MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 11:29-32
The unchangeableness of God’s attitude towards men.—It is difficult to comprehend that, while change and decay are recognised everywhere in men and in nature, these should not have any place with God. Our preconceived notions lead us to expect shifting policies. But in these points natural and spiritual law are unlike, whatever other harmony there may be. One truth is always before us concerning God—He changes not.
I. God’s intentions towards men are unchangeable.—I. This is shown by the fact that, notwithstanding men’s unfaithfulness, He does not repent of His gifts and promises. Yet some say God has repented—e.g., Genesis 6:6, where He repented that He had made man. In reality this only points out man’s limitation. He cannot think of God save as a magnified man, with man’s methods of thought and action. The true explanation of this is that God’s visible procedure towards man was altered. From being longsuffering and merciful He was about to show Himself a God of judgment. It is easy to conceive God’s grief that the mercy had so little effect and that judgment was called for. But, in point of fact, God’s feelings towards men were unchanged. It was simply a change in the method of treatment, but pointing to the same gracious end. A father, e.g., has the welfare of his child at heart. Kind treatment failing, he brings strong discipline to bear. So it is with a nation and the troublesome subjects. So it was with God in the treatment of man.
2. But if there be apparent change, it is in detail, not in purpose. “Changes take place above and around the fortress, but its massive buttresses still stand unmoved, and its battlements frown defiance at the strength of the foe.” Such is the parallel to God’s purpose concerning men. “He willeth not the death of a sinner,” etc. Since mercy will not keep the sinner in the path of righteousness, another method is pursued.
3. God may choose others, and not lose His first love—e.g., He turned to the Gentiles and called them; but He did not thereby lose His regard for the Jews. There was still the gracious plan for their redemption. Even when they passed into mischief and sorrow, and the Gentiles were invited to participate in redemption, He still was saying, “How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?” God’s heart too large only to have love for a Jew or a portion.
4. Apparent cruelty was in reality kindness. “Is error to be immortal because its eradication is painful? Is the mandrake to grow because its roots shriek when they are torn out of the ground?”
II. Only pure perversity can cause a sinner’s loss.—It is not God who changes, but the sinner who refuses. It is the grace of God which gives the Gentiles salvation, and only rebellious resistance to that grace which excludes the Jews. This suggests man’s freedom of action. He is no victim of fate. He may choose his attitude towards God, and may submit and serve, or be defiant. The rejection of the Jews was the natural result of their own obstinacy and hardness—not the result of a blind, hard fate against which they were powerless.
III. In spite of man’s wilfulness God has unchangeably adhered to His scheme of mercy.—“God’s gifts and calling admit of no revocation. Once given, they are given for ever.” The question is, Do we reject them? God’s constancy to His purposes shows:
1. The amplitude of His love—mercy offered to those who by no means deserved it.
2. Man, when lost, has been his own worst enemy, by having refused the offers of mercy.
3. The vastness of our debt to Him who decreed our salvation. While sin is universal, God’s love is equally unlimited; it traverses the whole range of sin. What is our response? The question may come to us, How much owest thou unto thy Lord? The difficulty is to answer how much; for the mercy we have received is so vast, so boundless, so undeserved—it is so much a gift of God’s free grace, large, unmerited, and free! We may not say less than this,—
“Here, Lord, I yield myself to Thee!
’Tis all that I can do.”
Albert Lee.
Romans 11:29-32. Temporal restoration not. promised.—There is nothing in this passage pointing to a temporal restoration of the Jewish nation, or to an Israelitish monarchy having its seat in Palestine. The apostle speaks only of a spiritual restoration by means of a general pardon and the outpouring of the graces which shall flow from it. Will there be a political restoration connected with this general conversion of the people? Or will it not even precede the latter? Will not the principle of the reconstitution of races, which in our day has produced Italian unity, German unity, and which is tending to the unity of the Slavs, also bring about Israelitish unity? These questions do not belong to exegesis, which confines itself to establishing these two things:
1. That, according to apostolical revelation, Israel will be converted in a body;
2. That this event will be the signal of an indescribable spiritual commotion throughout the whole Church. As Nielsen says: “Divine impartiality, after having been temporarily veiled by two opposite particularisms, shines forth in the final universalism which embraces in a common salvation all those whom these great judgments have successively humbled and abased.” There is therefore no inference to be drawn from this passage in favour of a final universal salvation (De Wette, Farrar, and so many others), or even of a determinist system, in virtue of which human liberty would be nothing more in the eyes of the apostle than a form of divine action. St. Paul teaches only one thing here-—that at the close of the history of mankind on this earth there will be an economy of grace in which salvation will be extended to the totality of the nations living here below, and that this magnificent result will be the effect of the humiliating dispensations through which the two halves of mankind shall have successively passed. The apostle had begun this vast exposition of salvation with the fact of universal condemnation; he closes it with that of universal mercy. What could remain to him thereafter but to strike the hymn of adoration and praise?—Godet.
Romans 11:29. Persistence of the divine gifts.—St. Paul having shown that the rejection of Israel was only partial, he next shows that it was only temporary—that God had not done with His people yet, but that they had still a great part to play in the spiritual history of the future.
