What About the Law of Moses?

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Should Christians Keep the Seventh-Day Sabbath, the Feasts, and the Food Laws?

Should a Christian keep the seventh-day Sabbath, observe the feasts of Leviticus 23, and stay away from pork? Many sincere believers say yes, and they say it with an open Bible.

The teaching goes by several names, most often Hebrew Roots or Torah observance (Torah is the Hebrew word for instruction, and it commonly refers to the law given through Moses). Its case should be heard in its strongest form, and it runs something like this. God does not change, and He does not lie. He called the Sabbath a sign forever. He called the feasts His own appointed times. He warned Israel never to add to His commands or take away from them. The prophets called Israel back to His law again and again. Jesus Himself said He did not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. Where, then, did Moses or the Prophets ever say that the Messiah would come and change what God commanded? And if they never said it, how can the followers of Israel’s Messiah treat the Sabbath, the feasts, and the food laws as finished?

That is a serious question, asked by people who love the Lord and want to obey Him. It deserves a careful answer from Scripture.

What We Gladly Affirm

Let me begin with what every Christian should affirm, because there is more common ground here than is often supposed.

  1. Grace did not begin in Matthew. The God who gave the law at Sinai is the same God who proclaimed His own name to Moses as “merciful and gracious” (Exodus 34:6). The Bible does not have a harsh God in the Old Testament and a kind one in the New.
  2. Loving obedience to what God has commanded is never legalism. Moses joined love for God and obedience to God in a single breath (Deuteronomy 10:12–13), and Jesus did the same (John 14:15).
  3. Christians are not free from God’s moral law. Paul insists that the gospel of faith does not overthrow the law: “By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law” (Romans 3:31). He describes himself as “not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ” (1 Corinthians 9:21). And he names the commandments against adultery, murder, theft, and coveting as summed up in love for our neighbor (Romans 13:8–10).
  4. Gentile believers have been grafted into Israel’s olive tree, and Paul forbids us to boast over the natural branches (Romans 11:17–18).

Where Christians have spoken as though the Old Testament were an embarrassment, or as though Jesus came to rescue us from God’s law instead of from our sin, they have been wrong, and the correction is deserved.

So the disagreement is narrower than it first appears. Both sides believe God’s people must obey God. What divides us is what God now commands, and who has the right to tell us.

A Covenant “Not Like” the Old

Begin where the Old Testament itself points forward. In Jeremiah 31 God promises a new covenant. It is made “with the house of Israel and the house of Judah” (verse 31). In it God will write His law on His people’s hearts (verse 33). Those who teach Torah observance love this passage, and they are right to. But one verse in it is easy to pass over. God says the new covenant will be

“not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt” (Jeremiah 31:32).

Which covenant did God make with Israel when He brought them out of Egypt? The covenant at Sinai. So here is one of Israel’s own prophets, about six hundred years before Christ, announcing in God’s name that a covenant is coming which will be different from Sinai. Did the prophets ever foretell a change? Here it is, in the very promise of the new covenant.

The book of Hebrews quotes Jeremiah’s promise in full and then tells us what it means: “In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete” (Hebrews 8:13).

Paul says the same in his own words. The law was added until the promised offspring should come (Galatians 3:19). It was our guardian until Christ came, and now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian (Galatians 3:24–25).

This matters for the Sabbath in particular. Exodus 31:16–17 calls the seventh-day Sabbath a sign between God and the children of Israel. It was the sign of the covenant made at Sinai. It is sometimes said that Christians claim Israel’s covenant while dismissing its sign. But we do not claim the Sinai covenant. We belong to the new covenant, the one God Himself said would be “not like” the old.

What, then, is the law God writes on the heart? Ezekiel describes the same promise: God will put His Spirit within His people and cause them to walk in His ways (Ezekiel 36:26–27). So the new covenant produces real obedience, from the inside out. But obedience to what? Hebrews quotes the heart promise a second time and immediately concludes that “there is no longer any offering for sin” (Hebrews 10:16–18). The sacrifices were commanded in the law of Moses. If they have ended, then the law written on the heart cannot be every statute of Sinai carried over unchanged. The Spirit gives God’s people hearts that love Him and want to do His moral will, and Paul says plainly that “love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10).

When “Forever” Has a Horizon

But did God not call these things everlasting? He did. Exodus 31 calls the Sabbath a lasting covenant and a sign forever, and the Hebrew word is olam. If God said forever, who are we to say otherwise?

