Book of Common Prayer

The fly in the ointment—the infidelity of my own race

9 ^1-3 Before Christ and my own conscience I assure you that I am speaking the plain truth when I say that there is something that makes me feel very depressed, like a pain that never leaves me. It is the condition of my brothers and fellow-Israelites, and I have actually reached the pitch of wishing myself cut off from Christ if it meant that they could be won for God.

^4-5 Just think what the Israelites have had given to them. The privilege of being adopted as sons of God, the experience of seeing something of the glory of God, the receiving of the agreements made with God, the gift of the Law, true ways of worship, God’s own promises—all these are theirs, and so too, as far as human descent goes, is Christ himself, Christ who is God over all, blessed for ever.

God’s purpose is not utterly defeated by this infidelity

^6-7 Now this does not mean that God’s word to Israel has failed. For you cannot count all “Israelites” as the true Israel of God. Nor can all Abraham’s descendants be considered truly children of Abraham. The promise was that ‘in Isaac your seed shall be called’.

^8-12 That means that it is not the natural descendants who automatically inherit the promise, but, on the contrary, that the children of the promise (i.e. sons of God) are to be considered truly Abraham’s children. For it was a promise when God said: ‘At this time I will come and Sarah shall have a son’. (Everybody, remember, thought it quite impossible for Sarah to have a child.) And then, again, a word of promise came to Rebecca, at the time when she was pregnant with two children by the one man, Isaac our forefather. It came before the children were born or had done anything good or bad, plainly showing that God’s act of choice has nothing to do with achievements, good or bad, but is entirely a matter of his will. The promise was: ‘The older shall serve the younger’.

¹³ And we get a later endorsement of this divine choice in the words: ‘Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated’.

We must not jump to conclusions about God

^14-15 Now do we conclude that God is monstrously unfair? Never! God said long ago to Moses: ‘I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion’.

^16-17 It is obviously not a question of human will or human effort, but of divine mercy. The scripture says to Pharaoh: ‘Even for this same purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name shall be declared in all the earth’.

¹⁸ It seems plain, then, that God chooses on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will harden in their sin.

^59-60 Jesus said all these things while teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. Many of his disciples heard him say these things, and commented, “This is hard teaching indeed; who could accept that?”

^61-64a Then Jesus, knowing intuitively that his disciples were complaining about what he had just said, went on, “Is this too much for you? Then what would happen if you were to see the Son of Man going up to the place where he was before? It is the Spirit which gives life. The flesh will not help you. The things which I have told you are spiritual and are life. But some of you will not believe me.”

^64b-65 For Jesus knew from the beginning which of his followers did not trust him and who was the man who would betray him. Then he added, “This is why I said to you, ‘No one can come to me unless my Father puts it into his heart to come.’”

^66-67 As a consequence of this, many of his disciples withdrew and no longer followed him. So Jesus said to the twelve, “And are you too wanting to go away?”

^68-69 “Lord,” answered Simon Peter, “who else should we go to? Your words have the ring of eternal life! And we believe and are convinced that you are the holy one of God.”

⁷⁰ Jesus replied, “Did I not choose you twelve—and one of you has the devil in his heart?”

⁷¹ He was speaking of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, one of the twelve, who was planning to betray him.