who are Israelites; whose [is] the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the law-giving, and the service, and the promises;
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
whose [are] the fathers; and of whom, as according to flesh, [is] the Christ, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.
Paul is listing the gifts God gave Israel, and the list ends with the greatest of them: the Messiah came from their line. The verse then lifts that Messiah above the nation He came from and calls Him God over all.
Some had doubted Paul's love for his nation. His list of their privileges answers them.
People who hate others take every chance to belittle them. They deny that the ones they hate have any favours from God that are specially their own. Love makes the most of what belongs to the one it loves. Judged by that test, the love of the apostle is beyond doubt. He sets out the marks of God's goodness to Israel as no one had ever done before.
The phrase points to a real birth into a real family line.
The eternal God had become incarnate, taking flesh from that nation. All this is fully allowed. He who is over all, God blessed for ever — as to the flesh, the body, He was born of Mary, of the royal line of that nation.
The patriarchs come just before the Messiah in Paul's list. Israel's claim on Him is real, but it has a limit.
"The fathers" are the well-known figures of Old Testament history. Christ too, as concerning the flesh, belongs to Israel; that is, He came from them. Israel could have, in this sense, no exclusive title to Him, and in fact not even a special title. He is, of course, much more than Man — One over all, "God blessed for ever." … The words as we have them in our version perfectly express the original. They state in the strongest way that Christ is God in the highest sense, the God who is over all.
Writing to someone who denied that Scripture ever calls Christ God, one commentator singled out this verse above others he could have used.
How you can say the Scriptures do not say He is God, I do not understand: they do so over and over again, directly and indirectly, in equivalent terms. … This last one, however (Rom. 9:5), is as plain a testimony as could well be imagined, and the language is such that it is impossible to apply it to anyone but Christ.
The Greek has no punctuation, so it has been proposed that the last clause is a separate burst of praise to God rather than a description of Christ. One writer weighed that proposal against the oldest evidence.
It is easy to say that the proposed rendering ("he who is over all, God be blessed for ever. Amen.") is at least as good as the one in the Authorised Version. But I am convinced that the claim is rash and groundless. … The most ancient versions of East and West — the Syriac, the Itala, the Vulgate, and others — leave no doubt as to how the words were then understood and applied. So do the early Greek and Latin writers.
He also argued that the sentence itself settles the matter. Its two halves answer one another.
Their highest mercy naturally forms the climax, though sadly they despised it. That mercy is the Messiah. He came from their fathers according to the flesh, but in reality He is Emmanuel, God over all, blessed for ever. His being God over all is the opposite pole to His springing from the fathers according to the flesh.
The crowning item on Paul's list was the one his nation refused.
In their blind unbelief they stumbled at the stumbling-stone. That stone was the infinite grace of His humiliation, and His obedience to death, the death of the cross. It shut out from the eyes of their heart the height of His glory, which reached far beyond the glory of the Messiah.
Paul ends the sentence not with an argument but with a seal.
We can understand something of what Paul felt when he added the Amen here. Nothing could be added to this. No nation could receive a greater privilege or honour than to be linked, according to the flesh, with Him who is God over all, blessed for ever.
- Love lists. Some doubted Paul's love for his nation. He answers by naming their privileges more fully than anyone before him. Love makes the most of what belongs to the one it loves.
- Lineage. "According to the flesh" means a real birth in a real family. The eternal God took flesh, born of Mary, of the royal line of that nation.
- Limit. The same phrase draws the boundary. Israel's claim reaches only as far as His flesh. He is much more than Man, and no nation holds an exclusive title to Him.
- Lordship. "God over all, blessed forever" stands as the opposite pole to His descent from the fathers. The oldest versions and the earliest writers applied the words to Christ, and the balance of the sentence points the same way.
- Last word. The nation stumbled over the very glory that crowned their list. Paul could add nothing further, so he sealed the list with worship.
Not however as though the word of God had failed; for not all [are] Israel which [are] of Israel;
Paul has just poured out his grief over his own nation, listing every privilege God gave them — and yet they stand outside the blessing. If the people God chose have refused their Messiah, has His promise collapsed?
The verse answers a charge Paul's teaching had provoked:
Paul had been teaching that all, whether Jew or Gentile, come into blessing on the ground of sovereign grace. At once the Jew raises the objection that this teaching denies the promises which come to them on the ground of natural descent. The apostle answers that not all who are of Israel by natural descent are the true Israel of God — the Israel God made the promises to. He then turns to Scripture to prove his point.
Push the principle of bloodline, and it proves far more than any Jew wanted:
Their objection assumed that God had to bless the whole race descended from Abraham. But that would open the promises to the Ishmaelites as well. Not so, cries the Jew: the promise runs only through Isaac. Then, the apostle could reply, natural descent is an unsound principle... So to shut out the Ishmaelites, they must themselves fall back on the promise tied to the line of Isaac. Promise decides, then, not flesh... Descent by birth alone secures no inward blessing. "The Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit" is more than one of Jacob's descendants: not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.
The examples Paul reaches for are Isaac over Ishmael and Jacob over Esau — God's own past choices. That makes the Jewish complaint self-defeating:
Of all people, Israel could least afford to quarrel with God's sovereignty. Again and again He had used it in their favour... God made a sovereign choice in regard to the sons of both Abraham and Isaac. He chose Isaac and Jacob, and set aside Ishmael and Esau. Anyone objecting to God making a choice would have to wipe out every distinction between themselves and the Ishmaelites and Edomites. They would not consider that for a moment. So God was only continuing what He had already done. Not all who were of Israel by natural descent were the true Israel of God.
The name Israel was first given to one man, and how he received it explains the distinction:
God's reckoning is a spiritual one. Natural birth cannot presume to claim blessings that God gives for spiritual reasons. Jacob was named Israel only when his flesh was touched and left shriveled. How then can natural Israel claim to be "Israelites indeed"? Their flesh is far from shriveled — it is the very thing they boast in. That is Jacob, not Israel.
The true Israel is smaller than the visible nation. So Paul could hold God's thoughts for them even when the nation looked lost:
Far from cancelling Israel's future, this verse is what secures it:
This explains that verse, "all Israel will be saved." Remembering that "not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel," we see here the unreal cut off. But God lets none of the true seed, the true children, perish; they are all saved. They are truly Israelites. The national adoption as sons, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service, and the promises are all theirs.
- Objection — Does grace for all cancel Israel's promises? Paul answers that the promises never rested on natural descent.
- Principle — Promise, not flesh, decides. Blood alone secures no inward blessing, and a true Israelite is more than one of Jacob's descendants.
- Proof — God chose Isaac over Ishmael and Jacob over Esau. To protest His choosing, Israel would have to admit the Ishmaelites and Edomites as equals.
- Remnant — As in Elijah's day, God keeps a reserved number. So His word stands even when the nation as a whole refuses to believe.
- Promise kept — God's calling marks out the true seed, not birth. So nothing promised to Israel is lost: the unreal are cut off, and God saves every true child.