Rom 11.25-36

The People of God

(Romans 11.25-36)

Jason Procopio

Most of you know I’m a big movie nerd, and one of my favorite movies of the last twenty years is a movie called The Prestige. It’s one Christopher Nolan’s lesser-known movies, and it’s spectacularly weird. It’s about two stage magicians in the nineteenth century who each become obsessed with beating each other to become the best magician in the world. One of these magicians uses whatever new gimmicks he can find to pull off his magic tricks, and the other is a purist—he only wants to use tried and tested techniques to pull off what he’s doing. But they’re both so good at what they do that they can’t stand each other, and become obsessed with coming up with a trick that will put the other to shame. (That’s as spoilery as I’ll get, I promise—I wouldn’t want to ruin it for anyone who hasn’t seen it.)

I love movies, and I like magic too, so this movie is tailor-made for me. They go into a lot of detail explaining how magic works—not the tricks themselves, but the steps, the misdirection necessary to pull off a good trick. But the most astounding thing about this movie is that when you get to the end, and you finally figure out what’s been going on, you realize that the movie itself is a magic trick, that follows the same steps, the same misdirects. It’s a masterful, jaw-dropping realization that everything has been leading up to, and it’s all been under your nose the whole time.

Why am I bringing up The Prestige to introduce a message about Romans 11, which concludes the most difficult section of this letter? Because that sort of stunning realization—“You mean that’s what he’s been doing all this time?”—is exactly what Paul is trying to bring us toward in this section, except in a much bigger way, because what he’s talking about is true (it’s not just a story), and it concerns God’s eternal plan of salvation for all of his people, ourselves included. I certainly won’t do justice to this extraordinary revelation, because I’m still trying to grasp it myself, and I’m guessing I’ll be figuring it out for the rest of eternity. But even a partial understanding of God’s incredible plan is still enough to worship him for it.

It’s been two weeks though, so let’s go back and remember what we saw last time.

This church in Rome to whom Paul is writing is filled with Jewish and Gentile Christians, who are figuring out how to live together as Christians. The question on these minds of the Christians in Rome is that if God has saved those people from pagan nations, outside of God’s chosen people—the people of Israel—what does that mean for Israel? Has God rejected them?

So Paul reassures them that no: although Israel—as a nation—seems to have rejected God’s Messiah, Jesus Christ, God has not rejected them: he has kept a remnant for himself—a number of Israelites who shared in Abraham’s faith. The Gentiles, Paul says, have been “grafted in” to this history and given this same faith.

God has caused Israel (as a nation) to fall away, and he has grafted in people from other, pagan nations, for two main reasons. Firstly, has allowed Israel to fall away to make it clear that the inclusion of the Gentiles is not unfair—no one deserves to be forgiven and saved by God: not even the Jews who, collectively, have rejected Christ. And secondly, he has allowed Israel to fall away in order to make it undeniable that the Gentiles have indeed been grafted in—that they are full and complete members of his people, despite their non-Israelite origins.

God’s People Are Saved (v. 25-27)

In v. 17-24 of Romans 11, which we saw last time, Paul reminds the Gentiles of this reality, in order to protect them from pride (cf. v. 20: So do not become proud, but fear). He says, you don’t deserve to be here, and God can do to you what he’s done to the Jews. And by the same token, he can do for the Jews exactly what he’s done for you. In any case, he’s the one who saves; this is not from you.

It is on that call to humility that Paul continues in v. 25.

25 Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.

So just a reminder: the word “mystery”, when it’s used in the New Testament, is not referring to something unknowable or unsolvable—it’s not something that is “mysterious.” A mystery, in this context, is something that was hidden before, but which has now been revealed. So Paul’s intention here is not to be obscure—he clearly says, “I don’t want you to be unaware of this”. He’s telling them what’s going on.

What’s going on is that (firstly) a “partial hardening has come upon Israel”. That is, they have become unfeeling toward God, and blind to what he is doing: even when they hear the good news, they don’t receive it. Now like we said before, he’s not talking about all the Jews here—Paul himself is a Jew, and this letter is addressed to a church with many Jewish Christians—but Israel as a people, collectively, has become hard.

So this partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. That means, until the people of God includes members of every people group, every nation.

So far, this isn’t too difficult—but it gets a little harder in v. 26.

26 And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written,

“The Deliverer will come from Zion,

he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”; [this is a quote from Isaiah 59]

27  “and this will be my covenant with them

when I take away their sins.” [This is from Isaiah 27.]