The answer is to look at how Scripture itself uses the word. It is used of the old priesthood and its sacrifices:

  1. Aaron’s priesthood is “a perpetual priesthood throughout their generations” (Exodus 40:15).
  2. The Day of Atonement, with its sacrifices, is “a statute forever” (Leviticus 16:34).

Yet every believer who confesses Jesus as our great High Priest agrees that Aaron’s priesthood has given way to a better one. Psalm 110:4 promised a priest of a different order, and Hebrews draws the conclusion: “For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well” (Hebrews 7:12).

The same word even appears in Exodus 21:6, where a servant who chooses to stay with his master “shall be his slave forever.” No one believes he serves beyond the grave. He serves for life. The word can mean truly endless, and often it does. But it can also mean lasting to the far horizon of the thing being described, and the context tells us which.

So something God called “forever” at Sinai has already reached its appointed end in Christ, and all who trust Him agree on it. The only question left is what else has, and who tells us. Neither church tradition nor personal preference can settle that. Only the Word of God can. And when God brings one of His own arrangements to the goal He appointed for it, He has not broken His word. He has kept it.

Before Sinai

Two things are often pointed out from the book of Genesis, long before Israel stood at Sinai.

The first is that God rested on the seventh day, and blessed it, and made it holy (Genesis 2:2–3). That is gloriously true. Christians have differed over whether those verses set a pattern of one day in seven for all mankind. But Genesis records no command to Adam, to Noah, or to Abraham to keep the seventh day. The first time Scripture records such a command, it is given to Israel in the wilderness, after their rescue from Egypt, when the manna fell for six days and not on the seventh (Exodus 16:23–30). Nehemiah later counts the Sabbath among the things God made known to Israel through Moses (Nehemiah 9:13–14). And our Reformed brothers and sisters who do see a pattern laid down at creation agree that the seventh-day observance given to Israel has ended with the coming of Christ.

The second is that Noah knew the difference between clean and unclean animals (Genesis 7:2). He did. But the distinction there is connected with sacrifice. When Noah left the ark, he offered some of every clean animal on the altar (Genesis 8:20). When God then spoke to him about food, He gave him every moving thing that lives, as freely as the green plants (Genesis 9:3). The food laws of Leviticus 11 came later, and they were given to Israel.

The Prophets Saw It Coming

Did the prophets give any hint that the arrangements of Sinai would one day change? They gave more than a hint.

Isaiah 56 is often quoted in this discussion because it speaks of foreigners who join themselves to the LORD and keep His Sabbath. But read the verses around it. God promises eunuchs a place and a name “in my house and within my walls” (Isaiah 56:5). Under the law of Moses, such a man was barred from the assembly of the LORD (Deuteronomy 23:1). Isaiah is foretelling a day when a line drawn in the law would be redrawn by God Himself.

The same passage says the foreigners’ “burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar” (Isaiah 56:7). Isaiah speaks of Sabbath-keeping and animal sacrifice side by side. We cannot carry the one forward as a literal requirement for Christians, and treat the other as fulfilled in Christ, without explaining why we read them differently. The prophets described the coming age in the language of their own, and the New Testament must show us what the fulfillment looks like.

The same is true of Isaiah 66:23, where all flesh comes to worship before the LORD from new moon to new moon and from Sabbath to Sabbath in the new heavens and the new earth. Two verses earlier, God says He will take some of them for priests and for Levites (verse 21). New moons, Sabbaths, priests, and Levites: this is the worship of the age to come, described in the vocabulary of the old.

Jeremiah foretold a day when the ark of the covenant, the very center of Israel’s worship, would be gone and no one would mind: “It shall not come to mind or be remembered or missed; it shall not be made again” (Jeremiah 3:16).

Malachi foretold a pure offering presented to God “in every place” among the nations (Malachi 1:11), although Moses permitted sacrifice only at the one place God chose (Deuteronomy 12:13–14).

And Moses himself pointed beyond Moses. In Deuteronomy 13 Israel is told to reject any prophet who leads them after other gods. That test still stands, and Jesus led no one after other gods. But five chapters later Moses gave a second instruction. God would raise up a Prophet like Moses, and “it is to him you shall listen” (Deuteronomy 18:15). God adds that He will hold to account anyone who refuses (verse 19). A faithful Israelite honors Moses by doing what Moses said, which is to listen to the One who was coming.

What Did Jesus Say?

