Romans 10:1-3; Romans 3:22—2 Corinthians 5:21; 2 Corinthians 3:14-16; Romans 11:7,8,25
Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.
Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe—For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ. But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart. Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.
What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded (According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto this day…For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): See how they went astray through inconsiderate zeal! for they sought to set up a righteousness of their own; and this foolish confidence proceeded from their ignorance of God’s righteousness.
JOHN GILL (1697-1771): This the Jews submitted not to, because they had no true humble sense of themselves as sinners, nor did they care to acknowledge themselves as such; which submission to Christ’s righteousness requires and necessarily involves—and because they had an overweening opinion of their own righteousness, which they trusted to, and depended upon, imagining it to be blameless, and to contain all that the law required, and therefore they stood in no need of any other; and as for the righteousness of Christ, they had it in contempt; their carnal minds being enmity to Him, they were not subject to His righteousness.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): They are so proud that they will not submit to be saved by the righteousness of another, even though that other is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Yet this is the main point—the submission of our proud will to the righteousness of God.
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): Unbelief is a non-submission to the righteousness of God.
JOHN CALVIN: The first step towards obtaining the righteousness of God is to renounce our own righteousness: for why is it, that we seek righteousness from another, except that necessity constrains us?
ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): What is the real state of the case before us? They were not all unbelievers: several thousands of them had been converted to the Christian faith; though the body of the nation, and especially its rulers, civil and spiritual, continued opposed to Christ and His doctrine.
JOHN GILL: Israel—the body and bulk of that people, who sought for life and righteousness by their obedience to the law, which they in general were in quest of, and pursuit after, but did not obtain—for the thing was impracticable and impossible—no life nor righteousness are ever to be had by the law of works; they did not obtain life and righteousness, because they sought them in a wrong place and in a wrong way; they sought them not by faith in Christ Jesus, where they are only to be had, but by their own works, which fall abundantly short.
JOHN WESLEY (1703-1791): What is the conclusion? It is this: that Israel in general hath not obtained justification; but those of them only who believe. And the rest were blinded by their own willful prejudice.
JOHN GILL: As they knew not the Messiah, so neither would they understand; they sinned willfully against light and knowledge; they shut their eyes against all that evidence and demonstration given of Jesus of Nazareth being the Messiah, by His doctrines and miracles…And they were also blinded by God Himself, so that they could not believe; for after all this, it was but just with God to give them up to judicial blindness and hardness of heart.
MATTHEW HENRY: Blindness and hardness are expressive of the same senselessness and stupidity of spirit. They shut their eyes, and would not see; this was their sin: and then God, in righteous judgment, blinded their eyes, that they could not see; this was their punishment.
JOHN CALVIN: He assigns a reason, why they are so long in blindness.
JOHN WESLEY: God hath at length withdrawn His Spirit, and so given them up to “a spirit of slumber,” Isaiah 29:10; which is fulfilled unto this day.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): They do not see that chain of prophecy, commencing with the promise of “the Seed of the woman who should bruise the serpent’s head,” Genesis 3:15, and gradually proceeding through all successive ages, with ever increasing clearness and precision, till it terminated in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. In this respect the Jews of later ages are blinder than their forefathers. The Jews previous to the coming of Christ did so far understand the prophecies, that they knew of what tribe the Messiah was to be born, and what was to be the place of his nativity: they knew also, that the various prophecies which were cited by our Lord and his Apostles were cited according to their true import: for we do not find them on any occasion controverting the application of those passages to the promised Messiah. But Jews of later ages, seeing how demonstrably those passages prove the Messiahship of Jesus, have resorted to other interpretations, in order to weaken the force of the arguments with which they are pressed.
MATTHEW HENRY: Of all judgments spiritual judgments are the sorest, and most to be dreaded, though they make the least noise. Ever since Isaiah prophesied—or, rather, ever since the first preaching of the gospel—It is still true concerning multitudes of them, even to this day in which we live; they are hardened and blinded, the obstinacy and unbelief go by succession from generation to generation, according to their own fearful imprecation, which entailed the curse: “His blood be upon us and upon our children,” Matthew 27:25.
CHARLES SIMEON: But it shall not be always so: there is a time coming, “when that infatuated nation shall turn unto the Lord; and then the veil shall be taken away.”
MATTHEW POOLE (1624-1679): Blindness is happened to Israel in part only. They were not all blinded or hardened; or this blindness should not last always, but for a time.
JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): It is neither total nor perpetual.
MATTHEW POOLE: The latter sense agrees best with the word “mystery.” Secondly, another part of this mystery was, that this blindness of the Jews should continue till “the fulness of the Gentiles” came in.
JOHN GILL: Since the blindness of the Jews is not yet removed, it seems plain that the full number of God’s chosen ones among the Gentiles is not yet completed in regeneration; for as soon as ever they are all called and brought in, the vail will be taken away from the Jews, and they will be turned unto the Lord.
JOHN WESLEY: Israel, therefore, is neither totally nor finally rejected.
CHARLES SIMEON: How great will that “mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh,” appear to them, when they shall see, that that very Jesus, whom their fathers crucified, was indeed “the Lord of glory,” “Jehovah’s fellow,” “Emmanuel, God with us!” Then they will see, that every part of their ceremonial law was fulfilled and realized in Him: that He was the true Temple, “in whom dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily;” the altar, which sanctifieth all our gifts; the sacrifice, that taketh away the sins of the whole world; the priest, that offered that sacrifice, and is gone with his own blood within the vail, and ever liveth there to make intercession for us. Then they will see why God repeatedly gave that particular command to Moses, “See thou make all things according to the pattern shewn to thee in the mount.” Even the minutest point that was revealed to Moses, portrayed something in the character of Christ—all the offices of Christ, as Prophet, Priest, and King, together with all that He should do in the execution of them, was there delineated: and, when the completion and concentration of them all shall be made manifest to them, with what wonder and admiration will they exclaim, “O the depths both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!”