Once again, Paul uses Old Testament quotes to remind his readers that none of this is new information—God said it would happen this way. And while the promises of the Old Testament said that the Messiah would come in the way he did, and that the Gentiles would be brought into God’s people, it also said that God would save his people in the end—that he would take away their sins, and banish ungodliness from them. And in this way, he says, all Israel will be saved.

A lot hinges on what Paul means by “all Israel” here, at least in the way our minds work in our culture today. Is he talking about all the Jews who have placed their faith in Christ? Is it every physical descendant of Abraham? Is it every believer in Christ throughout all time—the universal church?

This is an incredibly confusing question, and I don’t have a definitive answer across the board. But we do need to explore the question, because the way we approach it can have pretty big consequences.

Some people take a view of this promise that “all Israel will be saved” which almost divinizes them. They become fascinated with Old Testament Jewish ritual, to the point where they feel “more Christian” if they study it extensively or participate in it. For example, when I was a kid I went to a church in which a guy regularly brought out a ram’s horn he had purchased on a trip to Israel. It was the sort of horn they likely blew when God brought down the walls of Jericho. He’d wear a Jewish sash with tassels and Hebrew embroidered into it, and when he blew into it the church would go absolutely nuts—shouting and dancing and running around the room—as if now we were finally legit. Now, they were really Christians.

Christians can also become hyper-militant concerning the geopolitical life of the nation of Israel today. They feel that when Israel finally became a recognized nation in 1948, that was the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham to give his people a land—so the stakes of Israel’s borders and political life today are huge in their minds. They feel it is their responsibility to protect Israel in order to make sure God’s promises come true. (I disagree: I think we should do good to Israel, but because there are people there, made in the image of God, not because God needs our help bringing his promises to fulfillment.)

At any rate, this kind of thinking always produces an unfortunate result: that we see Israel as “other”: as if God has plans for Israel that he doesn’t have for the rest of humanity, as if because they were God’s chosen people in the Old Testament, he has one plan of salvation for us (salvation by faith in Christ) and an entirely separate plan of salvation for them (which involves Christ, but hinges on other things too).

The other direction we could go would be to imagine that by “all Israel”, Paul is not talking about the ethnic people of Israel at all, but about everyone who has faith in Christ. After all, we’ve already seen in chapter 9 that “not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel” (9.6), and in chapter 10, how the Gentiles who have placed their faith in Christ have been brought into the Israel family tree, making them a part of the same people.

This is the direction I would tend to lean, but I need to be honest and admit I still have questions here; I haven’t read a single commentary that fully satisfies me on this point. It’s true that in the larger context of chapters 9-11, Paul describes Israel as a spiritual reality—as God’s people, which includes Gentiles. But in the immediate context of this particular chapter, every single time he mentions Israel, he is clearly referring to ethnic Israel—to Israel as a nation. We see the clearest example (though not the only one) in v. 7, which we saw last time:

What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened…

Which “Israel” failed to obtain the righteousness they were seeking? It wasn’t those who have placed their faith in Christ, because they didn’t fail to obtain righteousness; it was those Jews who sought to establish their own righteousness through the law. The “elect” obtained righteousness, Paul says, but the rest were hardened.

We see the same thing in v. 11, in v. 23-24, in v. 25. Let’s read v. 25 again:

Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.

Who is the Israel who has been hardened until the fullness of the Gentiles have come in? It’s not those Jews who have placed their faith in Christ, but those who haven’t: the Jews who are still, as of yet, not Christians.

So that makes the next verse, v. 26, harder to understand—when Paul says that “all Israel will be saved,” is he saying, as many people believe, that at some point in the future, every individual Jewish man and woman, every descendant of Abraham, will be saved?

I don’t believe so…but he at least suggests that a very large number of them will—a group of Jews who could be qualified as “Israel”. I don’t see how else we can interpret what he’s saying in the context of the chapter.

Now, what this will look like, I have no idea. But here’s what I think he’s getting at—and here’s why I think this is such exciting news.

Think back to God’s promise to Abraham, that through his descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Of course this doesn’t mean that literally every person from every nation on earth will be saved; we have clearly seen, on multiple occasions, that salvation comes through Christ alone, by faith alone, and that many reject him. This is a truth whose current runs throughout the entire Bible.

