Old Lutherans

Old Missouri Theologian George Stoeckhardt’s Commentary on Romans is a wealth of doctrine for our present, starved age of antinomian Lutheranism. One such application ripe for the correction of Christian thinking is a series of hilights regarding the Judaean people, Israel —both the nation and the typological concept found in Scripture —, and the Church Herself. Herein below you will find such a selection of hilights from Stoeckhardt’s Romerbrief demonstrating the Old Missouri teachings on these topics and more. This is the first part in a series regarding such.

For more on the topic of true Israel (i.e the Church Invisible) and the modern peoples called Jewish today read

• “What makes our mission to the Jews so difficult?” Der Lutheraner Vol. 66, No. 24
• What Does it Mean to Stop Being a Jew? Pt 1

As elsewhere, the below excerpts are formatted with the exact verse in reference at the header, with the verses themselves underlined as original. Editorial emphasis is added with bolded letters. A short concluding comment follows.

IX.2
The apostle so holily and dearly assures that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. What incessantly pains and troubles him is this: For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. Paul’s brethren and relatives according to the flesh, the Jews, are accursed. They have fallen under and are appointed to the wrath and curse of God. The Jews are under God’s curse because they are excluded from Christ and salvation in Christ. It annoys the apostle that his own people are excluded from salvation, which he also praised in this letter and recommended to Jews and Gentiles. It troubles his heart so deeply that he wished he himself would be banned from Christ and condemned, instead of his brethren according to the flesh. If it were possible and proper, Paul would like to pledge his own salvation in order to save his brethren from damnation. The apostle does not directly speak the wish, for a Christian always keeps his desircs within the realm of possibility and the limits set by God. But it is the earnest feeling of his heart that, in case it were possible, he would be ready to buy the deliverance of his brethren with his own salvation. Paul now enumerates the advantages of his brethren according to the flesh, from which one understands why he so ardently loves and is so deeply concerned about the exclusion of his brethren from salvation in Christ.

IX.6
Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. That Paul’s brethren according to the flesh are accursed from Christ is not to be understood as though God’s Word had become invalid. This Word is the Word of God, which concerned Israel,
God’s promise that Israel should be His people and the possessor and bearer of the promise of Christ. This promise seems to contradict the present fate of the Jews. As it was promised, Christ went forth from Israel. Nevertheless, the promise, that Israel had, included also that Israel itself and Israel first should share in Christ’s salvation, which was meant for all peoples, to
be sure. Abraham, through whom all the peoples of the earth should be blessed, should also himself be a blessing. When Christ should come, “Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely,” Jer. 23,6. And now Israel is accursed from Christ! However, God’s Word has not become untenable. That the apostle proves.

IX.9
Isaac was a son of promise. For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sarah shall have a son. Gen. 18,10.14. Isaac was born by promise. Gal. 4,23. God had given the promise to Abraham and Sarah in their old age, when their bodies were already dead, that they should have a son. And what He promised that He was also able to do and did. Isaac is thus a type of the children of the promise. Isaac, by virtue of the promise, was born in the natural way. The children of promise, whom the apostle has in mind, are born by the promise, by the Gospel, in a spiritual way, are translated into a new, spiritual life and existence. God has created faith in them through the Word. Through faith they are born again. Thus believing Christians are the children of the promise, as was Isaac. Ga.4,28. And the children of the promise, the believing, converted Israelites, are the true children of Abraham and God. They are not accursed from Christ but share in His salvation. So God’s Word, which Israel had, has not become of none effect but in that respect has rather been confirmed and fulfilled. For from the beginning in the promise the blessings was connected with faith. Isaiah says: “Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone,.. he that believeth shall not make haste.” Is. 28,16. The new covenant, which rests on the forgiveness of sins, has, according to Jeremiah, also this characteristic that the children of Israel will know the Lord. Jer. 31,34. Scriptures testify that Abraham, the ancestor of Israel, was justified by faith, and so is the father of all believers, also of the believing Jews, a father of the circumcision, not only of those who are of the circumcision but also of those who walk in the footsteps of Abraham’s faith, To them righteousness is imputed; to them belongs the promised inheritance.

