be a trustworthy ambassador for God one needs 'apostolate.' 'How shall
they preach except they be _sent_?' And this apostolate, as he uses
it, means not only an inward sense of mission, but an external sending
by Christ Himself; and in pursuance of the same principle, when once
the Church has been established, it would mean a sending by those
authorized to send in His name. This is the root principle of the
Christian 'stewardship.' As the subapostolic Clement expresses it,
'Christ (was sent) from God, and the apostles from Christ. Each came
in due order from the will of God. Therefore, having received the
words of command, and having been fully convinced by the resurrection
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and been assured in the message of God with
conviction of the Holy Ghost, they came forth, preaching the gospel
that the kingdom of God was to come. Therefore as they preached in
country and towns they established their first-fruits, when they had
put them to the proof, to be bishops (i.e. presbyters), and deacons of
those who were to come to the faith.' And afterwards, in view of
disputes over the presbyteral office, which divine inspiration enabled
them to anticipate, they made provision for a due succession {57} in
the 'episcopate' on the death of those first appointed[17].
4. St. Paul's singularly free, but deeply inspired, manner of applying
texts from the Old Testament is especially illustrated in this passage.
Thus the passages quoted from Isaiah about the Stone, which St. Paul
applies to Christ, refer originally to Jehovah simply in one case (Isa.
viii. 14), and probably to His will and covenant as the foundation of
Israel's polity in the other (Isa. xxviii. 16). Jewish tradition had
possibly already referred them to the Christ[18]; and certainly our
Lord's use of Ps. cxviii. 22--'The stone which the builders
rejected'--as applying to His own rejection, made the reference more
obvious. It is indeed in deepest accordance with the spirit of Isaiah:
and St. Peter (1 Peter ii. 6), we notice, follows St. Paul in the use
of them. Another passage (lii. 7) about 'the feet of those who preach
good tidings' is transferred, with added meaning, from the heralds of
the redemption from Babylon, to the heralds of the greater redemption.
And the opening of chapter lxv, which originally refers altogether to
apostate Israel, is divided, {58} and applied in part to the Gentiles,
in part to the Jews. (Other passages in the prophets, we should
observe, would justify the former application.) Again, a passage from
Ps. xix is transferred very beautifully from the witness of the heavens
to the witness of the Gospel; as if St. Paul would say--grace is become
as universal as nature. The language of a passage from Deuteronomy, as
we have seen, is taken from the law to express the spirit of the
gospel. The calling upon Jehovah in Joel becomes in St. Paul's
quotation the calling upon Christ. All this free citation, uncritical
according to our ideas and methods, yet rests upon a profoundly right
apprehension of the meaning of the Old Testament as a whole. The
appeal to the Old Testament, even if not to the particular passage, is
justified by the strictest criticism.
[1] I have endeavoured sometimes in this analysis to expand what St.
Paul means by 'pursuing righteousness,' by 'works' and by 'faith,' in
accordance with the meaning already assigned to these words; see vol.
i. pp. 7-24.
[2] Isa. viii. 14; xxviii. 16. Cf. Matt. xi. 6.
[3] See above, vol. i. p. 17.
[4] Levit. xviii. 5.
[5] Deut. xxx. 11-14. I have italicized the words substantially
reproduced by St. Paul, but I have quoted the whole passage because its
whole meaning is in his mind.
[6] Isa. xxviii. 16.
[7] Joel ii. 32.
[8] Isa. lii. 7.
[9] Isa. liii. 1.
[10] Ps. xix. 4.
[11] Deut. xxxii. 21.
[12] Isa. lxv. 1, 2.
[13] See vol. i. pp. 7 ff., 165 f., 250 ff.
[14] Godet _in loc._
[15] Cf. 1 Cor. xii. 3. The lordship of Jesus, we see in this passage,
means that He can have applied to Him the sayings of the Old Testament
about the Lord Jehovah; and can be 'called upon' as such in prayer
(Joel ii. 32).
[16] Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 1-3.
[17] Clem, _ad Cor._ 42, 44.
