Romans: The Clearest Gospel of All
By E.H. “Jack” Sequeira
The fundamental issue in the three chapters of 9, 10, and 11 of Romans is, if some Jews are going to be lost as the New Testament writers declare, even Jesus Christ, then hasn’t God failed to keep his promise? He promised Israel and the fathers of Israel, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that all Israel will be saved. If all Jews are not saved, then God has failed to keep His promise. As we have seen in the past two chapters, the answer of Paul is an emphatic “No.” But you can only understand Paul’s answer when you realize what he is trying to get across, especially in chapter nine. That is, that God’s promise was that all spiritual Israel will be saved. In other words, not the natural descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob constitute Israel in God’s eyes, but the spiritual descendants of these three men. The question is, “What do these three men represent?”
We saw in our last study that Abraham represents faith. Now, I want to turn to Isaac. He represents the new birth, the second prerequisite to being an Israelite. In the next study we will look at Jacob, who represents the perseverance of the saints whose faith endures unto the end.
The only thing special about Isaac was not something that he did or performed. The only thing special about him recorded in scripture was his birth. God has a very special lesson for us. Let us begin with Romans 9. We will look at three verses but we will concentrate on verse 8 here. Let us start at verse 6 to get the whole context. In Romans 9:6, Paul says that God has not failed to keep His word but it is not that the word of God has taken no effect. God has not failed to keep His promise, but here are the facts:
It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.
In other words, it is not the natural, or Israel according to the flesh, that constitutes God’s elect. Then in Romans 9:7 he says:
Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children....
Just because you may have Abraham’s blood in you doesn’t make you a child of God. Ishmael was a child of Abraham. So what constitutes true Israel? Look at the last part of verse seven:
...On the contrary, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”
He’s quoting from the Old Testament and He’s saying, “In Isaac your seed shall be called.” Then he explains that in Romans 9:8:
In other words, it is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.
What does Paul mean by that? He spends a whole section in Galatians 4 explaining. Before we turn to Galatians, I think we need to be familiar with the background. Paul is taking for granted that his readers understand the Old Testament. (In Paul’s day, there was no New Testament.) Let me give you a couple of texts that we need to be clear about concerning Isaac. The first one is Gen. 12:4:
So Abram left, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he set out from Haran.
There we are told that Abraham was 75 years old when God came to him and called him out of his country and from his pagan environment and promised him that he would be the father of a special nation. God promised him that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed. He was 75 years old. Abraham had no children when the promise came so the promise was through his son Isaac, who was still to come.
Then turn to Genesis 21. There we are told how old Abraham was when the promised son actually came. He was 75 when the promise was made and 100 years old when the promise was fulfilled. I read it in Gen. 21:5:
Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
Why did God wait 25 years to keep His promise? It was very embarrassing, very frustrating. It was very hard for Abraham to wait that long. Why did God wait 25 long years? Is it because God was incapable of giving him a son earlier? The answer is, “No.” Because He gave him a son when it was impossible to get a son by the natural means. But why did God wait 25 years? Well, there is only one reason. It was essential for Abraham to be exhausted in terms of producing a son. When the natural ability to produce a son through Sarah had come to an end, then and only then God said, “I will give you a son.” That is because Isaac represents something very special: he represents those who, like him, are born not the natural way but from above.
This is a lesson that Jesus tried to teach Nicodemus. Turn to John 3 and listen to a dialogue that took place. Nicodemus was one of the theologians of Judaism. He was a member of the Sanhedrin. If he was living today he probably would be a professor at Walla Walla College or maybe Andrews University. He was one of the members of the Sanhedrin. He with his church had gone astray in terms of the truth as it is in Christ. But He recognized in Jesus Christ a very special person. So he comes to Jesus at night. He says, “Jesus, nobody could do such miracles as you are doing unless he was from God.”
Jesus ignored his question and, in John 3:3, Jesus answered and said:
I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.
