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Sunday School
Continue In His Goodness
Jewish rejection and perse- cution or Jewish and Gentile inclusion in the new Israel. This is exactly what we see in our text.
One could conclude that since the Jews rejected the gospel and since the Gentiles accepted the gospel that the dye is cast, end of story. To that Paul says, “Not so fast.” The Jewish stumbling (also called transgression, rejec- tion, andloss) did not mean they could not recover. In fact Paul had already af- firmed that he was a Jew and embraced God’s call (Ro- mans 11:1).
Jewish rejection did give the Gentiles a crack at the gospel, and that is a great thing. Paul refers to it as riches and reconciliation. But Paul was shooting for the stars. He held out hope that many Jews would turn back to God. Paul hoped that the Gentile inclusion would stir up Jewish envy (mentioned twice in our text) and would bring a great revival of inter- est for the gospel among the
Jews. For Paul this would have been the greatest thing—the full inclusion of Jews and Gentiles and life from the dead for everyone.
The Analogy | Ro- mans 11:16-24
Verse 16 functions as a transition from the formula to the analogy. Paul mixed metaphors. He moved from the kitchen to the olive or- chard. He likened Israel to dough offered as firstfruits in an offering to God (think Leviticus 1–7). He likened the Gentiles to the whole batch of dough since they have become part of the whole lump with the Jews. Then Paul said, If the root is holy, so are the branches. This parable gets extended next.
Paul particularly ad- dressed the Gentiles here. Evidently they needed a “come to Jesus meeting.” In light of the Jewish expulsion from Rome (Acts 18:2), per- haps the church at Rome was primarily Gentile. Now the
Jews were coming back to Rome and the church, and perhaps the Gentiles were re- senting the Jews reclaiming their Christian heritage. The Gentiles had begun to take on a bit of superiority.
The branches broken off were Israelites. The wild olive shoot grafted in was Gentiles. This combination tree was exactly what God wanted.
So arrogance is totally out of place. Gentile branches needed the Jewish roots. Re- gardless of what happened to the Jews, the Gentiles had to realize that they had their standing with God by active obedient faith. God could take them out as easily as he grafted them in. Instead of arrogance this should foster a healthy fear. Next Paul en- tertained the reality that the Jews could come back to Christ. At least he held out an olive branch of hope for it. God’s toughness (sternness) and tenderness (kindness) worked in the favor of both Jews and Gentiles.
The greatest word in John 3:16 is ‘whosoever,’ because that one word gets us into the kingdom of God.” Paul would likely agree. Paul was a Jew, and due to that heritage had ready ac- cess to salvation. But Paul was also the apostle to the Gentiles, and due to that call- ing wanted them to have ready access to salvation as well.
At points one is tempted to think that the Jews have squandered their opportu- nity to be saved at all. But Paul reassured that God has reserved for himself a rem- nant of believing Jews (Ro- mans 11:1-10). Paul used our text to remind the Gen-
tiles not to feel arrogant about their opportunity to believe the gospel.
All things being equal one would think that Jews and Gentiles would rejoice in the wide embrace of God. But alas, that was not the case. Our text was written to ad- dress some of the ethnic ten- sions in the church at Rome.
The Formula | Ro- mans 11:11-15
An involved formula de- veloped during the mission- ary journeys of Paul (Acts 13–21). It goes like this: Jewish rejection leads to Gentile inclusion, which leads to Jewish jealousy; that produces two things—further
(Romans 11:11-24)
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