Jewish Problem Solution

Romans – A Treatise
Chapter Ten
SOLUTION OF THE JEWISH PROBLEM

Scripture Reading: 9:33 – 10:4

AS IT IS WRITTEN, BEHOLD I LAY IN SION A STUMBLINGSTONE AND ROCK OF OFFENCE: AND WHOSOEVER BELIEVETH ON HIM SHALL NOT BE ASHAMED. BRETHREN, MY HEART’S DESIRE AND PRAYER TO GOD FOR ISRAEL IS, THAT THEY MIGHT BE SAVED. FOR I BEAR THEM RECORD THAT THEY HAVE A ZEAL FOR GOD, BUT NOT ACCORDING TO KNOWLEDGE. FOR THEY BEING IGNORANT OF GOD’S RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND GOING ABOUT TO ESTABLISH THEIR OWN RIGHTEOUSNESS, HAVE NOT SUBMITTED THEMSELVES UNTO THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD. FOR CHRIST IS THE END OF THE LAW FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS TO EVERY ONE THAT BELIEVETH.

God has declared His righteousness in the forgiveness of sins; has issued a pardon on a righteous basis, so that God “might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.” In view of this decree issued by the court, Paul is now setting forth on a brilliant discussion regarding the status of the Jewish nation under the government of God. In chapter 9, by reference to the Hebrew Bible prophets and the history of Israel down through the centuries, he has shown that although God had called a multitude of people under the banner of Israel, yet only a small remnant had come into the good of salvation. In a probationary way, by introducing the Lord Jesus Christ, the true Messiah, God had cut short His patient dealings with Israel, bringing the entire situation to a climax. The issue now before the court is this: the Jews according to flesh may claim kinship with the One who was born in Bethlehem, their Messiah, but because of unbelief this kinship is of no avail to them. Had they as a nation accepted their Messiah when He was born in Bethlehem-Ephratah, as the Hebrew Bible prophets had foretold, then they would have come into their princely place according to the promise of God.

But nationally they have rejected Him and the One who could have brought about their national salvation has become a stumblingstone and a rock of offence.¹ However, in the last verse of chapter 9, Paul insists that this same Jesus, who had been rejected by the Jewish Nation, has been laid as a corner stone in Zion by Jehovah Himself and that whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed.² Here is the crux of the entire situation. The Jews nationally had their part in the rejection of the Lord Jesus, their Messiah, even as the Gentiles had their part in rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ. The guilt of Calvary cannot be laid entirely at the door of the Jewish nation, because we must remember His crucifixion was authorized by the Roman power. However, neither can the guilt of Calvary be removed entirely from the Jewish nation. Paul is indicating that the One who came with all claims to the throne of David was unequivocally set aside. “He came unto His own and His own received Him not.” Unto Israel the child was born, unto Israel the Son was given, but instead of becoming their rock and fortress, a hiding place for them from the storm of God’s judgment against their sins, He became to them a stumblingstone and a rock of offence.

The heart of every Christian should be deeply touched when seeing the Jewish people, the national representatives of Israel, stumbling forward in the confusion of a night of persecution, trial, and difficulty unparalleled in the history of any other nation under heaven. They are truly a nation without a king. However, to the Jewish people He still remains a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence. In the day when He is accepted, He will become their fortress and strong tower. The grand truth of the present hour is this: he that believeth on Him shall not be ashamed. This is the day of Christ’s rejection, not only by the Jews nationally, but by the world at large. They who declare allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ must take their place of rejection before a world that has cast Him out and crucified Him. God’s guarantee to us, whether Jew or Gentile, is that if we believe on Him and obey His Gospel, we shall not be ashamed. It is a guarantee covering every part of our lives. It applies to the national life of any nation. If a nation recognizes the Lord Jesus it shall stand in princely grace before the peoples of the earth. If an individual recognizes the Lord Jesus, God shall see to it that he is honored, for our Lord promised: “He that honoreth Me, him shall My Father honor.”

Yet, having discussed this important national truth, Paul, still the brilliant attorney for the defense, seems to burst forth with uncontrolled expression of affection for the Jews, his fleshly kinsmen, as he says, “Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.”³ He looks abroad on the national calamity that had befallen them. Even in that day they were in the thralldom of the tyrannous power of Rome. Instead of being princes in the earth most of them were abject slaves; instead of being as the stars of heaven to whom men looked up, they were as the sand of the sea, driven hither and thither by the restless waves of the sea of nations. Even worse than that, they were as the dust of the earth trodden underfoot by other nations.