The text most often raised is Matthew 5:17: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Amen. Jesus did not come to throw away the Law or the Prophets, and no Christian should speak as though He did.

But what does “fulfill” mean? Notice that Jesus speaks of the Law and the Prophets together, as one thing waiting to be fulfilled. Later He says that all the Prophets and the Law “prophesied until John” (Matthew 11:13). The whole Old Testament, its laws included, was pointing forward. A prophecy is not abolished when it comes true. It is kept.

Jesus adds that until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota or a dot will pass from the Law “until all is accomplished” (Matthew 5:18). Does that mean every statute of Sinai stays in force, just as it was given, until the end of the world? It cannot, because the same Scriptures tell us that the priesthood has changed (Hebrews 7:12) and that the first covenant is obsolete (Hebrews 8:13). Jesus is saying something larger. The Law will stand as the Word of God for as long as the world stands, and not one thing it pointed to will fail to arrive. Much of it has arrived already, in Him.

Verse 19 warns against relaxing even the least of these commandments, and that warning stands. No Christian is asking for leave to set aside what God commands. But which commands does God lay on His new covenant people, and in what form? That is the question the apostles answer.

Paul can even say that Christ made peace between Jew and Gentile “by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances” (Ephesians 2:15). He is not contradicting his Lord. Jesus is speaking of the Scriptures, which He upholds to the last stroke of the pen. Paul is speaking of the ordinances that kept Jew and Gentile apart, which Christ brought to their end by fulfilling them.

Did Jesus ever say anything about food? He did. In Mark 7 the argument began over eating with unwashed hands, but Jesus took it further. Nothing going into a person from outside can defile him, He said, because it enters the stomach and not the heart. What defiles a person comes from within. Mark 7:19 then reads, in the ESV, “(Thus he declared all foods clean.)” Some dispute how that phrase should be translated. But the apostles leave no doubt about where Jesus’ teaching leads, as we are about to see.

Jesus also called Himself Lord of the Sabbath (Matthew 12:8). And on the night before He died, He told the apostles that He had more to teach than they could yet bear, and that the Spirit would guide them into all the truth (John 16:12–13). It is sometimes suggested that the words of Jesus in the Gospels should count for more than the letters of Paul or the book of Hebrews. But all of Scripture is the Word of the same Lord, and the letters of Paul and the book of Hebrews are His Word as surely as the Sermon on the Mount. So what do they say?

The Question Has Been Asked Before

Nothing about this debate is new. In Acts 15, some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said of the Gentile converts, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses” (Acts 15:5). The apostles and elders met to decide the matter.

After much debate, Peter stood up. He asked why anyone would test God “by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear” (Acts 15:10). Jews and Gentiles alike, he said, are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus (verse 11).

The council then wrote to the Gentile churches: “For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements” (Acts 15:28). Four items follow: to abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, from blood, from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality (verse 29). Three of these concern food, and Christians have understood their purpose in more than one way. But notice what the list leaves out. The seventh-day Sabbath is not there. Neither are the feasts, or the list of clean and unclean animals. The council did not ask Gentile believers to take up the law of Moses as a way of life, which is exactly what had been demanded.

Some reply that verse 21 implies the Gentiles would pick up the rest of Moses in the synagogue over time. But years later, in Acts 21:25, the Jerusalem elders repeat the same ruling to Paul, and nothing has been added to it.

Paul’s letters speak the same way.

“Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (Colossians 2:16–17).

Look at the list: food, festivals, new moons, Sabbaths. These are the very practices in question, and Paul calls every one of them a shadow. When the one who casts the shadow walks into the room, you are no longer enamored with the shadow.

To the Romans he writes, “One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Romans 14:5). And of food: “I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself” (Romans 14:14). Hebrews says that regulations about “food and drink and various washings” were “imposed until the time of reformation” (Hebrews 9:10).

Where did God authorize the change? These are the places.

The Test Case of Circumcision

One command brings the whole question into focus, and it is circumcision.

God called circumcision “an everlasting covenant” in the flesh (Genesis 17:13). The uncircumcised male was to be cut off from his people (verse 14). And no uncircumcised man could eat the Passover (Exodus 12:48). So a Gentile household that is required to keep the Passover as Moses commanded it must first have all its males circumcised. And circumcision is older than Sinai. It was given to Abraham.

Here is a question worth asking. Must a Gentile who trusts in Christ be circumcised?

