Romans 11:1-24

 Romans 11:1-24

Our relationship with God requires that we approach it with great humility. Occasionally people imagine that they are much more significant than they actually are. Paul warns early Gentile Christians about this danger. It is a warning that we need to heed. He begins by asking, “Did God completely and totally reject Jews and replace them with Gentiles as his chosen people?” Clearly that is not the case, for Paul himself was Jewish. There would remain a remnant of believers among the Jews. But being a part of God‘s calling was not based on genetic ancestry or national origin, but rather on faith. We must understand that there is no such thing as a “Christian nation.” There may be a nation that was shaped culturally, legally, and socially by a Christian ethic. But there is no nation whereby citizenship in the nation brings about salvation in Christ. To imagine in any degree that being a part of a given nation makes a person a Christian is pure folly. The person living and working in a pagan or atheist culture and nation who is a disciple is far better off than a non-Christian living in the most conservative Christian culture, family, or nation. Like many Christians today, Israel had become satisfied, comfortable, or even arrogant in their position, and began to drift away from God. In response, God gave them over to a “spirit of stupor” or, as we might say, ‘fat, dumb, and happy.’ As a whole, they were lost, but they did not know it.

God’s call to Gentiles is a wake-up call to Israel. It is a way to make them aware of their serious spiritual condition. When it comes to Gentile relationships with Jews, there seem to be two opposite and extreme follies into which Christians fall. On the one hand, there’s almost an anti-Semitic hatred or hostility toward the Jews. Jews are described as Christ-killers, and they are vilified wrongly. The other extreme is almost as Zion-phila. In some cases, Gentile Christians try to act Jewish, to the point of acting as if it will be two ways of salvation: Jewish law keeping and Christian sacrifice. Some Gentiles have gone so far as to begin to keep kosher, sort of. The proper response for Gentile Christians is to share Jesus the Messiah back with the Jews.

Paul uses the illustration of a wild olive branch. This is hard for us who don’t tend olive trees to understand this image. Imagine a farmer with a beautifully tended olive grove; it is like the Garden of Eden; it is so beautiful. He goes out into the wilderness to an ugly desert place and brings back a wild olive branch and grafts it into his olive grove; life for that branch just got better, but not because it earned it but by grace. It was for the pleasure and purposes of the gardener. We are grafted into God’s family by grace.

“Lord, help me to live with great confidence in Your plan and with sincere humility. AMEN”