Ancestry

DEVOTION

ROMANS

ANCESTRY

Rom 9:1-5

9:1 I speak the truth in Christ — I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit— 2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, 4 the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. 5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.

NIV

We are starting another long discourse which by rights we should include it all in order to justly view these words within the context of the whole. But then we would also righty just put the whole letter to the Romans in, for as with any letter, it is meant to be read all at once. If we received a long letter from a friend, several pages long, we would not just read one sentence and wait until another day to read one more sentence. That is the way it is with all the letters, the gospels and epistles. But there is truth all throughout these letters and so we will hang our hat on them as they stand out to us by the prompting of the Spirit. Paul was a Jew, and is filled with sorrow that so many of his fellow Jews have not seen Jesus as the Messiah. Here in the beginning of what someone determined to be chapter 9, we see Paul laying out the case that Jesus came into the world through Israel. Israel is the chosen people, being adopted as sons was there’s for the taking. They were given the covenant, the law, the temple, where the presence of God resided, and they had the promises of God. The whole purpose we have all the genealogy within the Old Testament and what Matthew includes it to show that Jesus came through the human line of Israel. We will see throughout scripture Israel claims to be the sons of Abraham, Jacob and Isaac. Isaac having the twelve sons who became the twelve tribes of Israel. But we know from reading ahead that just because of human ancestry they are not automatically given access to eternal life. They, like all mankind must accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior in order to gain eternal life. But also that when the scripture declares that all of Israel will be saved, it is not talking about the human ancestry of Abraham, Jacob and Isaac, but rather those who are by faith the sons of Abraham whose faith was credited unto him as righteousness. What good is human ancestry other than to determine where in the world their ancestors came from? Today we call ourselves Americans, although many of us have ancestry that hails from all over the globe. There are a few who hyphenate there heritage, and there are those who although not born here, go through the process to become a naturalized citizen of this country. They basically are born again as a citizen of the United States of America. This is the truth of becoming Israel. It does not matter the human ancestry, but it matters who is born again into the promise given to Abraham. Although the nation of Israel was given it all, they refused and God is making the case through Paul that we all can be Israel just through faith in Jesus, having not our flesh circumcised but our heart. It is sad to think the nation of Israel was given everything so they might be in Christ and gain eternal life in the presence of God. Although Israel today still believes in Jehovah, they are still waiting for Messiah to come. We are so blessed to have the truth revealed to us and been able to see the truth of God in Jesus Christ. What our life would have been had we not seen and accepted Jesus is too much to even consider. Surely we would have been dead by now and dead in our sin, forever lost, condemned. But praise God he made sure we saw his truth, his Spirit broke through our hardened heart and opened our eyes so we could see. Through faith we have become the Israel with the promise. Instead of human ancestry defining who we are, it is our divine ancestry who declares we are the sons of God.