Notes on Romans 11

Every book of scripture was written by a child of Israel; the authorship of Job, the oldest book, is uncertain, but many attribute it to Moses, who compiled the first five books of scripture.  Without the Jews, there would be no New Testament; without them, Christ would not have been born.  The fact that most of them ultimately rejected their promised Messiah does not change those facts.  It was the occasion of their great failure that gave rise to the success of the church among the Gentiles, among whom we are numbered.  Paul emphasizes that later in the chapter, but the point here is that not all of them rejected Christ.  Those who accepted him were sufficient for the task of spreading the Gospel around the world.  The Lord only needs a few committed servants to carry out his great work.

The failure of Israel was their confidence in the works of the flesh, keeping the law, rather than God's grace.  That is always the failure of any religion not based in faith in Christ.  No matter what deity or deities they profess to worship, the eyes of such worshippers are always turned ultimately inward; what can I do to please my god, and gain his favor?  Our eyes are turned to Jesus, not seeking what we might do for him, but understanding what he has already done for us.

I have seen no figures on the number of Jews who have accepted Christ as Savior, though I am aware that there are congregations of so-called "Messianic Jews" around the country, probably in many parts of the world.  The great turning of Israel to Christ, though, will not happen until the Tribulation period, even though we have seen the restoration of Israel as a nation.  What finally provokes them to turn back to God and accept Christ is not clear to me, other than the fact of God's sovereign act of calling out the 144,000 to be his witnesses.  In the meantime, the whole church age we have lived in for 2,000 years dates back in a straight line to the Jews' rejection of Christ.  In their casting away, the Word says, we were reconciled, as Gentiles, to God.  In God's receiving back of Israel to himself, in the last days, will come the resurrection of the dead.  The long-interrupted story of God's chosen people, as recounted in Daniel 12, will finally be completed.  In no small way, the history of the world is bound up in the story of Israel, and God's promise to bring them back once more to himself when they strayed away.

The children of Israel are God's natural children, his chosen ones and the heirs to his promises.  We Gentiles who accept Christ are adopted children, with the same rights as natural children, but not the same heritage.  Jesus was born in the blood and lineage of David, so all those born into Israel have a blood relationship to him.  None of us as Gentiles can make that claim.  The same blessings that were apportioned to the children of Israel, but so are the same responsibilities.  All of us have the privilege and opportunity to claim our inheritance of eternal life in Christ, but, like the Jews, we can lose that inheritance through unbelief.  Every Gentile has the right to ask for and receive salvation, because Christ purchased that right for us, but all of us who refuse accept what is offered to us are cast out as surely as the Jews who rejected Christ.  God has never withdrawn the possibility of salvation from the Jews, either; any of them who receive Christ as Savior are just as assured of their status as joint heirs as we are.  The only difference is that their status is one of conformation of their relationship as children, not by adoption, but by blood.  Then, too, all of us can claim the relationship of children to our Father by blood -- the shed blood of Christ.  God is no respecter of persons; we are no better than the Jews, nor they than us; the only reason any of us has standing with him is because of Jesus.

Israel's blindness, this passage says, will last until the fullness of the Gentiles comes.  The word used, pleroma, means completion, or being filled up.  In other words, when the period allowed for the Gentiles to come to Christ is completed, Israel will once again see the truth, and turn to God in acceptance of the lordship of Christ.  Many of us believe that the period of the Gentiles, the church age as come call it, is almost at its end.  It is interesting to note the connection between our own mercy, or compassion, and the mercy God extends to Israel.  Through Israel's unbelief, we obtained mercy; is it too much a stretch to say that, in the last days, the great falling away of the Gentiles may have a similar relationship (though not a causal one) to God's extending mercy to his people?  In any event, God does extend his mercy through us, and I believe that one way this is expressed is our continuing support, individually and as a nation, of the state of Israel.  God's mercy is not necessary for those who believe in and obey him; it is by his mercy that none of us are condemned for our unbelief without being given the opportunity to believe.  At some point, though, for those who reject his offer of salvation, mercy must give way to judgment.

This is one of the hymns of page that Paul breaks into from time to time in his letters, as the enormity of God's love and mercy overflows in him.  That rhapsody of joy should be a natural part of our fellowship with the the Lord, but so few of us ever actually experience it.  Many are content to accept a counterfeit of it in the form of an emotional binge brought on by rhythmic music and crowd hysteria.  Certainly we should expect, and not reject, the sweet majesty of God's power and presence in our worship services, but it should come from the moving of the Sprit.  The same unspeakable joy may, and should, come to us in our own private times of devotion, as a result of the same sense of God's majesty, beauty, and glory that Paul experienced here.  It is that sweet fellowship, that overpowering knowledge of loving and being loved, that God wants with us first of all.  That relationship is everything, and everything else we do, everything else we are, comes out of it.