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Romans 11 — Commentary 4

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Benson Commentary Romans 11:1 I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. Romans 11:1-3 . I say then, &c. — As if he had said, We have just seen how the perverseness of the Jews and the calling of the Gentiles have been foretold; but do I say then that God hath entirely cast off his whole people, so as to have mercy on none of them? God forbid — In no wise; for I should then pronounce a sentence of reprobation upon myself; for I also am an Israelite — As it is well known; of the seed of Abraham, &c. — To whom, through the tribe of Benjamin, I can trace my genealogy; yet I am not cast off; I am still one of God’s people, by believing in Christ. God hath not cast off that part of his people whom he foreknew, as repenting and believing. The apostle speaks after the manner of men. For in fact, knowing and foreknowing are the same thing with God, who knows or sees all things at once, from everlasting to everlasting. Wot ye not — Know ye not, that in a parallel case, amid a general apostacy, when Elijah thought the whole nation was fallen into idolatry, God knew there was a remnant of true worshippers. How he maketh intercession — Or complaineth, as the verb ????????? , here used, evidently signifies, Acts 25:24 , where Festus says, The Jews, ???????? ??? , complained to me concerning Paul; against Israel — The ten tribes, who had generally revolted to idolatry; saying, Lord, they have killed thy prophets — See note on 1 Kings 19:10 ; 1 Kings 19:14 ; and digged down thine altars — Built upon extraordinary occasions by special dispensation, and with the authority of the Lord’s prophets; altars which pious people attended who could not go up to Jerusalem, and would not worship the calves, nor Baal; these separate altars, though breaking in upon the unity of the church, yet being erected and attended by those that sincerely aimed at the glory of God, and served him faithfully, God was pleased to own for his altars, as well as that at Jerusalem; and the pulling of them down is mentioned and charged upon Israel by Elijah as a heinous sin. And I am left alone — Of all thy prophets who boldly and publicly plead thy cause; and they seek my life — Send murderers in pursuit of me from place to place. Romans 11:2 God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew. Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel, saying, Romans 11:3 Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life. Romans 11:4 But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. Romans 11:4-6 . But what saith the answer — Recollect the answer which God gave to this doleful complaint; I have reserved to myself — To maintain my honour and true worship, I have preserved by my providence and grace not fewer than seven thousand; who have not bowed the knee to Baal — Nor to the golden calves, nor complied with any of those idolatrous rites which have been established by iniquitous laws. Even so at this present time — As it was then, so it is now; bad as this generation of Israelites is, there is a remnant who continue faithful to God; according to the election of grace — According to that gracious purpose of God, whereby he hath chosen those, whether Jews or Gentiles, for his people, that break off their sins by repentance, and believe on Jesus, as the true Messiah and Saviour of the world, with their hearts unto righteousness. Among those who thus repented and believed, in the first age of Christianity, were many thousands of Jews. Of the election here spoken of, see notes on Romans 8:28-30 . And if by grace, then it is no more of works — That is, of the merit of works, whether ceremonial or moral; whether of the Mosaic or any other law, except that of faith. In other words, it is no more an election according to any covenant of justice, like that made with our first parents before the fall, which required unsinning obedience, but according to the covenant of grace, made with man since the fall, which makes provision for pardoning his past sins, and renewing his fallen nature, and by which alone a sinful creature can be saved: otherwise grace is no more grace — The very nature of grace is lost. But if it be of the merit of works, then it is no more grace, otherwise work is no more work — No longer deserving the name, or is no longer meritorious, but the very nature of it is destroyed. There is something so absolutely inconsistent between the being justified by grace, and the being justified by the merit of works, that if you suppose either, you of necessity exclude the other. For what is given to works is the payment of a debt; whereas grace implies an unmerited favour. So that the same benefit cannot, in the very nature of things, be derived from both. Romans 11:5 Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace. Romans 11:6 And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work. Romans 11:7 What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded Romans 11:7-10 . What then — What is the conclusion from the whole? It is this, that Israel, in general, hath not obtained that which he seeketh — Namely, justification, acceptance with God, and the blessings consequent thereon. But the election — Those of them only who repent and believe, and therefore are chosen of God to be his people; have obtained it, and the rest were blinded — By their own wilful prejudice, arising from their worldly spirit, which caused them to reject Jesus on account of his poverty, mean appearance, and state of suffering. The word ?????????? , here rendered, were blinded, signifies properly, were hardened, being a metaphorical expression taken from the skin of the hand, made hard by labour. In general it denotes, in Scripture, both hardness of heart, and blindness of understanding. “The apostle’s meaning is, that the unbelieving Jews, through the influence of their own evil dispositions, were so blinded, that they did not discern the force of the evidence by which God confirmed the mission of his Son, and so were excluded from his covenant and church.” — Macknight. According as it is written — Here the apostle refers to two passages of Isaiah, chap. Isaiah 29:10 ; Romans 6:9 , &c. God hath given them the spirit of slumber — Or deep sleep, as the word ?????????? signifies, being used with an allusion to the stupifying potions which were sometimes given to persons who were to suffer torture or death, to render them insensible. The meaning here is, God hath at length withdrawn his Spirit, and for their wilful impenitence, unbelief, and obstinacy, hath given them up to a state of blindness and insensibility, whereby they slumber, as it were, on the brink of ruin, and are careless about their salvation; while the wrath of God hangs over theft heads, and the divine judgments are ready to break forth upon them, in a most awful manner. Eyes that they should not see — Here the apostle alludes to Deuteronomy 29:4 , where see the note. As if the apostle had said, Being forsaken of God, they are like to a man bereft of his senses: or he has given them up to such stupidity of mind, that though they have eyes yet they see not. Unto this day — So it was then, and so it is still. And — To show the causes and consequences of that spiritual blindness; David saith — Speaking prophetically of the Messiah’s enemies; Let their table be made a snare — Or, as the words may be rendered, Their table shall be for a snare to them, &c. That is, the plentiful provision God has made for the supply of their wants, ghostly or bodily, being abused, shall become an occasion of sin and mischief to them; and their blessings shall be turned into curses, by reason of their depravity. The metaphors of a snare and a trap are taken from birds and beasts, which are allured into snares and traps to their destruction, by meat laid in their way. Stumbling-blocks occasion falls, which sometimes wound to death. And a recompense — A punishment as a recompense of their preceding wickedness. Thus sin is punished by sin; and thus the gospel, which should have fed and strengthened their souls, becomes a means of destroying them. Let their eyes, &c. — As if he had said, And in them the following words are also fulfilled: Their eyes shall be darkened — Not the eyes of their bodies, (for in that sense the prediction was neither fulfilled in David’s nor in Christ’s enemies,) but of their minds, so that they will not discern God’s truth nor their own duty, nor the way of peace and salvation. And bow down their back alway — Under a perpetual weight of sorrows, which they will not be able to support, and which will be a just punishment upon them for their having rejected so easy a yoke. The darkening of the eyes, and the bowing