If the answer is yes, Paul could not be more direct. He is not condemning the act itself, for he once had Timothy circumcised for the sake of the work among the Jews (Acts 16:3). His warning is for those who accept circumcision as necessary for their standing before God. To them he says that Christ will be of no benefit, and that such a man “is obligated to keep the whole law” (Galatians 5:2–4). And when others pressed circumcision simply as a duty for Gentile believers, the apostles at Jerusalem refused to require it (Acts 15:19, 28).

If the answer is no, then we have already agreed that a command God called everlasting, with a penalty attached, does not bind Gentile believers. The only ground for believing that is the teaching of the apostles. And the same apostles must be heard when they speak about Sabbaths, feasts, and food.

Paul’s own summary is remarkable: “For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God” (1 Corinthians 7:19). Circumcision was a commandment of God. Paul, raised a Pharisee, could write that sentence only if he saw a difference between the covenant signs given to Israel for a time and the abiding moral will of God. Christians did not invent that distinction. We received it from the apostle.

What Makes Israel Jealous?

Paul says that salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel jealous (Romans 11:11). Some conclude that Gentile believers should therefore take up the Torah, so that Jewish people will recognize their own way of life and be drawn to the Messiah.

But think about what jealousy requires. Israel already had the Sabbath, the feasts, and the food laws. Who grows jealous watching strangers copy what he already owns? And Paul does not say that Gentiles provoke Israel by taking up Israel’s customs. He says that salvation has come to the Gentiles. What did Israel lack? Paul tells us two chapters earlier. Gentiles who were not even pursuing righteousness obtained it by faith, while Israel, pursuing it through the law, did not arrive (Romans 9:30–32). Paul takes the word “jealous” from Moses, who foretold that God would provoke Israel by a people who were no people at all (Romans 10:19, quoting Deuteronomy 32:21).

Picture it. Gentiles who never kept a Sabbath in their lives are forgiven, filled with the Spirit, and calling the God of Abraham “Father” through Israel’s own Messiah. That is what provokes jealousy.

A Word About Liberty

None of this means a Christian may not rest on Saturday, or decline pork, or mark the Passover as a way of remembering Christ our Passover (1 Corinthians 5:7). Romans 14 protects that freedom, and the rest of us must not look down on a brother or sister who uses it. In Acts 21:20 there were thousands of Jewish believers still zealous for the law, and the apostles did not rebuke them.

The line is crossed when these practices are laid on the consciences of other believers, and when their absence is called disobedience. At that point Paul’s word is “let no one pass judgment on you,” and his counsel is firm: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).

One more thing should be said about the seventh-day Sabbath given to Israel. It was a day of rest, and the rest it pictured has come to us in a Person. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,” Jesus said, “for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29). Hebrews tells us that a Sabbath rest remains for the people of God (Hebrews 4:9). We enter it now by faith, resting from our own works in the finished work of Christ, and we are urged to press on until we enter it in full (Hebrews 4:11).

As for the Lord’s Day, Acts 20:7 records believers gathered on the first day of the week to break bread. It is the day our Lord rose from the dead, and we find Christians meeting on it already in the days of the apostles.

Listen to Him

Should Christians go back to Moses in order to understand Jesus? In one sense, yes. We should read Moses, love Moses, and preach Moses. Jesus said that Moses “wrote of me” (John 5:46), and on the road to Emmaus He began with Moses and all the Prophets and explained what they said about Himself (Luke 24:27).

But Moses was never the destination. Three disciples learned that on a mountain. Jesus was transfigured before them, and Moses and Elijah appeared, talking with Him. Peter, overwhelmed, offered to build three tents, one for each. Then a bright cloud covered them and the Father spoke: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (Matthew 17:5). The disciples fell on their faces. And when they lifted up their eyes, “they saw no one but Jesus only” (Matthew 17:8).

Moses had said, “it is to him you shall listen.” On the mountain the Father said the same.

If you have been drawn toward Torah observance because you love God and want to obey Him, I honor that desire. May I ask you one thing? When you look at Israel’s Sabbath, feasts, and food laws, do you see the shadow or the One who cast it? Every lamb, every feast, every day of rest was a promise, and God has kept His promise in His Son. The law has arrived where it was always going.

Come to Him, then, and rest. To Him be glory forever. Amen.

