Paul's letter to the Romans is known to many as the Christians' Constitution. and for good reason. In these Spirit-inspired chapters, Paul lays the theological foundation of our faith. Our sinfulness, God's righteousness, and the life-changing truth of justification by faith. But then something unexpected happens.
Right after eight powerful chapters, Paul takes what seems like a detour. He stops to address God's heart for his chosen people. The Jews. Today on Insight for Living, Juxwindahl reveals that Romans chapters 9, 10, and 11 aren't a detour at all. They're the essential bridge that changes everything.
Today, we do a survey of three chapters in the middle of the letter to the Romans.
So let me read just randomly several verses from each of the chapters. If you have a New Testament with you, Turn please to the ninth. of Romans 9:1. I am telling you the truth in Christ. I am not lying.
My conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow. and unceasing grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ, for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh, who are. Israelites Verse 1 chapter 10. Brethren, my heart's desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation.
For I testify about them that They have a zeal for God. But not in accordance with knowledge. For not knowing about God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own. They did not subject themselves. To the righteousness of God.
For Christ is the end of the law. for righteousness. to everyone who believes. Verse 1 of chapter 11. I say then, God has not rejected his people.
Has he? May it never be. For I too am an Israelite. A descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people.
whom he foreknew And then at the end of that chapter, verse. 33. O the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable. His ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord?
Who became his counselor? Who is first given to him that it might be paid back to him again? From him. And through him And to him. Are all things?
To him be the glory. Forever. And everyone said Amen. You're listening to Insight for Living. To dig deeper into the book of Romans on your own, be sure to purchase our Searching the Scriptures Bible Study Workbook by going to insight.org/slash offer.
Chuck titled today's message, Three Faces of God. The late cartoonist Charles Schulz. always love to portray vignettes of life Oh, and the little characters we all sort of identified with. It was always Charlie Brown and Lucy in charge, of course. And Linus and Pigpin, and every once in a while Snoopy would get the show and, you know, take it from there.
One of my favorite scenes is Charlie and Lucy. on the deck of a cruise ship, And Lucy is again instructing Charlie. Charlie, she said, this is a decision you must make all on your own. Do you want to set your deck chair facing forward so that you can see where we're going? Or do you want to turn and face your deck chair?
To the rear to see where we've been. What's your decision, Charlie? He said, I can't get my deck chair unfolded. Maybe you feel like that as we're in the middle of this letter to the Romans and we've been going forward and backward. You can't get your theological deck chair unfolded as we worked our way through this letter.
I mean, this is Paul's magnum opus. This is Pauline theology at its very best. This is truth, this is doctrine, this is Christian living. As you will read nowhere else in the scriptures, this is the Christian's constitution.
So it would be helpful to face our deck chairs toward where we have been and look back. For eight chapters, we have been watching the gospel unfold. And the main message has been God's righteousness. Not what we have done to earn it, but God's giving it to us because of what Christ has done for us. For example, in chapter 3.
We read very clearly, verse 23: all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. That's us. That's us. For three chapters, he has been developing the depravity of humanity. It doesn't mean we're as bad as we can be, it means we're as bad off as we can possibly be.
Some sinners are good.
Some sinners are better than other sinners. But no one is righteous enough to get into heaven on their own. Because we have all sinned and we all fall short of the glory of God. We are sinners by birth, we're sinners by nature, we're sinners by choice.
Well, how do we get this righteousness of God? Verse 24. By being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. A lot of 4-bit words that mean God has given us His righteousness. When we place our faith and trust in His Son, Jesus.
The term justified simply means God's sovereign act. Whereby he declares righteous the believing sinner while we are still in a sinning state. It doesn't mean we get better and better until we're finally good enough to deserve it. It means we remain on the level of sinfulness, and God, in grace, because we place our faith in Christ, deposits to our account divine righteousness. We then have the righteousness of God.
The results are numerous, and one of the best ones is in 5, verse 1, where we read: Having been justified by faith, having been declared righteous, we now have what we could never find in ourselves: peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And that offer of salvation continues to go on. Verse 8. God demonstrates his love toward us in that while we are yet sinners, Christ died for us.