[18] See S. and H. _in loc._
{59}
DIVISION IV. Sec. 4. CHAPTER XI. 1-12.
_God's judgement on Israel neither universal nor final._
But if Israel has thus by her own fault fallen from her high estate,
are we then to suppose that God has simply rejected His own chosen
people? Such a thought cannot be entertained. How could it have been
in the mind of such an Israelite as St. Paul, one who came of Abraham's
genuine seed, and of the tribe which held so fast by Judah? No: the
people on whom from eternity God's eye rested, to mark them out for
Himself and for His purposes, assuredly cannot, as a people, have been
cast away[1]. What has happened now is only what is recorded long ago
in the history of Elijah. Then, as now, a general unfaithfulness in
the bulk of the nation concealed the existence of a faithful remnant.
Yet God had, as He assured the prophet, {60} reserved for Himself such
a remnant, and of very considerable numbers. And now also such a
remnant of true Israelites exists in accordance with the selective
action of grace--that is to say, God's gratuitous and unmerited good
will. Yes: let there be no mistake about it; their position is due to
nothing else than the original and continuous action of God's grace;
and grace means God's absolutely gratuitous and unmerited good will
(which may therefore come upon Gentiles equally with Jews). It
excludes the idea of these remnants owing their position to previous
merits, or of its being in any way God's response to an antecedent
claim[2].
This then is what we have to recognize. What Israel in bulk sought for
(by way of its supposed merit), that it did not get, but a select
remnant got it; and upon the rest there fell that judicial
hardening--that reversal of their true relation to God--which Moses and
Isaiah already discerned in the chosen people[3]: an abiding {61}
stupor, and deafness, and blindness, with regard to God's purpose and
will for them. David too, as God's righteous servant, demands, as a
divine requital upon his bitter and cruel enemies, that their very
abundance should betray them into captivity and prove their
stumblingblock; that their spiritual vision should be lost and their
backs bent downward to the ground. Which is just what has happened to
Israel through their rejection of the Son of David.
The bulk of the people then has stumbled. But we must not exaggerate
what has happened. As it is not all of them who have stumbled, so also
it is not for ever. Their stumbling is not equivalent to a final fall.
Already we can perceive how it may be reversed. The refusal of the
Jews to recognize the Christ has been the occasion for a turning to the
Gentiles. Thus the salvation of the Christ has come to them. And this
has happened in the divine providence in order that, as Moses
anticipated, they may in their turn provoke the Jews to jealousy--to a
jealous determination not to lose their old {62} privileges. Thus if
even the transgression of Israel has proved the occasion for enriching
the world as a whole, if even the deficiency of Israel (leaving vacant
space, as it were, in the Church) has proved the occasion for enriching
the Gentiles, how much more enrichment is to be expected when the
chosen people are recovered in their full number?
I say then, Did God cast off his people? God forbid. For I also am an
Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God did
not cast off his people which he foreknew. Or wot ye not what the
scripture saith of Elijah[4]? how he pleadeth with God against Israel,
Lord, they have killed thy prophets, they have digged down thine
altars: and I am left alone, and they seek my life. But what saith the
answer of God unto him? I have left for myself seven thousand men, who
have not bowed the knee to Baal. Even so then at this present time
also there is a remnant according to the election of grace. But if it
is by grace, it is no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace.
What then? That which Israel seeketh for, that he obtained not; but
the election obtained it, and the rest were hardened: according as it
is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not
see, and ears that they should not hear, unto this very day. And David
saith,
Let their table be made a snare, and a trap,
And a stumblingblock, and a recompense unto them:
{63}
Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see,
And bow thou down their back alway.
I say then, Did they stumble that they might fall? God forbid: but by
their fall salvation _is come_ unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them
to jealousy. Now if their fall is the riches of the world, and their
loss the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?
