Chapter # 11 Paragraph # 3 Study # 1
January 13, 2019
Humble, Texas
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1769 Translation:
13 For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office:
14 If by any means I may provoke to emulation [them which are] my flesh, and might save some of them.
15 For if the casting away of them [be] the reconciling of the world, what [shall] the receiving [of them be], but life from the dead?
16 For if the firstfruit [be] holy, the lump [is] also [holy]: and if the root [be] holy, so [are] the branches.
1901 ASV Translation:
13 But I speak to you that are Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle of Gentiles, I glorify my ministry;
14 if by any means I may provoke to jealousy [them that are] my flesh, and may save some of them.
15 For if the casting away of them [is] the reconciling of the world, what [shall] the receiving [of them be], but life from the dead?
16 And if the firstfruit is holy, so is the lump: and if the root is holy, so are the branches.
- I. Paul Deliberately Turns to the Gentiles to Build His Argument.
- A. "I am saying" is lego and, by now, we recognize the impact of this verb: declaring something that is presented as absolute doctrinal truth.
- 1. This is the "revelational" root of "faith": this is where "believers" are supposed to go to get their "doctrinal feet" on the ground so they may withstand the wiles of the adversaries.
- 2. In this eleventh chapter of Romans alone, lego is used five times before we get to verse thirteen (11:1, 2, 4, 9, and 11).
- B. "...to you, the gentiles...".
- 1. There is "danger" in Paul's teaching about how God determined to use Jewish hardness in order to "save" non-Jews.
- a. There is more than one way a "gentile" might react to this doctrine.
- b. Paul's intention is to get the "gentiles" to see that God turned to them for blessing so that He might bring salvation to the "Jews". In other words, God's turn to the "gentiles" is not to be taken as any kind of indication at all that this means that "gentiles" are now somehow "superior" to the Jews.
- 2. Before he gets to the danger, he addresses the foundations of his "apostleship".
- a. He is God's "apostle" to gentiles (nations). There may be some irony in the fact that Saul of Tarsus, that vehement defender of apostate, legalistic, Judaism, is restrained from having a significant impact upon that Judaism and is "commissioned" to take the offer of salvation to everyone but the Jews. His gospel was proclaimed "to the Jew first, but also to the Greek", but, though he made it a habit to approach the synagogue in the cities to which he took the Gospel, he was invariably forced to withdraw to the gentiles. The reason is not hard to find: the Jews hated him for becoming the major promoter of faith in Jesus of Nazareth to such a degree that they could not listen to him.
- b. He claims to be "magnifying" his apostleship to the gentiles. This means he is deliberately forcing the attention to the "tender spot of the festering sore" as far as the Jews are concerned. But, he is not "rubbing their face in it" in some sort of vengeful retaliation for their hate. Rather, he is pointing out just how wildly successful his apostleship has been as a way to "provoke" the Jews to "jealousy" as Romans 10:19 declared. This is a divine method, not a Pauline one.
- c. This entire issue of using "jealousy" to "provoke" the Jews to repentance is a great oddity to most human beings. How does "stirring up jealousy" not lead to greater rage? In this way: "jealousy" is only one emotional step away from deep "despair" and deep "despair" is a sometimes-effective "godly sorrow" that can result in repentance (2 Corinthians 7:9-10).
- 1) The verb translated "provoke to emulation" (KJV) is only used in this precise form four times in the New Testament, three of which are in Romans (10:10; 11:11,14). The other time is in 1 Corinthians 10:22 where Paul asks the Corinthians whether their behavior is "provoking the Lord to jealousy", and then points out the danger: "are we stronger than He?".
- 2) However, if we dive below the surface here and look into the main idea of the root of this verb, we discover significant truth.
- a) The "root" is the verb without its prefix.
- i. The "prefix" is a widely used preposition that is often "attached" to a verbal idea in order to "intensify" its meaning according to the direction of thought that the preposition implies.
- ii. This "prefix" is simply Paul's way of enabling his readers to understand just how highly motivated Paul was "to provoke to emulation" (i.e., "make jealous"). He was hoping to make his "kinsmen according to the flesh" intensely "jealous".
- b) This "root" spawned a noun that is used 17 times in the New Testament with a meaning along the lines of "being highly motivated to act" in either an attempt to correct or to block, and, failing that, to destroy. The basic idea is to so contradict one's values and beliefs as to generate a strong attempt to oppose (a "positive" use of this noun is found in John's record of Jesus' cleansing of the temple as an explanation for His uncharacteristic violence).
- c) This "root", itself, is used in eleven texts of the New Testament, most of which are useful to define its meaning, which is: "to feel so strongly about something either valuable or true as to be moved into aggressive action".
- d) Thus, when a prefix is, then, attached to this meaning, we come away with someone being "whipped into a frenzy" by "jealousy".
- 3) That Paul knows beyond a doubt that the initial reaction of his "kinsmen" will be extremely dangerous (he suffered the proof of that throughout his history of preaching to the gentiles and being tortured in various ways by the Jews), he also knows that after the explosive hostility has run out of adrenalin, a time of "defeat" will settle in that sometimes brings about a more sober thoughtfulness in the direction of "despair" and an attendant desire to be "delivered" from these cycles of rage/despair.