Or, The Blessed Option
Scripture: Romans 11:11-15
Date: May 21, 2023
Speaker: Sean Higgins
Four is the number of sides and corners on a square. Here is the fourth sermon for Romans 11:11-15; we’re trying to cover every square inch of it.
We’ve walked through Paul’s argument:
This is the clearest paragraph in Romans about the Gentiles’ jealousability as part of God’s sovereign, and so irrevocable/inexorable, purpose to save a people for His own possession. God Himself designed and develops the jealousable argument. Those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified with jealousability. Jealousability is not the whip cream and cherry on top of our salvation, it is the whole bowl of blessings.
Before we move on from the explicit jealousable vocabulary (see Romans 10:19, 11:11, 11:14), I think it would be helpful, if not needful, to clarify jealousability and connect it to some other labels. It’s good for you to do the next right thing no matter what outcome you can see, and yet why not be able to put that outcome into its meaningful context? Your labor in the Lord is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58), and why? So I want you to understand jealousability as manifestly as possible and pursue it as faithfully as possible. When asked about it, I want you to be able to defend it and extend it. I don’t want you to feel bad when boasting in the Lord; let us aim toward a jealousability with no disclaimers.
There are four descriptions of jealousability that grow out of this paragraph.
I am not part of any social circle that polices itself so fiercely as the “Reformed.” At TEC we say we are “Reformed and still reforming,” but there are plenty of those who claim that they are truly Reformed and that we can’t be based on some things we don’t believe. Yet to say that one can only be really Reformed by accepting later additions (such as those in the mid 17th century in Westminster) is like saying one can only be American by binding oneself to all the 21st century adjustments to the United States Constitution. I don’t buy it, neither should you.
It actually doesn’t even really matter whether or not one takes that label, but I’m using it as shorthand for a love of the evangel. The Reformation began in the 16th century with a recovery of Bible reading and a rejection of dualism between sacred and secular. Protestants had a shared theology and worldview that made them not Roman Catholic. We identify with at least that sort of the Reformed.
To call jealousability reformed means that jealousability must be defined according to God’s Word (sola Scriptura), not Pope’s or prosperity preachers. Jealousability is a by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone argument. All the blessings we receive are soli Deo gloria, and so the final section of Romans 11:33-36. Israel will be provoked to faith in Christ by our salvation fruitfulness, not provoked to follow our worldly ways (see Romans 12:2).
The Roman Catholic Church was full of workers and merit-earners, those who aimed to present their righteousness to God. And like the unbelieving Jews, “being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeing to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness” (Romans 10:3). They “did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone” (Romans 9:32).
Reformed jealousability and blessings are Christian, and so start with the gospel of Christ. We have no jealousability apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. We boast in Him, we are created in Christ Jesus for good works as those saved by grace through faith, and these glorify God not us; “that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-10). Reformed jealousbility is the same as from-through-to-Him jealousability (see Romans 11:36). The truly Reformed are rich in blessings.
I like this nickname. I just like it, I’m not married to it. It’s as helpful as a label to me as “dark roast.” You don’t necessarily need to know to what extent the beans have been roasted before drinking the coffee; coffee is good. And yet if I can choose, I know what kind of coffee is gooder. Dark roast also means it isn’t tea.
My point is, jealousability is Kuyperian in that it summarizes a theological worldview from God’s Word that equips us to present our bodies as living sacrifices on earth (Romans 12:1), not just to understand and live in the library of theology books, or podcasts, or even personal quiet times, or our Lord’s Day services of worship. Kuyperian is contra Christian truth-tubes. Remember that the Lord made six days for work. “The earth is the LORD’s and the fulness thereof” (Psalm 24:1), so “all are yours” (1 Corinthians 3:22).
Paul is the one who wrote that you must “confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord” (Romans 10:9), and Abraham Kuyper is the one, not-inspired of course, who wrote that Christ cries “Mine” over every square inch in the whole domain of human existence. Christ is Lord over the soul and the solar system; He made heaven and earth.