down of the back, denote the greatest affliction. For grief is said to make the eyes dim, Lamentations 5:17 ; and a most miserable slavery is represented by walking with the back bowed down, as under a yoke or heavy burden, Psalm 146:8 . They loved darkness rather than light, and therefore were permitted by the righteous judgment of God to go on in darkness, while the blind led the blind. And such still continues to be the state of the Jews, notwithstanding the intolerable load of wo which in all ages, since their rejection of the Messiah, has bowed down their backs to the earth. By quoting these prophecies, the apostle showed the Jews that their rejection and punishment for crucifying the Messiah, was long ago foretold in their own Scriptures. It is justly observed by Macknight here, that “God’s ancient Israel, given up to deep sleep, to blind eyes, and deaf ears, and with the back bowed down continually, is an example which ought to terrify all who enjoy the gospel, lest by abusing it they bring themselves into the like miserable condition.” Romans 11:8 (According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto this day. Romans 11:9 And David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumblingblock, and a recompence unto them: Romans 11:10 Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their back alway. Romans 11:11 I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. Romans 11:11-12 . Have they stumbled that, as a nation, they should fall — Totally and finally? No: though they have taken such offence at Christ and the gospel that they are rejected by God at present, yet they are not fallen into irrecoverable ruin, so as never more to be owned by God as his people: but rather, through their fall, salvation, that is, the gospel, which is the means of salvation, is come unto the Gentiles — Not but that salvation might have come to the Gentiles if they had stood, but it was the divine appointment that the gospel should be preached to the Gentiles, upon its being rejected by the Jews. Thus in the parable, Matthew 22:8-9 , they that were bidden were not worthy; Go ye therefore into the highways, &c. See also Luke 14:21 ; and so the apostles acted. It was necessary, said St. Paul, Acts 13:46 , that the word of God should first be spoken to you, Jews: but seeing that you put it from you, lo! we turn to the Gentiles. See also Acts 18:6 . Add to this, that the persecution of the Christians in Judea drove them into other countries, into which, whether private Christians or public teachers, they carried the gospel with them, and by conversation or preaching, communicated the knowledge of it to such as they found willing to receive it. See Acts 8:4 . To provoke them to jealousy — That is, to excite them to a holy emulation of sharing the blessings to be expected from their own Messiah, when they shall see so many heathen nations enjoying them. For the word ????????? is evidently to be taken here in a good sense, and signifies, to excite others to emulate those who enjoy advantages which they themselves do not possess. “The admission of the Gentiles into the church erected by Christ, was a very proper means of exciting the Jews to emulation; because, when they saw the Gentiles endued with the gifts of the Spirit, and with miraculous powers, and observed the holiness of their lives, and the favour which God showed them; in short, when they found all the blessings and privileges of the people of God bestowed on the Gentiles, they would naturally conclude that the Christian was now the only church of God, and be excited to imitate the Gentiles by entering into it, that they might share with them in these privileges, Romans 11:14 ; as it is probable a number of them actually did, especially after the destruction of Jerusalem.” — Macknight. Thus, as the rejection of the Jews became an occasion of the calling of the Gentiles, so this calling of the Gentiles will prove an occasion of the restoration of the Jews. For, if the fall of them — That is, their rejecting the gospel, and so falling from the honour and happiness of being God’s people, be the riches of the world — The occasion of God’s spreading the light of his truth and the riches of his grace over all the world. And the diminishing of them — Greek, ?? ?????? , the diminution or the lessening of them, by stripping them of their privileges; the riches of the Gentiles — The occasion of his manifesting his abundant mercy in pardoning and saving the heathen; how much more their fulness — That Isaiah , 1 st, The general conversion of them, which the word ??????? , here rendered fulness, undoubtedly implies; since the general conversion of the Gentiles is expressed by the same word, Romans 11:25 . 2d, The restoring them to their forfeited privileges, and thereby raising them even to more than their former greatness, which is fifty called their fulness, because it will render both themselves and the Christian church complete. For the word ??????? , fulness, is properly that which, being added to another thing, makes it complete. Thus Matthew 9:16 , the patch with which a torn garment is mended, or made complete, has this name given it: and in this sense the church is called, Ephesians 1:23 , ?? ??????? , the fulness of him who filleth all in all; because without the church, which is his body, Christ would not be complete. “The apostle’s meaning is, that a general conversion of the Jews will take place before the end of the world, and will afford to the Gentiles the completest evidence of the truth of the gospel, by showing them that it is the finishing of a grand scheme, which God has been carrying on for the salvation of mankind, by means of his dispensation toward the Jews.” Indeed so many prophecies refer to this grand event, that it is surprising any Christian should doubt of it. And these are greatly confirmed by the wonderful preservation of the Jews, as a distinct people, to this day. When it is accomplished, it will be so strong a demonstration both of the Old and New Testament revelation, as will doubtless convince many thousands of Deists, in countries professedly Christian; of whom, under such corrupt establishments as generally prevail, there will, of course, be increasing multitudes among merely nominal Christians. And this will be a means of swiftly propagating the gospel among Mohammedans and Pagans; who would probably have received it long ago, had they conversed only with real Christians. Romans 11:12 Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness? Romans 11:13 For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office: Romans 11:13-14 . For, or now, I speak to you Gentiles — You believing Romans, and thus make known to you the present rejection of the Jews, and the happiness of the Gentiles in their future restoration, for your caution as well as comfort; inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles — By a special designation of divine providence and grace, and am accordingly under an indispensable obligation to communicate to them whatever will be for their profit; I magnify my office — Far from being ashamed of ministering to them, I glory therein, and esteem it the most signal honour of my life to be so employed. And the rather, if by any means — Especially by converting the Gentiles; I may provoke to emulation — To a striving to partake of the privileges of the gospel, as well as the Gentiles; them which are my flesh — My kinsmen; and might save some of them — Might bring them to believe in Jesus, and so to be saved. Here, by a most popular and affectionate turn, the apostle represents himself as zealous in converting the Gentiles, from his great love to the Jews. Romans 11:14 If by any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them. Romans 11:15 For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be , but life from the dead? Romans 11:15 . For — As if he had said, Their general conversion ought to be desired, because of the admirable benefit which will come to mankind thereby: for if the casting away of them — Their rejection, as signified above; be the reconciling of the world — An occasion of sending the gospel to the Gentiles in all parts of the world, and so bringing them to faith in Christ, whereby they obtain the pardon of their sins, and reconciliation with God; what shall the receiving of them into God’s favour and into his church be, but life from the dead — A miraculous work, and productive of the greatest joy to the converted Gentiles; a joy like that which one would feel on receiving a beloved friend back from the dead. As, in the following verse, the apostle speaks of God’s church under the emblem of a tree, Dr. Macknight thinks, in using the words ? ??????? , the casting away, “he may perhaps allude to the practice of gardeners, who