Resources
- Romans overview (video): Part 1, Part 2
- Romans is structured as follows:
- Books 1-4: Revealing God’s Righteousness
- Books 5-8: Creating a New Humanity
- Books 9-11: Fulfilling God’s Promise to Israel (Past/Present/Future)
- Books 12-16: Unifying the Church
Romans 11: Fulfilling God’s Promise to Israel (Past)
Context
- This chapter concludes the section on Fulfilling God’s Promise to Israel (Past) of Paul’s letter, contained in Romans 9—11.
- These three chapters ask and answer the question, “What about Israel?”
- Paul begins this chapter by asking if Israel’s rejection of Christ means that God has rejected Israel.
- God has not rejected Israel. Paul is an Israelite who came to faith in Christ and has been saved, showing that this is possible for all Jewish people.
- Paul refers to the smaller subset of Jewish people who have turned to Christ, comparing them to the remnant of those in Israel who had not bowed to Baal in Elijah’s day.
- By His grace (Romans 9:6–8), God has set aside this remnant of Jewish Christians as true Israel (Romans 11:1–5).
- Paul warns about salvation by grace vs salvation based on works. They are incompatible.
- If something is truly by “grace,” it cannot be in any way based on works, and vice versa (Romans 11:6).
- Paul’ says God has hardened the hearts of those who refuse to believe Jesus is Messiah. God caused them to trip over the stumbling block of Jesus, but not permanently.
- Their hardening is only for a time (Romans 11:7–10).
- One reason for Israel’s unbelief is to make room on the main body (“the root”) of God’s tree.
- This space is intended for Gentiles coming to God through faith in Christ.
- The Gentiles are like branches of a wild olive tree grafted onto the trunk of a cultivated plant.
- The old branches are the unbelieving Jews – they have been broken off for a time to make this grafting possible (Romans 11:11–16).
- Paul warns Gentile Christians not to be arrogant toward unbelieving Jews..
- After the right amount of the Gentiles have believed in Christ, God will remove the hardening from the unbelieving Jews.
- The Jews will then turn to faith in Christ and, as a people, be grafted back onto God’s symbolic olive tree, from which they had previously been pruned.
- God is not done with Israel (Romans 11:17–24).
- Despite their disbelief, the Jewish people of Israel are deeply loved by God because of the promises He made to the patriarchs. God never breaks His promises.
- God’s gifts and His calling on Israel can’t be taken back.
- God will use His grace and mercy toward the Gentile Christians to make Israel jealous. He will use these events to bring her back to Himself as a nation, in the form of those individual Jews who eventually trust in Christ at some future time (Romans 11:25–32).
- Paul concludes with a poem about the vast un-knowable-ness and independence of our merciful God (Romans 11:33–36).
