν);but on you,Hisgoodness, if you abide by that(τῇ) goodness, with the adherence and response of faith;since you too will be cut outotherwise.And they too, if they do not abide by their(τῇ)unbelief, shall be grafted in; for God is able to graft them in again. For if you from the naturally wild olive were cut out, and non-naturally(παρὰ φύσιν)were grafted into the Garden-Olive, how much more shall those, thebranchesnaturally, be grafted into their own Olive!
Here are more topics than one which call for reverent notice and study.
1. The imagery of the Olive, with its root, stem, and branches. The Olive, rich and useful, long-lived, and evergreen, stands, as a "nature-parable" of spiritual life, beside the Vine, the Palm, and the Cedar, in the Garden of God. Sometimes it pictures the individual saint, living and fruitful in union with his Lord (Psal. lii. 8). Sometimes it sets before us the fertile organism of the Church, as here, where the Olive is the great Church Universal in its long life before and after the historical coming of Christ; the life which in a certain sense began with the Call of Abraham, and was only magnificently developed by the Incarnation and Passion. Its Root, in this respect, is the great Father of Faith. Its Stem is the Church of the Old Testament, which coincided, in the matter of external privilege, with the nation of Israel, and to which at least the immense majority oftrue believers in the elder time belonged. Its Branches (by a slight and easy modification of the image) are its individual members, whether Jewish or Gentile. The Master of the Tree, arriving on the scene in the Gospel age, comes as it were to prune His Olive, and to graft. The Jewish "branch," if he is what he seems, if he believes indeed and not only by hypothesis, abides in the Tree. Otherwise, he is—from the divine point of view—broken off. The Gentile, believing, is grafted in, and becomes a true part of the living organism; as genuinely and vitally one with Abraham in life and blessing as his Hebrew brother. But the fact of the Hebrew "race" in root and stem rules still so far as to make the re-ingrafting of a Hebrew branch, repenting, more "natural" (not more possible, or more beneficial, but more "natural") than the first ingrafting of a Gentile branch. The whole Tree is for ever Abrahamic, Israelite, in stock and growth; though all mankind has place now in its forest of branches.
2. The imagery of Grafting. Here is an instance of partial, while truthful, use of a natural process in Scripture parable. In our gardens and orchards it is the wild stock which receives, in grafting, the "good" branch; a fact which lends itself to many fertile illustrations. Here, on the contrary, the "wild" branch is inserted into the "good" stock. But the olive-yard yields to the Apostle all the imagery he really needs. He has before him, ready to hand, the Tree of the Church; all that he wants is an illustration of communication and union of life by artificial insertion. And this he finds in the olive-dresser's art, which shews him how a vegetable fragment, apart and alien, can by human design be made to grow into the life of the tree, as if a native of the root.
3. The teaching of the passage as to the Place of Israel in the divine Plan of life for the world. We have remarked on this already, but it calls for reiterated notice and recollection. "At sundry times, and in divers manners," and through many and divers races and civilizations, God has dealt with man, and is dealing with him, in the training and development of his life and nature. But in the matter of man's spiritual salvation, in the gift to him, in his Fall, of the life eternal, God has dealt with man, practically, throughonerace, Israel. Let it never be forgotten that the "sundry times and divers manners" of the apostolic Epistle (Heb. i. 1) are all referred to "the prophets"; they are the "times" and "manners" of the Old Testament revelation. And when at length the same Eternal Voice spoke to man "in the Son" (ἐν Ὑιῷ), that Son came of Israel, "took hold of Abraham's seed" (Heb. ii. 16), and Himself bore definite witness that "salvation is from the Jews" (John iv. 24). Amidst the unknown manifoldness of the work of God for man, and in man, this is single and simple—that in one racial line only runs the stream of authentic and supernatural revelation; in the line of this mysteriously chosen Israel. From this point of view, the great Husbandman has planted not a forest but a Tree; and the innumerable trees of the forest can get the sap of Eden only as their branches are grafted by His hand into His one Tree, by the faith which unites them to Him who is the Root below the root, "the Root of David," and of Abraham.
4. The appeal to the new-grafted "branch" to "abide by the goodness of God." We have listened, as St Paul has dictated to his scribe, to many a deep word about a divine and sovereign power on man;about man's absolute debt to God for the fact that he believes and lives. Yet here, with equal decision, we have man thrown back on the thought of his responsibility, of the contingency in a certain sense of his safety on his fidelity.[197]"If you are true to mercy, mercy will be true to you; otherwise you too will be broken off." Here, as in our study of earlier passages, let us be willing to go all along with Scripture in the seeming inconsistency of its absolute promises and its contingent cautions. Let us, like it, "go to both extremes"; then we shall be as near, probably, as our finite thought can be at present to the whole truth as it moves, a perfect sphere, in God. Is the Christian worn and wearied with his experience of his own pollution, instability, and helplessness? Let him embrace, without a misgiving, the whole of that promise, "My sheep shall never perish." Has he drifted into a vain confidence, not in Christ, but in privilege, in experience, in apparent religious prosperity? Has he caught himself in the act of saying, even in a whisper, "God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are"? Then let him listen in time to the warning voice, "Be not high-minded, but fear"; "Take heed lest He spare not thee." And let him put no pillow of theory between the sharpness of that warning and his soul. Penitent, self-despairing, resting in Christ alone, let him "abide by the goodness of God."