“For I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren’s sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh” (Romans 9:3).
Such is Paul’s dedication to his people that he could wish himself accursed from Christ for their sake. Of course he could not really desire that; he was rather making a rhetorical exclamation mark as an example of the grief and heaviness of heart he felt at the apostasy of the Jews and their rejection of their Messiah.
This grief impelled him to earnest prayer and intercession on Israel’s behalf, for we see in the opening verse of Chapter 10, that he tells the Roman Church;
“Brethren, the good pleasure of my heart’s desire and my supplication to God on behalf of them, is their salvation” (Romans 10:1).
It is the “good pleasure” of Paul’s heart and it should be also the good pleasure of everyone born again of the Spirit; for it will bring one closer to the heart of God, which is wrapped up in His first-born Israel. The heart of God has never ceased to yearn for His wandering people and, though they are estranged at the present, the culmination of all things and the return of the Lord of Glory is prophetically linked to Israel’s repentance and conversion. To that extent, all believers should be praying to God to bring these events about, for only then will we see the Lord ruling from Jerusalem.
Paul is not alone in wishing he might be accursed for Israel’s sake; Moses, too, after the idolatry of Israel with the golden calf, cried out to God; “Yet now, if you will, forgive their sin, and if not, I pray blot me out of the Book which you have written” (Exodus 32:32). And, of course, their Messiah actually bore the “curse of one who hangs on a tree”, as Paul swtites to the Galatians;
“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, ‘Cursed is every one that hangs on a tree’” (Galatians 3:13).
This He did, firstly for God’s chosen nation and then for those of the gentile nations who would become, firstly, His disciples, then His friends, and finally, His brethren.
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