God Foretold in Scripture the Inclusion of Gentiles
As he says in Hosea:
“I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people;
and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one,”
and,
“It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them,
‘You are not my people,’
they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’” Romans 9:25,26
Paul is still responding to the question: why does God still blame us? (9:19). He has said firstly that God as the potter has the right over His clay (9:20,21). His second response was that God reveals Himself as He really is (9:22,23). We now come to his third explanation: God foretold these things in Scripture (9:24-29).
Among the objects of His mercy whom He has prepared in advance for glory (9:23) Paul now includes ‘even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles’ (9:23). God’s way of dealing with Jews and Gentiles had been clearly foretold in Old Testament scripture. In 9:25,26 Paul quotes two scriptures from Hosea to explain God’s amazing inclusion of the Gentiles, and then in 9:27-29, two texts from Isaiah, to explain His equally amazing reduction of the Jews to a remnant.
The background to the Hosea texts was Hosea’s marriage to his ‘adulterous wife,’ Gomer, together with their three children whose names symbolised God’s judgement on the unfaithful northern kingdom of Israel. He told them to call their second child (a daughter), ‘Lo-Ruhamah’ (meaning ‘not loved’) because, he said, ‘I will no longer show love to the house of Israel’ (Hosea 1:6). He then told them to call their third child (a boy) ‘Lo-Ammi’ (‘not my people’) because ‘you are not my people and I am not your God’ (Hosea 1:9). Yet God went on to say that He would reverse the situation of rejection explicit in the children’s names. These are the texts Paul quotes:
“I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people;
and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one,”
and,
“It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them,
‘You are not my people,’
they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’” (9:26,27)
The prophecy takes the form of God’s promise in mercy to overturn an apparently hopeless situation, to love again those He had declared unloved and to welcome again as His people those He had said were not. The immediate and literal application was to Israel in the 8th century BC, repudiated and judged by Yahweh for apostasy, but promised a reconciliation and reinstatement. Paul saw the text having a further, gospel fulfilment in the inclusion of the Gentiles. They had been ‘separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world’ (Ephesians 2:12). ‘But now in Christ Jesus,’ Paul continues, ‘you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ … Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household (Ephesians 2:13,19). Peter also applies Hosea’s prophecy to the Gentiles in 1 Peter 2:10.
The outsiders have been brought inside, the aliens have become citizens and the strangers are now beloved members of the family.