cut off from vines and olive-trees such branches as are barren or withered, and cast them away. According to this notion of casting away, the reconciling of the world, or Gentiles, is the same thing with the ingrafting of them, mentioned Romans 11:17 . In this passage the unbelief and rejection of the Jews is justly represented as the means of the reception of the Gentiles. For, although the unbelief of the Jews may seem to have been an obstacle to the conversion of the Gentiles, it hath greatly contributed to that event. Besides the reason mentioned in a preceding note, it is to be considered, that the rejection of the Jews was the punishment of their unbelief, and that both events were foretold by Moses and by Christ. Wherefore these events, as the fulfilment of prophecy, have strengthened the evidences of the gospel, and thereby contributed to the conversion of the Gentiles.” Add to this, there are many other predictions in the Old Testament, which demonstrate the truth of the gospel, but which derive their strength from their being in the possession of the Jews, in whose hands they have continued from the beginning, and who have preserved them with the greatest care, carrying them with them in all their dispersions, wherever they go. In all countries, therefore, the Jews are living witnesses to the antiquity and genuineness of the whole of the prophecies by which the gospel is confirmed. And their testimony, which is always at hand, cannot be called in question; because, having shown themselves from the beginning bitter enemies of Christ and of his gospel, no suspicion can be entertained that they have either forged these prophecies, or altered them to favour us. As little can it be suspected that we have forged or altered these prophecies. For if any of us had been disposed so to do, it would have served no purpose while our enemies, the Jews, maintained the integrity of their copies. Romans 11:16 For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy : and if the root be holy, so are the branches. Romans 11:16-17 . And their conversion will surely be effected, For if the first- fruit of them, the patriarchs, be holy — He alludes to the waved sheaf, which was said to be holy, because it was accepted of God, in token of his giving the appointed weeks of the harvest: and by the first-fruit, he either means the patriarchs, who were called and separated to the service of God from all the people of the earth; or, as many commentators understand him, the first converts to Christianity from among the Jews, teaching that they were most acceptable to God, as being the first members of the newly- erected Christian church. The lump is also holy — The lump, ?????? , (which was the meal tempered with water, and kneaded for baking,) here denotes the mass of which the two wave-loaves were made, mentioned Leviticus 23:17 . And as these were offered at the conclusion of the harvest, seven weeks after the offering of the first-fruits, they represented the whole fruits of the earth newly gathered in, as sanctified through that offering for the people’s use, during the following year. By this latter similitude, therefore, the apostle intends the whole mass, or body of the nation, to be hereafter converted, and rendered acceptable to God, as members of his true church. And if the root of them, namely, Abraham, was holy and beloved of God, so are the branches still beloved for the father’s sake, and so will be once more, in his good time, admitted to his favour. There seems here to be an allusion to Jeremiah 2:16 , where the Jewish nation, made the visible church of God by virtue of the covenant at Sinai, are represented under the figure of a green olive-tree, of which Abraham was the root, and his descendants by Isaac the branches. Hence the thrusting the Jews out of the covenant of God, is here represented by the breaking off of the branches; and the admission of the Gentiles into that covenant, so as to make them members of God’s church, is set forth under the idea of their being ingrafted into the stock of the green olive-tree; and the advantages which they enjoyed thereby, are expressed by their partaking of the root and fatness of the olive-tree. The expression, a wild olive-tree, means here, a branch of a wild olive-tree, for branches only are ingrafted. The Gentiles are called a wild olive, because God had not cultivated them as he did the Jews, who on that account were called, Romans 11:24 , the good or garden olive. Romans 11:17 And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert graffed in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree; Romans 11:18 Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. Romans 11:18 . Boast not against the branches — Attribute not thy being ingrafted into the good olive to thy own merits, as if thou wert worthy of the blessing. But if thou boast — To humble thy pride, consider, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee — The Jewish church is not ingrafted into the Gentile, but the Gentile into the Jewish; the members thereof being by faith made children of Abraham, who was constituted by God’s covenant the father of all believers, receiving on their behalf the promises. The apostle’s meaning is, that Abraham and his posterity derived no advantage from any covenant which God made with any of the Gentile nations: but the Gentiles have derived many benefits from the covenants which God made with Abraham and the Jews. “Because the converted Gentiles began very early to despise and hate the unbelieving Jews, on account of their opposition to the gospel, and because the apostle foresaw that in after-times the Jews would be treated with great cruelty and contempt by Christians of all denominations, he wrote this passage; in which, by mentioning the great obligations which the Gentiles are under to the Jews, he shows it to be injustice, ingratitude, and impiety, to despise and hate this people; and much more to plunder, persecute, and kill them. They were the original church and people of God. They preserved the knowledge of God when all the world was sunk in idolatry. To them we owe the Scriptures of the New Testament, as well as those of the Old; for the holy and honourable fellowship of the prophets and apostles were Jews. Of them, as concerning the flesh, Christ, the Saviour of the world, came. All the knowledge of religion, therefore, which we enjoy, is derived from them. And surely something of kindness and gratitude is due for such obligations.” — Macknight. Romans 11:19 Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be graffed in. Romans 11:19-21 . Thou wilt say — Thou wilt object; The branches were broken off — For their infidelity and rejection of Jesus and his gospel; that I might be graffed in — And therefore we may glory over them as they once did over us. Well; take this thought at least along with thee, Because of unbelief they were broken off — It was not undeservedly, by an act of absolute sovereignty and prerogative, but because of unbelief: by which it appears, it is possible for whole churches, as well as individuals, that have long stood by faith, to fall into such a state of infidelity as may prove their ruin. Now thou art liable to the same infirmity and corruption that they fell by. For thou standest — Hast a place in God’s favour and family; by faith — A grace which, in the very nature of it, implies dependance on God, and is itself the free, undeserved gift of God. Thou dost not stand in or by any strength of thy own, of which thou mightest be confident: thou art only what the free grace of God makes thee; and his grace is his own, which he gives or withholds at pleasure. Therefore be not high-minded, but fear — Be not too confident of thy own strength. A holy fear is an excellent preservative against high-mindedness; happy is the man that thus feareth always. We need not fear lest God should not be true to his word; all the danger is, lest we should be false to our own: let us therefore fear, lest a promise being left, to persevering believers, of entering into his rest, we should come short of it, through not continuing in the faith, grounded and settled; but being moved therefrom, and from the hope of the gospel, Colossians 1:23 . If God spared not the natural branches — Of the good olive-tree, namely, the Jews, so called because they sprang from Abraham, the root of that tree, and consequently by their descent from him were naturally members of the Jewish Church; if God proceeded with so much severity against them, take heed lest he spare not thee — Or, as the Syriac translates the clause, perhaps neither will he spare thee. They, observe, were natural branches, and as such had a peculiar interest in Abraham’s covenant, and in the promises, being descended from his loins; and