Romans 11:16-24

16 If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches. 17 If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, 18 do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. 19 You will say then, "Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in." 20 Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.

22 Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. 23 And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. 24 After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!


Dig Deeper
When I was coaching basketball I had a team one season that had a set group of five starters. They had started every game in the previous year and all five starters came back for the next season. As that second season with that group wore on, though, I noticed that they began to take on a sense of entitlement about being starters. They had actually begun to separate themselves from the rest of the team, thinking themselves as more privileged and different from everyone else. At the same time that all of that was going on, their play had begun to slip noticeably. So I decided to have a bit of a shake-up. I benched the entire starting unit for a game and started younger players. My intention was to send a strong message to those players that there was no inherent superiority to them as a group simply because they had been starting the games and playing most of the minutes. My plan worked and the young men got the message loud and clear but imagine if I had permanently removed them as starters and made the five younger players the starters for the rest of the season. What if I did that and then these new starters began to look down upon the old starters and question whether they should even be on the team? What if they started to begin to think of themselves as superior and started doing the same things that the original starters had done, forgetting that they were once sitting on the bench and being excluded by the starters?

Paul spent the first several chapters of this letter demonstrating that although there were advantages to being a Jew, that those advantages weren’t the type that made Jews better off or superior to the Gentiles in any way. They were both equally guilty before God and in need of him being faithful to the covenant promises through the resurrection of the Messiah. The unique situation in Rome was that the Jews, including Jewish Christians, had been expelled from Rome but were now returning. It seems that the Gentile Christians in Rome had gotten used to the idea of not having Jewish Christians around. So much so that they began to wonder whether God had just given up on the Jews altogether now. Sure there was an initial remnant group but now hadn’t it become obvious that God was turning the kingdom completely over to the Gentiles, as though there was now some special status given to Gentiles when it came to God’s covenant family? That kind of thinking, however, is very wrong-headed and dangerous as Paul is about to make clear. In fact, it is to make the same sort of mistake that the Jews of the Old Covenant had made concerning the Gentiles, only in reverse.

Paul offers up two quick analogies in verses 16 and 17 as he picks up the thought of Jews coming back to life spiritually just as the Messiah has risen from the dead. The first example he gives is that of the firstfruits. Part of a crop or batch would be sacrificed to God as an offering. It would sanctify or make holy the rest of the batch and show that it was dedicated to God and also appeal to God to bring in the rest of the crop. In a similar fashion, Paul’s hope is that the remnant of Jewish believers will serve as a type of firstfruits.

The Jewish people have their roots as God’s people, so even if some branches are broken off, as we transition from the first analogy to the second, there is still hope. Paul takes advantage of the common knowledge that people would have had about olive trees to make a firm point. The branches have been broken off from the tree because of their lack of belief in the Messiah. That much is not in dispute. Paul still holds firm to the fact that faith in the life of the Messiah is the only means to true covenant status as the people of God. The root of the tree of being the people of God is a decidedly Jewish root. The branches have been broken off and that has benefited the Gentiles who are like wild olive shoots who were commonly grafted into the olive tree to bring new life to it.

What Paul wants the Gentile Christians to understand in no uncertain terms is the foolishness of beginning to think that God has turned his back completely on all Jewish people. The nation of Israel as a whole has hardened, that is true, and God has used them for his overall purposes. But that, by no means, is a signal that Jews cannot still come to faith in the Messiah and be renewed as the people of God just as surely as Gentiles have been grafted into the family. Holding such a position would be arrogant and would be to forget that the root of the tree is still a Jewish root. That should be respected. If they start buying into the idea that Jews have been completely cut off then a form of reverse prejudice would come into play. Whereas Paul has criticized the fact that Israel began to think of the covenant family as their special status and belonging simply because of their ethnic identity, the Gentiles would be, in fact, committing the same act of arrogance if they began to believe that ethnic identity was a marker after all, but that it was the Gentiles who were in and the Jews who were out.

The branches were not broken off for being Jewish branches. They were broken off because they did not believe in the Messiah. They trusted ethnic identity and birth status. If those branches were broken off because they clung to belief in things other than the life of the Messiah, then the Gentile Christians had better take heed. To think that someone could not become a Christian simply because they were Jews and had been cut off by God would be the same act of unbelief that the nation of Israel had taken part in. If God did not spare them, Gentiles should not look for any such sparing either for the same act. Again, it is important to note that Paul is speaking in terms of groups not individuals. He is not arguing that someone will lose their salvation here but is arguing instead that these churches are in danger of embracing a false gospel, effectively cutting themselves off from true faith in the Messiah.

Paul asks his readers to remember two aspects of God that all people should keep in tension with one another. God is both kind and stern. He has shown his sternness to Israel and his kindness to those who have been grafted into the people of God. But they should not make the mistake of thinking that God will not show the same kind of sternness if they act in the same way that Israel did. God is kind but he is also just and faithful to his promises. He has promised all along to have one family built on faith and that is exactly what he will have. If any Jews do not persist in their unbelief they will be grafted back into the tree. The tree, after all, is the family of God, the Messiah. So Gentiles had better remember that if they start clinging to the thought that Jews have been cut out, then they are in reality embracing the thought that status in the family of the Messiah comes through something other than belief or unbelief in the Messiah. This would be tantamount to unbelief themselves. The Gentiles should not get cocky. If God has already done the difficult work of grafting the wild branches of the Gentile people into the tree, they should realize that it could be just as easy to graft back into the original tree the branches that had been cut off.

Thus, Paul has made his points regarding where Jewish people stand in regards to their future status in the kingdom of God. Paul takes seriously what he has stated in chapters 9 and 10. Jews who have not believed in the life of the Messiah really have been broken off from the tree and there is no going back on that. They will not simply be grafted back in because they are Jewish branches. The tree may be Jewish but the true Israel consists of all who have faith in the Messiah not those who are simply of Jewish descent (Rom. 9:6). The people of God would really be a single family based on resurrection faith as God had always promised. Yet Paul did not believe that there was any good reason that Jews could not continue to join the family of God. Any notion that they were cursed or rejected by God must be dismissed. In all of this, Paul has also made his serious point that the Gentiles need to make sure that they are clinging to faith in the life of the Messiah alone and not accepting some warped ideas that the family of God is now a Gentile-only family. That would be to think that the grace of God through the Messiah was tied to ethnicity after all. If they embrace that then they can expect God to deal with their church in the same way that he did with Israel. It also stands as a stern reminder to us that we stand in the covenant family of God on no other status than our faith in the life of Christ. Christ alone truly is our solid rock on which we stand.

Devotional Thought
Paul sternly warned the Gentiles not to fall into the type of thinking that said that anyone was beyond the reach of God’s mercy. Do you ever do that? Do you ever pass on sharing your faith with someone, thinking that they’ll never respond? How does Paul’s words here help to change your mind?