For the first time in many years, they are reaching national consciousness, but the sad part is they are not yet coming in on the line Paul describes here in Romans 10. He says,

I bear them record that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge,⁴ for they, being ignorant of God's righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of law for righteousness to every one that believeth.

“I believe the word end here has the literal meaning of aim or object. In other words, the law was a fingerpost pointing forward to the Lord. It was not an end in itself. It was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ” (Dr. James E. Priest).

This should be a warning to the Jewish nation, as well as to Gentiles, that we will never come into abiding blessing on the principle of what is right among ourselves. Only by appropriation of the righteousness of God in Christ shall we arrive at any solution of the moral and material problems of our lives. In Christ the great sin question, the question of transgression of the law has been taken up and the penalty paid. The only way whereby we may attain righteousness, nationally or individually, is to accept the substitutionary work of the Lord Jesus, to come under His banner and allow Him to be our Lord and Master.

Footnotes:
¹ This quotation is a fusion of two passages from Isaiah. They read thus in the Old Testament: “Therefore, thus saith the Lord, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste” (Is. 28:16). “And he shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offense to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem” (Is. 8:14). In both these passages, mention is made of a stone; but the predicates of this stone, as given in the latter passage, are transferred to the other, and those there are omitted. Such was permissible and right for Paul to do, because the stone in both passages is the Lord Jesus Christ. The great significance of Paul’s introduction of these quotations is the clear and emphatic prediction that Israel would stumble upon it. It was foretold in the most dramatic form that “both the houses of Israel would find this precious corner stone, not only a rock of stumbling and offense, but a gin and a snare.” Again, the blindness of the religious hierarchy to such stark and dreadful warnings must ever remain a mystery.
² “If ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious: unto whom coming, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but with God elect, precious, ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Because it is contained in scripture, Behold I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect, precious; And he that believeth on him shall not be put to shame. For you therefore that believe is the preciousness: but for such as disbelieve, The stone which the builders rejected, The same was made the head of the corner; and A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence; for they stumble at the word, being disobedient” (1 Peter 2:3-8). With reference to this metaphor itself, a stone is among the most interesting things on earth; and every stone has a life story, the mystery of which encompasses the most fantastic dimensions of time and space. Compared to the life story of a stone, the lives of the most interesting men seem dull and commonplace. As an example, take the Star of Africa which adorns the scepter of England’s queen. It is old by millenniums and eons of time, but seems as little affected by the receding centuries as the stars themselves. And yet, at one time, it was a lump of black carbon, folded and pressured by the undulating layers of prehistoric earth; and how it came to be a jewel in a monarch’s regalia is a romance as exciting as the story of the earth itself. Again, glance at the seared residue of Ahnighito (79,000-pound meteorite in Museum of Natural History, New York). Like the angels cast out of heaven, it has fallen from its first estate, having once coasted through measureless reaches of the universe at thousands of miles an hour for numberless thousands of years; it was snared, at last, by the tricky atmosphere of the earth and sank in flaming robes of fire upon a mountain side, from whence it journeyed to its place as a gazingstock in a museum. And look at that great boulder, a mighty erratic, speaking of the ice age, the distinctive markings of its serrated surface witnessing to the power of the great glacier that plowed it up from the bed of a continent and floated it upon a sea of ice for a thousand miles to where it now rests in isolated splendor, a grey sentinel of yesterdays which preceded the race of people. That chalk-like limestone with its arms full of seashells (the San Jacinto Monument) was once the bottom of the ocean floor and was formed by innumerable generations of marine life that sank to the cold oblivion of its midnight depths, where it waited half an eternity for the buckling of the earth’s crust to lift it upward to the light and to the interest of a being called man. The same exciting story is everywhere a stone is found. That lump of lava that cooled only yesterday, as geologists count time, was boiling hot for five hundred centuries. Those flat pebbles on the beach were machined and polished by ocean waves and tides, not merely of centuries, but of millenniums. A grain of sand has a history that staggers the imagination. In the petrified forest of Arizona, one stands in amazement and awe. That stone forest was once a flourishing mantle of green growth; songbirds built their nests there; and God’s myriad children of the out-of-doors dwelt there through ages and cycles of time. But now those great trees are stone, hard as flint, with the dead weight of time upon