The Parable of the Soils: What God Alone Can Do

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Why does the same gospel produce such different responses in different people? Jesus addresses this very question in His parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1–23; Mark 4:1–20; Luke 8:4–15). A farmer goes out to sow his seed, which Jesus identifies as the Word of God. The seed falls upon four different kinds of soil, representing four different responses to the Word. Notice that the sower scatters the seed freely, without first determining which ground is most likely to produce a harvest. This is how we are called to proclaim the gospel. We preach Christ indiscriminately, to everyone, without attempting to determine who is elect or who might respond favorably. The same gospel is proclaimed, with the same promises and the same call to repentance and faith. Yet the results are dramatically different. The difference lies in the soil, which represents the condition of the human heart. And there is a vast difference between hearing the gospel, making an outward profession of faith, and actually being born again.

The first soil is the hardened pathway. Here the seed falls upon ground so hard that it never penetrates. The birds come and quickly devour it. Jesus explains that this represents the person who hears the Word but does not understand it, and Satan snatches away what has been sown. There is no saving response, no repentance, no faith. He may follow the words well enough at an intellectual level, but the message is not received with spiritual understanding. This reminds us of what Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 2:14, that the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God because they are spiritually discerned. The problem goes far deeper than a lack of information. The sinner’s heart is naturally opposed to God. He needs far more than persuasion. He needs a new heart.

The second soil is the rocky ground, and here things become more deceptive. The seed springs up quickly, and initially everything looks promising. Jesus tells us that this person receives the Word immediately and even with joy. Think about that. There is an enthusiastic response, perhaps accompanied by tears, a public profession of faith, baptism, and involvement in the life of a church. To those looking on, this may appear to be a wonderful conversion. Yet Jesus says there is no root. When tribulation or persecution arises because of the Word, the person falls away. Luke records that such people “believe for a while” (Luke 8:13). There is a temporary faith that looks very much like the real thing, yet it differs in kind from saving faith, and testing exposes it. The initial joy may have been sincere as an emotional experience, but it was not evidence of genuine regeneration. This is why we must never confuse enthusiasm for Christianity with the new birth. Emotional responses may accompany genuine conversion, and often do, but they cannot establish that conversion has actually occurred. As 1 John 2:19 explains, those who finally depart from the faith demonstrate that they never truly belonged to Christ.

The third soil presents another danger, perhaps even more subtle. Here the seed falls among thorns, and the plant begins to grow. There is a response to the Word, and outwardly there may be every appearance of Christian faith. Yet as time passes, the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things choke the Word, and it proves unfruitful. Unlike the second soil, Jesus does not specifically say that this person falls away. Indeed, such a person may remain outwardly attached to a church for many years. The problem is that the heart is increasingly occupied with other things. Christ does not have its supreme affection. The things of this world, many of which may be perfectly legitimate in themselves, have become more important than the things of God. This person may still profess faith, but no mature spiritual fruit is produced. An outward attachment to Christianity, even one that lasts for decades, is no guarantee that someone has actually been born again.

Then we come to the fourth soil, and here everything changes. This person hears the Word, receives it, understands it, holds it fast, and bears fruit with perseverance. Jesus speaks of different yields, thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold. Not every Christian produces the same amount of fruit, but every genuine Christian produces fruit. This is the only soil in the parable that represents a truly regenerate person. The fruit does not make the soil good. Rather, the good soil produces the fruit. This is precisely the relationship between regeneration and the Christian life. Good works are the evidence of salvation and never its cause: having been saved by God’s grace, we will bear fruit. The fruit may vary greatly in its abundance and maturity, and genuine believers still struggle with remaining sin. Nevertheless, where God has granted spiritual life, that life will become evident.

What accounts for the difference between the fourth soil and the first three? We need to be careful here and allow Scripture to speak for itself. The story itself never tells us how the fourth soil came to be good. It describes the different responses to the Word and their outcomes. Yet Jesus does not leave the question unanswered. Between the parable and its explanation, the disciples ask why He speaks in parables. He replies that to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven “has been given” to them, while to the crowds it has not been given (Matthew 13:11). Now notice how Jesus describes the soils. The person on the pathway hears the Word and “does not understand it” (Matthew 13:19). The person in the good soil hears the Word and “understands it” (Matthew 13:23). Set these verses side by side, and the understanding that marks the good soil turns out to be the very thing Jesus has described as a gift. The difference is not that one sinner was naturally more intelligent, humble, wise, or spiritually inclined than another. The difference is the sovereign grace of God.

