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In our verse-by-verse study of Romans last time we started on Rom 9:3; that starts to explain Paul's burden. It begins with the explanatory use of the particle "gar "(For)." With it is the imperfect middle indicative of the verb "euchomai" (to wish or to pray for). Here it means to wish so we have "for I could wish."
The imperfect tense expresses a thought that is unattainable. It means if effect, I would like to pray for it but I cannot so I can only wish for the impossible. We will see why he cannot pray for it shortly.
Paul is stating that he recognizes that God's omniscience knew all of the facts before they occurred. All of these were placed the divine decree and then printed out in terms of the believer as election, foreknowledge, and predestination and in terms of the unbeliever in concepts of judgment and condemnation.
God knew in eternity past the free will decision that everyone would make about believing in Jesus Christ. The imperfect tense describes Paul as recognizing that he is in a hopeless situation as far as Israel is concerned.
He is aware of the consequences of negative volition toward the gospel and that his own people have negative volition toward God's Word of Truth. He understands thoroughly and completely their problem, their difficulty so he is burdened for them because he knows that they are destroying themselves.
About 20 years after Paul was writing the letter of Romans Jerusalem would be destroyed. His burden was that he could see this coming. The reciprocal middle voice is accompanied by the pronoun "ego" (I or me" and the intensive pronoun "autos" (myself) that with emphasis is translated "I myself."
So we have "I could wish that I myself." The indicative mood is a potential indicative of impulse. This is followed by the present active infinitive of the verb "eimi" (to be) in the tendential present tense that is used to describe an action that is desired but is not actually happening.
The active voice tells us that Paul would like to produce the action of the verb. The infinitive is the infinitive that describes what he could wish would happen.
Next we have the predicate nominative singular from "anathema" (cursed) that is used in the Septuagint for a the Hebrew noun "cherem."
When cherem was translated from the Hebrew to the Greek in the Septuagint "anathema" was used. It means to be the object of a curse. Then the prepositional phrase "apo" (separated from) then the proper noun "Christos" (Christ) so we have "separated from Christ."
Because Paul is a believer in Jesus this is impossible because it is impossible for any believer, no matter how apostate or how evil, to be separated from Christ because of the baptism of the spirit.
There is nothing the believer can do to separate himself from the Lord Jesus Christ after the believer is in union with Christ so it is impossible for Paul to be cursed and separated from Christ.
This is an illustration of the fact that there are certain things that a believer can wish for that they should not pray for because they cannot be changed because for it to happen would contradict God's integrity.
Nothing can remove the believer's salvation or his relationship with Christ because nothing can change God's mind.
This is why to pray effectively a believer must understand God's Word so you don't waste your time praying for something God will not do.
As Saul of Tarsus, an unbeliever, Paul trued to keep the Jews away from Christ but now as the apostle Paul, a believer; he is burdened by the Jews failure to come to Christ.
These two opposite positions demonstrate Paul's great love for his people, the Jews. As an unbeliever he had a great misguided love for Israel and as a believer doctrinal truth has intensified his love for Israel.
In his burden for Israel Paul went as far as he could go to demonstrate his love and his concern for the Jews. We see here that he even expressed an unattainable wish, an impossible desire to be cursed so that his brethren the Jews will believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
In the pain of his soul Paul could wish for no more than this. It is a perfect expression of pain in the soul.
The obstacle to fulfilling the wish or prayer is the fact that Paul's eternal salvation could not be canceled but it expresses his burden even though it cannot happen.
Under the principle of individual free will and self-determination there is nothing Paul can do to save the Jews who refuse to believe in Jesus. They must change their own mind about Jesus.
Under the principle of free will and the principle of self-determination, every individual must make that decision for himself. He has to decide for himself whether he will believe in the Lord Jesus Christ or not.
In the angelic conflict God makes free will and volitional self-determination the only issue. That the Greek noun "anathema" would be used for the Hebrew noun "cherem" in the Septuagint is not surprising so we need to take a look at the use of the anathema for cherem because this is why Paul knew that he could not be cursed so the Jew's could be saved.
"Cherem" describes what was consecrated to God without capability of being ransomed; something that is given to God, consecrated to God, and it cannot be redeemed.
The meaning of cherem is explained in Lev 27:28-29 "Nevertheless, any cherem thing (any proscribed thing, any banned thing, any cursed thing), which a man sets apart to the Lord out of all that he has, whether of man or of animals, or of the fields, or of his own property, shall not be sold and shall not be redeemed: for every devoted (cherem) thing is most holy to the Lord.
v29 No person who may have been set apart (charem) among men shall be ransomed, he shall be put to death."
What happened at Jericho is a perfect illustration of this. God said that when the walls of Jericho fell everything inside was cherem with the exception of Rahab and her family who were the only believers in the city.
This means that all of the people in Jericho except for Rahab and her family had been dedicated to the Lord and were to be killed. They could not be redeemed and they could not be saved. Therefore the army had to go in and execute every man, woman, child, and even every baby, because they were under cherem from God because they were dedicated to the Lord.
Jesus Christ controls history and they had now reached a place of insanity and left unchecked their insanity would spread throughout the human race so except for Rahab and her family they all had to be destroyed. This is why God told Israel to kill all of the inhabitants of Canaan.
Cherem also applies to things, and it means that every materialistic thing that was found in Jericho was to be put in the treasury because it was dedicated to the Lord.