In other words, you cannot belong to God by natural birth, you have to be born again. This made no sense to Nicodemus. His theological school had not studied the new birth issue. So Nicodemus asked in John 3:4:
How can a man be born when he is old? Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!
Nicodemus had missed the point. Jesus was not talking about a second natural birth. And so Jesus answered in John 3:5:
I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.
Water represents baptism and baptism represents burial. “The natural life must go,” says Christ, “that the new life might come. It is not a repetition of the old life. It is a new life in exchange for the old.” Then, in John 3:6, Jesus makes it very clear:
Flesh gives birth to flesh...
The flesh life cannot change. That’s all it will be. It is born flesh, it will be flesh, and it will die flesh.
...but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.
They are two different things. You can’t mix the two. This is what Isaac represents. Let me put it this way: God told Adam and Eve in Gen. 2:17 that the day they sinned they would die. We know that Adam and Eve did not die the day they sinned, i.e., they did not die physically. Their physical life did not die that day. It began the processes of death but it did not die. But Adam and Eve did die that same day. They died spiritually. The Holy Spirit, which was dwelling in them, left them and their life was plunged into darkness. And since God had established a law that each would produce its own kind, the children that Adam produced were born spiritually dead. I read this, for example, in Ephesians 2:1:
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins....
What he meant was, “You were dead spiritually.” Then in verse five he adds:
[God] made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved.
Even when we were dead spiritually, he made us alive together with Christ. Here he is not referring to our experience; he is referring to an objective truth that took place in Christ when Divinity was united to humanity. You see, the humanity that Christ took came from Mary. It was spiritually dead, but the moment that it was united with the Divinity of Christ, it became spiritually alive. That, by the way, is the basis of the new birth experience. In other words, we experience nothing in the Christian life apart from the finished work of Christ. The new birth was not something added to Christ’s earthly mission. It was the beginning of His earthly mission when divinity and humanity were joined together in the womb of Mary.
But, because we are naturally born spiritually dead, we have a problem, and the problem is found in Romans 7:14. Here Paul gives us the problem:
We know that the law is spiritual; but I [that’s a corporate “I,” refering to every human being born in this world] am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.
In other words, my natural life is a slave to sin. In fact Romans 7:5 brings this out:
For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death.
In other words, our natural life does not have the capacity, the ability to keep the law of God. Why? Because the law is spiritual and my natural flesh life is carnal. He brings this out clearly in Romans 8:7:
...The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.
So here am I born with flesh, a life that is enmity with God, a life that is sold under sin, a life that can never please God. And here was Nicodemus trying to please God through his natural life. He had failed and he was coming to God at night for some counsel.
When we were in Ethiopia, we were acquaited with a young man. He was a Communist professor. In other words, he taught Marxism during the special sessions that they had. He was an instructor of Marxist philosophy. But there were questions he had in his mind, so he would come to us at night. My wife nicknamed him Nicodemus. She was not sure whether he was genuine or if he was a spy to get hold of me so they could get rid of me. I was willing to take the risk because I knew that if he is really searching, then he needs to know the gospel. I studied with him several nights. He would only come at night because he dared not come to a pastor in the daytime. He was a Marxist. He was an atheist outwardly.
When we left Ethiopia a few years later, I wondered if anything happened out of this. Years later we received a letter while we were in the States and he said, “By the way, I want you to know that I have accepted Christ and have been baptized.” The same thing happened to Nicodemus. Do you know that he became a follower of Christ after the resurrection?
So please remember that there are men and women out there who are searching because they have tried. There are our own people who have tried to be good by their natural powers. They have made promises. They have made resolutions and they have discovered that the law is spiritual but they are carnal. Well, I have good news for you. The natural life can never please God. That is why Jesus said, “Nicodemus, your foundation is wrong. You need to be born again.” You need to be a child of Isaac. That’s the whole issue.
Now, because of what Christ has done, He has given us a new hope. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:50 that flesh and blood — by that he means this natural life with which we are born through Adam, that we receive through our parents — this flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God:
I declare to you, bothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
Do you know why? Because corruption cannot inherit incorruption. That’s why there will be a change.