The rest of Scripture speaks with the same voice. In Ezekiel 36:26, God promises to remove the heart of stone and give His people a heart of flesh. Notice who performs this work. God does. In John 3:3–8, Jesus teaches Nicodemus that no one can see or enter the kingdom of God apart from being born again, a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. In John 6:44, Jesus explains that no one can come to Him unless the Father draws him. And in Acts 16:14, when Lydia heard Paul’s preaching, we are specifically told that the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what Paul was saying. The Word was proclaimed outwardly, but God performed the necessary work inwardly. James 1:18 and 1 Peter 1:23 likewise connect the new birth with the Word of God. Peter speaks of seed as well. We have been born again, he says, “not of perishable seed but of imperishable,” through God’s living and lasting Word. Two verses later he calls this Word the good news that was preached (1 Peter 1:25). The seed in the sower’s hand is no ordinary seed. God uses the proclamation of His Word as the means through which He brings sinners to spiritual life. The Holy Spirit opens blind eyes, gives a new heart, and brings the sinner willingly to Christ in repentance and faith. The fourth soil is good because God has graciously made it so. What the parable shows us in the fruit, the rest of Scripture explains in the root.

What enormous encouragement this gives us in evangelism, and what a solemn warning concerning false professions of faith. We cannot regenerate anyone. We cannot manufacture saving faith through persuasive techniques, emotional manipulation, or human effort. As Paul wrote, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6). We preach Christ crucified and risen, calling all people to repent and believe, knowing that everyone who comes to Him will be received. In Luke’s account, Jesus presses the point home: “Take care then how you hear” (Luke 8:18). Our confidence must never rest merely upon a decision we once made, an emotional experience we once had, or the length of time we have been associated with a church. The question is whether we are presently trusting Christ and whether our faith is bearing the fruit that His grace produces. No Christian is without sin, and our fruit is never the ground of our acceptance before God. Christ alone is that ground. If this parable leaves you troubled, look hard at what you are relying on. Your own efforts cannot bear that weight, and neither can your faithfulness. Make sure your full reliance is on Christ Himself. The same sovereign grace that brings us to Christ keeps us in Christ (Philippians 1:6). And so we sow the gospel freely, examine ourselves honestly, rest in Christ completely, and give all the glory to God. Salvation, from beginning to end, is of the Lord.

What About Jacob and Esau? Corporate Election and the Argument of Romans 9

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Bring up Romans 9 in a conversation about election, and sooner or later someone will say it: “Paul isn’t talking about individuals there. Jacob and Esau stand for two nations, Israel and Edom. God chose a people for a role in history. He wasn’t choosing particular persons for salvation.” This view usually goes by the name corporate election: God chose a group rather than particular people.

It’s a common answer, and it deserves a fair hearing, because it isn’t simply made up. Some of the very Old Testament passages Paul quotes in Romans 9 do speak of nations. When the twins struggled inside Rebekah, the LORD told her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided” (Genesis 25:23). And when Paul writes, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (Romans 9:13), he is quoting Malachi, where God goes straight on to say of Esau, “I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert” (Malachi 1:3). That is Edom, the nation.

So yes, nations are in view, and I’m glad to say so. But that doesn’t settle anything yet. The question that settles it is this: what is Paul trying to prove? Follow his argument from the opening of chapter 9 to the close of chapter 11, and the national reading runs out of road long before Paul does.

Here, in plain words, is where I believe the road leads. Paul certainly speaks about nations in Romans 9, but national election can’t explain his whole argument. God chooses particular people for salvation by His own gracious purpose, before they have done anything good or bad, and not because He foresaw anything in them, not even their faith. Then, in His own time, He brings each of them to faith in Christ.

The Problem Paul Is Answering

Romans 9 doesn’t open with a lecture on predestination. It opens with a grieving man. Paul speaks of “great sorrow and unceasing anguish” in his heart, and then he says something astonishing: “I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers” (9:2-3).

Notice what grieves him. Israel had been given the covenants, the law, and the promises, and from Israel, by human descent, came the Christ Himself (9:4-5). Yet so many of Paul’s own people stood outside of Christ. Nobody wishes himself cut off from Christ over a question of which nation will serve which. Paul’s grief is about salvation.

And his grief raises a hard question. If God made promises to Israel, and so many in Israel have rejected their Messiah, has God’s word failed? Paul answers at once that it has not, and he gives the reason: “For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel” (9:6).

Read that again slowly. Paul is drawing a line inside Israel, between those descended from Jacob by birth and those who truly belong to the people of promise. The problem on his desk is a divided nation, with some in Israel believing and many not. To say “God chose the nation” doesn’t touch that problem, because the nation is the very thing being divided.

