Thomas
Chalmers
Lectures on Romans
LECTURE LXXV.
ROMANS, ix, 25 - 33.
"As he saith also in Osee, I will call them my
people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved. And
it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are
not my people, there shall they be called the children of the living God.
Esaias also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of
Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved: for he will finish
the work, and cut it short in righteousness; because a short work will the Lord
make upon the earth. And as Esaias said before, Except the Lord of sabaoth had
left us a seed, we had been as Sodom, and been made like unto Gomorrha. What
shall we say then? That the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness,
have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith; but
Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness,hath not attained to the
law of righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it
were by the works of the law: for they stumbled at that stumbling-stone; as it
is written, Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling-stone and rock of offence: and
whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed."
VER. 25.
As he saith also in Osee, I will call them my people which were not my
people; and her beloved which was not beloved.' The apostle, with his usual
skill and dexterity of argument, addressed himself as a Jew to the Jews; and so
brings their own scriptures to bear upon them. He first quotes a prophecy from
Hosea regarding the Gentiles; and of whom it is most distinctly stated that
they were to be admitted to the same favour, by which the children of Israel
had been specialised, and from which themselves had heretofore been outcasts.
He thus takes shelter under the old and venerable authorities, which the very
people against whom he contended held in equal reverence with himself, and
proves that it is no new idea - this extension of the family of God, in such a
way that other nations might enter into the same close relationship with Him of
His people, which had hitherto been confined to the descendants of Israel.
Ver. 26. And it shall come to pass, that in the place
where is was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there shall they be called
the children of the living God'.
This verse seems necessary for describing
the precise manner in which the extension was to take place. It had been no
unwonted thing for Gentiles to become proselytes; but still the land they
occupied was regarded as an outcast region of heathenism, and they looked to
Judea as the Holy Land - to Jerusalem as the priestly and the consecrated place
whereunto they looked as the great metropolis of religion, and whither many of
them repaired every year to join in the solemn services of the temple. It was
not in this sense however that the coming enlargement was to be brought about.
In the language of our Saviour to the woman of Samaria, the hour was at hand
when neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem the Father was to be
worshipped. Even the local affinity, between the true religion and the country
or the cities of the people of Israel, was forthwith to be dissolved; and in
every nation he that feared God and worked righteousness was to be accepted of
Him. Still proselytes from every nation under heaven came to Jerusalem at the
time of their great festival; but now, without any such annual migration, a
priesthood and a religious service and an acceptable worship were th be
established in the very seats of idolatry. - in the place where it was said
unto them Ye are not my people, there shall they be called the children of the
living God.
Ver. 27. Esaias also crieth concerning Israel,
Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a
remnant shall be saved.'
The prophecy of Hosea respected the Gentiles; and
is quoted for the purpose of reconciling the children of Israel to their
participation, in what had been hitherto the distinguishing privileges of but
one people. The prophecy of Isaiah respects Israel itself; and is quoted for
the purpose of showing, and from the mouth of their greatest Prophet, that,
although God had uttered promises in behalf of a seed numerous as the sand of
the sea-shore, yet that He regarded not these promises as broken although they
were made good only to a remnant of them. That prophecy referred, in the first
instance, to a fell destruction which came on the children of Israel, and
reduced them to but a remnant - proving it to be no strange thing in God, to
have abandoned to their ruin a vast majority of the children of Abraham, even
notwithstanding the word of promise which He had made to the patriarch; and
therefore that this promise would be as little falsified now as it was then,
although the great bulk of the nation should be reft of the divine favour, and
but a small fraction of them should remain in that favour by embracing
Christianity. Esaias also crieth concerning them, Though the number, the
predicted and promised number to Abraham, of descendants who should spring from
him, was that they should be as the sand of the sea, yet but a remnant shall be
saved.'
Ver. 28. For he will finish the work and cut it
short in righteousness, because a short work will the Lord make upon the
earth.'