yet, when they sunk into unbelief, neither prescription, nor long usage, nor the faithfulness of their ancestors, could secure them, but God cast them off. Take heed, therefore, lest thy unbelief and barrenness expose thee, who art not a natural branch, but a scion from a foreign stock, to the punishment of excision, after all the great obligations which he hath laid thee under by his unparalleled goodness. Romans 11:20 Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear: Romans 11:21 For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. Romans 11:22 Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. Romans 11:22-23 . Behold, therefore — In this dispensation; the goodness and severity of God — Consider them maturely, and lay them deeply to heart: on them which fell — The unbelieving Jews, who took offence at the mean appearance of Jesus, and so fell into unbelief, and were cut off for it; severity — Or the exercise of strict justice; for God laid righteousness to the line, and judgment to the plummet, and dealt with them according to their sins, after many ages of astonishing patience and long-suffering exercised toward them. Observe, reader, God is most severe toward those who have been most distinguished by advantages on the one hand, and the abuse of them on the other. Divine patience, and privileges abused, turn to the greatest wrath. The word ???????? , here rendered severity, literally means, a cutting off; the effect being put for severity, the cause. But toward thee — Who art called to faith in Christ, without any merit in thyself; goodness — Benignity and gentleness, as ????????? signifies; if thou continue in his goodness — That is, walk worthy of this privilege, into which thou art brought by God’s goodness: or, if thou be careful to maintain thine interest in God’s favour by continuing to depend upon, and comply with the design of his free grace, and endeavouring to please him continually: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off — From communion with God and his people. And they also — The Jewish nation; if they abide not in unbelief — And thereby continue to reject Christ; shall be grafted in — Restored to union with Christ and his church; for God is able to graft them in again — And willing also, as the word ??????? is frequently taken: (see Romans 4:21 ; Romans 14:4 ; Hebrews 2:18 :) for it was to no purpose to mention God’s ability to graft in the Jews, unless it had been accompanied with willingness. Locke says, “This grafting in again seems to import, that the Jews shall be a flourishing nation again, professing Christianity in the land of promise; for that is to be reinstated again in the promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This Paul might, for good reasons, be withheld from speaking out here. But in the prophets there are very plain intimations of it.” Romans 11:23 And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be graffed in: for God is able to graff them in again. Romans 11:24 For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches , be graffed into their own olive tree? Romans 11:24 . For, &c. — As if he had said, And it appears that he will do it, because he has done that which was more unlikely, as being contrary to nature: if thou wert cut out of the tree wild by nature, &c. — If thou wert admitted into the family of God, though descended from parents that were strangers and enemies, how much more shall they who were children of the covenant, to whom the promises originally belonged, be taken into covenant with him. In other words, God will not seem to do so wonderful a thing, in restoring them to what might appear the privilege of their birthright, and in saving the seed of Abraham his friend, as he hath done in calling you sinners of the Gentiles, to participate the blessings of which you had not the least notion, and to which you cannot be supposed to have had any imaginable claim. This reasoning is certainly very just; the conversion of the Jews, though it hath not yet happened, appearing much more probable than did the conversion of the Gentiles, before that event took place. Some understand the expression, grafted contrary to nature, as signifying contrary to the usual way of ingrafting; which is, not to insert a wild scion into a good stock, but a good scion into a wild stock, to which it communicates its changing efficacy, causing it to bear good fruit. But that circumstance appears not to have been at all regarded by the apostle; nor was it necessary, as Doddridge justly observes, that the simile taken from ingrafting should hold in all its particulars: and certainly the engagement to humility arises, in a considerable degree, from the circumstances of the ingrafting here supposed being the reverse of that commonly used. Indeed, had the scion been nobler than the stock into which it was inserted, its dependance on it for life and nourishment would have rendered it unreasonable that it should boast against it; how much more when the case was the reverse of that in use, and the wild olive was ingrafted on the good. Romans 11:25 For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye sho

Expositors

Expositor's Bible Commentary Romans 11:1 I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. Chapter 22 ISRAEL, HOWEVER, NOT FORSAKEN Romans 11:1-10 "A PEOPLE disobeying and contradicting." So the Lord of Israel, through the Prophet, had described the nation. Let us remember as we pass on what a large feature in the prophecies, and indeed in the whole Old Testament, such accusations and exposures are. From Moses to Malachi, in histories, and songs, and, instructions, we find everywhere this tone of stern truth telling, this unsparing detection and description of Israelite sin. And we reflect that every one of these utterances, humanly speaking, was the voice of an Israelite; and that whatever reception it met with at the moment-it was sometimes a scornful or angry reception, oftener a reverent one-it was ultimately treasured, venerated, almost worshipped, by the Church of this same rebuked and humiliated Israel. We ask ourselves what this has to say about the true origin of these utterances, and the true nature of the environment into which, they fell. Do they not bear witness to the supernatural in both? It was not "human nature" which, in a race quite as prone, at least, as any other, to assert itself, produced these intense and persistent rebukes from within, and secured for them a profound and lasting veneration. The Hebrew Scriptures, in this as in other things, are a literature which mere man, mere Israelite man, "could not have written if he would, and would not have written if he could." Somehow, the Prophets not only spoke with an authority more than human, but they were known to speak with it. There was a national consciousness of divine privilege: and it was inextricably bound up with a national conviction that the Lord of the privileges had an eternal right to reprove His privileged ones, and that He had, as a fact, His accredited messengers of reproof, whose voice was not theirs but His; not the mere outcry of patriotic zealots, but the Oracle of God. Yea, an awful privilege was involved in the reception of such reproofs: "You only have I known; therefore will I punish you". { Amos 3:2 } But this is a recollectlon by the way. St. Paul, so we saw in our last study, has quoted Isaiah’s stern message, only now to stay his troubled heart on the fact that the unbelief of Israel in his day was, if we may dare to put it so, no surprise to the Lord, and therefore no shock to the servant’s faith. But is he to stop there, and sit down, and say, "This must be so"? No; there is more to follow, in this discourse on Israel and God. He has "good words, and comfortable words," { Zechariah 1:13 } after the woes of the last two chapters, and after those earlier passages of the Epistle where the Jew is seen only in his hypocrisy, and rebellion, and pride. He has to speak of a faithful Remnant, now as always present, who make as it were the golden unbroken link between the nation and the promises. And then he has to lift the curtain, at least a corner of the curtain, from the future, and to indicate how there lies waiting there a mighty blessing for Israel, and through Israel for the world. Even now the mysterious "People" was serving a spiritual purpose in their very unbelief; they were occasioning a vast transition of blessing to the Gentiles, by their own refusal of blessing. And hereafter they were to serve a purpose of still more illustrious mercy. They were yet, in their multitudes, to return to their rejected Christ. And their return was to be used as the means of a crisis of blessing for the world. We seem to see the look and hear the voice of the Apostle, once the mighty