The Remnant

One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use? Romans 9:19-21

Paul does not get bogged down in analysis here. He just lays it on the line. It’s God’s creation, God’s rules. God’s authority is the issue. Only the one in authority can demonstrate grace.

Who is in charge? God is. How dare you, the created being, challenge God, the creator? The potter makes of the same lump of clay a dainty dish or a chamber pot. It is His decision, depending on what use He has for the vessel. The methods and timing of God are at His discretion and in His power, for His foreordained purposes. Just because the Jews thought they were God’s only people didn’t make it so.

What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory—even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? As he says in Hosea:

“I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people;
and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one,” and,
“In the very place where it was said to them,
‘You are not my people,’
there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’”

Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:
“Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea,
only the remnant will be saved.
For the Lord will carry out
his sentence on earth with speed and finality.”
It is just as Isaiah said previously:
“Unless the Lord Almighty
had left us descendants,
we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.” Romans 9:22-29

The nation of Israel rejected their Messiah. Those few who believed Him became regenerated Jews (born-again believers). They were the ones who were given the Holy Spirit and appointed as apostles to the newborn Church. Jews who believe in Jesus Christ in the Church age are no longer Israel, but Church. Believing Gentiles are Church. In the Church age, Jews are dispersed throughout the globe and are persecuted in varying degrees by Gentile nations; sometimes quite severely. They continue to be evangelized in Gentile languages (like at Pentecost) wherever they are.

Nevertheless, they remain Israel. Whatever nation they are in, they do not lose their identity as Jews. There is always a remnant, therefore, of Israel. And there will always be. It is important to Satan to annihilate the Jewish race, but he cannot. That explains a lot of the pressures they have endured as a people. God has promised there will always be a remnant, to whom His covenant promises will be fulfilled in the future kingdom. When that happens, the remnant will be a believing people of God. Spiritual Israel.

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: (Isaiah 28:16)
“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

Israel tried to be righteous by the works of the law. It didn’t work, because no one can be made righteous by the law. The Gentiles weren’t even trying to work for righteousness, but they received the righteousness of God by faith.

There’s that stumblingblock we’ve seen before. Your personal sins are not your, or someone else’s stumblingblock. Jesus is. God’s plan of grace is. God’s grace, demonstrated in Jesus Christ causes legalists to stumble because they are determined to do “good works” or keep some kind of score to gain God’s approval. They are blinded by self-righteousness and stumble over the rock foundation of faith in Jesus Christ.