In the incarnation, God made the new birth possible for the human race but the new birth becomes a reality in you and me when we have experienced conversion. When do you become a child of Isaac? Turn to 1 Peter as well as 2 Peter. I’m going to read chapter one of both epistles. In 1 Peter 1:3:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead...
You see, Christ took our condemned life and surrendered that life to the cross where it died, and, in exchange, he gave us His own life so that we could rise again in newness of life. That’s what Christ accomplished. Now Peter is saying, “Thank God, bless His name, praise His name, for giving us a new hope with a new life which became ours, was offered to the human race, through the resurrection of Christ.” Then in verses 4 and 5 he says:
...And into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade — kept in heaven for you [i.e., those who accepted these promises], who through faith are shielded by God’s power [please notice it is God who keeps you, not you; our part is faith] until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
In other words, salvation is ours who are Isaac’s children through a promise. We are the children of the promise. The reality will take place at the second coming of Christ. Now turn to 2 Peter 1:2:
Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
I could preach a whole sermon on that text. I’ll tell you why. There are many who think that the way to build up Christians is to give them instructions on do’s and don’ts. But Peter says here that grace and peace are multiplied through the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ. That’s why I believe in expository preaching, that you may have increased knowledge, because it gives you better hope and peace and stronger power. “You shall know the truth,” says Jesus, “and the truth shall make you free.” And we are learning the truth of the new birth today. Verse three:
His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and previous promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
This new life gives you two wonderful things:
Through this new life you are able to reflect the character of God. Not only heaven is yours but godliness is yours through this new life.
Please notice it is the knowledge of Christ that gives us exceedingly great and precious promises. You may be part of that new life that Christ gave to you on the cross. So conversion is a new experience.
Conversion is giving up something you have in exchange for something you want. You were born with the natural life: a life that is sold under sin, a life that is incapable of keeping God’s law, a life that stands condemned, a life that must die. That is what you were born with. That is your natural inheritance. And now God says, “I have made a way of escape. You can give this up in exchange for the life of my Son, which is righteous, which is immortal, which gives you the right to stand just before God’s law.” And if you refuse it, all I can say is you need to see a doctor. Only a fool will reject such an exchange or somebody who is crazy in the mind. But some of us have not understood the good news.
When you accept Christ, you become a partaker of the divine nature. You are a new person, a born again person in Christ. The issue is not whether you have your name in the books of the church. That won’t save you. It is whether you have the new life in Christ that qualifies you to be a child of Isaac.
With this background, let us turn to Galatians 4. Galatians was the province of Galatia. The churches there were evangelized by Paul himself through the preaching of the gospel. But after he left, some false teachers called Judaizers came and said to them, “You know, Paul gave you an incomplete gospel. He told you that you have to accept Christ to be your Righteousness. That is not enough. It is only part of the truth. The other part is that you must be circumcised and keep the law. It is not enough simply to accept the gift. The gift is incomplete. You must also do something.” And the poor Galatians fell for the trap.
I remember several years ago, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was an African from South Africa, an ex-pastor who was disfellowshipped and his credentials were removed. He came to our churches in Kenya and he said to them, “You know, the missionaries brought to you the gospel but they brought to you only half the truth. They have not brought to you the other half.”
Our people said, “What’s the other half?”
He said, “The sanctuary message.”
You see, our people were not preaching the sanctuary message in the 1970s because of Brinsmead. They were afraid to be labelled as a Brinsmead so they kind of pushed that message down. So this African said, “I am going to bring you the sanctuary message. They will give you one half and I will give you the other half. Therefore, you pay the church half tithe and pay me half tithe.” What a bargain! And they fell for it. This man went back to South Africa quite rich. Anyway, here the Galatians were trapped into what we call Galatianism: “partly by Christ and partly by your works.”
When Paul heard about that, he did not waste time. He sat right down and wrote this letter to the Galatians. This is a book that we as a people need to understand. Many Adventists are trapped in Galatianism. That’s why it was the main book used in 1888. Paul wrote his hardest letter in Galatians. In Galatians 4:21, he is asking the Galatians a question:
Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says?