We must distinguish between the seed and the true seed of Abraham. The people of Israel, all bodily descendants of Abraham from Isaac, as from Jacob, were God’s people. God had placed this people into a special relation to Himself. He had revealed Himself to this people and lived in their midst. Israel had a law. The whole community, all the public affairs of Israel were regulated by the law. To them belonged the promise. To Israel alone, to no other people, was the promise given, was the future Christ revealed in the promise. Christ came from the people of Israel in the fulness of time. Salvation has come from the Jews. It is wrong to restrict the prerogatives of Israel to the believing Israelites. They are rather characteristic of all Israel. From Israel according to the flesh, which includes all natural descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, however, the Israel according to the Spirit is to be distinguished. Only Israel begotten through the Word by the Spirit is the true Israel. Only the believing Israelites are regarded by God as Abraham’s real children and God’s true children and share in Christ’s salvation; while all those Israelites, who are Israelites according to the flesh only, but not according to the Spirit and faith, are accursed from Christ. It is wrong to reckon among the enumerate advantages of Israel the salvation in Christ, the righteousness which avails before God, the eternal salvation. The promise pertains to all Israelites inasmuch as the promised Christ should and did take upon Himself flesh and blood from Israel, and inasmuch as in the promise and later in the preaching of the Gospel salvation was offered to all Israelites. The real children of the promise are only those who cling to the promise, who have applied to themselves Christ’s salvation in faith.

IX.13
The apostle wishes to refer this second Biblical example, as the first, to the question under discussion. That Esau was excluded from the lineage of promise points to that fact that not all Israelites, descended from Abraham according to the flesh, are true Israelites. Jacob, as Isaac, is a type of the true children of Abraham and God. This is the lesson from the example of Jacob: All Israelites, who – as Jacob and regardless of birth and origin, of works and conduct- were chosen and called according to God’s free purpose, but who are now chosen and called to adoption and salvation in Christ, are the real seed of Abraham; they are God’s children, who finally receive eternal salvation.

IX.18
It evidently was the example of Pharaoh which caused the apostle to speak of obduracy. Nowhere in Scriptures is obduracy described more in detail than in the story of Pharaoh. God has presented Pharaoh just as an example of obduracy. The last great deed of God’s might and judgment upon Pharaoh, which destroyed him from the earth, was prepared through the judgment of obduracy, Yet, it is especially the context that leads the apostle to the subject. Through the entire historical discussion runs the contrast between true Israel and the Israel accursed from Christ. In the further course of the discussion just this fact is brought forth that the unbelieving Jews have fallen under the judgment of obduracy. Though the statement “Whom he will he hardeneth” is general in character, Paul has in mind especially the Jews, who had the same experience as Pharaoh. From the example of Pharaoh, therefore, one should learn what obduracy really is.

IX.23-4
Throughout the present historical discussion the apostle speaks of the fate of Israel, which he places along side of the fate of the Gentiles. So when he speaks of the vessels of wrath, he has before his eyes his fellow men, who at the time when he wrote this were accursed from Christ. It was a great day of mercy for Israel when Christ, who is God over all, took from Israel the flesh and blood of men and went to and fro among His people to seek and to save that which was lost. He came unto His own, but His own received Him not. To them He cried out at the close of His public ministry: “How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” Matt. 23,37. Then when the Jews nailed their Messiah to the cross, they filled the measure of their sins; then were they ripe for destruction. It would not have been too severe had God suddenly exterminated this generation of Christ’s murderers from the earth. Matt, 23,32. But God had patience and granted the disobedient children yet a last time of grace.

The twelve apostles of Israel declared the salvation, which Christ had won for sinners through suffering and death, to their people first of all and preached unto them repentance and forgiveness of sins. Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, wherever he came, spoke the Word of God first to the Jews of the Diaspora. When the greater part of the Jews hardened themselves to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then the judgement of obduracy, already begun in the days of Christ, was completed; and final wrath was no longer far off. “They please not God, and are contrary to all men: forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.” I Thess. 2, 15.16. The judgment of wrath in the year 70 A.D. was according to Scripture the final day for Israel, a type and beginning of the judgment of the world. Matt. 16,28; Mark 9,1; Luke 9,27. At the the same time, however, during this last period of Israel’s history the Church of the New Testament was being built in the heathen world, especially through the ministry of Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles. In those days God had revealed the riches of His glory and the fulness of His mercy to the poor, erring heathen. When the Jews did not deem themselves worthy of eternal life, the apostles turned to the heathen and gathered together from the peoples of the heathen a great harvest. And wherever the Gospel of Christ was preached and brought fruit, there also a number of Jews was added to the congregation of Christ. These are the historical facts, the great deeds of God, upon which Paul looks back, having already happened when he wrote this letter.