This alludes to the work of vengeance, that in His righteous
indignation was executed upon the children of Israel; and that, by a sudden and
overwhelming invasion of their enemies. The same work was speedily to be done
over again by the forces of the Roman empire; and, in like manner as the truth
of Gods promise to Abraham stood unimpeachable and firm because of the remnant
that survived the sweeping destruction of these former days - so the impending
destruction of the latter days would also leave a remnant which should
vindicate the word of God from the charge of having taken none effect.
Ver. 29. And as Esaias said before, Except the Lord of
sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodom, and been made like unto
Gomorrha.'
The Lord of Sabaoth signifies the Lord of Hosts. Had He left no
remnant, had He made a clean and total destruction of Israel, then it would
have shared in the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah - cities of which now no vestige
is to be found, and of - whose people the descendants are altogether lost in
the history of our species. It is not so with the Jews. A goodly number of them
were obedient uxtto the faith, and in them all the blessings promised to
Abraham had their richest accomplishment. Even those who stood obstinately out
in their rejection of the Saviour were not all cut off; and their posterity
maintain a separate and a monumental character to this very day - at once
affording a most impressive evidence of that special part which the Divinity
takes in their affairs; and forming a reserve, as it were, for the fulfilment
of such a restoration upon them as shall pour a lustre on all the prophecies
which have been delivered in their behalf; and make it obvious, that, after the
many dark reverses and humiliations which this singular people have undergone,
that, after all, there is not a promise which has been uttered to their
patriarchs of old which has not obtained a splendid verification in the
subsequent history of the race.
Ver. 30. What shall we say
then? - That the Gentiles which followed not after righteousness have attained
to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith'.
It might well
disarm predestination of all its terrors, when we look to the way in which its
fulfilments are practically brought about. There is the offer of a justifying
righteousness made unto all; and they who accept, as the Gentiles in the
present instance, are the objects of a blessed predestination. The reprobate
are they who decline that offer. However tremendous it may look when viewed by
us from afar, among the sublime and mysterious altitudes of that past eternity
where be the primary links of a vast progression reaching from the decrees of
the unsearchable God to the yet unrevealed destinies of all His creatures -
certain it is, that God when, instead of being contemplated in His place at the
commencement of this chain where He stands at so lofty and incomprehensible a
distance away from us, is contemplated in the place He occupies at the present
and the contiguous links, appears to us under a very different aspect from that
in which our imagination arrays Him, when we cast our regards athwart the
boundless interval of those ages which are past. And whether is it better, we
ask, to take our impressions of the Divinity in the act of looking to Him as
God at a distance - or in the act of listening to Him as a God who is at hand!
Whatever He may have purposed or done then, when creation and all its issues
were fixed by an act of preordination, that reached forward unto all and
embraced all - this is what He is doing now. He is stretching out for your
acceptance the title-deeds to an inheritance of glory. He is offering to put
into your hands a right of entry into the city which hath foundations. He is
making the issues of your eternity, at least, to turn upon this - whether,
accepting of Christ's righteousness as a gift and so coming into possession of
a valid plea for the honours and rewards of heaven, you shall obtain sure
entrance thereinto; or, declining this offer and casting the die upon your own
righteousness, you shall utterly fail of everlasting bliss.