1. We learn a little more exactly about St. Paul's doctrine of
election in this chapter. God's final purpose for good is, as we shall
see at the end of the chapter--and in what sense we shall have to
consider--upon all men whatsoever. But this universal purpose is
worked out through special 'elect' instruments. Thus God recognized[5]
Israel beforehand, i.e. in His eternal counsels, as the people to bear
His name in the world. This was the selection of Israel, and was an
act of which the initiative was wholly on God's side. It was a pure
act of the divine favour. This 'selection of grace' was upon Israel as
a whole, but at later stages of the history, frequently enough, owing
to the disobedience and apostasy of the majority, it is found to rest
in an effective sense only upon a 'remnant' whom God has reserved for
Himself, because they have not utterly refused to {64} correspond to
the original and continuous call of the divine grace. For the rest
their privileges become the occasion of their fall: their light becomes
their darkness. For judgement always and inevitably waits upon any
form of misused privilege. Thus, when the Christ came, only an elect
remnant of the nation welcomed Him. The rest fell under judgement.
But God overrules even this apostasy. He takes the opportunity of the
absence of those who should have been at the marriage supper of the
king's son, to fill the great vacancy from the Gentile world. They are
brought within the scope of the selecting call. But God's original
vocation is still irrevocably upon apostate Israel. The new Gentile
converts are to stimulate them to recover their lost privileges. Their
wilfulness and obstinacy is to give place to humility and faith; and
Jew and Gentile all together are to constitute the elect catholic
church.
This is very simple and cheerful teaching. It leaves for us to
consider later the question whether God's original and special vocation
resting upon the Jews is finally to _constrain_ them all to conversion,
and whether in the same way His ultimate purpose of salvation for all
men is to take place infallibly in all cases. This {65} question is
still to be considered. But at any rate the doctrine of election has
lost all that gave it a colouring of arbitrariness and injustice and
narrow sympathies.
We ought to notice in the above passage how St. Paul, in recalling the
continual obstinacy and hardening of the majority of the chosen people,
is following on the lines of St. Stephen's speech (Acts vii. 51).
2. The imprecatory psalms are, especially in our Anglican public
services, a great stumblingblock to many--especially the 69th (here
cited by St. Paul) and the 109th. These psalms do not represent barely
the cry of an individual sufferer invoking God's curse upon his private
enemies. The sufferer, who is the psalmist, or with whom at least the
psalmist identifies himself, represents afflicted righteousness. It is
God's people, His 'servant' and 'son' according to the language of the
Old Testament, that is under persecution from the enemies of God. And
he calls upon God to vindicate Himself by punishing the adversary; to
let it be seen that His word and promise is truth. 'How long, O God,
holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge?' Even from this point
of view, however, when with the assistance {66} of the modern critics
we have in the main purged away the element of private vindictiveness,
these psalms no doubt remain with the stamp of narrowness and
bitterness upon them. They have none of the larger New Testament sense
that the worst enemies of the Church may be converted and live: that
our attitude towards all men is to wish them good, purely good and not
evil, even though it be under the form of judgement: 'Rejoice when men
revile you and persecute you'; 'Bless them that curse you, do good to
them that hate you, pray for them which despitefully use you'; 'That by
your good works which they shall behold, they may glorify God in the
day of visitation.'
But granted the limitation and bitterness still remaining in these
psalms, their citation in the New Testament shows us what is for us the
right use of them. They are by implication taken up--where we should
least expect them--into the mouth of the Son of Man[6]. That is to
say, it is His enemies on whom the judgements are imprecated. There is
a wrath of the Lamb. There is a divine sword of judgement which
proceeds out of His mouth. He, the administrator of the righteousness
of God, {67} expects from His Father judgement on His enemies. It is
not necessarily, as St. Paul here indicates, final judgement: the
judgement upon the Jews was not yet that; but judgement of some
sort--temporal or final--upon His wilful adversaries, the Son expects
of the Father. And we men, as we repeat these psalms, are, like the
first Christians in face of the suicide of Judas, to identify ourselves
with the divine righteousness and accept the law of just retribution.
This is the deepest and truest sense in which we can still say the
imprecatory psalms; and in these days of a philanthropy that often
lacks the stern savour of righteousness, it is very necessary that we
should make this sense our own.
