What isn’t Israel saved? That was the question people were asking in Paul’s day. Paul’s first answer is in Romans 9:6-29 – God has not included all physical descendants of Abraham in the True Israel. Rather, He has sovereignly chose some, but not all. His next answer, is because of Israel’s failure. Israel sought righteousness by works, stumbled over Jesus Christ, had a zeal for God that was not according to knowledge, and refused to submit to God’s righteousness. Oh, may we not repeat Israel’s mistakes!
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Why Isn’t Israel Saved?
Romans 9:30 – 10:4
Paul begins Romans 9 by putting himself on oath and telling his readers that he could wish that he could be accursed and separated from Christ for the sake of his fellow Israelites? Why? Because they were accursed and separated from Christ. How could it be that the Jews of Paul’s day were lost? After all, they were God’s chosen people. They had the adoption of sons, and the glory and the covenants, and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises, and the fathers, and brought forth the Messiah. After all those privileges, how could they be lost?! And, be very sure of it – Paul is definitely saying that Israel was not saved. In Romans 10:1 he says, “Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation.” I know some strong Pro-Israel groups today teach that all Jews are saved because of their nationality, but that is precisely the opposite of what Paul is teaching. Paul is teaching that they were not saved. The Jews who did not believe in Jesus were in exactly the same spiritual position as the unsaved Gentiles.
Well, Paul’s first answer is the sovereignty of God. He says that not all physical descendants of Abraham were part of Israel. He says that God made choices as to whom He would include and whom He would exclude in the True Israel. He included Isaac, and excluded Ishmael. He included Jacob, and excluded Esau. He has mercy on whom He will have mercy, and hardens whom He desires. He is the Potter, and men are the clay. Some are molded into vessels of honor and others into vessels of dishonor. Some are vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and others are vessels of mercy which He prepared beforehand for glory. God is calling some Jews to Christ, but not all. Paul’s first answer to why most Israelites in Paul’s day were not saved, is that God did not choose to save all of Israel.
But now we come to a second reason. The first reason was a divine reason. The second is a human reason. The first reason was the sovereignty of God. The second reason is the responsibility of man. Beginning in Romans 9:30, Paul is not pointing to the sovereignty of God as the reason why Israel is not saved. He is pointing to the failure of the Jews as the reason. As we will see, Paul points to four reasons:
1) They sought righteousness by works
2) They stumbled over Jesus Christ
3) They had a zeal for God that was not according to knowledge
4) They sought to establish their own righteousness
So, does that negate everything Paul has just taught about the sovereignty of God? Does this mean that the Jews were lost only because of their own failures, and that it had nothing to do with the sovereignty of God? Of course not. This is not an either/or situation, but a both/and situation. Both of these are true. One of the reasons the Jews were lost is because of the sovereignty of God, and another reason is because of their own failures to receive God’s righteousness in His way. Or, let’s put it another way. Why is anyone saved? The first reason is because God has unconditionally elected them to salvation. The second reason is because they attain righteousness by faith. These two reasons are not at odds with one another. A person attains righteousness by faith because God has unconditionally elected them. They are two sides of the same coin – the Divine side and the human side.
You see, God’s unconditional election does not actually save anyone. There are many people in the world today that God has chosen, but are not saved yet. When God chooses a person to be saved from wrath and inherit everlasting joy in God, He can’t just reconcile that person to Himself until he is first declared righteous. God hates sin and must punish it. God’s justice requires that all sinful thoughts, actions, and attitudes must be punished and removed before the sinner can be brought into God’s favor and presence. Thus, the only people who can stand in God’s blazing holiness without being destroyed are perfectly righteous people. And the problem, is that there are no people outside of Christ who are perfectly righteous.
Thus unconditional elections marks out certain people for salvation. But those people do not actually receive the gift of salvation until they are justified (declared righteous) through faith in Jesus Christ.
Brothers and sisters, never pit God’s sovereignty against human responsibility. When someone asked Charles Spurgeon how he reconciled divine sovereignty with human responsibility, he quipped, “I never have to reconcile friends. Divine sovereignty and human responsibility have never had a falling out with each other. I do not need to reconcile what God has joined together.”
So, beginning today, we are going to be studying the flip side of the coin – human responsibility. We will be asking the question, “Why isn’t Israel saved?” The answer Paul gives here is because of Israel’s failures. Let’s look at the four reasons he gives.