But the number of people whom God has chosen to save is definitely far bigger than we often imagine. Over the scope of human history, enough people will be saved so that at the return of Christ, we will be able to truly say that God has brought the gospel to the French, and they have accepted it; God has brought the gospel to the Malagasies, and they have accepted it; God has brought the gospel to the Germans, and the Russians, and the Ukrainians, and the Chinese, and the British, and the Canadians, and the Cameroonians, and the Koreans, and the Italians, and the Belgians, and yes, even the Americans—at the return of Christ, we will be able to say that God has brought the gospel to every nation, and they have accepted it. God will have saved such a significant number of people from every nation that we will say, “God brought salvation to the entire world”.

In the same way, once God lifts this “partial hardening” from Israel, we will be able to legitimately say that God has brought the gospel to the Jews, and they, as a people, have accepted it.

And out of these thousands of nations, he will form one nation: his nation. It won’t be an entirely new thing—they will not be a separate people, with the Christians on one side, and the Jews on the other side. What did he say in v. 24? They [the Jews] will be grafted back into the olive tree—the same tree we have been grafted into.

In other words: not every individual Jew, but Israel, as a people, will turn to Christ, and come back to the table—the same table all of us who have faith in Christ are sitting at today. The “heavenly Israel” Paul described in chapter 9 will be complete.

God’s People Are Loved (v. 28-29)

But Paul knows what his readers are experiencing, and he doesn’t try to shy away from that dissonance. V. 28:

28 As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. 29 For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

This would have been a difficult pill for them to swallow. He’s speaking to Christians in Rome, in a context in which the Jews he’s talking about are vehemently opposed to the Christian faith. There is a lot of conflict, a lot of animosity, a lot of bitterness and fear and hurt.

Even so, Paul’s saying, “They’re acting like enemies, but do not look on them as enemies. Love them. Pray for them. Seek to do them good.”

Why? Because God made promises to their forefathers—he made promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and God is faithful to keep his promises. That was the whole thrust of Romans 9: no matter what the Jews seem to be doing, God is faithful to his promises; he is doing what he said he would do.

Once again, this isn’t to say that every single, individual Jewish person will be saved because God made a promise to Abraham. We saw that in Romans 9 too—God never promised to save every individual. Again, in this chapter he’s speaking collectively: he made promises to his people, he gave them “the gifts and the calling” (this is what he was referring to at the beginning of Romans 9, when he said, “to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises” (9.4).

That all makes sense in the context of Romans 9-11. But we have to wonder, why use the word “beloved”? They are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. This goes farther than simply saying God will be faithful to his promises. Why does Paul phrase it this way?

In part, he surely says it like this to silence the criticism, often leveled at him, that he has betrayed his people by bringing the gospel to the Gentiles. He’s writing this letter in part to get the church in Rome to support his mission to Spain—to the Gentiles—and he’s often accused of turning his back on his own people. He wants to refute that idea.

But I’m convinced that he also calls them beloved because of the real, familial affection Paul feels for his people, as we saw at the beginnings of both chapters 9 and 10.

We might read these words and be tempted to think that because the Jews are descendants of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob (their “forefathers”), God has a special kind of love for them that he doesn’t have for the rest of his people. I don’t believe that’s true; plenty of passages all over the Bible would say the opposite. God doesn’t play favorites (cf. Ephesians 4.1-6).

But we have to admit there is a certain poignancy to how salvation plays itself out in their particular situation.

My dad has six brothers and two sisters, and he loves them all; he doesn’t love one of them more than the others. But there is a particular context to his love for his brother Tony that makes it particularly poignant.

Dad lived in an orphanage until he was seven along with three of his brothers, because his mother had abandoned the family and his father was in jail. While he was in the orphanage, his youngest brother Tony was adopted. We had no information on him, had never seen him. I grew up hearing Dad talk about the last time he saw Tony, when he was five and Tony was three, and I knew that knowing he had a brother out there somewhere was hard on him.

Then, when I was seventeen, Tony’s adoptive grandmother tracked my father down. It only took a couple of conversations and a photo sent through the mail to confirm that it really was Tony. It was a photo taken the day Tony was adopted; in it he is wearing the same red shorts my dad described him wearing the last time he saw him.

So my grandfather and one of my uncles came to our house, and Tony drove up to meet us with his wife.

He came through the door, and looked at my dad, then at my uncle, then at my grandfather, and burst into tears. He hugged everyone, and all of us cried for a long time (it was the only time I ever saw my grandfather cry). Obviously we were all emotional because of the story behind his absence and his return; but a big part of the emotion we felt had to do with the fact that Tony looked like my dad. He looked like my uncle. He looked like my grandfather. The resemblance was uncanny: anyone passing them on the street would know at a glance that they were family.