So, throughout the centuries of time, including this one and on beyond our own, God continues to demonstrate His love to us. In bringing to the attention of the lost his son's death. And when we trust in Him, we are given the righteousness of God. How good is that? Having the righteousness of God means that we are now saved.
We're no longer spiritually lost. That's the major theme of the first eight chapters. Our salvation, which is by faith apart from works. It is trusting in Christ alone, by faith alone, because of God's grace alone. The songwriter puts it, Nothing in my hands I bring simply to your cross.
I claim. By doing so, I am born out of darkness and into light. I am born out of death into life. I no longer am condemned in my sin, but because of God's grace I am accepted in His family.
Now, when you get to the end of chapter 8, it just doesn't get much better than that. There's a great climax if you love music. It's like a great crescendo. That comes to the end with a triple fortissimo. It's as if three exclamation points appear.
Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? Oh, no, none of these things can separate us. Says Paul at the end of the chapter, I am absolutely convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor principality, and he goes through a whole grocery list of the things that he could name. None of that will ever separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If this were a play, the curtains would be closing. The end of Act 1, and the audience would be applauding. How great is the message of salvation? Nothing will separate us from the love of Christ.
Now, if you ask me, When you end chapter 8, what ought to begin is chapter 12.
So, skip the next three chapters and go to chapter 12. And the curtains open, and now, therefore, I urge you by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice unto God. I mean, after all, look at what God has done for us.
Next chapter of the book or the next act of the play. Here's what we do in return: we give Him ourselves and not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. I mean, it fits.
So the great question is why Are there three chapters that keep us from this climactic ending to the book? Chapters 9. 10. And 11. I'm not the first to point out that these are a little bothersome as they appear in this letter.
One man writes, chapters 9 through 11 are as full of problems as a hedgehog is full of prickles. I mean, there are more difficulties in chapters 9, 10, and 11 than you will find in any part of chapters 1 through 8 or 12 to 16. It's full of problems. It's full of issues. There are a number of things in here that make you squirm.
It's here we read of predestination. The election of God. It's here we read about the Jews. Oh, and by the way, that's what these three chapters are all about. You see, there's one thing Paul is that most of us are not.
Paul's Jewish. And being a Jew He would hear us say, Why are these three chapters in the letter to the Romans? And he would say, what a Gentile question is that. When you're a Jew, your great concern is for your Jewish family, your Jewish mom and dad, your Jewish brothers and sisters, your Jewish relatives, your Jewish friends. In Paul's case, the Jews formed the Sanhedrin, the fellow Pharisees who were a part of his group and he a part of theirs.
I mean, Paul is grieved over the fact that they're not here. And by now he thinks, I can stay quiet no longer.
So, chapters nine, ten, and eleven bring into perspective. The Jews. That's an issue that has to be answered.
Now as a Gentile you think why I don't need to worry with what the ju you have every reason to be concerned. The Jews are his chosen people. To the Jews he first gave the message of hope. To the Jews, he wrote the Torah. The Jews are the ones who preserve the scrolls, the sacred scrolls of scripture.
From the Jews, the message of missions was Was sent forth to a Gentile world. One of the early missionaries, Jonah. Maybe you never thought about him as a missionary. Jonah is a Jewish prophet. who is told to take the message of the news of God to Nineveh.
And maybe He goes to Tarsish. That's like God saying, go to Berlin and you go to Hawaii. You don't get there by going to Tarshish. What was the problem? He's a bigoted Jew.
He didn't want the Gentiles to believe. We're the ones who are the chosen. We're the ones with the message. And finally, he does go. First amphibious landing in the scriptures is in Jonah.
It's a story of a missionary who took the message reluctantly to a group of people, and to the surprise of most, it's the greatest revival in all of the Old Testament. when Nineveh hears and responds. We better answer the issue of the Jews. I mean, if it's the gospel, chapters 1 to 8, we certainly need to know where the Jews are in it. The fact is For the most part, They're blind.