Rabbi, the persecuting patriot, as he begins now to dictate again. His eyes brighten, and his brow clears, and a happier emphasis comes into his utterance, and he sets himself to speak of his people’s good, and to remind his Gentile brethren how, in God’s plan of redemption, all their blessing, all they know of salvation, all they possess of life eternal, has come to them through Israel. Israel is the Stem, drawing truth and life from the unfathomable soil of the covenant of promise. They are the grafted Branches, rich in every blessing-because they are the mystical seed of Abraham, in Christ. I say therefore, did God ever thrust away His people? Away with the thought! For I am an Israelite, of Abraham’s seed, Benjamin’s tribe; full member of the theocratic race and of its first royal and always loyal tribe; in my own person, therefore, I am an instance of Israel still in covenant. God never thrust away His people, whom He foreknew with the foreknowledge of eternal choice and purpose. That foreknowledge was "not according to their works," or according to their power; and so it holds its sovereign way across and above their long unworthiness. Or do you not know, in Elijah, in his story, in the pages marked with his name, what the Scripture says? How he intercedes before God, on God’s own behalf, against Israel, saying, { 1 Kings 19:10 } "Lord, Thy prophets they killed, and Thy altars they dug up; and I was left solitary, and they seek my life"? But what says the oracular answer to him? "I have left for Myself seven thousand men, men who bowed never knee to Baal". { 1 Kings 19:18 } So therefore, at the present season also, there proves to be a remnant, "a leaving" left by the Lord for Himself, on the principle of election of grace; their persons and their number following a choice and gift whose reasons lie in God alone. And then follows one of those characteristic "footnotes" of which we saw an instance above: { Romans 10:17 } But if by grace, no longer of works; "no longer," in the sense of a logical succession and exclusion: since the grace proves, on the other principle, no longer grace. But if of works, it is no longer grace; since the work is no longer work. That is to say, when once the grace principle is admitted, as it is here assumed to be, "the work" of the man who is its subject is "no longer work" in the sense which makes an antithesis to grace; it is no longer so much toil done in order to so much pay to be given. In other words, the two supposed principles of the divine Choice are in their nature mutually exclusive. Admit the one as the condition of the "election," and the other ceases; you cannot combine them into an amalgam. If the election is of grace, no meritorious antecedent to it is possible in the subject of it. If it is according to meritorious antecedent, no sovereign freedom is possible in the divine action, such freedom as to bring the saved man, the saved remnant, to an adoring confession of unspeakable and mysterious mercy. This is the point, here in this passing "footnote," as in the longer kindred statements above (chap. 9), of the emphasised allusion to "choice" and "grace." He writes thus that he may bring the believer, Gentile or Jew, to his knees, in humiliation, wonder, gratitude, and trust. "Why did I, the self-ruined wanderer, the self-hardened rebel, come to the Shepherd who sought me, surrender my sword to the King who reclaimed me? Did I reason myself into harmony with Him? Did I lift myself, hopelessly maimed, into His arms? No; it was the gift of God, first, last, and in the midst. And if so, it was the choice of God." That point of light is surrounded by a cloud world of mystery, though within those surrounding clouds there lurks, as to God, only rightness and love. But the point of light is there, immovable, for all the clouds; where fallen man chooses God, it is thanks to God who has chosen fallen man. Where a race is not "thrust away," it is because "God foreknew." Where some thousands of members of that race, while others fall away, are found faithful to God, it is because He has "left them for Himself, on the principle of choice of grace." Where, amidst a widespread rejection of God’s Son Incarnate, a Saul of Tarsus, an Aquila, a Barnabas, behold in Him their Redeemer, their King, their Life, their All, it is on that same principle. Let the man thus beholding and believing give the whole thanks for his salvation in the quarter where it is all due. Let him not confuse one truth by another. Let not this truth disturb for a moment his certainty of personal moral freedom, and of its responsibility. Let it not for a moment turn him into a fatalist. But let him abase himself, and give thanks, and humbly trust Him who has thus laid hold of him for blessing. As he does so, in simplicity, not speculating but worshipping, he will need no subtle logic to assure him that he is to pray, and to work, without reserve, for the salvation of all men. It will be more than enough for him that his Sovereign bids him do it, and tells him that it is according to His heart. To return a little on our steps, in the matter of the Apostle’s doctrine of the divine Choice: the reference in this paragraph to the seven thousand faithful in Elijah’s day suggests a special reflection. To us, it seems to say distinctly that the "election" intended all along by St. Paul cannot possibly be explained adequately by making it either an election (to whatever benefits) of mere masses of men, as for instance of a nation, considered apart from its individuals; or an election merely to privilege, to opportunity, which may or may not be used by the receiver. As regards national election, it is undoubtedly present and even prominent in the passage, and in this whole section of the Epistle. For ourselves, we incline to see it quite simply in ver. 2 { Romans 11:2 } above; "His people, whom He foreknew." We read there, what we find so often in the Old Testament, a sovereign choice of a nation to stand in special relation to God; of a nation taken, so to speak, in the abstract, viewed not as the mere total of so many individuals, but as a quasi-personality. But we maintain that the idea of election takes another line when we come to the "seven thousand." Here we are thrown at once on the thought of individual experiences, and the ultimate secret of them, found only in the divine Will affecting the individual. The "seven thousand" had no aggregate life, so to speak. They formed, as the seven thousand, no organism or quasi-personality. They were "left" not as a mass, but as units; so isolated, so little grouped together, that even Elijah did not know of their existence. They were just so many individual men, each one of whom found power, by faith, to stand personally firm against the Baalism of that dark time, with the same individual faith which in later days, against other terrors, and other solicitations, upheld a Polycarp, an Athanasius, a Huss, a Luther, a Tyndale, a De Seso, a St. Cyran. And the Apostle quotes them as an instance and illustration of the Lord’s way and will with the believing of all time. In their case, then, he both passes as it were through national election to individual election, as a permanent spiritual mystery; and he shows that he means by this an election not only to opportunity but to holiness. The Lord’s "leaving them for Himself" lay behind their not bowing their knees to Baal. Each resolute confessor was individually enabled, by a sovereign and special grace. He was a true human personality, freely acting, freely choosing not to yield in that terrible storm. But behind his freedom was the higher freedom of the Will of God, saving him from himself that he might be free to confess and suffer. To our mind, no part of the Epistle more clearly than this passage affirms this individual aspect of the great mystery. Ah, it is a mystery indeed; we have owned this at every step. And it is never for a moment to be treated therefore as if we knew all about it. And it is never therefore to be used to confuse the believer’s thought about other sides of truth. But it is there, as a truth among truths; to be received with abasement by the creature before the Creator, and with humble hope by the simple believer. He goes on with his argument, taking up the thread broken by the "footnote" upon grace and works: What therefore? What Israel, the nation, the character, seeks after, righteousness in the court of God, this it lighted not upon as one who seeks a buried treasure in the wrong field "lights not upon" it; but the election, the chosen ones, the "seven thousand" of the Gospel era, did light upon it. But the rest were hardened, (not as if God had created their hardness, or injected it; but He gave it to be its own penalty;) as it stands written, { Isaiah 