When you have something important to share that you think is life-changing, you hope people will respond positively. It doesn’t matter if you’re the president, governor, mayor, or, in my case, a preacher. It’s frustrating when people don’t respond the way you hope. So, I can feel Paul’s frustration, which he shares with his readers in the opening verses of Romans 9.
Paul closed the previous chapter with a heartfelt declaration, telling the Roman church that he was “convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39). Now, as we turn the page to chapter 9, we find Paul talking about the grief he felt for his fellow Jews who rejected his message about Jesus.
In chapters nine through eleven, Paul addresses the failure of the Jewish people to receive his message that Jesus was their Messiah, even though in his mind, his message was in line with the teachings of his Jewish faith. However, Jesus was a stumbling block for most Jews, which makes chapters nine through eleven quite challenging. This is especially true since Christians have used what Paul wrote to justify persecuting Jews. So, although Paul directed his mission at reaching Gentiles with the message of Jesus, because he believed he was fulfilling God’s covenant promise that Abraham’s descendants would be a blessing to the nations, he also hoped to reach members of his own community.
Paul wrote this letter to Christians living in Rome, a city Paul had never visited, hoping to introduce himself and his message before his hoped-for visit. Because he wrote to a community composed of both Jewish and Gentile Christians, he wanted to address concerns about his own views on the relationship between Jewish and Gentile Christians. That meant he also felt the need to speak about Jewish resistance to a message he believed was rooted in Judaism.
Although Paul believed that his message about Jesus being the Messiah was rooted in Judaism, it was, as they say, a matter of interpretation. Not everyone agreed with his interpretation. In fact, it was definitely a minority view within the Jewish community. This was especially true since Paul had changed the rules for joining the community. Since Gentiles resisted circumcision, Paul eliminated that regulation, at least for Gentile converts. Of course, this didn’t make everyone happy. I think you can understand how this works. Churches have rules and regulations, and then a new pastor comes along who wants to change things. Although members of the search committee knew that the new pastor was going to change things, not everyone was happy. Change is difficult!
Now, Paul would have given anything to reach his people, including being accursed because his people had received from God the promises of the covenant, including the Law. After all, they had the right form of worship and had received the message of the prophets, which was found in their scriptures. Finally, they were the source of the very Messiah they had rejected. Despite his grief, Paul was still confident that God’s love would prevail in the end.
Although Paul grieved because he wasn’t successful in his outreach to the Jewish people, he was also concerned about the future of his own movement. This Christian movement was very new, and he knew that lots of religious movements come and go. He hoped that this wouldn’t be true of his movement, especially since he believed that the end of the age would come sooner rather than later. Of course, Paul was wrong about the timing of the end of the age since we’re still here. But I do believe that Paul had put his trust in God’s faithfulness to the covenant promises. So, even if his own people might wander away from their adherence to the covenant, he believed “that the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable” (Rom. 11:29). If that was true, then Paul trusted that God’s grace would cover everyone.
But what about us? Do you ever worry about the future of the church, whether it’s this congregation, the denomination, or Christianity in general? Do you ever feel like no one is listening to our message? Preachers talk a lot among themselves about the “state of the churches,” including the steep decline in membership of our denominations. After all, the trend lines for most mainline denominations, including the Presbyterians and the Disciples, don’t look good. So what should we do? Should we stay the course or innovate? Should we change the music or stay with those beloved hymns? Should we fix up the building or be content with what we have? Could our theology be off-putting to some? Besides, it’s hard to compete for young families with football, youth leagues, movies, or the beach! When I was serving the church in Santa Barbara, it seemed that if the sun was out, the people went to the beach instead of church. If it was raining, they stayed home so they wouldn’t get wet. So, I prayed for fog on Sunday mornings!
Although it seems at times that Paul believed God had rejected the Jewish people because they didn’t respond as he hoped, he also expressed his faith that God is faithful to the covenant. This is important because Christians throughout the course of history have embraced the idea that Christianity has replaced Judaism as God’s chosen religion. Therefore, God’s covenant with Israel was transferred to the church. This is called supersessionism, which has contributed to the persecution of the Jewish people. However, even though Paul’s letter can be a bit confusing, I believe that in the end he understood that while God had provided a means for Gentiles to share in the covenant promises, God remained faithful to the original covenant made with Abraham. Therefore, both Jews and Christians can fulfill God’s promise that through Abraham’s descendants, the nations would be blessed (Gen. 12:1-4). The difference between Jews and Gentile Christians is that we non-Jewish Christians have been added to the family of God by adoption in Christ, so that we might be joint heirs with Jesus of God’s promises.
So, although we live in a messy world filled with division and enmity, whether it’s political, cultural, or religious, Jesus has given us a message of hope and healing to be shared with a broken world. I believe Paul’s grief was due to his desire to see Jew and Gentile live together in peace. We see this expressed in the letter to the Ephesians, where Paul writes about Jesus tearing down the dividing wall of hostility, so that God might create a new humanity that isn’t marked by division. Jesus did this by dying on the cross (Eph. 2:14-16).
Despite the challenges we face in life, and there are many, especially right now, there is hope. Although we can get impatient when things aren’t going well, in verse six, immediately following our reading, Paul writes something I think is worth hanging on to: “It is not as though the word of God had failed.” When things look dark and hopeless, Paul wants us to stand on the promises of God. Among those promises is the one God made to Abraham, in which God promised that the nations would be blessed through Abraham’s descendants, even though at the time Abraham and Sarah didn’t have any children and didn’t expect to have any. Despite the odds, along came Isaac in fulfillment of God’s promise, which is still in force.
As we ponder Paul’s message to this church in first-century Rome, a world that is strangely similar to our own, it’s worth remembering that people are hungry for answers to their spiritual questions, even if they don’t always know how to express those questions. Unfortunately, due to a variety of reasons, many of these seekers for spiritual wisdom aren’t sure the churches have answers to their questions. Nevertheless, even as Paul confessed that his own people had been given the resources needed to bless the nations, the same is true for us. We have spiritual resources that we can share with a broken and hurting world. The Holy Spirit is, I believe, at work in our midst, providing the necessary gifts so that together we can be a blessing. As Paul told the church in Corinth, which was a rather messed up community, “to each is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7). Not everyone has the same gifts, but we’ve all been gifted in some way so we can fulfill God’s call to service in the world, so that the world might experience God’s healing presence.
While Paul wanted his Jewish kin to embrace his message, he also believed that God had adopted the Gentile Christians so that in Christ they could share in partnership with the children of Abraham and Sarah in the mission of blessing the nations with the love of God. May we, having received this calling by adoption, stand on the promises of God and join with the Spirit of God in not only opening the doors of welcome to all who would come in and share this life with us but, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, may we be ambassadors of reconciliation to a broken world (2 Cor. 5:20).
Preached by:
Dr. Robert D. Cornwall
Pulpit Supply
First Presbyterian Church (PCUSA)
Troy, Michigan
Pentecost 10A
August 2, 2026
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