Discussion ranges over a number of questions: Are the Jews still the chosen people of God? Are there two equally valid ways to God: one for Jews through Judaism; the other for Gentiles through Jesus Christ? Does the Christian church now simply replace Israel in God's plan of salvation?

Steve Motyer takes up these and other questions in a lively Interpretation of Romans 9-11, the apostle Paul's most concentrated study of Israel's place in God's plan.

Motyer's book is much more than a discussion, however. It is a searching critique of the church's failure to be the kind of people to provoke Israel to jealousy, to use Paul's own phrase. It also challenges Christians to recover the apostle's compassionate longing for his own Jewish people to believe in Jesus as Messiah.

Steve Motyer is a New Testament lecturer at London Bible College. He is married with three children