1. Because They Sought Righteousness By Works
The Condition of the Gentiles. 9:30, “What shall we say then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith…” Paul begins by describing how so many of the Gentiles had been saved. They weren’t pursuing righteousness. In fact, Gentile cities were the centers of vice, superstition, and idolatry. They weren’t seeking for God. Yet, they found Him. Why? Because when the gospel of grace was preached to them, they believed. They turned from idols to serve the living God. They attained the righteousness which is by faith. They were justified by faith. The Jews, on the other hand, by and large rejected the gospel of grace. It was the Jews who persecuted those who preached the gospel. They turned on the early missionaries with rage and hatred, starting riots, and pursuing them from city to city in order to try to destroy them and their message.
So, here is the strange irony. The Gentiles, who weren’t pursuing righteousness attained it, and the Jews who were pursuing righteousness did not attain it. In Romans 10:20-21, Paul quotes Isaiah 65:1-2 to show that God had predicted all of this, “I was found by those who did not seek Me, I became manifest to those who did not ask for Me. But as for Israel He says, “All the day long I have stretched out My hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.”
The Condition of the Jews. 9:31-32, “but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as though it were by works.” The reason Israel was not saved is because they sought righteousness by works. They sought righteousness in the wrong way. There is plenty of Old Testament Scripture that shows that God’s righteousness can only be received by faith. Abraham, the father of Israel discovered this. Genesis 15:6 says, “And he believed in the Lord, and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.” Habakkuk 2:4 says, “the righteous one will live by his faith.” Isaiah 55:6-7 gives the Jews a clear path for the Jews to follow to receive pardon of their sins, “Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” God does not tell the Jews to seek the Law. He tells him to seek the Lord and to return to the Lord. This is describing faith in the true and living God.
But the Jews, by and large, refused to come to God through faith. They pursued righteousness by works. Paul has already told us in Romans 3:20, “by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.” Every Israelite believed that all he had to do to be right with God was to have the Law and attempt to live up to it. However, he could never perfectly live up to the standards of the Law. God’s standard is perfection. God’s way of salvation was made plain to Israel, but they refused to go that way. They ran, but they ran down the wrong path! As Warren Wiersbe has written, “The Jews thought that the Gentiles had to come up to Israel’s level to be saved; when actually the Jews had to go down to the level of the Gentiles to be saved. Instead of permitting their religious privileges (Rom. 9:1-5) to lead them to Christ, they used these privileges as a substitute for Christ.”
2. Because They Stumbled Over Jesus Christ
Romans 9:32b-33, “They stumbled over the stumbling stone, just as it is written, “Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and he who believes in Him will not be disappointed.” Here Paul is quoting from Isaiah 28:16 and Isaiah 8:14, and blending them together. Now, we know that this stone of stumbling is a person because Paul says, “And he who believes in Him (referring back to the stone of stumbling) will not be disappointed. We know that this stumbling stone is Jesus Christ, because Peter says in 1 Peter 2:4, “And coming to Him as to a living stone which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God.” Jesus was the One rejected by men, but who became the chief corner stone.
Why did the Jews stumble over Jesus Christ? I think it was because He was not what they expected from their Messiah. They expected a Lion, and He turned out to be a Lamb. They expected a military conqueror, and he turned out to be a suffering servant. They expected a great leader of a political kingdom, and he was a great leader of a spiritual kingdom. The Jews wanted a throne, but God gave a cross.
The irony was that the Law they tried so hard to keep, pointed to the coming Messiah, whom they failed to trust and follow. The Law spoke of the sacrifices, the priesthood, the temple services, the religious feasts and festivals, and covenants. All of those things were types pointing to the perfect sacrifice, the high priest after the order of Melchizedek, the true temple, the fulfillment of all the festivals, and the framer of the covenants. The Law everywhere pointed to Jesus. It was a signpost pointing to Him. The Law told them they were sinners and needed a Savior, but rather than following the Law to Christ, they worshiped the Law, and rejected their Savior! How tragic! The Law could never actually make anyone righteous. Its purpose was not to save, but to point to the One who alone could save. But the Jews, instead of falling at Jesus’ feet and worshiping Him, stumbled over Him and were offended by Him. He is not what they expected or what they wanted, and He is still not to this day. But to that Jewish remnant who did believe, they discovered that they would not be disappointed (9:33).