them, incredible things, lying stark and still there in the desert sun, but with a message in their stone branches that brings a catch in the throat and unwilling mist in the eyes. Therefore, it is little wonder that the sacred writers seized upon such a metaphor as that provided by the stone, in order to convey eternal truth concerning Jesus Christ: for Christ is many kinds of stone, as a glance at the Scripture text just cited quickly reveals. Christ is the “living stone;” and, in this, our Lord infinitely surpasses the metaphor without in any manner diminishing the effectiveness of it, because the Living Stone partakes of the likeness of many other types of stones. Like the meteorite, He is a visitor from another sphere. The Dayspring from on High came from above and beyond our poor earth to bring redemption and eternal life to people. Like the diamond, He is exceedingly precious and is “the same yesterday, today, yea and for ever” (Heb. 13:8). Like the glacial boulder, He bears upon Himself the record of the infinite past and the prophecy of something yet to be. Surely, it could have been none other than the Spirit of God who gave the sacred writers so apt a metaphor of the Son of God. He is truly the Living Stone. This living stone is the foundation stone, as Isaiah said. He is the foundation of all that is good and desirable in human civilization. Especially of the church, He is the foundation. “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11). What is built upon Christ will endure. As He Himself revealed, to build upon the rock is to keep the sayings of the Master (Matt. 7:24). If people would only build upon the living stone, they would no longer be discouraged by the collapse of all that they build elsewhere. This living stone is a tried stone, as stated in both Testaments. He was in all points tempted as people are (Heb. 4:5). The fact of our Lord’s being tried brings to the Christian supreme confidence in two important particulars, these being the infallibility of Christ and the perfect sympathy He has for His children. We know that He cannot fail, for He has already been tried and tested, and we know that He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. This living stone is a precious stone (1 Peter 2:7), precious by any standard of determination, precious because of His beauty (though His beauty is not of an earthly type, Is. 53:2), precious because of the love He showed to people, precious because of the hope He brings, and precious in every way. We shall see “the King in his beauty” (Is. 33:17). Whatever criteria people have ever used to determine value, or the quality of being precious, all of them are exhausted in Christ. He is unique, there being none other. He alone provides salvation. The ties of the heart’s highest and best affection attain their ultimate strength in Christ. This living stone is a corner stone (Is. 28:16), an appropriate designation indeed. In Him law ended and grace began; in Him God submitted to His deepest humiliation and humanity attained its greatest exaltation; in Him time and eternity struck hands together; in Him the Old Testament was fulfilled and the New Testament was established; in Him the righteous shall be glorified and the wicked frustrated; He is a savor of life unto life in them that believe and a savor of death unto death in them that believe not; in Him is the corner of all human destiny, those on the left departing from His presence forever, and those on the right entering into His joy forever. This living stone is a growing stone. In the dream of the mighty king of Babylon, centuries before Christ was born, he saw a little stone cut out of a mountain without hands, which struck the kingdoms of this world upon their feet of clay, overcame them, ground them to powder, and grew until it filled the whole world. That growing stone is Christ, and the growth is still in progress, nor shall it ever cease until the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. Amen. The living stone is a refuge, or sanctuary. As it is written: “And he shall be a sanctuary” (Is. 8:14). “A man shall be a hiding place from the wind and a covert from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place, and as the shadow of a mighty rock in a weary land” (Is. 32:2). Christ is our Rock and our Redeemer; blessed be the name of the Lord. In this concept of Christ as a sanctuary, or refuge, it is well to remember that none ever enjoyed a refuge in a sanctuary without being in it. This living stone is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. It was this particular aspect of Him that prompted Paul’s introduction of this metaphor into this part of Romans. Christ’s being foretold as “a rock of stumbling” by Isaiah was a prophecy of Israel’s rejection of Christ. And how did they stumble on Christ? Peter explained it thus: “They stumbled at the word, being disobedient.” People stumbled upon Christ (and they still do), accounting His commandments as “hard sayings” (John 6:60); people stumble through pride which is offended at the lowliness of Jesus’ birth, and draw back from following one born in a stable, laid in a manger, nursed under the palms of Egypt, schooled in a carpenter’s shop, attended by fishermen, mocked by the soldiers in the common hall, crucified between two thieves, and buried in a borrowed grave. In such things as those, Christ has always been a stumbling stone to the proud. Paul said: “We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:23,24). How strange that it should be thus with people in regard to spiritual things, but who nevertheless do not reject a diamond because God wrapped it in the mud of Africa, nor a lily because its roots take hold of the mire. We sing “Oh, then to