29:10 , and Deuteronomy 29:4 } "God gave them a spirit of slumber, eyes not to see, and ears not to hear, even to this day." A persistent ("unto this day") unbelief was the sin of Israel in the Prophet’s times, and it was the same in those of the Apostles. And the condition was the same; God "gave" sin to be its own way of retribution. And David says, { Psalm 69:22 } in a Psalm full of Messiah, and of the awful retribution justly ordained to come on His impenitent enemies, "Let their table turn into a trap, and into toils, and into a stumbling block; and into a requital to them; darkened be their eyes, not to see, and their back ever bow Thou together." The words are awful, in their connection here, and in themselves, and as a specimen of a class. Their purpose here is to enforce the thought that there is such a thing as positive divine action in the self-ruin of the impenitent; a fiat from the throne which "gives" a coma to the soul, and beclouds its eyes, and turns its blessings into a curse. Not one word implies the thought that He who so acts meets a soul tending upward and turns it downward; that He ignores or rejects even the faintest inquiry after Himself; that He is Author of one particle of the sin of man. But we do learn that the adversaries of God and Christ may be, and, where the Eternal so sees it good, are, sentenced to go their own way, even to its issues in destruction. The context of every citation here, as it stands in the Old Testament, shows abundantly that those so sentenced are no helpless victims of an adverse fate, but sinners of their own will, in a sense most definite and personal. Only, a sentence of judgment is concerned also in the case; "Fill ye up then the measure". { Matthew 13:32 } But then also in themselves and, as a specimen of a class, the words are a dark shadow in the Scripture sky. It is only by the way that we can note this here, but it must not be quite omitted in our study. This sixty-ninth Psalm is a leading instance of the several Psalms where the Prophet appears calling for the sternest retribution on his enemies. What thoughtful heart has not felt the painful mystery so presented? Read in the hush of secret devotion, or sung perhaps to some majestic chant beneath the minster roof, they still tend to affront the soul with the question, Can this possibly be after the mind of Christ? And there rises before us the form of One who is in the act of Crucifixion, and who just then articulates the prayer, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." Can these "imprecations" have His sanction? Can He pass them, endorse them, as His Word? The question is full of pressing pain. And no answer can be given, surely, which shall relieve all that pain; certainly nothing which shall turn the clouds of such passages into rays of the sun. They are clouds; but let us be sure that they belong to the cloud land which gathers round the Throne, and which only conceals, not wrecks, its luminous and immovable righteousness and love. Let us remark, for one point, that this same dark Psalm is, by the witness of the Apostles, as taught by their Master, a Psalm full of Messiah. It was undoubtedly claimed as his own mystic utterance by the Lamb of the Passion. He speaks in these dread words who also says, in the same utterance (ver. 9) { Romans 11:9 }, "The zeal of Thine house hath eaten me up." So the Lord Jesus did endorse this Psalm. He more than endorsed it; He adopted it as His own. Let this remind us further that the utterer of these denunciations, even the first and non-mystical utterer, -David, let us say, - appears in the Psalm not merely as a private person crying out about his violated personal rights, but as an ally and vassal of God, one whose life and cause is identified with His. Just in proportion as this is so, the violation of his life and peace, by enemies described as quite consciously and deliberately malicious, is a violation of the whole sanctuary of divine righteousness. If so, is it incredible that even the darkest words of such a Psalm are to be read as a true echo from the depths of man to the Voice which announces "indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, to every soul of man that doeth evil"? Perhaps even the most watchful assertor of the divine character of Scripture is not bound to assert that no human frailty in the least moved the spirit of a David when he, in the sphere of his own personality, thought and said these things. But we have no right to assert, as a known or necessary thing, that it was so. And we have right to say that in themselves these utterances are but a sternly true response to the avenging indignation of the Holy One. In any case, do not let us talk with a loose facility about their incompatibility with "the spirit of the New Testament." From one side, the New Testament is an even sterner book than the Old; as it must be of course, when it brings sin and holiness "out into the light" of the Cross of Christ. It is in the New Testament that "the souls" of saints at rest are heard saying, { Revelation 6:10 } "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" It is in the New Testament that an Apostle writes, { 2 Thessalonians 1:6 } "It is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them which trouble you." It is the Lord of the New Testament, the Offerer of the Prayer of the Cross, who said { Matthew 23:32-35 } "Fill ye up the measure of your fathers. I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes, and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth." His eyes must have rested, often and again, upon the denunciations of the Psalms. He saw in them that which struck no real discord, in the ultimate spiritual depth, with His own blessed compassions. Let us not resent what He has countersigned. It is His, not ours, to know all the conditions of those mysterious outbursts from the Psalmist’s consciousness. It is ours to recognise in them the intensest expression of what rebellious evil merits, and will find, as its reward. But we have digressed from what is the proper matter before us. Here, in the Epistle, the sixty-ninth Psalm is cited only to affirm with the authority of Scripture the mystery of God’s action in sentencing the impenitent adversaries of His Christ to more blindness and more ruin. Through this dark and narrow door the Apostle is about to lead us now into "a large room" of hope and blessing, and to unveil to us a wonderful future for the now disgraced and seemingly rejected Israel. Romans 11:11 I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. Chapter 23 ISRAEL’S FALL OVERRULED, FOR THE WORLD’S BLESSING, AND FOR ISRAEL’S MERCY Romans 11:11-24 THE Apostle has been led a few steps backwards in the last previous verses. His face has been turned once more toward the dark region of the prophetic sky, to see how the sin of Christ-rejecting souls is met and punished by the dreadful "gift" of slumber, and apathy, and the transmutation of blessings to snares. But now, decisively, he looks sunward. He points our eyes, with his own, to the morning light of grace and promise. We are to see what Israel’s fall has had to do with the world’s hope and with life in Christ, and then what blessings await Israel himself, and again the world through him. I say, therefore, (the phrase resumes the point of view to which the same words above ( Romans 11:1 ) led us,) did they stumble that they might fall? Did their national rejection of an unwelcome because unworldly Messiah take place, in the divine permission, with the positive divine purpose that it should bring on a final rejection of the nation, its banishment out of its place in the history of redemption? Away with the thought! But their partial fall is the occasion of God’s salvation for the Gentiles, with a view to move them, the Jews, to jealousy, to awake them to a sight of what Christ is, and of what their privilege in Him might yet be, by the sight of His work and glory in once pagan lives. Observe here the divine benignity which lurks even under the edges of the cloud of judgment. And observe too, thus close to the passage which has put before us the mysterious side of divine action on human wills, the daylight simplicity of this side of that action; the loving skill with which the world’s blessing is meant by the God of grace to act, exactly in the line of human feeling, upon the will of Israel. But would that "the Gentiles" had borne more in heart that last short sentence of St. Paul’s through these long centuries since the Apostles fell asleep! It is one of the most marked, as it is one of the saddest, phenomena in the history of the Church that for ages, almost from the days of St. John himself, we look in Vain either for any appreciable Jewish element in Christendom, or for any extended effort