There aren't many Jews in this congregation. Born Jews, reared Jewish. Jewish parents Jewish friends, most of us are Gentile. Do you realize in ancient days we were known as the dogs? We were given the crumbs from the table.
It was the Jew who was first to receive the message.
So Paul, as he begins this Ninth chapter is grieved that his Family and friends are not in the number of the saved.
Now, let me clarify something because we're going to just hit the high spots. Remember, when you were a kid, you threw a little Flat rock across the top of the lake, and it skipped. That's what we're going to do today. We're going to skip chapters 9, 10, 11.
So don't write me and tell me I didn't cover verse 6 or you left out 10, 14. I wonder what you think about that. We'll get to it. Relax. Right now we're skipping.
We're doing a little survey. And I want you to see that chapters 9, 10, and 11 really are not chapters about the Jews. They're chapters about God. Don't forget that. In God's great plan, He If I may use the words, he is the star of the show.
He is the preeminent one. In chapter 9, he is sovereign. In chapter 10, he is just. In chapter 11, he is faithful. That's what these chapters are about.
It so happens to be applied to the Jews. But in chapter 9, he is sovereignly in charge of selecting those who will come into the family and blinding those who choose not to. In chapter 10, he declares his justice. The only way I can receive anyone into my family is through faith in my son, Jew, Gentile, doesn't matter. In chapter 11, I haven't forgotten my people.
I've made promises and I will make them good. God's faithfulness is promised there. God's sovereignty, chapter 9. God's justice, chapter 10, God's faithfulness, chapter 10. 11.
Three faces. of God. And when you get into chapter 9, it isn't long before you feel the heartbeat of a Jewish. A pastor, a Jewish missionary. A Jewish writer of scripture.
Verse 1. I am telling the truth in Christ. I'm not lying. My conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow. And unceasing grace.
Brief. in my heart. Why, Paul? After coming to that climax at the end of Act 1, the curtains close. Nothing will separate us from the love of Christ.
Paul says, wait, wait, wait. But what about my fellow Jews? I'm grieved. Verse 3, you wonder how grieved I could wish that I myself were accursed. Separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh, who are Israelites.
You know what? I think We Christians read that and uh We who are Gentiles don't really feel the passion. But Paul would feel. If you're Jewish, you would. It's just built into your system to think Jewish.
to feel Jewish. And he realizes, having presented these magnificent truths, that most of his contacts are lost. They're all blind. to the message.
So he says, I'm grieved. I would be willing to be accursed if my kinsmen would believe. Then he reminds himself and us in his writings that it is God who is at work. Verse 6. It is not as though the word of God has failed, for they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel.
Just because you're born a Jew doesn't mean you're truly a part of the family. That's a surprising message to the Orthodox Jew. It's a surprising men. Nor are they all children because they are Abraham's descendants. They would consider that heresy.
No wonder they don't read the New Testament. They are descended from Abraham. That means they are in the family. They're born in the family. Wrong, says Paul.
Your Messiah has already come, though you did not recognize him. The Messiah has already paid the penalty for your sin, though you haven't received it. Haven't accepted it.
So understand, just because you're Jewish doesn't mean you're in the family of God. Matter of fact, God has selected those who are in his family. And this is called divine election.
Now here's where we gag. We come to that, and we who are not reared with that particular doctrine emphasized in our lives, we see it as a bit of heresy. Unfortunately, we see it as that. What we miss is the perspective. Please follow me.
You will never understand the doctrine of election if you do not see it's a matter of perspective. As God looks down upon humanity from the portals of heaven, if I may use that term, as he looks onto this earth and sees all of humanity, from his perspective, none of it is a surprise. Everyone who believes has been called to believe. Everyone has been elected. Everyone is in the family that God has chosen to be in the family.
That's chapter 9. As a matter of fact, when you get deeply into the chapter, you realize there's an illustration. about a potter with a piece of clay. And the clay cannot say to the potter, What are you doing? It's the potter's sovereign right to shape the clay as he pleases.
