In colonial days, two Puritan preachers met briefly. One asked his friend, “What did you preach about last Sunday?” “The wicked will be sent into hell,” was the grim reply. After a moment, the first preacher said quietly, “Were you crying when you had to say that?”
Paul has been sharing the wonderful good news of Jesus’ death to pay for our sin and His resurrection to bring us a new quality of life; but chapter 8 ends that theme. Chapters 9-11 bring that gospel message to a particular problem in the church at Rome. Paul is crying as he has to explain it.
Both history and the Bible (Acts 18:2) teach us that the Jews, including Jewish Christians, were temporarily expelled from Rome. This would disrupt and confuse leadership in the church at Rome. Imagine your pastor being forced to vacate his position, making the church scramble for leadership; only to have the new leaders dealing with the return of the pastor a few years later. Confusion could deepen into animosity if the returning “old guard” was Jewish and the “young bucks” were Gentiles. How does the gospel apply to deep cultural and ethnic divisions?
Paul, a preeminent Jewish Christian, has bad news for his fellow Jews, and Rom.9:1-5 tells us of his deep sadness as he has to say it. The gospel brings an end to Jewish entitlement that was based on “the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises” (Rom.9:4). Paul has shown us in Rom. 1-3 that performance-based religion is like climbing a ladder that is leaning on the wrong wall. Performance brings pride, then frustration and condemnation. We just can’t climb that ladder to the top (see Rom.7:14-24). When what is needed is God’s grace, not our effort, Jews have no advantage. We all are great sinners blessed by a great Savior.
Romans 9:16 puts it in a nutshell: “It (God’s blessing) does not depend on the person who wants it or the person who runs, but on God who has mercy.” God selects; we don’t earn. And who does He select? Rom.9:7-15 tells us the answer is in God’s heart, not in our potential. He picks those He wants, without a discernable reason.
Speculating on the given examples, it may be that God has a fondness for zeros, not heroes. Jesus’ disciples included blue collar workers, a Roman collaborator, a terrorist, and several uneducated nonentities. Mathematics tells us that if you begin with a 0 and add something to it, the end result is just the addition. When God begins with nothing whatever finally results just brings glory to Him. Therefore, Paul tells us elsewhere, “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise and the weak things of the world to shame the strong…and the things that are not (the 0’s) so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God” (I Cor.1:27-29).
Martin Luther observed that when God created the world, He began with nothing. Likewise, He can’t create a saint until He begins with nothing. Sorry, you privileged people with the great heritage and the natural advantages, you’re too big for God to use. He has a particular love for zeros.