Romans 3:3 Commentary and Bible Study

Here is another objection. It is an objection based on the impossibility of God changing his mind. He has promised in the past to make Israel his special people. Our unbelief will not stop God keeping his promise that we shall all be saved. He cannot break that promise just because some – they are flattering themselves in the way they express this objection; they minimise the extent of Jews unbelief; it was really a majority – do not believe. The truth was that very few believed. It may help to understand the verse if an alternative translation for the word ‘faith’ is provided: ‘For what if some did not believe? Shall their unbelief make the [faithfulness] of God without affect?’ Do not believe what? Paul has been saying that the Jews are no better off than the Gentiles if they do not keep the righteousness of the law; they might as well not be circumcised. That failure is the result of unbelief. This applies to all Jews and all the children of Israel in the past who never trusted in God’s promise as Abraham did. It is not just about those who have failed to recognise the Messiah in his own times. The oracles of God were committed to them long ago, and many failed to believe what was written in them. Will God’s judgment of some who deserve to be judged mean that ha has abandoned his promise to the nation? Will his faithfulness to his promise to make them a special people be overturned? You can hear the Jewish protest behind this. They are saying, ‘Well this is all very well, but if some Jews have not believed God and kept the law, and served him and loved him, God must still remain faithful to his promise to save the nation.’ According to this argument God is in a bind, and unable to judge them because of his prior promise. ‘He promised that the seed of Abraham would be blessed, and so we must be blessed regardless of whether we exercise faith or not. We are children of Abraham’, they would say. If some did not believe, does that mean God is faithless? No! It does not, because the Jews have got it wrong. God did not promise, as they thought, that all the seed of Abraham would be blessed, no matter how they lived, no matter whether they had faith or not. When God promised blessing upon the seed of Abraham, he did not mean every single one of them, and he did not say that. He never made a promise like that. He meant those who like Abraham would exercise faith, the faithful seed, the spiritual seed would be blessed, and the New Testament explains it that way. Were the promises to Abraham that his seed would be blessed made to every single one of his physical seed, or do they apply to his spiritual seed? The earthly promises apply to his physical seed, but the spiritual promises apply only to his spiritual seed. As the New Testament tells us, he is father of the faithful, and it is to those who believe like faithful Abraham that the promise applies.