So it is, from God's perspective, his sovereign right to select whom he chooses. But we don't like that. Because we're in charge. We like being in charge. We like calling the shots.
We like making our own selections, especially we in America. We're independent. We'll decide. Uh on the contrary, God has decided.
Now you say, wait a minute, wait a minute, man, we are getting way, way off. No, from his perspective, he is the one. Who makes that decision? And he places in our path those individuals who will lead us to a knowledge of Jesus, and then we respond by faith to the message, and then we believe. And horizontally, it looks like we're the ones who made the decision when, in fact, we are responding to the divine work of God in our lives.
Some of you look at me so great right now. I say, what? I can just see it. What do you mean? We have not been taught Romans 9 correctly.
All the way through this chapter, there's the reminder that He is in charge. He is the one making the call. He is the one who determines these things. God's sovereign hand is at work.
Now, there are some who say, if I really believe that. And even in survey fashion, if I believe that it's all about the sovereign hand of God, then. I'd lose all my zeal for those who were lost. Really? Look at chapter 10, verse 1.
Does this look like a loss of zeal? Brethren. Cisterns. My heart's desire, my prayer to God for them is for their salvation. I testify about them that They have a zeal for God.
but not in accordance with knowledge. You travel to Israel, you see that on display. You see a zeal for God right before your eyes. You go to the wailing wall and your heart will break. You see sincerely.
determined, disciplined, Orthodox Jews. bowing over and over and over at the wall, over and over, praying. hours on end praying. Prayers put in every little crevice of the stones. Praying, praying, working for righteousness.
and your heart goes out to them. They have zeal. But not a knowledge of the Saviour. And the message of the Savior is Christ died for you, and if you will believe in Him, Jew or Gentile, young or old, boy or girl, man or woman, you will know a peace that you can't know any other way. The matter of fact, Look how he puts it right in the center section of Romans 10.
This is a familiar part. Verse 11, the scripture says, Whoever believes in him will not be disappointed. It's wide open. Whoever will believe. How can that be?
I thought chapter nine says God chose. Chapter ten says, Whoever believes. Which is it? Both. I like Spurgeon's answer when someone said that they would like for him to reconcile these two truths.
He said, I wouldn't try to do that, I never reconcile friends. From God's perspective, it's all about what He's doing and His electing action. From my perspective, it's about my believing it, my receiving it. If I do not receive it, I am not in the family of God.
However, God is at work and His grace is continuing on our behalf. And believe me, it is a grace that will win its way into our lives. Oh, it doesn't take away your passion for the lost. Back to Spurgeon, who ministered in the Victorian era, made a great statement. He said: If God had painted a stripe on the back of every elect person, I would spend my days walking up and down the streets of London lifting up shirt tails.
But because he said, Whosoever will may come, I preach the gospel to everyone. That's my experience. I don't know who the elect are. I just know who the lost are. And my job is to tell the lost how to find bread.
How to find light and hope. It's God's work to do a work in your heart and to bring you to Himself. That's His sovereign. Work. This is Insight for Living, and we're just getting started in our study of Romans 9:10, and 11.
Stay with us because there's much more that Chuckswindahl wants to tell us about the three faces of God. If you're ready to learn more, our creative team has assembled a collection of helpful study tools for this comprehensive series on Romans. First, we'd love to send you the Searching the Scriptures Bible Study Workbook. This spiral-bound resource for Romans comes in two volumes, and both volumes are available now.
Next, the bundle includes Chuck's commentary on Romans from the popular Living Insights commentary collection. And third, the bundle includes audio messages from both Volume 1 and Volume 2 of Chuck's teaching series on Romans. You can check out this special bundle for Romans by going to insight.org/slash offer. Insight for Living is made possible on your station because of grateful listeners who give voluntary donations. and today our team would like to say thanks to our monthly companions.
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I'm Bill Meyer. Join us when Shuckswindahl continues his message about the three faces of God. Tuesday on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Three Faces of God, was copyrighted in 2007, 2010, and 2025, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2025 by Charles R. Swindahl, Inc.
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