romans 11:25-32

All Israel Will Be Saved
25 I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not think you are superior: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, 26 and in this way [e] all Israel will be saved. As it is written:
"The deliverer will come from Zion;
he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.
27 And this is [f] my covenant with them
when I take away their sins." [g]

28 As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, 29 for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable. 30 Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, 31 so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now [h] receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you. 32 For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.


Dig Deeper
I heard a lot of sermons growing up between Sunday morning services, Sunday nigh services, Wednesday night services, and even weekly chapel services at the Christian school that I went to as a young man. With all of those sermons under my belt I cannot remember the exact setting, but I do remember hearing a sermon that was based in part, at least, on this passage in Romans 11. The point made then was that at some point before the “end of the world” that all Jews were going to be saved. I didn’t really understand all that was being said at the time, and, in fairness, I cannot completely recall the complete context of the sermon, but I do remember thinking how unfair it seemed that Jews were going to get saved just because they were Jews. Since that time, though, I have heard many a preacher on television preach just that. There is one famous television preacher that has become one of the leading proponents of the rather curious modern evangelical teaching that when Christ returns all of the Jews will receive salvation solely because they are part of the Jewish nation. He goes so far as to claim that there are dual covenants in play. One covenant is for the Jews and gives them automatic salvation while the other is the covenant of Christ. According to this teaching, there will be millions of Jews that receive salvation without ever having entered into Christ in this age.

But is this really what Paul is talking about in this passage? Can we simply take a handful of words out of this passage and build a whole theology around it that seems to flatly contradict everything else that Paul has said up to this point? Can we possibly allow for a reading that creates a covenant that lies outside of the mercy found in the life of the Messiah? Or is there some future moment when all of ethnic Israel will inexplicably turn to Christ? Who is the Israel to whom Paul refers here? How is it that all of Israel will be saved? This dense little section elicits a whole bevy of questions. Let’s see if we can find some answers.

Paul has tried to carefully show that there is no difference between Jew and Gentile in their need for the Messiah and their need to respond to the grace shown in the gospel by faith. It is in the Messiah that God’s covenant promises of having one family that would have their sin be dealt with have been answered. “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God” (2 Cor. 1:20). Paul has also wanted to show the Gentile Christians that God’s family is still just as open to Jews as it is to Gentiles. In helping them to see this, Paul has had some rather stern words for the Gentile believers. Yet, he wants to assure them of their status as well. They really are his beloved brothers and sisters in Christ. They are part of the family, there are just some things that he desperately does not want them to be ignorant. Paul is not introducing something new in this passage but actually begins verse 25 with the word “for” (omitted in the TNIV) which signals that he is beginning to summarize what he has said up to this point.

The mystery that Paul wants them to see is the revelation of the life of Christ that has brought together Jews and Gentiles into one family (see Eph. 2 & 3). He wants them to fully grasp God’s plan so that they will not fall into thinking that they are somehow superior in their covenant status over and against the Jewish people. What has happened to Israel? Have they really been cut off completely? Paul sums up what he has been saying all along, declaring that they have been hardened. Or in other words, their judgment for rebellion has been delayed so that they can either repent or stand fully guilty when God finally does bring judgment, but in the meantime God will use that time and the rebellion for his own purposes. We need two quick clarifiers on verse 25 before we move on. The word “part” should probably be understood to describe “Israel” rather than “hardening”. Also, “the full number of the Gentiles” likely refers to a level of completion, such as when the gospel was announced to all nations, rather than a specific and predetermined mathematical number. Thus, it would be best to understand the latter half of verse 25 to read, “A hardening has come upon part of Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in.” Part of Israel has continued in their unbelief and come into hardening while another smaller part of Israel has become the remnant that has entered into the Messiah.

This is the way of the process that “all Israel will be saved.” Those five words have become some of the most controversial and misused words in the entire Bible. The big question here is who is the Israel to which Paul refers. Does he mean every single Jew? Does he mean some number of elect Jews? Does he mean the nation of Israel as an entity but not every single Jew? Or does he mean something else altogether? It is true that in verse 25, Paul uses Israel to refer the nation of Israel, yet Paul has prepared us since the opening of this section for the fact that he is redefining Israel, “For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel” (9:6). But Paul’s redefinition of Israel goes far beyond one or two verses. It was one of the primary themes of his writing and ministry. True Jews were Jews inwardly by the Spirit (Rom. 2:29) and “those who have the faith of Abraham” (Rom. 4:16). All those in Christ are Abraham’s seed and heirs of the promise (Gal. 3:26-29). Jewish and Gentile Christians are the true circumcision group that put no confidence in the flesh (Phil. 3:3-4). Those who live by faith in the life of Christ alone are the true Israel of God (Gal. 6:12-16). It’s not that Israel had been exchanged, replaced, superseded, or reaffirmed for what they were. Israel had been transformed through the death and resurrection of the Messiah so that Israel was now the Israel that God had always promised. God has created one new humanity out of the two (Eph. 2:15). Paul is thus summarizing what he said in 10:13. “All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Part of Israel had undergone hardening and through that action, God has brought in those who chose to be part of the remnant of ethnic Israel to join together with the fullness of the Gentiles to become the one true family of God. All Israel, then, is all those who call on the name of the Lord, and all who do that will be saved.

