GOD’S SHOUT IS GRACE - Romans 9 & 10

 GOD’S SHOUT IS GRACE - Romans 9 & 10

“What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. As it is written: “See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble, and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.” – Romans 9 : 30-33

Here in Romans  9 & 10, Paul declares that the “dividing” wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile has been removed in Christ. God promised that all nations would be made righteous through his seed.  Israel throughout its history completely missed this and despised the Gentiles and treated them as inferior, thinking of themselves as superior since they have and "kept" Gods law. 

God doesn’t want to find fault with people. He loves the world. God loves us. He wants a relationship with us. It was out of his good pleasure that he created us. His intention is to have a people who are his own who will draw near to him for all time and eternity in an intimate covenant relationship. Jesus came to bring us into that relationship. He came to take us out of our own righteousness and bring us into His righteousness. A perfect righteousness that causes us to relate perfectly to God. Through Israel under the law man’s righteousness is an unstable and inferior righteousness that cannot sustain a relationship with God. God wanted an infallible and unbreakable relationship with mankind that would last for all eternity and that’s why the new covenant is a superior and far better covenant arrangement than the old law based on,

This was highlighted to Israel in no uncertain terms, 40 years (A generation) before the Northern Kingdom of Israel was taken into exile by the Assyrian Empire. During the reign of Jeroboam II God raised up and commissioned a prophet, Jonah to declare and demonstrate his grace to Israel by offering forgiveness and blessing to the underserving gentile city of Nineveh. There was nothing good about Nineveh, nothing deserving, nothing qualified them. But God sent Jonah to them to offer righteousness with him, based solely on believing the promise of God. This was more than just an offer, it was a declaration to Israel, that if they turned from the yoke of the law, God would turn from sending them into captivity. The Gentiles were chosen to show the children of Abraham, just how much God loved them. 

In the book of Jonah, we can see God’s intentional love and grace offered to unqualified people, to demonstrate that once God gives a promise, he is committed to keeping it. Israel was given a promise, but the promise of Christ and freedom from the law needed to be believed.