Now there are two systems that you can be under. If you read Romans 6:14, Paul tells us there that the born again Christian is no longer under the law but under grace. Why? Because in chapter seven he says we have died in the body of Christ under the law. He did not mean that the law was done away with. He simply meant that we are no longer living under the jurisdiction of the law.
What does it mean to be under the law? It means to live under its rulership. The word “under” means “to be ruled by.” How does the law rule a person? Well, it is very simple. The law says, “If you obey me perfectly, you may live. But if you disobey me, even in one point, only one, you are under the curse.” If you don’t believe me, read Galatians 3:10 where Paul quotes [from Deuteronomy 27:26] the law:
All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.”
So Paul is saying to these Galatians, “You who desire to be under the law, don’t you know what is found in the book of the law? Do you not hear the law?”
The people in Paul’s day did not make that big distinction that we do: moral law, ceremonial law, health laws, and civil law — all of them were under one umbrella called “The Book of the Law.” And in the book of the law, in the book of Genesis, which is the first book of the law, there is the story of Abraham. Paul refers to this in Gal.4:22:
For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman.
Notice how Paul defines the wife of Abraham: he calls Sarah “the free woman.” (So men, please don’t make your wives slaves.) God looks at the real wife as a natural woman. He looks at the surrogate wife, that is Hagar, as a bondwoman. She was a slave; in fact, she was a slave of Sarah. Now, why does Paul bring up Abraham’s two sons? In Galatians 4:23 he says:
His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way; but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a promise.
Abraham did not produce Isaac. He couldn’t. It was medically, scientifically impossible. Sarah had passed the age of childbearing. That was absolutely clear. Isaac was born according to the promise of God. Now, having reminded them of these facts, Paul goes on to Galatians 4:24:
These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: this is Hagar.
This is an allegory or symbolic; these things have spiritual significance. Ishmael represents those who are under the law. Why? Because the old covenant made at Mt. Sinai was the following: God gave the law at Mt. Sinai and the people said, “All that You have said we will do.”
In other words, the old covenant is where God gives the law and man promises to keep and fulfill that law. And if he fails? To use a good German word, “kaput.” That’s the end of him. Galatians 4:25:
Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children.
Hagar represents legalism, which the Jews are still under in Jerusalem. In 1980, I had a workers’ meeting with the pastors of Egypt. I tried to give them the gospel because, if you want legalism at its very best, go to the Middle East. The place the gospel began is where the falling away has taken place most. As an appreciation for my studies, they gave me a trip to Mount Sinai and I’ll tell you what I saw: nothing but barren rocks and rocks and rocks.
One dear, dear monk many years ago, who was a real Galatianist, carved out of those rocks steps from Mt. Catherine right to the top of Sinai. It took thirty years. I thanked him for the steps because it made it easier for me to climb. But he did it as a way of salvation. He thought that God would give him a special ticket to heaven for spending thirty years carving those steps on the rocks.
There are some Adventists who are like that, who have tried and tried to go to heaven under the law. If you are doing that you belong to Ishmael, not to Isaac. For I read in Galatians 4:26:
But the Jerusalem that is above [God’s children] is free, and she is our mother.
“Our” means both Jews and Gentiles who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior. Then you have this famous quotation [Isaiah 54:1]:
Sing, O barren woman, you who never bore a child....
Are you barren? Have you tried to be good and have failed? That’s because the natural life “does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.” If you want to be godly, if you want to please God, then the only life that can do it is the life of Christ that comes in you through the new birth experience. And in this context he says in Gal.4:28:
Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise.
But he doesn’t stop there. He introduces another problem which I will discuss in detail in our next study but will only introduce today. When you accept Christ by faith, which is Abraham’s child, then the Holy Spirit comes and dwells in you and you become now a child of Isaac; you experience the new birth. But the old life that you were born with, the natural life that is under sin, doesn’t disappear. You have said goodbye to it by faith and faith is not reality. So actually a born-again Christian lives two lives: the flesh and the spirit. And these two lives are a contradiction to each other. In fact, in Galatians 5:17 Paul brings this out:
For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.