We must remember that if Paul is offering some future salvation to ethnic Israel, this would hardly be a fulfillment of the promises that God gave to Abraham. God had made covenant promises to Israel and this is how they have been fulfilled. Paul has shown how Israel has been redrawn to the shape of the Messiah. Those in the Messiah are Abraham’s seed, they are the true Israel and “yes,” says Paul we can now see how God has been faithful to his promises to Israel. He promised to bless the whole world through Abraham’s descendants and he promised to have one family of many nations, a people whose sins would be dealt with. God has been faithful to his promises. The resurrection and the gospel declaration of it do really demonstrate the righteousness of God.

The biblical quotes in verses 26 and 27 are Paul’s attempts to demonstrate that how God dealt with Israel and their sins in the past is exactly what he is doing now in saving Israel. Paul quotes from Isaiah 59:20-21; Jeremiah 31:33-34; and Isaiah 27:9. Paul is not implying that Jews somehow have a private path to salvation apart from Christ or the Gentiles. The covenant that God promised to Israel has been fulfilled in the Messiah. Theologian Tom Wright says, “Taken together, Isaiah 59:20, Jeremiah 31:33-34 and Isaiah 27:9 speak, not of special privilege coming to Israel aside from the Gentiles, but of God working for the benefit of Gentiles through the fulfillment of the covenant with Israel.” The substance of the covenant was that God would take away the sins of his people and he has done that. The Messiah has come from Zion and has turned godlessness away from his people. The Christ -shaped people have finally been revealed.

Beginning in verse 28, Paul will lay out what he has been saying about Israel’s role. Ethnic Israel is not the enemy of God’s people, but they have certainly set themselves up as enemies of the gospel. They have rejected God’s plan, but they are loved by God because they were the people of God. Paul is not advocating the idea in verses 28-29 that every Jew in some future generation will be saved because they are part of the elect and always will be. His point is the one he has been making throughout the chapter. God loves the Jewish people. They are Abraham’s descendants and he has not completely cut them off as some accursed brood. The true Israel was and would always be open to the Jewish people who wished to join the remnant in Christ. God will continue to yearn for their salvation. The original relationship he had with them cannot be broken. He desires them to join into the family of the Messiah.

This leads Paul to his thoughts in verses 30-32. Gentile Christians need urgently to learn a clear lesson. The Gentiles, as Paul has already shown, were clearly once in disobedience to God. But they had received mercy as a result of the disobedience of the Jews. The Jews had rejected the Messiah and that created the conditions, in a sense, for the family to be fully thrown open to all people. But Jews, lest they think something different, can also benefit from their own disobedience. The Jews disobeyed God and brought about the death of the Messiah, and subsequently rejected him. This disobedience opened the door for mercy to be shown to the Gentiles, and this mercy created the space and jealousy through which they could now come back to the covenant family themselves. If the entire nation of Israel had immediately embraced the gospel we can speculate that this would have left them thinking that they were entitled to this status and that the Gentiles were, at best, second class citizens. But no, both groups were given over to their disobedience. The Gentile nation was shut out from God’s family so that when it was opened up to them, they could see the truth that their entry into the family was solely a result of God’s grace. In the same way, the nation of Israel had been given over to their disobedience and shut out from God’s family. That way when any Jews returned to the covenant family in the Messiah, they too would see that it was due to nothing else than God’s mercy.

God has acted in the death and resurrection of the Messiah and created the covenant family, the people who would have their sins taken away, just as he had always promised. But he has worked in such an incredible way to show both Jew and Gentile that they are part of God’s family based on nothing else than God’s own mercy to them. This truth and the way that God has worked to bring it about is so incredible that it truly should leave us with no other response than genuine and unfettered praise and worship of God. And this is exactly what Paul is about to do as he closes chapter 11.


Devotional Thought
Have you ever really spent time dwelling on your own disobedience to God before entering into Christ and how it actually magnifies God’s mercy in your life? How can you share with a non-Christian today the incredible and matchless mercy that God has shown in your life?