God’s free choice
Paul is not biased against his own kinship, the members of the Jewish race. Far from it! Rather, he accords them a premier place in the world. They are, in reality, the nation that is at the center of all world history by virtue of their being the bearer of the promised Messiah. But with all this national prestige and with all these God-given advantages, why are so few of them in step with what is happening through the worldwide spread of the Christian church? Paul first heads off a wrong notion and then gives his answer.
It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. 7 Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. On the contrary, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” 8 In other words, it is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring. 9 For this was how the promise was stated: “At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son.”
If many of the Jews are not in the Christian fold, Paul states that it is not because God wasn’t in earnest when he extended his Word and promise to them. Israel as a nation retains the many advantages he previously listed. The promises are still good. The problem is not with God and his Word. The problem is that, by and large, the individual members of the Jewish race have rejected and spurned those promises in unbelief. This is what the apostle means with his paradoxical statement that not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.
“Israel” is the name God gave the patriarch Jacob after he wrestled with God and by faith prevailed (Genesis 32:28). Hence all of Jacob’s physical descendants came to be called Israelites. But as Paul hints already here, and as he will be illustrating more fully later on, not all of Jacob’s descendants are true Israelites. True Israelites are those who in faith cling to the Savior promised to Jacob by God. The “true Israel,” therefore, is a spiritual Israel, the believers looking in faith to the promised Messiah found in Christ.
Sadly, the majority of Paul’s compatriots did not accept Jesus of Nazareth as the promised Messiah. Therefore, Paul has to say, Not all physical Israelites are the true (spiritual) Israel—the way we might say, Not all Christians are true Christians. Simply holding membership in a Christian congregation is no guarantee of faith or spiritual life residing in the heart.
Not all of Jacob’s (Israel’s) descendants are true Israelites. Moving back two generations, from Jacob to Abraham, Paul repeats that same thought when he says, “Nor because they [members of the Jewish race] are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children.”
When Abraham was 75 years old, God promised to make him into a great nation. Ten years later he still had no children. In an ill-advised attempt to help God fulfill his promise, Sarah suggested that Abraham take her Egyptian servant woman as a substitute wife. The result of this relationship was the birth of Abraham and Hagar’s son, Ishmael.
The conniving of Sarah, Abraham, and Hagar had indeed produced a child, but this child was not God’s way of fulfilling his promise. Paul makes the observation, “It is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.”
Ishmael was a natural child of Abraham, but he was not God’s choice. We might say God had not “elected” to fulfill his promise through this child. Rather, God’s choice rested on a descendant of Abraham and Sarah. Quoting Genesis 18:10,14, Paul says, “For this was how the promise was stated: ‘At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son.’” By God’s choice, or election, this statement would be true: “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”
Keep in mind that Paul has brought up the case of Isaac and Ishmael to illustrate the matter of God’s election. Paul senses that some among his readers might take a logical shortcut and come to a wrong conclusion. The mistaken conclusion he wants to head off is the thought that there is some reason discernible to the human mind as to why God does what he does—in other words, that God’s election is in response to what people do or don’t do. Paul debunks that notion with a second example, also from the life of the patriarchs.