In other words, there can be no partnership between flesh and Spirit. Both these are trying to dominate you. That is a struggle you will go through all of your life, even after probation closes. I’m not saying you will fall, but I am saying that the flesh and the Spirit will continually struggle in you. When will you get peace? Not until the second coming of Christ or until we bury you physically in the grave. That struggle will go on.
What I want you to know today is what your attitude toward the flesh should be. Look at Gal.4:29:
At that time the son born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It is the same now.
In other words, he is taking the literal incident in Abraham’s life and he applies it to the Christian life and says the struggle between the two also will be experienced by you.
Go back to Genesis 21 to get the whole picture. In verse 5, we read that Abraham was a hundred years old when he Isaac. He was approximately 85 or 86 when he had Ishmael. So Ishmael was a young teenager when Isaac was born. I want you to get the picture. As long as Isaac was not born, Ishmael was number one and when the doctors announced that Sarah can no longer have children, I can imagine Hagar sighing a sigh of relief. “Now my son is permanently number one.” Well, she had bad news because one year later Isaac was born. You can imagine how she felt.
Isaac was born and then he was weaned and now I want you to go to Gen. 21:8. This incident is important because it also has spiritual significance. Paul is taking for granted that we are familiar with the background. Since we are not, living 2,000 years later, we need to remind ourselves. Gen. 21:8,9:
The child grew and was weaned, and on the day Isaac was weaned Abraham held a great feast. But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking....
Some Bibles say mocking and some say scoffing, some say laughing and some say joking, but the Hebrew text says, “He was teasing him maliciously.” “You rascal, why were you born? Don’t you realize that you have put an end to my wonderful hope?” So what did Sarah do when she saw Ishmael mistreating her son Isaac? Verse 10:
...And she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”
The two cannot dwell in the same camp. And Abraham didn’t said, “Sarah, that’s an excellent idea.” No, folks, I want you to notice how Abraham reacted. When Sarah said to Abraham, “Please go to Hagar and produce a child,” Abraham said, “That’s a wonderful idea.” He never even consulted God. But when Sarah says, “Get rid of this woman and her son....” Verse 11:
The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son.
“This is my own flesh and blood; I produced him. I can’t get rid of him; he is mine.”
We have the same problem with our self-righteousness. This is something we produced. But there is no way that self-righteousness can be mixed with Christ’s righteousness. It is all of Him or none of Him. So he took it to God, hoping that God would agree with him. Listen to what God said to Abraham in verse 12:
But God said to him, “Do not be so distressed about the boy and your maidservant. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.
“Whatever Sarah says to you, this time, listen to her voice for in Isaac your seed shall be called. She is right this time. She was wrong the first time and you never consulted me but this time she is right.” Paul takes this in Galatians 4:29-30:
At that time the son born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It is the same now. [The flesh will give you no peace. It will want to dominate you all your life.] But what does the Scripture say? “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son.”
If you want the application, look at Gal.5:24:
Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.
Every day, tell the flesh it belongs to the cross: “Not I, but Christ.” So Paul concludes in Gal.4:31:
Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.
So my question today is not “Are you a member of the Adventist Church?” Not “Is your name in the books?” Not “Have you been physically baptized?” My question is, “Are you a born-again Christian?” If you are not, all these other things are of no value because only the children of Isaac, those who are born from above, have a right to the kingdom of God. First, you must believe the gospel. Secondly, you must surrender to the gospel by faith. And the surrender means: “Not I but Christ.” In other words, “I am crucified with Christ but I am still living. It is not I. The life that I now live I live through that which I receive from Isaac which is the new life in Christ.”
Our next study will discuss the struggle that Jacob went through. It was not until Jacob’s faith prevailed that his name was changed from Jacob to Israel. It is my prayer that your faith will endure unto the end also. May God bless you.