This is the very same word that Paul is using. He could wish himself to be accursed. Paul would like to cherem himself, or become anathema so that Israel could be saved.
But such a prayer violates the principle of self-determination in the angelic conflict. In the angelic conflict free will is the order of the day so each person must determine their destiny for himself.
The firstborn of Israel were redeemed by the death of another. The children as well as the animals were automatically under cherem. Every firstborn belonged to the Lord but cherem in the case of the firstborn children was redeemable by the death of an animal.
In Gal 3:13; Jesus Christ is described as being cherem. He is the ban for our sins. "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse (cherem) for us; for it stands written, Cursed is everyone who hangs on the wood."
When our Lord Jesus Christ was on the cross He could not be brought down from the cross. Jesus could not be redeemed because He was under cherem. He had to die; He was cherem to God for the sins of the world.
This is why when Jesus prayed in the Garden that if it be possible that there would be another way it was impossible for that to happen, Matt 26:39;
Joshua 6:17-19; describes the cherem that God put on Jericho. That means that nothing could be redeemed whether it was human, animal or material with the exception of born-again Rahab and her family.
Jericho was dedicated to the Lord as the first city in the land to be defeated and therefore it was dedicated to the Lord in an unredeemable manner. "And the city shall be under the ban (cherem)." Achan violated the ban (charem) per Josh 7:1; and Israel was cursed until Achan and his entire family was killed. Josh 7:25-26;
Rom 9:3; "for the sake of my brethren" - the preposition "huper" (for) plus the ablative plural from "adelphos" (brethren), refers to the Jewish people. With it is the possessive genitive singular from "ego" (my) "my brethren (adelphos)." Paul is a racial Jew.
It is translated " on behalf of" or "for the sake of my brethren." "Brethren" translated from "adelphos" is used here for the racial Jews who were citizens of Israel. Paul wanted to be "cherem", a substitute for the entire Jewish race and Jewish nation as a guarantee of their salvation.
The Jewish race is the youngest and greatest of all races in history. Gentile Abraham after reaching spiritual maturity and being circumcised became a Jew at age 100.
Abraham had seven sons but the Jewish race is perpetuated only through Isaac. By self-determination Ishmael was eliminated from the perpetuation of the Jewish race. Isaac was a believer so the Jewish race was perpetuated through him.
Isaac had twin sons, one a Jew and one a Gentile. Esau, the eldest should have been the source of perpetuating the Jewish race but Esau was an unbeliever and remained a Gentile but Jacob the younger of the twins was a believer so the perpetuation of Israel goes through him. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jacob's twelve sons formed the nucleus of the nation Israel so Abraham is known as the father of the Jewish race and Moses is known as the father of the Jewish nation Israel.
Anyone who has the genes of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is a biological Jew but that is only a Jew in the sense of the race of the Jews. There is also a religious Jew who is an adherent to Judaism but this also includes Gentiles by race who adhere to Judaism. Therefore when word Jew as used here describes only the race who are the progeny of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
A true Jew is a person of the Jewish race who is also a believer in Jesus Christ.
"My kinsmen" here we have the genitive plural from the compound "suggenes" (sun = with; genes= race) a race of people. It refers here to Paul's fellow countrymen, fellow citizens, members of the same gene pool, members of the same nation; plus the possessive genitive of "ego" (my) so we have "my countrymen."
"according to the flesh" this describes the great gap between them, they are still in the flesh but as a believer Paul is in Christ. " Kata" (according) plus the accusative of "sarx" (flesh).
"According to biological descent" is a good translation. The nation of Israel begins with Moses at the Exodus from Egypt. There was no Jewish nation or Jewish people functioning under national standards until the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Mosaic Law that made them the first client nation in human history.
Expanded Translation Rom 9:3; "For I could wish that I myself would be accursed [cherem], from the Christ for the sake of my brethren (racial Jews), my fellow countrymen (citizens of Israel) according to genetics (from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob)."
We see here that the more Paul was separated from Israel through his perception of doctrine and his spiritual advance the more sensitive he became to the tragedy of Israel. You cannot advance spiritually without becoming sensitive to the tragedies of life and the people who live it.
For the Jews to have such a fantastic spiritual heritage and miss out on salvation was almost more than Paul could bear.
Both the formation of the Jewish race and the origin of the Jewish nation of Israel emphasize Jesus Christ as the God of Israel.
Therefore to be a Jew and not to believe in Christ the God of Israel is overwhelming to Paul who sees the Jews as being so close and yet so far. In the very sacrifices that they offer they have the answer in their hands, but they fail to see that Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Paul's burden existed in proportion to the number of Jews who had rejected Christ as savior, the number of contemporary Jews who in self-determination had said no to the gospel.
Once Paul the unbeliever as Saul of Tarsus had tried to destroy Christianity. But now Paul the believer sees Christianity as the natural, logical result, as the perpetuation of the spiritual heritage of Israel. He also sees Christianity as the logical result of Messiah's first advent.
God's need to call out a royal family of both Jew and Gentile is apparent to Paul. The royal family is made up of both Jew and Gentile. While the Gentiles did not have the background or the frame of reference to the Church Age, every Jew by spiritual heritage and by their own dispensation (the dispensation of Israel) has the background.
Therefore Paul has the desire for them to link their spiritual heritage with the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. The relationship between Israel's spiritual heritage and the doctrine of the Church Age is so obvious to Paul that he desires the impossible.