Grant that
you are the objects of a blessed predestination, here is the way in which you
make it good - even by accepting through faith the righteousness of Christ as
your meritorious plea of acceptance with God. Grant that any of you shall turn
out to have been the objects of dire reprobation, this will not be without your
refusal of an offer complied with by others, but made also unto you - made
without reserve and without exception unto all. Let me entreat you then, once
more, to forego the distant, and to take up with the near contemplation. Attend
not to Gods past decrees, but to God's present dealings with, you - not to what
He has written of you in that book of His secret counsels which is up in
heaven, but to what He has written to you in that book of His open declarations
which is now circulating freely on earth, and on a copy of which each may lay
his hand. In the language of the next chapter - try not to pluck the secret of
your destiny from heaven above, or from the recesses of that eternity which is
behind - try not to fetch it into the light of day from the profundity that is
under your feet, or from the yet untravelled depths of that eternity which is
before; but take all your direction, and the guidance of every footstep, from
the word which is nigh unto you. There you read of Gods beseeching voice - of
His protestations, nay of His very oaths, that in your death He has no pleasure
- of this proclamation the sound whereof reaches from the mercy-seat to the
farthest outskirts of His sinful family, even that whosoever calleth upon
the name of his Son shall be saved." And. if, on looking across the medium of
that endless retrospect where clouds and darkness at last terminate the vision,
you could descry nought to cheer you into confidence, learn now to regard the
present attitude, and hearken to the present accents of a God - all whose
thoughts to those who seek after Him, are thoughts of graciousness, and who now
holds Himself forth unto all as a God benign and placable and tender.
It is said of the Gentiles that they followed not after righteousness
and yet obtained it. The righteousness of that law which was written in the
books of Moses, they were generally ignorant of. The righteousness of that law
which was written in their own hearts, they knew but they did not follow; but
there was a righteousness followed after, even till it was finished, by Christ
Jesus as the substitute of sinners. This was declared to them as a
righteousness in which they might appear with acceptance before God - a
declaration believed by many; and according to their belief so was it done unto
them.
Ver. 31. But Israel which followed after the law of
righteousness hath not attained to the law of righteousness.'
The law of
righteousness here is the same with the righteousness of the law. They strove
by their obedience to its precepts after a right to its rewards. It was not
with a view of simply adorning their character by the graces or virtues of the
law, nor was it from the impulse of a love for its righteousness, that they so
laboured. It was with the view of making good that condition, on which they
conceived that the reward was suspended - after which they could challenge that
reward as their due; as a thing that they had as much won as either the wages
for which they had served, or the goods for which they had paid down the
purchase-money. This was that after which they laboured, and this they fell
short of. Their obedience did not come up to the high requisitions of the law,
and so they missed of its reward. On the contrary, their disobedience, both in
transgressing and in coming short - their sins, both of commission and of
omission, brought them under its clear and decisive conclemnation. They may
have fulfilled in some things, but they failed in many things; and though
toiling with all the strenuousness of men whose eternity was at issue, none
could overtake the whole length and breadth of its commandments.
Now
observe the precise effect of this state of matters. However willing God might
be that all these transgressors should be admitted into Heaven - yet this
admittance of them might not be possible, so long as they on the other hand
were not willing to be admitted there, but on the footing of a remuneration for
their obedience. There might be enough of the disposition of kindness on the
part of God to bestow heaven upon them as a present; but there might be a
disposition on the part of man to decline it in this character, and to demand
it as the term of a contract which they challenge the other party to fulfil.
This brings the parties to a stand, and it is no light matter which they stand
for. It is for a high principle of divine jurisprudence, of which we are taught
in the Bible that there is a moral impossibility that it should be violated.
Upon the difference between heaven as a thing of free grace to the sinner, or
heaven as a thing of due and merited return to him for his obedience as it is,
these just turns the difference between a vindicated and a dishonoured law.
This difference, man, obtuse and deadened as he is in all the
sensibilities of his moral nature, might feel to be a slight one; but it was
not ao felt among the pure and ethereal intelligences of the upper sanctuary.
The angels who are there saw the dilemma, and looked on with most intense
earnestness to the evolutions of that great problem by which it might be
extricated. It was a question of pure and lofty jurisprudence; and, however
shadowy it might appear to beings of our grosser faculties, and withal darkened
and made dull in all our perceptions of what is due to Heavens high sacredness
by the blight which sin has cast upon them - it was truly a question for which
all heaven was put in motion; and en which the King who sitteth upon its
throne, put forth the resources and the energies of a wisdom that is infinite.
