Grafted-in, Pt 5: Israel paved the way
Romans 9:30-10:5, 9-13, 19-21 30What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; 31but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. 32Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. 33As it is written: “See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.” 1Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. 2For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. 3Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. 4Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes…. 9If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. 11As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.” 12For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, 13for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved…. 19Again I ask: Did Israel not understand? First, Moses says, “I will make you envious by those who are not a nation; I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding.” 20And Isaiah boldly says, “I was found by those who did not seek me; I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me.” 21But concerning Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.”
Pursuing salvation by works
It is clear that God’s original plan was to have intimate personal relationship with his people—that is why he was walking in the Garden looking for Adam. Just because Adam and Eve messed things up through their sin does not mean that God had to abandon his plan, but it does mean God had to provide a way to return his people from sin to righteousness. Eventually the Messiah, Jesus, would come to show that only God’s grace and faithfulness could provide a way to salvation for sinful humans, but first humans had to learn that they could not affect this result themselves. They had to learn that they could not earn their own salvation by doing good deeds.
This is where Israel got stuck. Over the centuries, God gave commandments to his people, the 10 and 603 others, that were intended to teach holiness and righteousness. But the people got the idea that all they had to do was obey them all and the laws themselves would bring them salvation. This is faulty thinking on the surface—doing stuff doesn’t earn salvation—but also it is impossible to keep all 613 commandments all the time. People will always fail.
Pursuing salvation by faith
The Gentiles however, that is, everybody else except the Jews, did not have the Torah and Writings, called the Law. In fact, the Jews forbad them from the Law unless they fully converted. So, the Gentiles came to faith simply by believing what they heard from Jesus because there was no other source of information. We see an apparent disconnect here—the Jews pursuing a righteousness based on the Law and the Gentiles a righteousness based on faith.
A stone which causes stumbling
The disconnect lies at the feet of the Jews because they were so focused on the works seemingly required by the Law that they missed the opportunity to have faith in the author of the Law. I remember a time when at about ten, I was riding my bike up a hill, huffing and puffing, and I rode right into the back of a parked car. I was so intent on the task at hand that I neglected the larger picture.
This is the situation described by the phrase ‘stumbling stone’. The Jews failed to understand that Jesus was the Law during their day, and he remains the embodiment of the Law today.
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning…14The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-2, 14)
Like that parked car, or a rock in the middle of a path, the Jews, the receivers of the Law, tripped over something obvious. So threatened were they of deviation from the old ways, that they failed to embrace new understanding.
The culmination of the law
The coming of Jesus was the first pivot point in salvation history (the second is at Jesus’ Second Coming). God expanded beyond his teaching of righteousness and holiness through commandments to the offer of intimate relationship with the Author of those commandments. God offered a new avenue to holiness, but the Jews failed to notice.
We have this problem even in the present day. In vs 4 above, NIV uses the phrase ‘culmination of the law’. This is a good translation of a Greek word whose mistranslation has been a bane for recent Church history. That word is the Greek word telos which has a meaning of either ‘end’ or ‘goal’. Early Bible translations used ‘end’, mostly I think out of antisemitism, and out of that came a whole movement that held that the Old Testament had no value for a modern believer.
The goal of the Law—this is the point the Jews missed, the stumbling stone—is to prepare the people of God for the coming of Messiah.
17“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. (Matthew 5:17-18).
Before I came to know Jesus, I used to distain the Old Testament. “Why,” I thought, “would I follow such a violent God (Old Testament), when I have such a loving one (New Testament)?” This was faulty thinking in the extreme. Both the written word and the Living Word have value and efficacy. The written word encompasses all of the teachings of the Tanakh, which the modern church calls the Old Testament. The Living Word is Jesus Christ in the flesh. When John talks about the Word becoming flesh, he is talking about the manifestation of the written word in human form. Neither is fully expressed without the other.
The Lord of all
Although God is the God of all people, prior to the coming of Jesus there were two parts of humanity—the Jew and the Gentile. There was a wall of separation between them. Even the Temple had a wall of separation between the Court of the Gentiles and the Holy Place and death was in store for any Gentile who attempted to enter the Holy Place. But now, we Gentiles are included in the family of God. We are grafted in. We are added to the vine whose fruit is those who worship the Lord of lords and whose nourishment is the Living Word of God.
Through the messiah Jesus, God has torn down all separation between people groups. Everyone has the opportunity to accept Jesus as their personal messiah and has eternal life with God available to him. That person needs only to choose.
A disobedient and obstinate people
But the Jews were a disobedient and obstinate people. So also are the people of the West, especially America. America is now seen as a post-Christian culture, and most of the population denies the applicability of Godly precepts to their lives. They consider themselves moral and loving but deny that God has any part of it.
1But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. (1Timothy 3:1-5)
What about me?
Grafting in has allowed each of us—we disobedient and obstinate people—to join into God’s family of believers. We are his children even when disobedient, but now can have intimate loving relationship with him. We can talk to him, bring our struggles to him, and listen to his counsel. We can change our path when he points out how we wander this way or that, and we can avoid the perils of fellowship with the world.
Before I came to Christ, I was all the things of the Timothy verse. Believer, do you recognize yourself on this spectrum of disobedience? If so repent and ask God to forgive you. Your relationship with him is more important than anything else. Please don’t risk losing it because of those things. God loves you for who you are, accepts you, but wants you to change your ways and come closer to him.