Romans 9:3-4 revisited in a letter to a friend: You asked me about the “Israel” reference from Romans 9:3-4. That’s a great question, brother. When I was writing that post, my mind drifted back to how I had handled “kinsmen according to the flesh” in another piece I wrote a while ago. I chose not to go back and look at my old post at the time and just went with what seemed clear in the moment. But when you raised that verse, I went back and looked, and sure enough, I had approached it more narrowly there. Now I’m not entirely convinced it needs to be understood in quite the same way. I will say this, in that earlier post, I did lean in the direction of understanding “brethren” more specifically as referring to the elect within Israel. And I can still see why I went that way, especially considering how consistently Paul uses that term elsewhere.
But looking at it again, I’m not sure it needs to be limited in that way. The wording, “kinsmen according to the flesh,” seems to point more broadly to Israel as a nation, which fits with what he goes on to unfold in the chapter. In one sense, I suppose there may be two ways of looking at the same text, one focusing on how Paul uses that language elsewhere, where “brethren” consistently refers to those in Christ, and the other on the immediate wording and flow of Romans 9 itself, beginning with Israel according to the flesh and then making distinctions within it. So, while I can see both sides, this seems to be the more natural reading: that Paul is simply speaking of his own people as a whole, his kinsmen according to the flesh, before he begins to sort things out more carefully as he goes on.
I really appreciate you bringing it up, brother, it made me go back and look again. Obviously, I’m far from having anything figured out, but that’s where my thoughts rest for now. And in a way, that ties into something I think we can both appreciate. Just being able to go back, look again, and see things a little differently over time, without feeling locked into a framework, is a real blessing. Although it can feel like a more isolated path, I’m thankful the Lord hasn’t tied us to a system. We don’t have to interpret the Bible according to a creed or confession, and there’s a real liberty in that. It also takes away a lot of the need to defend ourselves. If there’s disagreement, we just go back and look again.
Speaking about being correct, brother, you often say (and now you’ll probably never say it again,) “not that I don’t agree with you,” or something along those lines. The day someone agrees with everything I write is probably the day I should start to worry. I tend to cover a lot of ground, and when it comes to Bible doctrine, let’s just say some of it goes a bit beyond the five points of Calvinism, so there’s bound to be some disagreement. And really, that’s part of how we help one another, by being driven back again to the Scriptures….. enjoy your night, brother, Marc