Twins in One Womb

Paul proves his point with two examples. The first is Abraham’s sons. Abraham had more than one, but God had said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named” (9:7). Physical birth was never what made someone a child of God. It is “the children of the promise” who “are counted as offspring” (9:8).

Someone might answer that Isaac and Ishmael had different mothers, so of course they were treated differently. Paul closes that door with his second example. Rebekah “had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac” (9:10). One father, one mother, one pregnancy: twins.

Then Paul presses the timing. The boys “were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad” (9:11) when God declared, “The older will serve the younger” (9:12). Before either boy drew a breath, before either made a single choice, God had spoken. Paul even tells us why God did it that way: “in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls” (9:11).

Jacob and Esau did become nations. Genesis says so plainly. But nations come from people, and Paul has fixed our attention on the moment when these two were still unborn. The deeds of Israel and Edom lay centuries in the future. Paul’s subject is what two boys had not yet done. God’s purpose stood before either of them had done anything at all, so that it would rest on “him who calls” and on nothing else.

Listen to the Objections

You can often tell what a teacher actually said by the objections his hearers raise. Paul anticipates two.

The first comes immediately: “What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means!” (9:14). Why would anyone think of injustice? Because Paul has just said that God chose one twin over the other before either had done anything. If God’s choice simply followed what people did, nobody would cry “unfair.”

Paul doesn’t answer the charge by softening what he said. Instead, he quotes what God said to Moses: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (9:15). Then he draws the conclusion: “So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy” (9:16).

Mercy doesn’t depend on human exertion, and it doesn’t depend on human will either. Whatever finally separates the person who receives mercy from the person who doesn’t, Paul locates it in God, “who has mercy.”

Paul turns next to Pharaoh, to whom God said, “For this very purpose I have raised you up,” so that God’s power would be shown in him and His name proclaimed in all the earth (9:17). Pharaoh was Egypt’s king, of course, and his hardening brought judgment on the whole land. But God addresses him as a man, and Paul draws a personal conclusion: “So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills” (9:18). Paul doesn’t tell us Pharaoh’s final destiny, and we don’t need to claim more than he says. His point is God’s freedom.

The second objection is sharper: “You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?’” (9:19).

Think about what that question assumes. Finding fault is what a judge does with someone who has to answer for what he has done. And “who can resist his will?” is exactly the objection you’d expect if verses 16 and 18 mean what they say: that God’s will, and not man’s, is what finally decides.

Once again, Paul doesn’t retreat: “But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?” (9:20). He reaches for a picture the prophets had used. Through Jeremiah, God told the whole nation they were clay in His hands: “so are you in my hand, O house of Israel” (Jeremiah 18:6). Paul takes that familiar picture and presses one part of it: the potter’s right to make “out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use” (9:21). Notice the words “the same lump.” The clay is the same in every vessel; the difference lies in what the potter purposes for each one.

“Even Us”

Next comes a question that brings everything down to earth. What if God, Paul asks, has patiently endured “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,” in order to make known the riches of His glory for “vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory” (9:22-23)?

Wrath and destruction, mercy and glory: this is the language of judgment and salvation, of where people finally stand before God. And Paul tells us who the vessels of mercy are: “even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles” (9:24).

Watch the small words. The vessels of mercy are those “which he has prepared.” Then Paul says, “us whom he has called.” Which, and then whom. The ESV has caught something in Paul’s Greek. In verse 23, the word for “which” is neuter, matching the neuter word for “vessels,” the form Greek normally uses for things. By verse 24 it has become masculine, the form Greek uses for a group of people. Paul has stopped talking about pots. He is talking about people, and he counts himself among them.

Notice, too, where these people come from. God called them “from the Jews” and “from the Gentiles.” Since they are drawn out of both groups, the called cannot simply be Israel, and they cannot simply be the Gentiles. God has gathered a people made up of persons, from both sides of the line that once divided Jew from Gentile.

I want to be careful here. Verse 24 shows that Paul has real people in view. It doesn’t, by itself, tell us why these were called and others were not. For that, Paul has already pointed us back to verses 11 through 16, and he will take us forward into chapter 11.

Paul doesn’t make us wait that long. Three verses later he quotes Isaiah: though the sons of Israel be as many as the sand of the sea, “only a remnant of them will be saved” (9:27). There is the line from 9:6 again, running right through the middle of Israel.

