Romans 9:8 That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God… A considerable group of expositors have regarded the first moiety of this verse as parenthetical, "I have great heaviness and sorrow of heart (for I myself used to wish to be accursed from the Messiah) for my brethren," etc. The apostle is supposed to be referring to his own infatuation during the time of his antagonism to Christ and Christianity, for the purpose of obliquely depicting, from the standpoint of his own experience, the lamentable condition of his countrymen, and of thus accounting for the overwhelming sorrow under which he was suffering. Others, without the mechanical parenthetical expedient, give substantially the same interpretation, "I was wishing, viz., at a former period, not now." But it is impossible that the apostle was speaking historically. The expression is a Greek idiom meaning, "I could pray or wish to God" — an idiom which grew out of the imperfect or incomplete tense, "I was praying." If it were wished to represent the act as completed some other tense would be required. Take another instance (Galatians 4:20). "I could wish (for reasons obvious enough, and if my ether engagements did not forbid) to be once more in the midst of you." Or (Acts 25:22) "Agrippa said to Festus, I also could wish to hear the man myself" (viz., if it were not, O Festus, trespassing too far on your indulgence). So in the case before us "I could wish to God to be vicariously an anathema for my kinsmen, if my conceptions of my duty on the one hand, and of God's wisdom and will on the other, would allow me to carry forth into completion such a desire and such a prayer. The apostle did not actually desire to be an anathema. He knew that such a desire would never be Divinely fulfilled, and hence he did not cherish it. A wise man keeps his desires under control. A pious man takes God's desires and purposes into account, and does not entertain any desire which he knows to be at variance with the Divine will, or with the arrangements that are dependent on the Divine will. Hence it is that the apostle does not say, "I desire," but only "I could desire." So far as he was concerned, he was ready for the self-sacrifice, provided it was legitimate, and could be efficacious. It would not, however, have been of avail, and hence the wish was never fully formed. The potential did not pass into the actual. It is true that the potential translation of the verb, though doubtless the only correct one under the circumstances, is nevertheless an imperfect reflection of the original "imperfect" tense. The tense is a time, not a potency; but it is a past tense incomplete. Hence the real idea of the word is "I was desiring." The desire rose up in the apostle's heart, and to a certain extent he allowed it, yet only to a certain extent, for a higher desire struck in and controlled it — the desire to be in perfect accord with God's desire and will. Hence it hung suspended, and remained imperfect. It was conditional, and the condition that would have brought it to maturity was never forthcoming. Thus the embryo desire was in reality but a potency. It may now be further noticed that the word means properly "I could pray." The word is so rendered in 2 Corinthians 13:7; James 5:16, and has really that meaning in 2 Corinthians 13:9 3John 2; Acts 27:29. In the last text they lifted up their desires to their gods and prayed for the break of day. The word only occurs elsewhere in Acts 26:29. "If I might venture to use the liberty of openly expressing the fulness of my feeling, I would audibly lift up my prayer to God." Hence our text is admirably expressed in our idiomatic "I could wish to God." It is impossible to believe that St. Paul ever presented such a prayer. The utmost stretch of conceivability extends no farther than this — that the apostle felt, time after time, the incompleted uprising of an impulse to pray that if it were compatible with all great interests, permission might be given him to be, by the sacrifice of his own happiness, the means of rescuing his infatuated countrymen from their doom. Such sacrifice he would gladly make, if it were among the moral possibilities. (J. Morison, D.D.) Parallel Verses KJV: That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed. |
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