[1] Three times--1 Sam. xii. 22, Ps. xciv. 14, xcv. 3 (in the
Greek)--the promise occurs 'The Lord will not cast away His people.'
[2] The vocation and election which made Israel the chosen people were
absolutely of God. What distinguished the faithful remnant from the
bulk of the nation was simply that they had not altogether failed in
faith, so that the unchanging election was not in their cases
practically suspended, but God 'reserved them for Himself.'
[3] St. Paul refers chiefly to Isa. xxix. 10--the description of a
besotted people whose prophets are eyes that cannot see, and their
seers ears that cannot hear; so that the word of God has become as a
sealed book; cf. also Isa. vi. 9. But there is a similar passage in
Deut. xxix. 4, which partly moulds his language, and supplies the words
'unto this day.'
[4] Rather, as margin, in Elijah, i.e. the passage of Scripture about
Elijah.
[5] This--to recognize or mark out beforehand--is the meaning of divine
'foreknowing' in St. Paul. See vol. i. pp. 317 f.
[6] Both in this passage and in Acts i. 20.
{68}
DIVISION IV. Sec. 5[1]. CHAPTER XI. 13-36.
_God's present purpose for the Jews through the Gentiles: and so for
all humanity._
St. Paul would not have it supposed that, in his zeal for the recovery
of Israel, he was proving faithless to his vocation as the apostle of
the Gentiles. On the contrary, he explains (assuming the Roman
Christians to be Gentiles in the mass) that he is, by this very zeal,
fulfilling that vocation. The conversion of the Gentiles was meant to
react as a stimulus on the Jews. When St. Paul magnifies his Gentile
ministry, he does so always with the motive of stinging the jealousy of
his own people, and so bringing some of them to salvation. How can
such a consummation be too eagerly desired? For if even so pitiable an
event as their rejection has yet, in God's providence, been overruled
for {69} a good end--the bringing back of the outside world into the
fellowship of God[2]: can we doubt that so happy an event as their
recovery would be indeed (what Ezekiel saw in vision in the valley of
the dry bones) a veritable resurrection? For the consecration of God
is still upon them. The holy (i.e. consecrated) people they still
remain. As the 'heave offering' of the 'first of the dough'[3]
consecrates the whole lump, so the first of the nation offered to
God--Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--have consecrated the whole nation. The
holiness of the root of God's olive tree[4] has passed to the latest
branches. It is quite true that some of these branches of the Jewish
olive tree were broken off, and that the Gentiles were introduced in
their place; like a wild olive grafted upon the root of a cultivated
plant, and so sharing its rich sap. But that--to let the metaphor
continue--gives the wild olive no ground for an insolent contempt of
the branches which naturally belonged to the tree. What advantage it
now has it wholly derives from that which it is {70} affecting to
despise. It is the root that supports it, not it the root. And are
the Gentiles disposed to argue that these rejected Jewish branches were
broken off in order that they might take their place; and that they,
the Gentiles, are thus plainly preferred by God to the Jews? The
answer is plain. Why were they broken off? Because they would not
maintain the correspondence of faith with the purpose of God; and it is
simply by maintaining this attitude that the newly introduced Gentiles
can hope to retain their place. They had better exhibit, not a
groundless pride, but a reasonable fear. Is God likely to be more
sparing towards them than towards His first chosen? God has displayed
before their eyes both His attributes of severity and goodness, and
they must take note of both. At the present moment it is severity
towards Jews, goodness towards Gentiles. Yes, goodness towards
Gentiles; but so long only as they abide faithfully in His goodness, no
longer. When they fail of faithfulness, they too, like their Jewish
predecessors, shall be cut off. And, on the other hand, when those
Jews change their attitude, and their hardness melts and faith returns,
they shall be recovered and reingrafted into the old olive tree. If
God {71} could graft into it branches cut out of an alien and inferior
stock, how much more easily can He reingraft into it what is really
part of its very self?
