Romans 9:31

“What shall we say then?” is one of Paul’s familiar questions in Romans, and he uses it to stop and draw out what his argument means. Up to this point the chapter has spoken of God’s free choice of Jacob over Esau (Romans 9:6–13), and of his justice in showing mercy and in hardening (Romans 9:14–29). Now Paul turns to what has actually happened among Jews and Gentiles, and to Israel’s own responsibility for it. These four verses lead straight into his prayer for Israel and his words about their zeal in Romans 10:1–4.

The Gentiles are the éthnos, a word for a nation or people, which here has its extended sense of the Gentiles, the peoples outside Israel. They stood outside the covenant of Moses and its law, and many Jews of the day counted them sinners and unclean. Paul says they “followed not after righteousness.” The verb is diṓkō, to pursue, a word that can also mean to persecute, and it pictures someone running hard after a goal. The Gentiles were outside that race altogether.

Yet they “have attained to righteousness.” This verb, katalambánō, means to lay hold of, obtain or come upon. People who were pursuing other things came upon righteousness and took hold of it. That is the surprise at the heart of the passage, and it shows the free grace of God, who gives righteousness apart from any merit or effort of the one who receives it.

The word for righteousness, dikaiosýnē, means rightness or equity in character and action, and in Paul’s letters it means above all justification, a right standing with God that God himself declares and gives. Paul names its kind at once: “even the righteousness which is of faith.” It comes out of faith, pístis, which here is trust and reliance on God and on what he has provided in Christ. God’s saving purpose was always wider than one nation. Isaiah spoke long before of a light for the Gentiles (Isaiah 49:6), and in Christ the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile has been broken down, so that the two are made one new people, reconciled to God through the cross (Ephesians 2:14–16).

Israel, Israḗl, is the name given first to the patriarch Jacob and then to the nation descended from him, God’s covenant people and Paul’s own kinsmen. It was this people, entrusted with God’s law and promises, who missed the way. Paul uses the same verb, diṓkō, for Israel that he used of the Gentiles, and here it describes a real pursuit: Israel “followed after the law of righteousness” eagerly and with zeal. The Jews of Paul’s day, and the Pharisees especially, revered the law of Moses and gave themselves to keeping its commandments, and their life as a nation was bound up with it. Paul had been a Pharisee himself and knew that zeal well.

Yet Israel “hath not attained to the law of righteousness.” Here the verb is phthánō, which means to come before someone, and then to come to, arrive at or attain. The two verses share the English word “attained,” and Paul uses two different Greek verbs for it. The Gentiles laid hold of righteousness, while Israel, for all its running, fell short of the goal. Their effort was great, and the trouble lay in the track they ran on.

Paul has already said that the works of the law justify no one in God’s sight (Romans 3:20). The law itself is holy and good. Its work was to show people their sin and point them to their need of a Saviour, and Paul calls it a schoolmaster leading to Christ (Galatians 3:24). Israel took it as a way of earning righteousness, and so missed the one it was pointing to.

Paul asks “Wherefore?” and answers at once: “Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law.” The “it” is the righteousness God gives. Faith, pístis, the same word as in verse 30, is humble reliance on what God has promised and provided in Christ. Works, érgon, are deeds, the things a person toils at and does, and “the works of the law” are the acts of obedience and observance that Israel offered God as the ground of his acceptance.

The words “as it were” stand for the small Greek word hōs, “as.” Israel really did the works of the law, and Paul’s point lies in how they held them. They treated those works as a means of earning righteousness, when obedience is meant to answer a righteousness God has already given by grace.

God’s way has always been faith, from Abraham onward, and salvation is by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8–9). The same failing turns up in every age, whenever people lean on good deeds, moral uprightness, religious practice or even sound theology to win God’s favour. Pride and a wrong idea of what God requires can blind a person to how simple and sufficient the gospel is.

Israel’s hopes made the stumbling easier. Many looked for a conquering king who would set them free from Rome and restore an earthly kingdom. A Messiah who would suffer and die, and whose righteousness would be counted to those who believe, overturned those hopes, and so did the welcome of Gentiles on equal terms, apart from circumcision and the law.

“For they stumbled at that stumblingstone.” The word próskomma comes from a verb meaning to strike against or trip, so it is the thing a foot strikes, an obstacle, and it can mean an occasion of falling away. Joined with líthos, stone, it gives the “stumblingstone” over which a person trips and falls. The stone is Christ. Israel, seeking righteousness by their own works, came upon him and fell over him. His message of grace, his cross and his call to believe gave offence to people who were building a righteousness of their own.

Paul calls Christ crucified a stumbling block to the Jews (1 Corinthians 1:23). Death on a tree was tied to the curse of the law (Deuteronomy 21:23), so a crucified Messiah was a scandal to many.

The verse ends with a promise. The verb pisteúō can mean simply to believe that something is true, and it also means to trust and rely on a person. Here its object is a person, “believeth on him,” so it means to trust oneself to Christ and rely on him and his atoning work. That trust is the very opposite of seeking righteousness by one’s own works. “Whosoever” opens the promise to everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, across every boundary of nation.

“Shall not be ashamed” means that the believer’s hope will be fulfilled and his trust proved right, and that he will be kept from disgrace and condemnation, above all on the day of judgment. Paul repeats the promise in Romans 10:11, and a psalm gives the same assurance to those who wait on the LORD (Psalm 25:3).

Christ “is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Romans 10:4). Where Israel ran and fell short, Christ fulfilled the law’s demands perfectly as the representative of his people and bore the penalty for sin in his death. His righteousness is what Israel was seeking and what the Gentiles received.

These verses show us who God is. He sets the terms of righteousness himself, and his terms are grace, received by faith. He reaches people who were looking elsewhere, as he reached the Gentiles, and he lays the stone himself, in the middle of his people, where all can come to it. Israel’s story shows how earnest zeal can carry a person past the very gift it seeks, and that warning reaches anyone who leans on his own record before God. The verse that speaks of stumbling ends in a promise. The stone some fall over holds up everyone who trusts in Christ, and our standing with God rests on his righteousness, given by faith, and on his word that “whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.”