Gods Faithfulness

Romans – A Treatise
Chapter Eleven
GOD’S FAITHFULNESS

Scripture Reading: verses 25-29

God’s purposes are inflexible and He will neither be frustrated nor defeated in accomplishing them. The picture presented in Romans 11:25-29 is that God chose the nation Israel as the center of His earthly administration. Through them the blessing would flow out to mankind. They proved themselves unfaithful and God removed them as branches that did not bear fruit. However, He proposes that His house may be full, that nothing shall stay the tide of the outflow of His blessings. Therefore, when He pruned off the branches that were unfaithful, He grafted in other branches from the wild olive tree, the Gentiles, and we live in the day when the superabundance of God’s grace is coming to mankind, not in a national but spiritual way, toward Jew and Gentile alike. In the second chapter of Ephesians this subject is taken up in another light, it is indicated that God has broken down the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile. Out of the twain He has made one new man, thus making peace. In this present age, God has obliterated the national and racial distinctions between Jew and Gentile, and He has one man before Him, “the new man.” It is the Body of Christ, a reflection of the Lord Jesus Himself. In order to constitute this new man, God has taken the elect according to His grace out of Israel, and the elect according to His grace out of the Gentiles, and has united them together into one.

Paul then warns concerning both the goodness and severity of God – tremendously important attributes. Perhaps we are in a place of particular circumstantial favor before God. Perhaps we have been brought up in a Christian home; at all events we have been brought up in a land where the light of the Gospel is evident. Remember the goodness and the severity of God. His goodness is toward those who respond to His call; His severity toward those who do not value His loving kindness. In another connection the same warning is provided in the Epistle to the Hebrews:

For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward; How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?

Perhaps these words come to some who have made no response to the appeal of the Gospel. Perhaps we have heard it a hundred times and know the way of salvation, but have never opened our heart to the Lord Jesus Christ. How grave our responsibility. Yes, remember the goodness of God,¹ but never forget His severity.² If God’s sunshine of loving kindness is brilliant and cloudless, remember that the outshining of His righteousness in judgment against evildoers and against those who obey not the Gospel of Christ will be like a lightning flash, blinding in its radiance.

Verse 27 is a remarkable one in this chapter:

Now, laying aside that parenthesis from verse 13 to the end of verse 15, let us go back to verse 12 and link it with verse 16, which is the true context:

As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sakes.³ For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.

God will never be frustrated in His purposes. He took up a definite relationship with Israel and He will not surrender what He has already undertaken. It may be that because of rebellion the Jews have been laid aside in order that their appreciation of God’s goodness might be sharpened. However, as touching the election, Israel are beloved for the fathers’ sakes. Those from among Israel’s ranks who will go God’s way, and not their own way, will come into the full realization of the blessing of Abraham, because he was the father of the faithful. Then Paul makes this master stroke again as he shines as the attorney for the defense in this universal courtroom drama. He says, “The gifts and calling of God are without repentance.”⁴ It is the reassurance that God will never go back on anything He has undertaken. If God gives a gift, the recipient may prove unworthy of it, but God will never take it back. He never repents of having given gifts. In the same way He may call a person to some definite work, and His servant prove unfaithful, but God does not repent of the call. We have seen this illustrated many times in individual lives of Christian people. We have known men of God who were outstandingly gifted of God. Then failure came into their lives, proving themselves unworthy of the gift given to them; but God never took the gift away. We are now thinking of a great preacher of the Gospel who fell into waywardness. God had used him mightily in the proclamation of the way of salvation and through him many had been brought to the knowledge of the Savior. Evil days came along. We are not suggesting that he lost his salvation, but his fervor for the Lord left him. He certainly lost the joy of his salvation and he drifted onward for years. Then a measure of spiritual recovery came his way, and years later we once again heard him preach. There was a contrite spirit and sadness about him we had not previously known, but God had not taken away the gift. He still spoke with magnetic force the spiritual power that distinguished him many years before. God never took away his gift. However, remember this: sometimes He takes His servant away. In Corinth they were mightily gifted. God was not vengeful because of their carnality, but Paul says, “For this cause many are weak and sickly among you and some have fallen asleep.” God had taken them home to heaven and denied them the privilege of serving Him here. God will not take back His gifts from us, but He may take us.