the Rock let me fly, To the Rock that is higher than I.” The living stone is also the rejected stone. This phase of this extensive metaphor is founded upon an historical incident, described by Dean Plumptre (as quoted by R. Tuck, The Pulpit Commentary, Vol. 18 [i], p. 356) thus: “The illustration seems to have been drawn from one of the stones used in the building of the great temple in Jerusalem, quarried, hewn, and marked away from the site of the temple, which the builders, ignorant of the head architect's plans, had put to one side, as having no place in the building, but which was found afterwards to be that upon which the completeness of the structure depended, that on which, as the chief corner stone, the two walls met, and were bonded together.” In this analogy, the Jewish hierarchy in Jerusalem were the builders who rejected the Christ who is the head of the corner. May all people labor in all their lives, day and night, in prayers and devotions, in patient waiting and loving service, that they might avoid, at all cost, the folly of rejecting the Lord.
³ Paul uses the word “Brethren” to address the disciples in Rome, to whom the book of Romans was written; and “them” is a reference to Israel, the great majority of whom had rejected the Lord and were thus in a lost condition. The fact of Paul’s praying for Israel is instructive, especially in view of Paul’s belief of the great prophecies which had predicted their stumbling on Christ, as mentioned at the end of the preceding chapter. This shows that there was no such thing as an “irrevocable decree” that Israel should be lost, and that there was actually no impediment to Israel’s salvation except Israel. Note too that Paul’s prayer was to the effect that Israel should accept the Gospel, not that they should be saved in unbelief. This second reference to Paul’s emotional desire for the salvation of Israel is different from that at the beginning of Romans 9, because here there is a specific reference to his prayers on their behalf.
⁴ What made the loss of Israel so tragic was the fact that they were actually a very zealous and God-fearing people, superior in every way to the Gentiles, whose godlessness was the shame of all nations. W. Sanday’s quotation from Josephus (Ellicott’s Commentary on the Holy Bible, p. 244) stresses this character of the Jews, thus: “They had a zeal of God .... The Jew knew the Law better than his own name .... The sacred rules were punctually obeyed .... The great feasts were frequented by countless thousands .... Over and above the requirements of the Law, ascetic religious exercises advocated by the teachers of the Law came into vogue .... Even the Hellenized and Alexandrian Jews under Caligula died on the cross and by fire, and the Palestinian prisoners ... died by the claws of African lions in the amphitheater, rather than sin against the Law .... The tenacity of the Jews, and their uncompromising monotheism, were seen in some conspicuous examples. In the early part of his procuratorship, Pilate, seeking to break through their known repugnance to everything that savoured of image-worship, had introduced into Jerusalem ensigns surmounted with silver busts of the emperor. Upon this, the people went down in a body to Caesarea, waited for five days and nights in the marketplace, bared their necks to the soldiers that Pilate sent among them, and did not desist until the order for the removal of the ensigns had been given. Later, he caused to be hung up in the palace in Jerusalem certain gilded shields bearing a dedicatory inscription to Tiberius. Then again, the Jews did not rest until, by their complaints addressed directly to the emperor, they had succeeded in getting them taken down. The consternation caused by Caligula’s order for the erection of his own statue in the Temple is well known. None of the Roman governors dared to carry it into execution; and Caligula himself was slain before it could be accomplished.” It would take volumes and libraries to recount the heroic zeal of the Jews which finally culminated in the bloody sorrow of Masada, where Eleazar ben Yair made his courageous stand against the Tenth Legion of Rome. When all hope was cut off: “Rather than become slaves to their conquerors, the defenders – 960 men, women, and children thereupon ended their lives at their own hands. When the Romans reached the heights next morning, they were met by silence” (Yigael Yadin, Masada, p. 12). How fitting it was that Paul should have here paid his tribute to the nobility and zeal of that wonderful people who were, until they rejected the Christ, God’s chosen people. “But not according to knowledge” ... is a reference far more than Israel’s rejection of our Lord and their failure to recognize Him as the Messiah. As just noted, Josephus said that they knew the Law “better than” their own names; but it was such a knowledge that failed to take account of the spiritual nature of God’s Word. Jesus said to the Jews of His day: “Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God” (Matt. 22:29). “Ye have made void the word of God because of your tradition .... But in vain do they worship me, teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men” (Matt. 15:6,9). Thus the Jewish ignorance of God’s Word extended to the very heart of it, which they had so corrupted with human tradition and so glossed over with their own interpretations that many of the plainest precepts were countermanded. Thus, the failure of Israel, about to be mentioned in the next verse, refers not merely to their rejection of Christ (which they also did), but to their failure to keep even the commandments of the Law which they acknowledged, preferring their own traditions and precepts instead of it.