Here then we have a real disclosure of a divine secret[5], to which the
Gentiles would do well to keep their eyes open, lest (like the Jews
before them) they mistake for wisdom their own self-conceit. The
hardening of the Jews has been used by God as an opportunity for the
gathering in of the full number of the nations of the earth; and that
with the further purpose that, when the nations are gathered in, Israel
in all its completeness should be recovered too. And so shall be
fulfilled Isaiah's prophecy of a redeemer from Zion, who should restore
Israel, and of a new covenant with them, based on a fresh forgiveness
of their sins[6]. Thus if we think of the actual relation of the Jews
to the present preaching of the Gospel, we must think of them as God's
enemies, and as having by their very enmity secured the Gentiles their
opportunity; but if we think of them in relation {72} to God's eternal
choice, they still must appear as sharing the divine love which rests
on the people of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God's gifts and vocation
do not admit of being repented of and recalled. Thus we know what to
expect. As the Gentiles passed out from disobedience under the divine
compassion through the opportunity afforded by the disobedience of the
Jews; so now the divine compassion which rests on the Gentiles is
intended (by stimulating the Jews to recover their lost privileges) to
prove the means of recovering them too out of their disobedience into
the shelter of the divine compassion which is the common heritage of
all. We see, in fact, all men in turn shut up in disobedience to God,
as in a prison house: it is God who has so shut them up; but it is done
in view of the largest and most compassionate purpose which can be even
conceived. It is done that (when men have become wearied of their own
wilfulness, and have experienced their own need) the divine mercy may
welcome and embrace all alike at last.
And if this is the purpose of God disclosed to us, how can we fail to
adore the fathomless resourcefulness of His wisdom in determining how
to act, and His skill in executing what He {73} has determined? How
can we fail to recognize our utter incompetence to explore His
judgement, or track out His ways? Like inspired men of old[7] we must
recognize that the absolute initiative is His, and our only reasonable
attitude the humblest correspondence. Truly in counsel and operation
we have contributed to God nothing of our own: we have no claim with
which to approach Him. He is the unique source of whatever is, and the
sole executor of whatever takes place, and the only end to which all
things tend: and to Him, therefore, alone all praise is due, and shall
be given.
But I speak to you that are Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle
of Gentiles, I glorify my ministry: if by any means I may provoke to
jealousy _them that are_ my flesh, and may save some of them. For if
the casting away of them _is_ the reconciling of the world, what
_shall_ the receiving _of them be_, but life from the dead? And if the
firstfruit is holy, so is the lump: and if the root is holy, so are the
branches. But if some of the branches were broken off, and thou, being
a wild olive, wast grafted in among them, and didst become partaker
with them of the root of the fatness of the olive tree; glory not over
the branches: but if thou gloriest, it is not thou that bearest the
root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say then, Branches were broken off,
that I might be grafted in. Well; by their unbelief they were broken
off, and thou standest by thy faith. Be not highminded, but fear: for
{74} if God spared not the natural branches, neither will he spare
thee. Behold then the goodness and severity of God: toward them that
fell, severity; but toward thee, God's goodness, if thou continue in
his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. And they also, if
they continue not in their unbelief, shall be grafted in: for God is
able to graft them in again. For if thou wast cut out of that which is
by nature a wild olive tree, and wast grafted contrary to nature into a
good olive tree: how much more shall these, which are the natural
_branches_, be grafted into their own olive tree?
For I would not, brethren, have you ignorant of this mystery, lest ye
be wise in your own conceits, that a hardening in part hath befallen
Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in; and so all Israel
shall be saved, even as it is written,
There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer;
He shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:
And this is my covenant unto them,
When I shall take away their sins.
As touching the gospel, they are enemies for your sake: but as touching
the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sake. For the gifts
and the calling of God are without repentance. For as ye in time past
were disobedient to God, but now have obtained mercy by their
disobedience, even so have these also now been disobedient, that by the
mercy shewn to you they also may now obtain mercy. For God hath shut
up all unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!
how unsearchable are his judgements, and his ways past tracing out!
For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his
counsellor? or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed
{75} unto him again? For of him, and through him, and unto him, are
all things. To him be the glory for ever. Amen.