Sunday School Notes: Romans 11:25-26

²⁵ For I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brethren, so that you may not be wise in yourselves, that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in. ²⁶ And in this way, all Israel will be saved, just as it is written: ‘The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn away the ungodly from Jacob. And this [is] my covenant with them, when I shall take away their sins.’

We started off this week with a review of the tree analogy in verses 17-24, returning to the question of how this contributes to Paul’s argument, and what it says, if anything, about the eternal security of the believer. With regard to eternal security, or “the perseverance of the saints,” we noted that there are some passages in Scripture that seem to indicate someone who is saved may, indeed, fall away–perhaps permanently. Hebrews 6 came up as a famous passage that seems to teach this. We had to acknowledge, however, that one cannot maintain God’s sovereignty in salvation with a view that a person’s actions could jeopardize his righteous standing before God. Indeed, if man can choose to walk away from the faith, does it not follow he can choose to be saved? On the other hand, if salvation is in God’s hands, then our eternal security is not dependent upon our actions, but upon God’s grace, and His desire for us to be saved.

This ties in to what Paul teaches in 11:17-24. Salvation is of God, whether you are Jew or Greek. If God so chooses, He can chop off “natural” branches, graft in “unnatural” branches, and even graft back in “natural” branches. The threat in verse 21, that God will not spare even those grafted in if they don’t remain faithful, can be seen not so much as what God will certainly do, but what God is able to do since He is the one who determines who is and who isn’t saved. Remember that Paul is trying to undermine the boasting of both Jew and Gentile, and the best way to do this is to remind them that they have nothing to boast about. This is all God’s work, so the credit and glory goes to Him alone.

As for Hebrews 6, this passage deserves study on its own, but suffice to say for now that it is possible for someone who is not saved to “taste” and even “partake” of the grace of God, and of the Spirit. When the unbeliever sits under sound preaching, or experiences the love of Christ through his bride, the church, or even receives an extraordinary blessing, he has partaken of heavenly things. God may use these things to effect repentance and salvation; or He may use these things to demonstrate the hardness of the unbeliever’s heart, and make his lost-ness evident. Indeed, Christ’s church is in the world to be salt and light. We are often used by God to help restrain the evil in our culture, to stand up for what is right, and to remind the world of the Moral Law that is in the heart of every person. Though the world rarely, if ever, acknowledges the fact, we are a means of God’s grace and blessing to a godless, rebellious world.

Paul starts verse 25 with a phrase he has used elsewhere: “I don’t want you to be ignorant.” The same Greek (ou thelô humas agnoein) can be found, for example, in Romans 1:13, talking about Paul’s plan to visit Rome, and 1 Corinthians 12:1, introducing the subject of spiritual gifts. In all these places, and here too, he’s drawing attention to something important, and maybe new. Perhaps even something Paul has received by revelation.

We took a few minutes to discuss what the Bible means whenever it talks about a “mystery.” When we use the word “mystery” to describe something, we often think of Sherlock Holmes, and a crime that needs to be solved, or something mystical, beyond human experience, that we can’t understand and have to accept by faith. Many times, Christians dismiss difficult doctrine, or apparent contradictions in Scripture by calling them “mysteries.” But this is not what a Biblical “mystery” is. The gospel is described as a “mystery” (1 Corinthians 2:7; 4:1; Ephesians 1:9; Ephesians 3:1-7), but we understand the gospel. Even the doctrine of the Trinity, which is often called a “mystery” by many, is understandable. What the writers of Scripture mean is that these are things we can understand in principle, but in their outworking, we have to trust God. We understand the Trinity (God is one being in three Persons), and can see from Scripture that this is indeed the nature of God, but we are not trinitarian beings, so we cannot understand it experientially. We don’t know what it’s like to be trinitarian, and it’s hard for us to conceive of how that would work. But we know it’s true of God, and so we have to trust the revelation in Scripture at that point. As for the gospel, we understand the message, but we can’t see the big picture. We don’t know why God saves some and not others. In the context of Romans 11, we don’t understand why God wants to graft the Gentiles in, why he would cast off a large portion of Israel, and many other things. We have to trust God that He knows what He’s doing, and it’s all for the best.

Paul goes on to tell the Gentiles that a “partial hardening” has come upon Israel that will last “until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in.” Furthermore, “in this way, all Israel will be saved.” This, I think, is the mystery: God’s plan of salvation does indeed include the Jews, though it seems right now that God has turned His back on them. But God is bringing in a certain number of Gentiles, and when that number has been reached, He will lift the hardening that is currently on Israel so as to bring Israel to salvation. Why God would choose to do things this way is a mystery to us. How God will bring this all about is a mystery to us. But Paul, perhaps by means of divine revelation, states these facts with confidence. And this is why the Gentiles should not be “wise in yourselves,” or “wise in your own estimation”: this is a work that God is doing, of which the Gentile outreach is a part, but it is not the whole story.

Further, the Gentiles need not be so short-sighted to think that the current circumstances are an indication of God’s intentions. It seems the Gentiles looked at a predominantly Gentile church, and the rejection of the gospel by a large majority of Israel, and concluded that God was finished with Israel. Paul has reminded them that God has a remnant of Israel that have come to Christ, and that He is able to take those cut-off branches and graft them back in (i.e., bring them to repentance and salvation through Christ). So the Gentiles need to stop looking at the branches that litter the ground. God has a bigger plan, based on the fact that He is a promise-keeping, covenant-keeping God, and the promise He made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, will come to fruition. He has hardened Israel, perhaps for the sake of the Gentiles, but that hardening is only temporary. A time will come when God will fulfill His promise to Israel and save them. And by this, he doesn’t mean through the restoration of the Temple and the Temple sacrifices, but in the only way one can be redeemed: through Christ.

We thought it made best sense to think of “Israel” here as corporate Israel, not every individual Israelite. When Paul says “all Israel will be saved,” he is using “all Israel” in the same way we might say “the whole church went out.” We may actually mean a large majority of the church, or better, the entire membership of the church that were present at that time. In other words, Paul is looking forward to a future day when a large portion of Israel–perhaps everyone who identifies themselves as Jewish–will come to a saving knowledge of Christ.

This is about as far as we got with verse 26. We will pick up the discussion next week. starting with the Old Testament quotations.