Responsible All the Same

If the chapter ended there, someone might conclude that people are simply puppets. It doesn’t end there. Paul goes on to explain why Israel stumbled, and he lays the blame on Israel. They pursued the law as the way to righteousness, yet “they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works” (9:32).

Then he tells us what he prays for: “my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved” (10:1). Once more, the subject is salvation. Israel’s problem was never a lack of zeal (10:2). They were trying to establish a righteousness of their own, and so “they did not submit to God’s righteousness” (10:3).

In the middle of that same chapter stands one of the widest invitations in the Bible: “For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved’” (10:13). And the chapter closes with God Himself speaking of Israel: “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people” (10:21). Picture it: hands held out all day long, and a people who will not come.

The same apostle wrote Romans 9:16 and Romans 10:13, and he felt no need to apologize for either. God is sovereign in mercy, and sinners are responsible for their unbelief. Paul holds both truths without embarrassment, and so should we.

A Remnant, Chosen by Grace

In chapter 11 Paul asks the question his readers would naturally ask: “has God rejected his people? By no means!” (11:1). His first piece of evidence is himself, an Israelite from the tribe of Benjamin.

Then he names the principle that has been running underneath the whole argument since 9:6: “So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace” (11:5-6). And he lays it out as plainly as anyone could: “What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened” (11:7).

Look at what Paul shows us inside that one nation: two groups, the elect and the rest, and the difference between them is God’s choice, a remnant chosen by grace. This is the very line Paul drew in 9:6, and a reading that sees only nations in Romans 9 has no way to account for it.

Where Faith Comes From

Some of the most thoughtful defenders of corporate election would agree with a good deal of what I’ve written so far. They don’t deny that Jacob and Esau were real men, and they agree that these chapters are about salvation. Their position is more careful than the quick answer we started with. God chose a people, they say, and individuals come to share in that election when they enter that people by faith.

That is a serious position, and it deserves a serious answer. Those who hold it would add, rightly, that faith is not a work. Faith earns nothing; it receives. So the real question is a different one: what finally accounts for one person believing and another not?

Paul has already given his answer. Mercy “depends not on human will or exertion, but on God” (9:16). If the deciding difference between a believer and an unbeliever were, in the end, the human decision to believe, then mercy would depend on human will. That is precisely what Paul denies.

The rest of Scripture agrees. “And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Romans 8:30). Every person called in this sense is justified, and nobody drops out between the calling and the glory. So this calling can’t be a general invitation that some accept and others refuse. It is the call that actually brings people to Christ.

The Lord Jesus said it just as plainly: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). Later in the same chapter He said, “no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father” (John 6:65).

So faith matters enormously. Election excuses no one from believing, and no one who hears the gospel is saved without believing it. But faith is the gift God gives to those He chose, never the reason He chose them. The London Baptist Confession of 1689 says that God chose His people “purely as a result of His free grace and love, without anything else about them serving as a condition or cause moving Him to do so” (3:5, modern English edition). For that very point it cites Romans 9:16, as it does again in 3:2.

What about the rest? Here we should speak as carefully as Scripture does. On this, the confession says: “Others are left to live in their sin, leading to their just condemnation, to the praise of His glorious justice” (3:3). God does not have to make anyone a sinner in order to judge him. Left to ourselves, every one of us would stay in unbelief, Jacob included. And when God hardens, as Paul says He does (9:18), He acts as the righteous Judge, giving sinners over to the unbelief they already prefer.

Oh, the Depth!

So, were Jacob and Esau nations? Yes, they became nations, and Paul knew it as well as anyone. But Paul didn’t stop where the national reading stops. He followed God’s choice all the way down to persons: twins before they were born, a remnant inside Israel, and a people called out of Jews and Gentiles alike, “even us.”

May I ask you something? When you read “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated,” what rises in your heart? Some people bristle at the second half. But Esau was a sinner who deserved God’s judgment, and so was Jacob. The real wonder is the first half: that God set His love on Jacob at all. Any believer who knows his own heart finds the same wonder in his own story.

And if you’re reading this and wondering whether you could be one of God’s chosen, don’t go looking for the answer in God’s secret plans. Look to Christ. He said, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6:37). The promise of Romans 10:13 still stands for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord.

When Paul finished these three chapters, he laid down his argument and worshiped:

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)

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2025. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language. Used by permission. All rights reserved.