Romanos 9:6-29

Not All Israel Are The True Israel. The True Israel Are a Remnant Of Israel Chosen By God, Together With Some Believing Gentiles. For God Has A Right To Do What He Will (9:6-29).

Paul now begins to establish from the Scriptures what God's method of working is, and what the true situation of the Jews (who considered themselves to be ‘the elect') was. The basic purpose of these verses is in order to emphasise that the Scriptures themselves demonstrate that not all of Israel are to be saved and inherit eternal life, but only a proportion, (not all are ‘the elect'), while at the same time some Gentiles are among the elect (Romanos 9:23). This was basic to his whole argument about ‘justification by faith' in Romanos 1:16 to Romanos 4:25. If many Jews were right who believed that Israel were God's elect and therefore that to belong to the Jewish nation under the Law, and to be circumcised, was a guarantee of God's final mercy for all Israelites, then Paul's teaching concerning justification by faith would be seen to be false. He has already partially dealt with this problem in Romanos 2:1 to Romanos 3:18 from the angle that all Jews were sinners. Now he will deal with the question of the election of Israel, and how it relates to salvation, and to Gentile believers

This section of the chapter can be divided up as follows:

· Not all of supposed Israel are truly Israel, and are the children of God, but only those who are chosen in line with the elective purposes of God (Romanos 9:6).

· The Scripture demonstrates that God is sovereign over all things and has mercy on whom He wills (Romanos 9:14).

· God has the sovereign right to do what He chooses, and has opted to save only a proportion of Israelites, whilst also including many Gentiles (Romanos 9:19).

· It is in accordance with Scripture that Gentiles would become children of God whilst only a remnant of Israel would be saved (Romanos 9:27).