Romans 9:24-29
For more on the context of these verses, click here.
The Call
…even us whom he has called…
This word, call, sums up Paul’s whole meditation on God’s sovereignty in selecting some for salvation in Romans 9. It is God’s call that makes the difference, not ethnicity or morality or any other human trait or endeavor.
God’s call is different from our call. When we call someone, we are at their mercy to answer and respond. When God calls someone, they are at his mercy. Our words say things. God’s words do things. He created the universe and raised dead people to life with his words. It is his call that qualifies a person to be a Christian.
Tim Keller illustrated this point well in a sermon I listened to recently: If I need a computer programmer, I find a qualified person and call them. God however scanned the horizon of humanity and found no one qualified to be his child. So he does not first find qualified people and then call them to be his children. His call qualifies them.
The Called
…even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles…
Who receives God’s call? Some Jews and some Gentiles. Both were somewhat surprising to Paul’s original audience because the assumption was that all Jews and no Gentiles would be saved.
But Paul teaches that without God’s call, even the Jews, God’s chosen people, would have been like Sodom and become like Gomorrah. And with God’s call, even those who were not my people I will call ‘my people…’
So, who receives God’s call? Even us, as Paul states in verse 24, bringing the theological abstract idea of God’s call to our daily reality. This is how God is. As as a fish swims in water, so humanity lives in God’s sovereignty.
God’s call is the most important factor in your life. It is the most decisive reality of your experience on earth.
The Calling
“Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’
and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved,’
And in every place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’
there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.'”
What is this call? What does it do? It reconciles people to God. It turns vessels of wrath into vessels of mercy. It brings spiritual orphans into God’s household.
The quotes Paul uses (and that I placed above) come from Hosea, a short book in the Old Testament in which God told a man named Hosea to marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her to illustrate to Israel how promiscuous they had become toward him. God told Hosea to name two of his children Not My People and No Mercy.
I use my children in sermon illustrations all the time; but this takes it infinitely further. Their whole identity was wrapped up in their disconnect with God. And so is ours absent his call. We are not his people without his call. We are recipients of his wrath rather than his mercy without his call.
His call is for the atheist, the addict and the abuser. It rings out to the sinner, the sick and the sorry. His call brings spiritual orphans in from all over the world and makes them sons of the living God.
After a recent sermon about how transcendently sovereign God is, a church member mentioned in conversation that they were awed by the fact that this truly divine God is her father now that she is in Jesus. This is indeed an awesome reality.
Some Questions to Consider
Here is the gospel in a nutshell based on these verses: Jesus, the only rightful son of God became forsaken so that the forsaken might become sons of God.
1. Are you still a spiritual orphan? Maybe you’re hearing God’s call as you read this passage right now. Contact me to talk about it: 704-545-5389 or matthewbroadway@gmail.com.
2. Are you a child of the living God, but living like an orphan? Are you living as though it is all up to you, you’re on your own to figure things out and provide for yourself? Or are you growing in your acceptance of all Jesus has bought for you, beginning to live like a child of the King?
3. Can you see the people around you for what they are: orphans in need of the adopting call of God? Have you’ve received the call, but aren’t transmitting it on to others? (See Romans 10:14-15)
