# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1856_S307
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Doctrine of the Election of Grace and Some Related Matters, etc. 307

love one ought not to judge lightly, just as inexperienced people can hardly comprehend, in the ordinary course of things, extraordinary deeds and the heroic courage of particular persons. The pain and the sorrow were unceasing, verse 2; but he looks, for comfort, to the infinite majesty and gracious dominion of Christ over Jews and Gentiles, verse 5, just as we too must rejoice inwardly that He is God over all — and to the eternal promises of His word, verse 6.

III. The good standing of the divine promises, verses 6–13. Luther and others after him have rightly noted, concerning what now follows, that all this will be not merely bearable but even delightful only to those who have first gone through the preceding chapters in justifying faith and the mortification of the old man; only then are they able to take in such strong food according to the Spirit. The apostle wishes to make plain that the word of God, which contains so many promises for Israel, has by no means fallen away forever together with the fallen part of the people. But because the Jews thought: We all, and we alone, are the possession of God — for this reason they are refuted here and in what follows. According to the view of those who deny the universality of divine grace, the content of what the apostle treats is, in short, this: God gives faith to whom He will; to whom He does not will it, to them He does not give it. But to one who looks back to chapters 3–8, it comes out rather as this: God gives righteousness to believers —; (the apostle here has in view chiefly righteousness itself, rather than the faith that possesses it, which is well worth noting, compare chapter 9:30ff., 10:1ff.; God gives both, righteousness and faith, the former through and in the latter — how He gives faith, see below —). But He does not give it to those who deal in works: and this does not even conflict with His own word, since He Himself has declared, partly through actual types, partly through testimonies, that the former are received as children of the promise, while the latter are rejected; such a counsel of God is certain, irreversible, and just, and according as it is realized in a given person or people or not, they either become partakers of grace or remain forever unredeemed from wrath. Therefore the apostle now says that not all who are of Israel by bodily descent are also the true Israel, verse 6; nor likewise, because they are Abraham's seed, are they therefore all children in the sense in which the covenant, made with him and his descendants, still pertains to its deeper fulfillment; but rather, just as Isaac was a son of the promise contrary to the course of nature, so also those who are born according to the Spirit alone are reckoned as children, compare Galatians 4:22f., 26, 28, 31; John 1:12–13, 8:39; Romans 2:28f., 4:12; Luther on Galatians 3:7. The word of the promise does not fall to the ground, as the Jews, who claimed it for themselves alone, would gladly have imputed to Paul's meaning: just as, notwithstanding the priority of age, Ishmael, already circumcised, and later