on the part of Christendom to win Jewish hearts to Christ by a wise and loving evangelisation. With only relatively insignificant exceptions this was the abiding state of things till well within the eighteenth century, when the German Pietists began to call the attention of believing Christians to the spiritual needs and prophetic hopes of Israel, and to remind them that the Jews were not only a beacon of judgment, or only the most impressive and awful illustration of the fulfilment of prophecy, but the bearers of yet unfulfilled predictions of mercy for themselves and for the world. Meanwhile, all through the Middle Age, and through generations of preceding and following time also, Christendom did little for Israel but retaliate, reproach, and tyrannise. It was so of old in England; witness the fires of York. It is so to this day in Russia, and where the "Judenhetze" inflames innumerable hearts in Central Europe. No doubt there is more than one side to the persistent phenomena. There is a side of mystery; the permissive sentence of the Eternal has to do with the long affliction, however caused, of the people which once uttered the fatal cry, "His blood be on us, and on our children". { Matthew 27:25 } And the wrong doings of Jews, beyond a doubt, have often made a dark occasion for a "Jew hatred," on a larger or narrower scale. But all this leaves unaltered, from the point of view of the Gospel, the sin of Christendom in its tremendous failure to seek, . in love, the good of erring Israel. It leaves as black as ever the guilt of every fierce retaliation upon Jews by so-called Christians, of every slanderous belief about Jewish creed or life, of every unjust anti-Jewish law ever passed by Christian king or senate. It leaves an undiminished responsibility upon the Church of Christ, not only for the flagrant wrong of having too often animated and directed the civil power in its oppressions of Israel, and not only for having so awfully neglected to seek the evangelisation of Israel by direct appeals for the true Messiah, and by an open setting forth of His glory, but for the deeper and more subtle wrong, persistently inflicted from age to age, in a most guilty unconsciousness-the wrong of having failed to manifest Christ to Israel through the living holiness of Christendom. Here, surely, is the very point of the Apostle’s thought in the sentence before us: "Salvation to the Gentiles, to move the Jews to jealousy." In his inspired idea, Gentile Christendom, in Christ, was to be so pure, so beneficent, so happy, finding manifestly in its Messianic Lord such resources for both peace of conscience and a life of noble love, love above all directed towards opponents and traducers, that Israel, looking on, with eyes however purblind with prejudice, should soon see a moral glory in the Church’s face impossible to be hid, and be drawn as by a moral magnet to the Church’s hope. Is it the fault of God (may He pardon the formal question, if it lacks reverence), or the fault of man, man carrying the Christian name, that facts have been so woefully otherwise in the course of history? It is the fault, the grievous fault, of us Christians. The narrow prejudice, the iniquitous law, the rigid application of exaggerated ecclesiastical principle, all these things have been man’s perversion of the divine idea, to be confessed and deplored in a deep and interminable repentance. May the mercy of God awaken Gentile Christendom, in a manner and degree as yet unknown, to remember this our indefeasible debt to this people everywhere present with us, everywhere distinct from us; -the debt of a life, personal and ecclesiastical, so manifestly pure and loving in our Lord the Christ as to "move them to the jealousy" which shall claim Him again for their own. Then we shall indeed be hastening the day of full and final blessing, both for themselves and for the world. To that bright coming day the Apostle points us now, more directly than ever. But if their partial fall be the world’s wealth, and their lessening, their reduction, (a reduction in one aspect to a race of scattered exiles, in another to a mere remnant of "Israelites indeed,") be the Gentiles’ wealth, the occasion by which "the unsearchable wealth of Messiah" { Ephesians 3:8 } has been as it were forced into Gentile receptacles, how much more their fulness, the filling of the dry channel with its ample ideal stream, the change from a believing remnant, fragments of a fragmentary people, to a believing nation, reanimated and reunited? What blessings for "the world," for "the Gentiles," may not come through the vehicle of such an Israel? But to you I speak, the Gentiles; to you, because if I reach the Jews, in the way I mean, it must be through you. So far indeed as I, distinctively I, am the Gentiles’ Apostle, I glorify my ministry as such; I rejoice, Pharisee that I once was, to be devoted as no other Apostle is to a ministry for those whom I once thought of as of outcasts in religion. But I speak as your own Apostle, and to you, if perchance I may move the jealousy of my flesh and blood, and may save some from amongst them, by letting them as it were overhear what are the blessings of you Gentile: Christians, and how it is the Lord’s purpose to use those blessings as a magnet to wandering Israel. His hope is that, through the Roman congregation, this glorious open secret will come out, as they meet their Jewish neighbours and talk with them. So would one here, another there, "in the streets and lanes of the City," be drawn to the feet of Jesus, under the constraint of that "jealousy" which means little else than the human longing to understand what is evidently the great joy of another’s heart; a "jealousy" on which often grace can fall, and use it as a vehicle of divine light and life. He says only, "some of them"; as he does in the sister Epistle; 1 Corinthians 9:22 . He recognises it as his present task, indicated alike by circumstance and revelation, to be not the glad ingatherer of vast multitudes to Christ, but the patient winner of scattered sheep. Yet let us observe that none the less he spends his whole soul upon that winning, and takes no excuse from a glorious future to slacken a single effort in the difficult present. For if the throwing away of them, their downfall as the Church of God, was the world’s reconciliation, the instrumental or occasioning cause of the direct proclamation to the pagan peoples of the Atonement of the Cross, what will their reception be, but life from the dead? That is to say, the great event of Israel’s return to God in Christ, and His to Israel, will be the signal and the means of a vast rise of spiritual life in the Universal Church, and of an unexampled ingathering of regenerate souls from the world. When Israel, as a Church, fell, the fall worked good for the world merely by driving, as it were, the apostolic preachers out from the Synagogue, to which they so much longed to cling. The Jews did anything but aid the work. Yet even so they were made an occasion for worldwide good. When they are "received again," as this Scripture so definitely affirms that they shall be received, the case will be grandly different. As before, they will be "occasions." A national and ecclesiastical return of Israel to Christ will of course give occasion over the whole world for a vastly quickened attention to Christianity, and for an appeal for the world’s faith in the facts and claims of Christianity, as bold and loud as that of Pentecost. But more than this, Israel will now be not only occasion but agent. The Jews, ubiquitous, cosmopolitan, yet invincibly national, coming back in living loyalty to the Son of David, the Son of God, will be a positive power in evangelisation such as the Church has never yet felt. Whatever the actual facts shall prove to be in the matter of their return to the Land of Promise (and who can watch without deep reflection the nationless land and the landless nation?) no prediction obliges us to think that the Jews will be withdrawn from the wide world by a national resettlement in their Land. A nation is not a Dispersion merely because it has individual citizens widely dispersed; if it has a true national centre, it is a people at home, a people with a home. Whether as a central mass in Syria, or as also a presence everywhere in the human world, Israel will thus be ready, once restored to God in Christ, to be a more than natural evangelising power. Let this be remembered in every enterprise for the spiritual good of the great Dispersion now. Through such efforts God is already approaching His hour of blessing, long expected. Let that fact animate and give a glad patience to His workers, on whose work he surely begins in our day to cast His smile of growing blessing. Now the argument takes