And His authoritative declaration to this our rebel world is, that - the
sanctions of His law could not be nullified - that all creation must pass away
rather than that any of its promises or any of its threatenings should fail -
that the truth and justice and. righteousness of the Lawgiver, admitted of
nothing short from the rigid execution of all its penalties - that sinners
could not be admitted to His complacency, till their sin had been branded with
the mark of an adequate condemnation; and, more particularly, that He would not
descend to any compromise with those, who, instead of trembling as they ought
lest the fire of. an offended jealousy should go forth upon them to burn
up and to destroy, persisted for their plea ot acceptance in an obedience so
paltry and so polluted, as being honourable enough to the Law and as every way
good enough for the exalted Lawgiver.
Ver. 32. Wherefore?
Because they sought it not by faith but as it were by the works of the law. For
they stumbled at that stumbling-stone.'
This is a most important question,
and a most instructive reply to it - more especially when we view it as given
by the apostle newly emerged from the subject of predestination, on which he
had just been arguing. All fresh as he was, my brethren, from the high topic of
God's decrees, yet, on the moment that he turns himself to consider the reason
why Israel fell short of the promised blessing, he lays it on the familiar
topic of man's doings. The cause of their not attaining to righteousness, and
so of their being excluded from life everlasting, is here resolved, not into
the destinies of the Creator, but into the doings of His creatures - not into
the predestination that is made by God above, but into the wrong and the
wilfully wrong direction that is taken by man below. Instead of speculating on
the incomprehensible mystery of that will in heaven by which some are elected
unto life, he tells us of the way upon earth which all men should take in order
to arrive at it. And the reason simply why the children of Israel missed the
object of a blissful eternity, at least the only reason which either they or we
have to do with, is that they took the wrong way. They sought a righteousness
which might justify them before God by the works of the law; and this proved a
stumbling-stone at which they stumbled and fell, and that very far short indeed
of the goal to which they were pressing forwards. They tried to master the
requisitions of the law, in order thereby to get at its reward; and the law
proved too hard for them. They chose to enter the lists with the judgment of
the law, and that judgment therefore must take effect upon them. They have sped
according to their own choice. They threw their stake on the commandments of
the law; and, not having won the length of perfect obedience thereunto, nothing
remains but that they must abide its condemnation.
Now what they did, the
natural legality of the human heart prompts the men of all ages to do. Our
first, our natural tendency, is to seek after a righteousness - and that by a
conformity to the rule of perfect righteousness. Did we attain the
righteousness, we would thereby acquire a title to the reward but the universal
fact is that none do attain; and hence, with all who persist in seeking life by
the law, there is but one or other term of this alternative. They either live
in the apathy of a false and an ill-founded peace, or they live in the alarm of
a well-founded terror - on good terms with themselves because of their imagined
adequate fulfilment of the demands of the law, or on bad terms with themselves
because of their real distance and deficiency therefrom. And so they sink down
into the state of mere formalists in obedience, or into the restless
unconfirmed and withal most unfruitful as well as unhappy state of a perpetual
fearfulness. In either state they are destitute of an availing righteousness
for their acceptance with God. He will not, on the one hand, merely because men
are satisfied with themselves, recognise the incomplete the tainted offerings
of their human imperfection - as if they made out a full and satisfying homage
to that law, all whose demands are on the side of a personal, spiritual and
universal holiness. Neither, on the other hand, will He sustain the dread and
the distress and the painful anxieties of those who are not satisfied with
themselves as a sufficient homage done to His law. What He wants with them
further is, that they should do, homage to His gospel It is well that they have
such a true discernment of God's law, as clearly to perceive, that no effort of
theirs can reach upward to its sublime and empyreal elevation. But is also
essential, that they should have such a true discernment of His grace, as to
perceive, that, by its condescensions and by its offers, it reaches downward
even to a worthlessness as humbling and as polluted as theirs. It is right that
they should defer to the terror of those penalties which are denounced by the
one; but it is equally right that they should defer to the truth of those
promises which are held forth by the other. They ought to tremble, when
bethinking them of their violations of the law; but they ought to feel
re-assured, and to cease from trembling, when bethinking themselves of the
sufficiency of the gospel. If it be an offence to have done disobedience to the
precepts of His authority, it is also an offence to have done discredit to the
overtures of His good-will. And so we read of the fearful and the unbelieving,
as well as of the presumptuously secure, that both alike have a place assigned
to them in the abodes of condemnation.
