God's Sovereign Choice
As he saith also in Osee, I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved. Rom 9:25
Osee, I will... The 3rd Old Testament prophecy fulfilled in Romans (Rom. 9:25; Hos. 2:23). Next, Rom. 9:26.
Hosea spoke of the ultimate restoration of Israel to God, but Paul’s emphasis is that restoration necessarily implies her present alienation from God. Therefore, Israel’s unbelief is consistent with the Old Testament revelation.
This scripture quotes from Hosea:
Hos. 1:9-10 “Then said [God], Call his name Loammi: for ye [are] not my people, and I will not be your [God].” “Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, [that] in the place where it was said unto them, Ye [are] not my people, [there] it shall be said unto them, [Ye are] the sons of the living God.”
Hos. 2:23 “And I will sow her unto me in the earth; and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy; and I will say to [them which were] not my people, Thou [art] my people; and they shall say, [Thou art] my God.”
Up to this point Paul had been speaking conditionally and objectively, but in Rom. 9:24 he was more direct — even us — because he and his readers were some of the vessels of mercy sovereignly chosen by God. God not only chose them but He also called them, including Jews and Gentiles. The point is that God’s sovereign choice was manifested not only in the Jews’ ancestry (in Isaac and Jacob, Rom. 9:6-13), but also in Paul’s generation and today. To back up his conclusion and particularly the part about Gentiles, Paul quoted two verses from Hosea (Hos. 2:23; 1:10). God directed Hosea to give his children symbolic names — one son Lo-Ammi (not my people) and the daughter Lo-Ruhamah (not… loved). These represented God’s abandonment of the Northern Kingdom of Israel to the Assyrian Captivity and Exile (Hos. 1:2-9).
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