a new direction. The restoration thus indicated, thus foretold, is not only sure to be infinitely beneficial. It is also to be looked for and expected as a thing lying so to speak in the line of spiritual fitness, true to the order of God’s plan. In His will, when He went about to create and develop His Church, Israel sprung from the dry ground as the sacred Olive, rich with the sap of truth and grace, full of branch and leaf. From the tents of Abraham onward, the world’s true spiritual light and life were there. There, not elsewhere, were revelation, and God-given ordinance, and "the covenants, and the glory." There, not elsewhere, the Christ of God, for whom all things waited, towards whom all the lines of man’s life and history converged, was to appear. Thus, in a certain profound sense, all true salvation must be not only "of" Israel ( John 4:24 ) but through him. Union with Christ was union with Abraham. To become a Christian, that is to say, one of Messiah’s men, was to become, mystically, an Israelite. From this point of view the Gentile’s union with the Saviour, though not in the least less genuine and divine than the Jew’s, was, so to speak, less normal. And thus nothing could be more spiritually normal than the Jew’s recovery to his old relation to God, from which he had violently dislocated himself. These thoughts the Apostle now presses on the Romans, as a new motive and guide to their hopes, prayers, and work. (Do we gather from the length and fulness of the argument that already it was difficult to bring Gentiles to think aright of the chosen people in their fall and rebellion?) He reminds them of the inalienable consecration of Israel to special divine purposes. He points them to the ancient Olive, and boldly tells them that they are, themselves, only a graft of a wild stock, inserted into the noble tree. Not that he thinks of the Jew as a superior being. But the Church of Israel was the original of the Church. So the restoration of Israel to Christ, and to the Church, is a recovery of normal life, not a first and abnormal grant of life. But if the first fruit was holy, holy is the kneaded lump too. Abraham was as it were the Lord’s First fruits of mankind, in the field of His Church. "Abraham’s seed" are as it were the mass kneaded from that first fruits; made of it. Was t

Illustrator

God hath not cast away His people. Romans 11:1-10 God hath not cast off His people J. Lyth, D.D. This is proved by — I. THE KNOWN FACTS OF THEIR HISTORY — Paul and his companions in the faith. II. THE SECRET OPERATIONS OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD — as exemplified in the case of Elias. III. THE RESULTS TO BE ACHIEVED IN THE NATIONAL REJECTION OF ISRAEL. 1. The conversion of the Gentiles. 2. The consequent conversion of the Jews. 3. The completion of the redeeming purpose on earth. IV. THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE OF GOD'S JUDGMENTS — the demonstration of His own glory. ( J. Lyth, D.D. )

Matthew Henry

11:1-10 There was a chosen remnant of believing Jews, who had righteousness and life by faith in Jesus Christ. These were kept according to the election of grace. If then this election was of grace, it could not be of works, either performed or foreseen. Every truly good disposition in a fallen creature must be the effect, therefore it cannot be the cause, of the grace of God bestowed on him. Salvation from the first to the last must be either of grace or of debt. These things are so directly contrary to each other that they cannot be blended together. God glorifies his grace by changing the hearts and tempers of the rebellious. How then should they wonder and praise him! The Jewish nation were as in a deep sleep, without knowledge of their danger, or concern about it; having no sense of their need of the Saviour, or of their being upon the borders of eternal ruin. David, having by the Spirit foretold the sufferings of Christ from his own people, the Jews, foretells the dreadful judgments of God upon them for it, Ps 69. This teaches us how to understand other prayers of David against his enemies; they are prophecies of the judgments of God, not expressions of his own anger. Divine curses will work long; and we have our eyes darkened, if we are bowed down in worldly-mindedness. 11:11-21 The gospel is the greatest riches of every place where it is. As therefore the righteous rejection of the unbelieving Jews, was the occasion of so large a multitude of the Gentiles being reconciled to God, and at peace with him; the future receiving of the Jews into the church would be such a change, as would resemble a general resurrection of the dead in sin to a life of righteousness. Abraham was as the root of the church. The Jews continued branches of this tree till, as a nation, they rejected the Messiah; after that, their relation to Abraham and to God was, as it were, cut off. The Gentiles were grafted into this tree in their room; being admitted into the church of God. Multitudes were made heirs of Abraham's faith, holiness and blessedness. It is the natural state of every one of us, to be wild by nature. Conversion is as the grafting in of wild branches into the good olive. The wild olive was often ingrafted into the fruitful one when it began to decay, and this not only brought forth fruit, but caused the decaying olive to revive and flourish. The Gentiles, of free grace, had been grafted in to share advantages. They ought therefore to beware of self-confidence, and every kind of pride or ambition; lest, having only a dead faith, and an empty profession, they should turn from God, and forfeit their privileges. If we stand at all, it is by faith; we are guilty and helpless in ourselves, and are to be humble, watchful, afraid of self-deception, or of being overcome by temptation. Not only are we at first justified by faith, but kept to the end in that justified state by faith only; yet, by a faith which is not alone, but which worketh by love to God and man. 11:22-32 Of all judgments, spiritual judgments are the sorest; of these the apostle is here speaking. The restoration of the Jews is, in the course of things, far less improbable than the call of the Gentiles to be the children of Abraham; and though others now possess these privileges, it will not hinder their being admitted again. By rejecting the gospel, and by their indignation at its being preached to the Gentiles, the Jews were become enemies to God; yet they are still to be favoured for the sake of their pious fathers. Though at present they are enemies to the gospel, for their hatred to the Gentiles; yet, when God's time is come, that will no longer exist, and God's love to their fathers will be remembered. True grace seeks not to confine God's favour. Those who find mercy themselves, should endeavour that through their mercy others also may obtain mercy. Not that the Jews will be restored to have their priesthood, and temple, and ceremonies again; an end is put to all these; but they are to be brought to believe in Christ, the true become one sheep-fold with the Gentiles, under Christ the Great Shepherd. The captivities of Israel, their dispersion, and their being shut out from the church, are emblems of the believer's corrections for doing wrong; and the continued care of the Lord towards that people, and the final mercy and blessed restoration intended for them, show the patience and love of God. 11:33-36 The apostle Paul knew the mysteries of the kingdom of God as well as ever any man; yet he confesses himself at a loss; and despairing to find the bottom, he humbly sits down at the brink, and adores the depth. Those who know most in this imperfect state, feel their own weakness most. There is not only depth in the Divine counsels, but riches; abundance of that which is precious and valuable. The Divine counsels are complete; they have not only depth and height, but breadth and length, Eph 3:18, and that passing knowledge. There is that vast distance and disproportion between God and man, between the Creator and the creature, which for ever shuts us from knowledge of his ways. What man shall teach God how to govern the world? The apostle adores the sovereignty of the Divine counsels. All things in heaven and earth, especially those which relate to our salvation, that belong to our peace, are all of him by way of creation, through him by way of providence, that they may be to him in their end. Of God, as the Spring and Fountain of all; through Christ, to God, as the end. These include all God's relations to his creatures; if all are of Him, and through Him, all should be to Him, and for Him. Whatever begins, let God's glory be the end: especially let us adore him when we talk of the Divine counsels and actings. The saints in heaven never dispute, but always praise.