Footnotes:
¹ “God’s goodness” is beyond the capacity of man to understand. It is a goodness that loved people, even in their sins, gave the Beloved for their rescue, and waits in longsuffering patience upon man’s repentance, not willing that any should perish, but desiring the salvation of all. The divine goodness is not a weak and vacillating namby-pambyism, which is as revolting and disgusting as it is untrue of that divinity which gave us birth.
² “Severity of God” is another of the divine attributes, but the minds of men are reluctant to dwell upon it. It was the loving and faithful God who swept the whole earth of the antediluvian race, and it has already been noted extensively in this chapter that when sin and rebellion reach their point of no return, God hardens and destroys. The current love-cult has, to some degree, perverted man’s conception of the divine goodness by leaving out of view the aspect of God’s character which Paul here commanded men to behold. The severity mentioned here derives from the righteousness and justice of Him who is angry with the wicked every day, who abhors evil, and who must punish all who deserve it.
³ Who are these designated here as “enemies for your sake”? Their identity is clear from the last clause of the preceding verse, where the portion of Jacob whose sins were forgiven, and who had turned away from transgression, are the ones spoken of, making them the subject of this verse. At first, we are shocked that the true Israel (the redeemed portion of Jacob) should here be called “enemies.” How is this true? Just as Christians on both sides of nations at war are technically enemies, so it is here. Part of the true Israel, through birth and environment, was then and continues to be, commingled with the old Israel. There are some of every generation of fleshly Israel that fall into this category. But within that environment, they are environmentally enemies of the truth, having been identified with the enemies of the Gospel from birth, and afterward, by upbringing and education; but, despite this, there are some of that old Israel in every generation who are of the true Israel, who are of “the election” and the “righteous remnant” and therefore beloved “for the fathers’ sake” and being the true seed of Abraham, no less than Christians from among the Gentiles; but they become so only by obeying the Gospel. Upon acceptance of the Gospel, they claim the inheritance that is theirs as "”children of the promise.” God has not abrogated his promise to that Israel. The true Israel has been separated from the fleshly Israel, but the inalienable right of every soul born into this world to decide which way his soul shall go, whether or not he will be of the true Israel, is not contravened. The physical descendants of Abraham in the national entity known as Israel, or scattered throughout earth’s populations, as individuals are not lost and doomed through the accident of their birth, any more than others, the final right of choice still belonging to every man alive. Some of the old Israel are still being saved, the same as in Paul’s day, and the same as in Elijah’s day. Therefore no fatalism is taught in the revelation here regarding the hardening of fleshly Israel. To clear up any confusion, the separation of the two Israels which came about in the events connected with the rise of Christianity, simply reversed the situation that had existed prior to the first advent of Christ. In those days the Gentiles were hardened, and the Jews were the covenant people; but, even under that condition, individual Gentiles now and again forsook the wickedness of their world and were received into the true spiritual seed of Abraham, Ruth the Moabitess being a conspicuous example. Now, the opposite situation prevails, and again and again, individual Jews accept the Lord and claim their rightful inheritance as true Sons of Abraham in Christ. The hardening of the Jewish institution has not affected the sovereign right of any man, Jew or Gentile, to obey the Gospel and be saved. That the earthly organization called Jewry, and including the state of Israel, shall ever be saved as such, in the light of the Scriptures, appears to be an absolute impossibility, in the same way that it was impossible under reverse conditions before Christ for any state like Babylon or Rome to be accepted as such into the benefits of Gods’ redeeming covenant.
⁴ ?For the gifts and calling of God are not repented of? ... the gifts and calling of God are the great promise of God to Abraham that in him ?all the families? of the earth shall be blessed with eternal life, such promise never having been confined to Abraham?s fleshly posterity alone, and never having included all of them, but only that portion of them who were Abraham?s kind of faithful obedient people, the ?spiritual seed? as they are called. But the institution, or establishment, of Israel flatly rejected any thought that God?s blessing should be extended to Gentiles; and the very mention of God?s will in that regard precipitated the great riot in the temple which led to Paul?s imprisonment, the enraged Israelites crying that ?It is not fit that he (Paul) should live? (Acts 22:22). The establishment had not merely murdered the Christ and suborned lying witnesses to deny the resurrection, they launched a campaign of eradication directed at the entire following of Jesus Christ, stoned Stephen to death, plotted to kill Paul, and sought by every possible means to thwart the preaching of the Gospel on the mission field, Paul himself being on precisely that kind of mission of destruction when he was converted. Therefore, if the hardened Israel had had their way, God?s great promise would have failed. This great clause is an affirmation that it did not fail. God did not repent of His purpose, merely because people did not agree with it. What a glorious onward thrust of God?s will is envisioned by Paul in these words. The whole nation of Israel might oppose it; but the will of God moved inexorably to the achievement of the divine purpose.