Ver. 33. As it is
written, Behold I lay in Zion a stumbling-stone and a rock of offence, and
whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.'
Our only method of escape
from this is by fleeing unto Christ, and casting a confidence upon Him which
shall never be put to shame. He is represented as being to some a
stumbling-stone and rock of offence. It were entering upon a subject far too
wide for us at present, did we enlarge upon all the varieties of that
repugnance which is felt by men towards Christ - the absolute nausea of some at
the very utterance of His name - the utter distaste for all conversation
regarding Him - the antipathy, nay even hatred, which rises in the bosoms of
many against His peculiarly marked and devoted followers; and, along with the
toleration which very generally obtains for a meagre and moderate and mitigated
Christianity, the secret revolt and the open declaration against those who
carry the doctrines and the demands of Christianity to what is apprehended to
be a great deal to far. In a certain decent and regulated proportion, it is
borne with; but very apt to be impatiently or indignantly flung at, when it
offers to engross the whole heart, or to make too large or ostensible an inroad
on the state and history of human affairs. But for a field of so much extent
and latitude,we verily at present have no time; and must be content now with
but one observation on a certain apparent crossness or contrariety - of
sentiment in the doctrines of Christ and His Apostles - which has an effect
rather to gravel the understanding, than to alienate the affections of men. We
advert to the place which the law and the works of the law have in the
theological system of the New Testament. - where at one time they are set aside
as utterly insigthficant; and at another it seems to be represented as the very
end, as the ultimate landing-place of Christianity, to make its disciples
zealous and perfect and thoroughly furnished unto all good works. There is the
semblance of a most obvious, nay very glaring inconsistency here, which does
embarrass even honest enquirers; and put them at a loss for the right
adjustment of this whole question. It is a question which stumbles them, which
perplexes them, and has all the effect of a painful and puzzling ambiguity upon
their minds. It is not too much to say that the disgrace and the disparagement
which appear to be cast by the men, called evangelical, on the worth and the
importance and the noble character of virtue, constitute at least one of the
offences, one ground of strong and sensitive aversion, against the truth as it
is in Jesus. I cannot pretend at present to a full deliverance upon this
subject; and will therefore only suggest a distinction which can be stated in
one sentence; and should, as far as that goes, be all the more memorable; and
which, if duly pondered upon, will achieve for you I think the extrication of
this whole difficulty. The distinction is between the legal right to heaven
which obedience may be supposed to confer, and the moral rightness of obedience
in itself. When the New Testament affirms the nullity of good works, it is
their nullity from their not being perfect to the object of establishing our
legal right to the rewards of eternity. When the New Testament affirms the
value of good works, it is their value, even though not yet perfect, in regard
to their moral rightness - which moral rightness brightens more and more unto
perfection, till at length it passes into the sacredness of heaven, and.
becomes meet for the exercises and the joys of eternity. A Christian utterly
renounces all good works, as having any value in them to confer a legal right
to heaven. And yet a Christian devotes himself assiduously to the performance
of good works, as having in them that virtue of moral rightness which is in
itself the very essence of heaven. For his legal right to heaven, his whole
reliance is on the obedience of Christ, as that which hath alone won and
purchased it. For his personal meetness for heaven, he plies all the strength
that is in him, whether by nature or by grace, in order to perfect his own
obedience.
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