Useful Bible Studies > Romans Commentary > chapter 9

God brings his people back to himself

Romans 9:26

Paul repeats the words of Hosea 1:10. God is able to bring people back into a right relationship with him. That act shows God’s honour, his kindness and his greatness in a very special way. He is working in the lives of people who very clearly do not deserve his love. He forgives people who are guilty of many evil deeds (Exodus 34:6-7).

Christ spoke much about how God brings people back to himself (for example, Luke chapter 15). However, Hosea’s subject is not just a few people, but a whole nation (Hosea 1:10-11). Hosea shows how God will bring Israel’s people back to himself. Paul will return to that subject in Romans 11:11-32.

Hosea’s difficult personal circumstances help us to understand the message that he brought from God. Hosea’s wife was not loyal to him, and she had children from a relationship with another man. God told Hosea to give her children unusual names. Those names described God’s relationship with Israel, which had also not been loyal to him (to God).

So Hosea called his wife’s second son Lo-Ammi, which means ‘not my people’. As that child was not Hosea’s son, so Israel’s people could no longer consider themselves the people of God (9:6). However, it was God’s honour to bring them back to himself.

God’s love astonishes us as we read his promises to Israel in Hosea 1:10-11. God repeats his promise in Genesis 22:17, to show that he will carry out his former promises to them. Then (as in Jeremiah 31:31-37 or Zechariah 14:9-21) God promises them a better future than anything that they have known in the past.

Next part: The people in Israel who are loyal to God (Romans 9:27-28)

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