IX.25-6
Paul refers these words of Hosea to the call and pardoning of the Gentiles. In his prophecy Hosea reveals to the idolatrous Kingdom of the Ten Tribes that the Lord would no longer be gracious to them and that they would become like the
heathen. The Ten Tribes then also perished in the heathen world after their removal into the Assyrian Captivity. But to the threat there is immediately attached a promise, a Messianic promise, Hos. I,10:”Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it
was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God.” The first part of the prophecy is evidently an echo of the patriarchal promise received by Abraham, Gen.12,3; 15,5; 17,5; 22,17. The seed of Abraham, however, is the spiritual posterity. Rom.4,17. Accordingly in Hos.1.10 “the children of Israel,” whose number should be as the sands of the seas,” are the members of God’s New Testament people; the place where it was said to them, “ye are not my people,” is the heathen land; those not called His people are the heathen to whom also belonged those Israelites, who had become like the heathen. And of the Gentiles it is here prophesied that they in Messianic times would be and be called the sons of the living God. The continuation of the prophecy agrees with this, Hos.1,11:”Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together, and appoint themselves one head, and they shall come up out of the land: for great shall be the day of Jezreel.”

These words can mean nothing else than the gathering of the New Testament Church from all peoples, the one flock under the one Shepherd, John 10,ll, which is here described in Old Testament expressions under the picture of the return from the captivity. For the children of Israel, in the real sense of the word, in distinction from the children of Judah, the Ten Tribes, never returned to Canaan from the Exile. And when it reads further in Hos, 2,1:”Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ruhamah,” and in 2,23; “and I will sow her unto me in the earth; and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy; and I will say to them which were not my people, Thou art my people; and they shall say, Thou art my God,” thus, according to the context, reference is made to the mercy which the Gentiles should experience. In Hos. 1,10; 2,23 there is, therefore, a direct Scriptural testimony for the call, conversion and pardoning of the Gentiles.

IX.29:
And as Esaias said before, Except the lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodoma, and been made like unto Gomorrha. Is. 1,9. In this prophecy, Is. l, Isaiah paints in short, marked lines the disobedient and impenitent Israel, as it was at his time and remained in later times, and threatens the judgment, which already began in his days and was finally completed in the mighty catastrophe of 70 A.D. Then the wrath of God was poured out over Judah-Jerusalem, similarly as once over
the godless cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. All apostate children are dedicated to wrath and destruction, not only those who are snatched away by such visible judgments. Nevertheless, Judah was not altogether like the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, of whom not one remained when the Lord destroyed those cities. In this case God kept a seed for Himself. Those are the true Israelites, who have shared in Christ’s salvation.

With these two prophetic quotations the apostle has confirmed the words: “Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also Gentiles.” God, as prophesied in the Scriptures of the Old Covenant called and gathered a people, Christendom, for Himself from the Gentiles and also from the Jews, in spite of the rejection of the great mass already proclaimed by the prophets.

IX.33
Such was the state of affairs with Israel when Paul wrote this letter. Christ had appeared and presented Himself to His people as the promised Helper and Redeemer. The apostle of Christ had first declared to the Jews that there was salvation in no one else but in Christ, the Crucified and the Resurrected. The great majority of Israel, however, had from the beginning taken offense at Christ and became confirmed in their enmity against Christ. Thus for them Christ, according to God’s just decree, was appointed to this purpose: that they further and more violently took offense at Him and were finally dashed to pieces. Thus the apostle points to the severe guilt of Israel, their fully-matured unbelief, as the adequate cause of their destruction and damnation.

In fine brevem

A few points will aptly summarize. (1) Stoeckhardt clearly exegetes the events of the New Testament with the prophecy of the Old, finding ample fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy in the events of Our Lord’s ministry, death and resurrection. No need for retaining Old Testament prophecies for purposes of dispensationalist misreadings! (2) The physical and the spiritual seeds of Abraham are clearly distinguished one from the other, as it was clearly the former alone that the majority of Judah prided herself on when it was those of the latter that constitute true Israel. (3) This spiritual seed, that is faith, has been and will always be the same throughout all time, the righteous belief in the savior sent to crush the serpent’s head.