So although I don’t think Paul is saying that God has a love for the Jews that is different than the love he has for us, at the same time, it’s true that there’s an affection created in such a situation that is undeniable. When Paul thinks of anyone coming to Christ, he’s happy—that’s why he’s given his whole life to bringing the gospel to the Gentiles. But when he thinks of his people coming to Christ, there’s a particular flavor to his emotion, as we see at the beginning of chapter 9. It doesn’t change anything fundamental for us, but it should move us. As Paul said in v. 12: Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!

Given their collective story, how glorious will it be to see them come back to the table? How wonderful will it be to see God’s promises fulfilled in that particular way?

God’s People Are Thankful  (v. 30-36)

And that’s what he summarizes next—the simple fact that God will save all of his people. V. 30:

30 For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, 31 so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. 32 For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.

The Gentiles were once disobedient, having no part of God at all—but now, because of Israel’s rejection of the Messiah, the gospel has come to us, and we have been brought in. In the same way, the Gentiles have received mercy in order to make Israel jealous, that they might return, and be welcomed back in, and receive mercy.

The Jews stumbled so that the Gentiles might be brought in. The Gentiles were brought in so that the Jews might be brought back in. As Paul says, God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.

This sounds confusing, but it’s actually very simple. Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of v. 32 in The Message is spot-on. He writes, “In one way or another, God makes sure that we all experience what it means to be outside so that he can personally open the door and welcome us back in.” That’s exactly right. Paul’s point here is God’s genius in his plan of salvation: he has made sure we all know what it’s like to be outside of salvation, in order to feel the immense weight of his grace when he opens the door, and welcomes us back in.

It’s no surprise, then, that Paul ends these chapters with a doxology—a liturgical formula of overwhelming praise to God. V. 33:

33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

34  “For who has known the mind of the Lord,

or who has been his counselor?”

35  “Or who has given a gift to him

that he might be repaid?”

36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

This is exactly the right way to respond, because the story of salvation gives full exposure to God’s attributes. How he saves his people shows us what he is like. His wisdom and knowledge are infinite. We could never guess his judgments and his ways. We could never fully understand the depths of his plan, and we could never earn back what he has done for us.

To put it another way: if after reading chapters 9 to 11, you feel like your brain’s been put in a blender, that’s right. If you’re disappointed that I haven’t explained this passage to your satisfaction, don’t be. That’s the point. He is God, not us. We can’t fully grasp what he’s doing, and the little we do understand is so stunning and so unexpected that the only proper response is worship.

In his commentary on these chapters, Thomas Schreiner writes this: "God has designed salvation history in such a way that the extension of his saving grace surprises those who are its recipients. Gentiles were elected to salvation when the Jews were expecting to be the special objects of his favor, and the Jews will be grafted in again at a time in which Gentiles will be tempted to believe that they are superior to ethnic Israel. By constructing history in such a way God makes it evident that he deserves the praise for the inclusion of any into his saving promises” (emphasis mine).

The ways in which these things play out are consistently surprising. No one could have predicted what God would do—even when he told his people what he was going to do, they didn’t see it coming.

We never do. And that’s wonderful.

If you’ve ever been to the mountains and looked out from a dizzying height at the landscape below you, then you know what I’m talking about. When you’re standing there, and you’re looking at something that seems impossible, like it shouldn’t be real, what you’re feeling is your heart’s impulse to worship the God who created it, whether you realize it at the time or not. We don’t understand how such things could be, no matter how well-informed we are. Even scientists—geologists and biologists and astronomers—can have their breath stolen by a view from the Alps. Knowing the processes of nature does nothing to take away its majesty, because no matter how much we know, there’s always more we haven’t yet discovered or understood.

It can feel a bit disconcerting to read these things, and to feel confused or perplexed by what God is doing. Like I said a couple weeks ago, if I’m thinking just in terms of getting God’s people saved, I can think of many easier ways to do it. But God’s not just thinking about getting his people saved; he wants to give fuel to our worship. He wants us to feel a gratitude worthy of the grace we have received. He wants us to be happy—and no one is happier than those who worship, and know why they are worshiping. No one is happier than those who stand and contemplate true majesty; there is absolutely nothing better.

Being exposed to all of the multi-faceted possibilities of God’s plan of salvation—in all of its complexities and confounding mystery—should fire our imaginations, and make us fall on our knees in worship to the God who saves and loves his people.

For from him, and through him, and to him, are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.