My FRiend, you are fixated on the English breaks in chapters and verses. Read your posts, “Here is what chap. 3 is about, what is 9 about?” as if they are repair manuals on a refrigerator and a stove. Paul is arguing the need and means of our rescue by grace throughout the book, principally to stop the rancor between the Jewish believers and the non-Jewish believers. As in other places, the Jewish believers had a tough time not feeling superior to the Gentile believers and Paul simply leveled the ground. Now, go back and read the entire book, and notice God’s grace operates first from Him to us, in a non-transaction method everywhere...and chap. 9.
We are broken beyond repair and no one, repeat no one seeks God (chap. 3) If He did not reach to you, you would not believe (chap. 4). There is the argument of Paul and it requires God to have done the planning, the election, and the application (chap. 8). Then you woke up and found you had been granted mercy (chap. 9) and some have been hardened and left out (chap. 9).
If the Gospel is the semi-pelagian world you describe, then the Reformation was no better than the self-righteous Catholicism it repudiated. You note yourself that Paul is addressing all believers who make up the real Israel “For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel,...but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.” This is not about “corporate” anything since he could not go on and single out Pharaoh as getting the “hardening” card and another man as getting mercy. Clearly, Paul is speaking individually and you, my FRiend, have morphed this into your denominational party line.
Chapter 9 is simply an easy way of pointing out that section. It is the Calvinists who quote one verse, and claim it is the entire argument.
“Then you woke up and found you had been granted mercy (chap. 9) and some have been hardened and left out (chap. 9).”
No, that is not what is in Chapter 9. The Jewish complaint is that God had been unfaithful. He promised the Jews they were the Chosen People, and now Paul was saying it was FAITH that matters.
Paul answers that objection in Chapter 9. I’ll use the Good News Translation, so Calvinists can follow multiple sentences easier:
First, Paul assures them he is still a Jew and that he loves his fellow Jews:
” 1 I am speaking the truth; I belong to Christ and I do not lie. My conscience, ruled by the Holy Spirit, also assures me that I am not lying2 when I say how great is my sorrow, how endless the pain in my heart3 for my people, my own flesh and blood! For their sake I could wish that I myself were under God’s curse and separated from Christ.4 They are God’s people; he made them his children and revealed his glory to them; he made his covenants with them and gave them the Law; they have the true worship; they have received God’s promises;5 they are descended from the famous Hebrew ancestors; and Christ, as a human being, belongs to their race. May God, who rules over all, be praised forever! Amen.”
Next, Paul restates his argument used in Chapter 4:
“6 I am not saying that the promise of God has failed; for not all the people of Israel are the people of God.7 Nor are all of Abraham’s descendants the children of God. God said to Abraham,
It is through Isaac that you will have the descendants I promised you.8 This means that the children born in the usual way are not the children of God; instead, the children born as a result of God’s promise are regarded as the true descendants.9 For God’s promise was made in these words:
At the right time I will come back, and Sarah will have a son.”
He is arguing that Christians - Jewish or Gentile - are the heirs of God’s promise to Abraham. This repeats in another form what he said earlier:
” Abraham believed God, and because of his faith God accepted him as righteous.10 When did this take place? Was it before or after Abraham was circumcised? It was before, not after.11 He was circumcised later, and his circumcision was a sign to show that because of his faith God had accepted him as righteous before he had been circumcised. And so Abraham is the spiritual father of all who believe in God and are accepted as righteous by him, even though they are not circumcised.12 He is also the father of those who are circumcised, that is, of those who, in addition to being circumcised, also live the same life of faith that our father Abraham lived before he was circumcised.”
Paul now shows God can give the promise as he wishes:
“10 And this is not all. For Rebecca’s two sons had the same father, our ancestor Isaac.11-12But in order that the choice of one son might be completely the result of God’s own purpose, God said to her,
The older will serve the younger. He said this before they were born, before they had done anything either good or bad; so God’s choice was based on his call, and not on anything they had done.13 As the scripture says,
I loved Jacob, but I hated Esau.”
That he is not using Jacob & Esau as individuals is shown by quoting Malachi, 1500 years after the individual. The Jews of Paul’s day understood they were benefiting from God counting Jacob’s line in the promise, and not counting Esau’s line. They had not complained when they thought that, but now they felt rejected because Paul was emphasizing faith rather than bloodlines.