3. Because They Had a Zeal for God that was Not According To Knowledge
Romans 10:1, “Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation.” There are a couple of important applications that we can draw from this verse. First, notice that even though Paul has just spent almost an entire chapter insisting on the sovereignty of God in salvation, this does not stop him from praying for the lost. A lot of people say, “If I believed what you believe about election, I would never pray. What’s the point? If God has already chosen certain people to be saved, why pray for them?” That logic didn’t stop Paul from praying. Praying for those God had chosen to be saved didn’t bother him in the least. God declared in Jeremiah 29:10 that after 70 years, He would bring His people back from Babylon to their own land. When Daniel discovered this prophecy, and that the 70 years were almost completed, did he say, “Why pray? God has already decided He’s going to bring us back to Palestine.” No, he sought the Lord earnestly and asked Him to do exactly what He said He would do. It was the same with Paul. And since Paul didn’t know whom God had chosen to be saved, he felt perfectly free to pray for anyone to be saved, knowing God would bring about His sovereign plan.
The second application I see here is how Paul speaks about Israel. He speaks with grace and truth. He speaks with grace because he writes of how greatly he desires their salvation. But he speaks with truth, because he refuses to water down their desperate need. The Jews needed to be saved. I think there is a valuable lesson here for us. We need to speak to others with grace and truth. We speak graciously, by showing a gentle and tender love. We plead with them and urge them to come to Christ. We demonstrate love by seeking to help them with their practical needs. But we never sugar-coat the message or try to make it more palatable. We speak the truth in love. We are direct, and honest, and tell them what God says, no more, no less. May we follow Paul’s example here in our dealings with the lost.
They have a zeal for God. Paul knew this by firsthand experience. Paul was a Jew himself, and a Pharisee. He writes in Philippians 3:6, “as to zeal, I was a persecutor of the church.” Jesus said in John 16:2, “an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God.” They had a zeal for God, that’s for sure.
But not in accordance with knowledge. They were ignorant of the true way of salvation. They thought they could be justified by their law-keeping, and were ignorant of the fact that they had to renounce all their own righteousness, and come to God as a poor, helpless, beggar crying, “Be merciful to me, the sinner!”
A locomotive engine is a powerful and wonderful thing as long as the train stays on the tracks, but if the train jumps the tracks, that same engine can produce an amazing amount of destruction. So too, with religious zeal. Zeal in religion is good. In fact, it is necessary. But if that zeal is not according to knowledge, it becomes destructive.
There is a certain town in Canada that has four roads leading from it. One road heads north and eventually connects to the Alaskan Highway. Another road heads due west, and ends up at the Pacific Ocean. Another, heads west, and ends up at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains where it comes to an abrupt end. Another road heads due south, where it ends up crossing the United States border. Well, let’s suppose someone wants to drive from this Canadanian town to the United States, but instead of getting directions, he takes the road that appeals to him the most. The road north looks the best, so he takes off on that road at top speed. The faster and farther he drives, the farther and farther he finds himself from his desired destination. It is exactly the same with zealous religious people whose zeal is not in accordance with knowledge. They are zealous, but are going to end up at the wrong destination. Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.”
Let’s stop to make some application here.
1) A person can have a zeal for God and not be saved. How do we know? Because Paul tells us the Jews have a zeal for God but they are not saved. That has massive implications for people caught up in religious devotion, but not according to truth. There are a lot of zealous people caught up in religious cults, that are not saved. There are a lot of people who are zealously trying to attain righteousness by their works, that will die in their sins. And not only cult members, but pastors, and elders, and deacons, and church members of true bible churches can have a zeal for God and not be saved. This shows us how important it is to know the truth! The only difference between zealous religious people who are saved and those who are not is that some know the truth. Their zeal is according to a true knowledge of the gospel. Friends, you can make a lot of mistakes in studying your Bible and still make it to heaven, but you can’t make a mistake about what the gospel is, and how a person receives God’s righteousness. You’ve got to nail that one. If you miss it here, you are doomed forever. Brothers and sisters, study your Bibles! Get into the Bible. Read it. Meditate on it. Make it your constant companion. Let it lead you to Jesus, and to faith in Him.
