Chapter # 11 Paragraph # 4 Study # 7
March 10, 2019
Humble, Texas
(118)
1769 Translation:
22 Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in [
his] goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.
23 And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be graffed in: for God is able to graff them in again.
24 For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural [
branches], be graffed into their own olive tree?
1901 ASV Translation:
22 Behold then the goodness and severity of God: toward them that fell, severity; but toward thee, God's goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.
23 And they also, if they continue not in their unbelief, shall be grafted in: for God is able to graft them in again.
24 For if thou wast cut out of that which is by nature a wild olive tree, and wast grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree; how much more shall these, which are the natural [
branches], be grafted into their own olive tree?
- I. Behold The Goodness.
- A. Paul's "Therefore/Then" is a summons to back up and take a larger look; drawing conclusions from the prior text and its argument(s).
- 1. Paul's argument has been serious: boastfulness (in its negative sense) and highmindedness negate "faith" so as to destroy it.
- a. Just as the "law of faith" excludes "boastfulness" (Romans 3:27), so also "boastfulness" excludes "faith".
- b. And just as God broke off the natural branches for their "persistence" (Romans 10:21) in "unbelief", so also will He break off the unnatural, in-grafted, branches that turn from "faith" in order to "persist" in "boastfulness" and "highmindedness".
- 2. Paul's argument has, however, also exalted the benefit(s) of "faith"; it leads to an enduring participation in the richness of the fatness of the tree for those "in" the tree by natural generation, and an inclusion in that participation by those not in the tree originally.
- 3. His doctrine is not a contradiction of the "security" of the "elect" and "foreknown"; it is a clarification of the "reality" that the "human" side of "election" is a persevering "faith", not a temporary embrace that falls apart once the details come to light (compare Luke 8:13 with Philippians 1:29).
- a. In other words, the hidden list of the "elect" calls for the careful commitment to "the faith" so that the question of "election" is settled for the individual who "believes" (do not overlook Peter's summons to "make your calling and election sure" ((2 Peter 1:10)) as a basic factor on the human side of the issue; election doesn't have to be "made sure" on the divine side, for God made the list). What absolutely must be kept in mind in this regard is the doctrine of Jesus' intercessory prayer on the behalf of those who "come to God by Him" (Hebrews 7:25) in light of His qualification of His prayer in John 17:9 and His expression of this intercession for Peter when he was to be "sifted as wheat" so that his "faith" would not "fail" (Luke 22:32). The reason this must be kept in mind is that men cannot, of themselves, "keep the faith". If they could, there would be no need for Jesus' prayer. Paul actually declares this in Romans 14:4.
- b. This, far from being a subtle insertion of "works" into the mix, is a fundamental insistence that "works" be kept out so that "boastfulness" and "highmindedness" do not creep in.
- c. Additionally, Paul claimed to "know" of the "election" of the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 1:4) precisely because they not only "received the word with joy" (Note well Luke 8:13 where Luke insists that "joy" be present as well as "endurance" in the face of "temptation"), but they also not only continued believing in spite of "much affliction" (1 Thessalonians 1:6), they actually became primary examples of what it means to "believe to the saving of the soul" (Hebrews 10:39) to all who "believe" in "every place" (1 Thessalonians 1:7-8).
- B. The significance of "the goodness".
- 1. At root, the word "goodness" refers to some action/activity that results in "benevolence" that is rooted in Grace (Luke 6:35).
- 2. The particular point in Romans, however, is that Paul made this "gracious benevolence" a root for "repentance" (Romans 2:4).
- a. Once "repentance" is actually understood as the fountainhead of the "human side" of God's "forgiveness" (Mark 1:4), we can see that, for Paul, the human requirement of an enduring faith is actually a requirement that human beings who "believe" are to "continue to believe" in their absolute "need" for God's intervention and their "confidence" in that intervention.
- b. In other words, the root of "boastfulness" and "highmindedness" is the "death" of the sense of personal "need". Boastful people who think more highly of themselves than they ought to think (Romans 12:3) have abandoned their former awareness of their own neediness, but those who remain aware of it, live in "Grace" with "faith".
- 3. Thus, "beholding" the "goodness" of God means retaining the awareness of one's own initiation into "Grace" through the humility of "need". Those who do this are restrained from becoming "boastful" or "highminded", or, if not initially restrained, at least recovered from that path.
- II. Behold the Severity.
- A. The word so translated is only used in this form (twice) in this one place in the New Testament. It is derived from a noun that Paul uses twice in the New Testament (2 Corinthians 13:10 and Titus 1:13), but in our current text, it has an added "intensifier" as a prefix and is dependent upon the context for its meaning.
- B. The context as the root of the meaning we are to understand.
- 1. At the most basic level, "severity" is expressed in the "violent breaking off the unbelieving branches" which, historically, has its greatest expression in the historical record of the disastrous destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
- 2. Earlier, and less impressive, illustrations are found in the Old Testament when God did things like "open up the earth and swallow up the rebels".
- C. The point is: the violent severity removes a person from the benefits of the root of the fatness of the tree.