Thursday
Thursday
God’s Plan for Jews and Gentiles
Again I ask: Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all!
Romans 11:11
Throughout the first half of his letter Paul has forgotten neither the ethnic mix of the Roman church nor the tensions that kept surfacing between the Jewish Christian minority and the gentile Christian majority. The time has now come for him to address head-on the underlying theological problem. How is it that the Jewish people as a whole have rejected their Messiah? Uniquely privileged by God, how could they remain entrenched in their prejudices?
Paul gives a double answer to these questions. To begin with, Jewish unbelief was due to God’s purpose of election. But it was also attributable to Israel’s own obstinate disobedience. In particular, she stumbled over the stumbling stone, namely Christ and his cross. This tension between divine election and human rebellion constitutes a contradiction that our finite minds cannot fathom. But we must affirm both truths, even if we cannot reconcile them.
In Romans 11 Paul looks into the future and declares that Israel’s fall is neither total, since there is a believing remnant, nor final, since God has not rejected his people and they will recover (vv. 1–11). He then goes on to develop his allegory of the olive tree and teaches two lessons from it. The first is a warning to the Gentiles (the wild olive shoot that has been grafted in) not to presume or boast (vv. 17–22). The second is a promise to Israel (the natural branches) that if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted back in again (vv. 23–24). Paul’s vision for the future (which he calls a “mystery” [v. 25] or revelation) is that the full number of both Jews and Gentiles will be gathered in (vv. 12, 25). Indeed, God will have mercy on them all (v. 32), not meaning everybody without exception but rather both Jews and Gentiles without distinction. It is not surprising that this prospect leads Paul to break out into a doxology, in which he praises God for the depth of both his riches and his wisdom (vv. 33–36).
For further reading: Romans 11:25–36