Kuyperian is a nickname for dark roast living, for rejecting what Christ rejects, which is sin, not the skin and bones and blood and opposable thumb’s. Christ took on flesh, He didn’t despise it. Kuyperian belongs with “riches for the world” and “riches for the Gentiles” and “life from the dead.” Jesus came that we might be saved to and for living that is not vanity under the sun. Our lives are the provocative argument, like Kuyperian cue balls breaking the rack.
There’s some purposeful irony in using this description, since Covenant Theology is a recognized theological label that I…eschew. But the irony is that, while I don’t prefer capital C Covenant Theology, it’s because of great love for and conviction about the Lord’s covenants, especially the New Covenant.
Last week we referred to Ezekiel 37 and the valley of dry bones and the Lord’s promise to bring life to the house of Israel. This object lesson comes after the second half of Ezekiel 36 where the Lord promises to remove the heart of stone and give new hearts, hearts of flesh (verse 26). He promises to put His Spirit in them and cause them to obey (verse 27).
But these promises of spiritual blessings belong with earthly blessings of dwelling in the land of their fathers (verse 28), and having plentiful grain not famine (verse 29), where the fruit trees and fields will be abundant (verse 30). Their cities will be inhabited, desolate land tilled into life, and other nations will see ruined places rebuilt (verse 36).
These blessings are promised to “the house of Israel” (verse 22). And it’s not for their sake, but for the Lord’s name. He repeats the group and the motivation again in verse 32 for this unconditional covenant.
In Jeremiah 31 this is referred to as the “new covenant.”
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, (Jeremiah 31:31 ESV) For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Jeremiah 31:33 ESV)
And see how secure the Lord likens this covenant, verses 35-37. If the sun and moon and stars stop, if the waves of the sea stop, then Israel will be no more.
This covenant word, to Israel, is the reason for Romans 9-11. It is the reason Paul said “it is not as though the word of God has failed” (Romans 9:6). It is the reason that supercessionism—any form of replacing Israel with the church—makes Paul’s argument and the covenant itself non-sensical. Any Covenant Theology that doesn’t make a place for ethnic Israel stumbles and falls.
The covenant is about the salvation of Israel and the kingdom of Christ, where Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords over all the earth. Gentile jealousability is part of the Lord’s plan to bring about these riches for the world. That is the covenant the Lord made to Israel, the covenant behind Paul’s confidence, and the covenant driving our courage to live jealousably. We will need courage.
Jealousability is truly reformed, truly covenantal, truly diverse. Diversity is a popular word these days with a destructive definition. But not only is jealousability as diverse as there are diverse callings and Christ-honoring, Kuyperian-sized interests, jealousability is also diverse in terms of its immediate/longterm and obvious/intangible positive results.
And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets— who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection. (Hebrews 11:32-35a)
That sounds like winning. But then the rest of the paragraph.
Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. (Hebrews 11:35b–38 ESV)
These names and stories are not about some winners and some losers. These are all acts and accomplishments of faith. These are all role models, even if we’re not sure at the moment which role God has for us. It is that epitaph near the end that nails it: of whom the world was not worthy .
These are our people. By faith we are these people. Courage for Christ by faith is compelling, whether we are blessed to “win” now as well as later or we are blessed with a reputation for fighting the good fight and having hope in the resurrection.
God reveals His righteousness from faith to faith, and so the righteous shall live by faith (Romans 1:17). Reformed, Kuyperian, Covenant-confident, Diverse “according to the measure of faith that God has assigned” (Romans 12:3).
Lives of jealousability are a gospel argument: look at the Lord we serve. This is the Blessed Option.
I do pray that you would enjoy your salvation, that your salvation would be fruitful, that your salvation would show the riches of God’s kindness, that your salvation would be like life from the dead, that your salvation would be both salty and bright to your family, amidst the flock, and for sake of making Jews (and other Gentiles) jealous.
What sort of people ought you to be? You ought to be from-through-to-Him people. See the blessings He has given (all from Him). Abide in the strength of His Spirit (living through Him). Point to His excellencies, His mercies, His purposes (all glory to Him). What sort of people ought you to be? A living doxology.
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
“For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?”“Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?”
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11:33–36, ESV)