2) All roads don’t lead to God. It is common to hear people say, “It doesn’t really matter that much what you believe, because as long as you are sincere, all roads lead to God.” Did the road of works lead the Jews to God? Were the Jews sincere? Were they zealous? Were they devoted? You bet they were, but they weren’t saved. Friends, God has not given us the liberty to decide how we are going to come to Him. You either come God’s way, or you don’t come at all. God makes the rules, not us. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes to the Father except through Me” (Jn.14:6).
3) The Jews lacked knowledge, but God still held them responsible. Verse 3 says, “For not knowing about God’s righteousness…” We often think that if we don’t know the Law, we shouldn’t be held responsible for it. Try that when the Highway Patrolman pulls you over for doing 65 in a 45 mile per hour zone! If you say, “Officer, I didn’t know the speed limit here was only 45 miles per hour,” how’s that going to go over. Is he going to say, “Oh, well, since you didn’t know it, no problem. I’ll be on my merry way, but from now on, make sure you go the speed limit”? No way. He’s going to give you a big fat ticket. He doesn’t care that you don’t know the law. If you are going to drive on those roads, you are responsible to know how fast you can drive on them. The Jew was responsible, because he could have known and should have known how he could approach God and receive His righteousness. It was written in his own Scriptures. If he had diligently studied the Scriptures, he could have discovered how to approach God. If we end up on Judgment Day, ignorant of the truth, we and we alone are to blame.
4. Because They Sought To Establish Their Own Righteousness
Romans 10:3-4, “For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”
They should have subjected themselves to the Righteousness of God. So, why didn’t they? Why didn’t they put their full trust and hope in the gift of God’s righteousness, rather than try to establish their own righteousness? I think it was because if they established their own righteousness, they would have something they could boast in. At the heart of their self-righteousness was pride. No one wants to admit that they are a helpless and desperate sinner, and that their only hope is the righteousness of God that God gives to them, without them contributing one thing! But that is exactly what Paul has been laboring to tell the Romans in this letter. Listen again to what he told them in Romans 3:19-24, “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin. But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
This is the hard lesson that Paul learned. In Philippians 3 he says that he had learned to take all of his assets, and move them to the liabilities column. He had to move them from the Profits side to the Losses side. That’s why he says in Philippians 3:9, “and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith.”
There are only two kinds of righteousness. There is divine righteousness and self-righteousness. Self-righteousness may puff you up with pride, but it can’t save you. Only the righteousness of God, granted to a sinner through faith in Christ, is able to save the soul.
They did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. Did you hear that? They didn’t subject themselves. That’s why they are at fault. They were unwilling to subject themselves to God’s righteousness. They were willing to zealously try and try and try to keep the Law, so that they would have something to boast about, and something they could be proud of. But God hates the proud and gives grace to the humble.
For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. This is why it is so damning for a person to seek to get to heaven by his good works. For you to trust in your own self-righteousness as the ground of your acceptance with God dishonors Jesus Christ. God has determined that Jesus alone will have the honor of bestowing God’s righteousness. Christ is the end, the goal of the law. All of the law terminates in Him. He is the fulfillment of the Law. Yet Jesus said in John 5:39, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me.” Similarly, professing Christians search the Bible, because they think that in the Bible they have eternal life. No, my friends, the Bible is not God. The Bible can’t save. Only God can save. The Bible can point you to the God who saves, but that’s all it can do. You must be united with Jesus Christ. He must become your righteousness.
Conclusion
Robert Murray McCheyne, a godly Presbyterian pastor in the 19th century, was once passing out tracts, and one day he handed a tract to a well-dressed lady. She responded by giving him a haughty look and saying, “Sir, you must not know who I am!” McCheyne responded by saying, “Madam, there is coming a day of judgment, and on that day it will not make any difference who you are!”
My friends, make up your mind once and for all, if you have never done so, that Christ alone will be all your righteousness. Either He will be your righteousness or you will perish. Jeremiah 23:6 says, “And this is His name by which He will be called, ‘The Lord our righteousness.” Is Christ your righteousness? The apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:30, “But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.” Has the Lord become to you righteousness?
I pray He has. If you are in doubt, commit your soul to Him right now, repent of seeking to be justified by your own self-righteousness, and take Him for your entire righteousness right now. Let’s pray.
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