So Paul goes on:
” 14 Shall we say, then, that God is unjust? Not at all.15 For he said to Moses,
I will have mercy on anyone I wish; I will take pity on anyone I wish.16 So then, everything depends, not on what we humans want or do, but only on God’s mercy.17 For the scripture says to the king of Egypt,
I made you king in order to use you to show my power and to spread my fame over the whole world.18 So then, God has mercy on anyone he wishes, and he makes stubborn anyone he wishes.”
Calvinists like that last verse, but it needs to be kept in context. Paul is not suggesting that all Jews are hardened, for he is himself a Jew. Individuals will come to Christ from anywhere, but the Jews (collectively) have fallen.
This next section again is popular with Calvinists, but it is not about individual salvation, but the paths of salvation:
“19 But one of you will say to me,
If this is so, how can God find fault with anyone? Who can resist God’s will?20 But who are you, my friend, to talk back to God? A clay pot does not ask the man who made it,
Why did you make me like this?21 After all, the man who makes the pots has the right to use the clay as he wishes, and to make two pots from the same lump of clay, one for special occasions and the other for ordinary use.
22 And the same is true of what God has done. He wanted to show his anger and to make his power known. But he was very patient in enduring those who were the objects of his anger, who were doomed to destruction.23 And he also wanted to reveal his abundant glory, which was poured out on us who are the objects of his mercy, those of us whom he has prepared to receive his glory.24 For we are the people he called, not only from among the Jews but also from among the Gentiles.”
If God chooses to call people of faith his own, who can object? The people who claimed it of blood? But that claim is what is blinding them, and provoking God’s wrath! They are busy claiming blood, and saying God has an obligation to them, and missing the point.
And yes, God WILL harden the hearts of those who have seen the truth, and refuse it. As Paul wrote in chapter 1:
“So those people have no excuse at all!21 They know God, but they do not give him the honor that belongs to him, nor do they thank him. Instead, their thoughts have become complete nonsense, and their empty minds are filled with darkness.22 They say they are wise, but they are fools;23 instead of worshiping the immortal God, they worship images made to look like mortals or birds or animals or reptiles.
24 And so God has given those people over to do the filthy things...They exchange the truth about God for a lie...Because they do this, God has given them over to shameful passions...Because those people refuse to keep in mind the true knowledge about God, he has given them over to corrupted minds”
This is what is happening to the Jews. Claiming their bloodlines obligates God, they try to force God to keep a bargain without understanding what bargain God made with Abraham.
So now Paul goes on to show the Jews that God had warned them by the Prophets:
“25 This is what he says in the book of Hosea:
The people who were not mine
I will call
My People.
The nation that I did not love
I will call
My Beloved.
26 And in the very place where they were told,
You are not my people,
there they will be called the children of the living God.
27 And Isaiah exclaims about Israel:
Even if the people of Israel are as many as the grains of sand by the sea, yet only a few of them will be saved;28 for the Lord will quickly settle his full account with the world.
29 It is as Isaiah had said before,
If the Lord Almighty had not left us some descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.”
God had warned them to repent, because only a remnant of the Jews would be saved.
Paul then places the fact before them:
“30 So we say that the Gentiles, who were not trying to put themselves right with God, were put right with him through faith;31 while God’s people, who were seeking a law that would put them right with God, did not find it.32 And why not? Because they did not depend on faith but on what they did. And so they stumbled over the
stumbling stone33 that the scripture speaks of:
Look, I place in Zion a stone
that will make people stumble,
a rock that will make them fall.
But whoever believes in him will not be disappointed.”
Why have the Jews fallen? Why did they not recognize the Christ? Because they are relying on a ‘promise’ to reward those born of Abraham’s blood, and are unwilling to accept the requirement for faith.
The start of the next chapter is, IMHO, the summary of this chapter:
“1 My friends, how I wish with all my heart that my own people might be saved! How I pray to God for them!2 I can assure you that they are deeply devoted to God; but their devotion is not based on true knowledge.3 They have not known the way in which God puts people right with himself, and instead, they have tried to set up their own way; and so they did not submit themselves to God’s way of putting people right.”
As long as Jews reject the need for faith, they will be rejected by God. They cannot force God to save them “by grace thru bloodlines”, anymore than someone can be saved “by grace thru election”. It is “by grace thru faith”, as Paul has said repeatedly in this letter, and in others.
Paul is not saying God has a list of names somewhere, and that he irresistibly saves those on the list, and utterly damns those who are not. He is contrasting two ways of approaching God: Bloodlines and faith. And if someone demands that God accept them because of their bloodlines, saying God made a promise, then they are screwed. They have misunderstood the promise of God and failed to pay attention to what God really WAS promising. They need, like all others, to repent and believe.