Such a sobering truth requires a question of us all: What will we do with the Son? God has been patient with sinners and sent his beloved Son in love. And though men rejected him, cast him out, and crucified him, God raised him from the dead and made him the cornerstone of his kingdom. We cannot undo his authority by rejecting it, nor prevent his reign by refusing it. But the wonder of the gospel is that this same cornerstone who will crush all who persist in unbelief receives every sinner who comes to him in faith.
Tag Archives: Eternal Salvation
Jealousy, Riches, and the Kindness of God
Paul’s question presumes our knowledge of his ongoing epistolary argument: “did [Israel] stumble in order that they might fall?” (11:11). Did Israel in fact stumble, and if so how? Indeed, they did; indeed they have, as Paul describes in the ninth chapter, “They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, ‘Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame” (Rom. 9:32-33). Pursuing the righteousness of God by works not faith, they stumbled over Christ. Or, as Paul puts it in the tenth chapter, “For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Rom. 10:3-4).
