Roman J Israel Quotes

Paul reinterprets the Scriptures of Israel in light of Jesus’ resurrection in order to defend his assertion that all people must confess the lordship of the resurrected Christ in order to know the righteousness of God and thus be numbered among God’s people.570

In Romans 1:3–4 Paul says something so surprising that most of our Bible translations refuse to print it. A literal translation reads as follows: the gospel promised by God “concerns his Son, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was appointed Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from among the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.” When Paul says Jesus “was appointed Son of God,” he means to say that Jesus became something that he was not before. Without denying Christ’s preexistence, this passage asserts that something happens to the human Jesus when he is raised from the dead. Like the kings of Israel, Jesus becomes a son of God when he is enthroned to rule the world on God’s behalf (see Ps. 2 and 2 Sam. 7). Jesus’s adoption and enthronement come at his resurrection.

They rout the inhabitants, and capture and kill Adoni-Bezek (“the Lord of Bezek”), who recognizes the rightness of this judgment on him (“God has paid me back for what I did to them,” v 7). It is notable that, while many 21st-century readers have many qualms about Israel’s conduct in Canaan, this defeated Canaanite did not. God’s judgment throughout history is to give people over to the consequences of the life they have chosen (eg: Psalm 64:3-4, 7-8; Romans 1:21-32)— Adoni-Bezek, it appears, accepts this.

The struggle to re-establish a Jewish homeland began twenty centuries ago when the Romans expelled most of the Jews from the Kingdom of Judea, the southern portion of the land now known as Israel.

What is the driving question in Romans? Is it “How do I find a gracious God?” or “How can this message about Jesus be the message about the saving faithfulness of Israel’s God?

The driving question in Romans is not, ‘How can I find a gracious God?’ but ‘How can we trust in this allegedly gracious God if he abandons his promises to Israel?

The message of the Apostolic Scriptures is that all of God’s people make up a singular entity known as the Commonwealth of Israel (Ephesians 2:11-13), which is to acknowledge Yeshua as Messiah, follow the Torah as a positive result of His redemptive work (Romans 8:3-4), and with all persons functioning in mutual submission to one another (Ephesians 5:21; Philippians 2:3-4). All three of these principles joined together is not frequently heard in today’s Messianic movement, but it forms the thrust of what it truly means for born again Believers to truly make up the “one new humanity” (Ephesians 2:15, NRSV/CJB) that the Lord wants to see emerge.