We All Need the Mercy of God

Thinking about Romans 9:22-29.

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What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?

As He says also in Hosea: “I will call them My people, who were not My people, and her beloved, who was not beloved.” “And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ there they shall be called sons of the living God.”

Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved. For He will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness, because the LORD will make a short work upon the earth.”

And as Isaiah said before: “Unless the LORD of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we would have become like Sodom, and we would have been made like Gomorrah.” (Romans 9:22-29)

After reminding his readers of God’s sovereignty, Paul emphasizes that all people - Jews included - need the mercy of God.

God’s Longsuffering and God’s Mercy.

Even though “all Israel” wasn’t really Israel (Romans 9:6), God endured with the physical nation of Israel. Why? Why didn’t He pour out His wrath and power on them the way He had down with other nations and destroy them?

So that “He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy.”

It is the word “mercy” which is so offensive to the Jew. That the Gentiles needed mercy everyone knew; but the Jews had the law. The Gentiles were not God’s people; but the Jews were God’s elite (and not only the elect). - McGuiggan, Romans, 290

God “suffered long” with the unfaithful Jews, the same as the unfaithful Gentile, so that He could show “the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy.”

God called all of the Jews and desired that every person in the nations would be saved, but not all Jews or Gentiles responded. Those who did became children of God and part of spiritual Israel. The calling or election of God is never one-sided, with human response eliminated. - Pollard, Truth for Today Commentary, 340

The Scriptures Support This View.

Paul refers to Hosea 2:23 and 1:10, as well as Isaiah 10:22-23 and 1:9, to provide support for his point that not all physical Israel would be saved - only a “remnant” would be saved.

The passages in Hosea emphasize that those who were once not God’s people would be called God’s people. This could refer to the Gentiles or to unfaithful Jews who repented and turned back to God.

Isaiah 10:22-23 points out that even with an “uncountable” number of Israelites, only a remnant would be saved.

The position that all of Israel would be saved just because they belonged to Israel was now proven to be false. Isaiah also helped to explain why the majority of Jews had not responded to the gospel. Remnant theology undergirds Paul’s entire argument. - Pollard, Truth for Today Commentary, 341

Isaiah 1:9 shows that God preserved the physical nation of Israel for the “seed” or “descendant’s” sake.

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Up to this point in his argument, Paul had told the story of Israel, stretching from Abraham to the promise of return from exile. At every turn, the story taught what God wanted to teach - that not all the children of Abraham were truly His covenant people. Only those whom He selected as the recipients of His mercy and who lived faithful to His promise would be His new Israel. - Pollard, Truth for Today Commentary, 342

What is Paul emphasizing to his Jewish readers - and even to us today?

We all need God’s mercy.

Even the continued existence of the physical nation of Israel was not proof of God’s approval - “for they are not all Israel who are of Israel” - but it was evidence of His mercy. Many of the Jewish people were blind to that fact - and this was precisely what Paul was trying to get them to see.

If we never see our desperate need for God’s mercy, we will never grasp our need for the gospel and the significance of what God has done for us through His Son, Jesus Christ.