I. The gifts of God are without repentance.—These two words, “without repentance,” are the translation of one word, and that one word occurs only twice in the New Testament,—here, and in the passage where the apostle, contrasting godly sorrow with the sorrow of the world, says that “godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of”—that is to say, such repentance is followed by no regret; no man is ever sorry that he has repented of his sins. In like manner God’s gifts, once bestowed, are not lightly recalled. Freely given, they are steadily continued from age to age—they are “without repentance”; even when misused and neglected, they are made in some way to work out the gracious purpose of Heaven. This is true of His commonest gifts of all. The word translated “gifts” is one almost entirely peculiar to the apostle in the New Testament, and is used by him in the sense of an endowment of power. It is analogous to what we say ourselves when we speak of the gift of the poet or the musician, of the orator or the artist, meaning thereby special aptitude or faculty for doing something. In the passage before us St. Paul is speaking of a special endowment of power bestowed upon a nation; for a nation may be specially gifted as well as a man. It was theirs, by means of super natural revelation through prophet and seer, to minister to the God-consciousness of the human soul, to deal with the conscience and the religious life. “The spiritual thirst of mankind has for ages been quenched at Hebrew fountains” the profoundest thoughts of God and of His righteousness to be found anywhere in the world, the clearest and most fruitful ideas of His nature, His moral government, and His personal relations to the souls of men, have come to us from them. In modern days, as in ancient, God’s gifts have been steadily persistent, without repentance and without recall. We thank God for harvests and fruitful seasons; let us also thank Him for men who have pioneered our way to nobler realms of thought, for men who have spoken burning words of conviction to the national conscience, for men who have grappled with great social wrongs and done battle with injustice, for men who have helped to make vivid to us the spiritual world and our own personal responsibility to the God of our life. Nor must we think only of great men and great gifts. The humblest man you meet has his own proper gift of God. But we must not stop at the intellectual and practical gifts which God bestows upon men. In the spiritual region, as in the intellectual, each hath his own proper gift of that God who divides to every man severally as He will. The grasp of faith, the intensity of love, the power of sympathy, vary. This gift of the Spirit is the gift of God Himself, as an indwelling, ennobling, and sanctifying power to His creature.
II. The words before us speak of the call of God as well as of the gifts of God; and the call, equally with the gift, is without repentance.—God’s call takes various forms. This, which is true of nations, is true also on a smaller scale of our own personal lives. There are times when God breaks up a man’s surroundings and sends him forth to new scenes and circumstances, that He may make more of the man himself. The call of God may take another form—that of summoning us to special acts of service. The men who have made the noblest sacrifices and done the noblest work have been those who have heard most clearly the call of God in their souls, and have felt most surely that He gave them their work to do. When God gives us work to do, He gives power to do it; power comes upon us as we go. Finally, the call of God to some men is a call to break away from a sinful, godless life. Such calls come at times even to the worst of men. In other ways, too, the call comes. It comes sometimes in the shape of personal trouble sweeping down upon the man’s life. Perhaps he has been trying to make his life complete without God, trying to make his paradise here instead of yonder. And it may be that he seemed to succeed for a while; but only for a while. For changes come. The shadow fell where the love dwelt; there was a vacant chair, and when that chair became vacant the light of the house seemed to go out, and in the silence and desolation which followed God’s voice was heard calling the stricken heart to its true home and its true rest.—John Brown, D.D,
God’s conduct in the salvation of mankind.—This is the conclusion of the argument which Paul had pursued in regard to God’s conduct in the salvation of mankind. He seems to be overwhelmed with the sense of its unsearchableness. In many things do the depths of God’s wisdom and knowledge in man’s spiritual restoration appear. We remark five things:—
I. The manifestation of His righteousness in the restoration of rebels.—Human monarchs have shown their justice in crushing rebels, but God in restoring them.
II. The destruction of the spirit of rebellion in the restoration of rebels.—Human monarchs may deliver rebels, but they cannot destroy the spirit of rebellion. God does this.
III. The augmentation of the force of moral government in the restoration of rebels.—Human monarchs may weaken their government by saving rebels, but God strengthens the force of His moral administration by redeeming transgressors.
IV. The promotion of all the rights of His subjects in the restoration of rebels.—Human monarchs by delivering rebels endanger the rights of loyal citizens. God in the restoration of rebels promotes the rights of all. “O the depth of the riches,” etc.
V. The election of earth instead of hell as the scene for the restoration of rebels.—Homilist.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 11
Romans 11:28-32. Providence always at work.—God’s work of providence is “His most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing of all His creatures and all their actions.” It has no Sabbath, no night suspends it, and from its labours God never rests. If, for the sake of illustration, I may compare small things with great, it is like the motion of the heart. Beating our march to the grave since the day we began to live, the heart has never ceased to beat. Our limbs grow weary; not it. We sleep; it never sleeps. Needing no period of repose to recruit its strength, by night and day it throbs in every pulse, and constantly supplying nourishment to the meanest as well as to the noblest organs of our frame, with measured, steady, untired stroke, it drives the blood along the bounding arteries without any exercise of will on our part, and even when the consciousness of our own existence is lost in dreamless slumber.