Christianity is the end all, says Roman 10:4, "For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth". The last verse of Chapter 10, as made the last verse of Chapter 10 by Stephen Langton or whoever did the division, is "But to Israel he saith, All day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people." (Rm 10:21). The next verse, as made the next verse by the Apostle Paul, in whose divine inspiration we in contrast have great amount of trust, is Romans 11:1 that begins "I say then, Hath God cast away his people?". Both Romans 10:21 and Romans 11:1 are therefore genuinely written and placed immediately one after the other by Paul — unseparated, undivided — and it helps to read them as such so as to understand what the "I say then" refers to. Paul is saying that the Jews have consistently, habitually, and nearly uniformly rejected Jesus Christ, therefore — "I say then" — has God rejected the Jews? The answer is obviously, with the context of Romans 10, that God has not rejected the Jews in the sense that he has given them the opportunity of accepting Jesus Christ just as he has given everyone else. No, the Jews have rejected God and therefore God will be just when he destroys them in hell for it! Recall Romans 3.
However...even wise Christian men have called the content of Romans 11 a "riddle," especially in terms of how verse 11:26 says that "all Israel shall be saved." Besides the immensity of heretical action, many well-intended explanations have been offered for these New Testament words that commonly appear to Christians to be at variance with the rest of their New Testament. We all know that this passage is somewhat of an outlier, but if the genuine Christian approaches it head-on logically using the context of Romans and all Scripture, then he or she will see that it differs only in its narrowed-focus way of expressing the same universally-applicable concept of a Christianity wholly dependent on faith in Jesus Christ alone. Romans 11 is grounded entirely on the "whosoever believeth in him" of John 3:16, on the "no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" of John 14:6, and the "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved" of Mark 16:16 — but considers these eternal principles in terms of the few Jews who will choose to satisfy the faith condition for inclusion. When it did mention that particular race, the first ten chapters of Romans instead focused on the vast majority of Jews who will be destroyed because they will not so choose, tellingly most often referring to them as simply "Jews" or in synonymously aggregated language, and not even bothering to distinguish them as non-believing Jews. In telling contrast, the believing portion were finally identified in Romans 9:27 by the numerically limiting word "remnant" (hypoleimma) just after Paul complexly and unusually separated them out from the whole racial-Israel in the nearby-preceding Romans 9 verses 6 to 8. Paul the philosopher was there making arrangement to explain the way that, as he will put it, "in this way all Israel will be saved" (Rm. 11:26 NIV). Without the split of the term it would of course have been most inaccurate and inconsistent for him to say that any "Israel" will be saved, since the usage of that nation word usually implies many people. After all he himself in Romans 9:27-29 and Romans 11:14 communicates that he has hope of Christian prospects for only a small number of Jews of the many in the racial Israel nation. He has therefore in Romans 9:6 separately defined a believing spiritual "Israel" nation, in other words a numerically small "remnant," different from the rest that are blinded or "hardened" forever, as he will soon put it in Romans 11 verses 7 and 10. Yet to the unphilosophical skimmer, and to those who have been tricked into reading Romans 11 in isolation, it is still far from obvious what he means by the in-this-way-saved Israel of Romans 11:26, and very often they interpret it in a manner that contradicts the New Covenant Truth won by the holy blood of Our Savior Jesus Christ.
The content of Romans 11 is not a riddle or a poem, it is a philosophically deep but brief defense of the inclusion of believing Jews in the Christian religion that was much more copiously explained as being Gentile-heavy and Gentile-led in Romans 1 to 10. It necessarily relies on terms and ideas that the philosopher has redefined from normal usage, and only by such a brash lexicon, such an oddly-customized language, can the Apostle Paul arrive at the "all Israel" statement. It makes no sense to any ancient or modern observer of the Jews, and is especially senseless to the Christian who knows the New Covenant normally, unless he or she has understood the Romans-11-peculiar manner of expression by reading and thinking about the rest of the Romans Epistle itself, and in our current society that is a taller order than ever before. In a secular democracy that breeds heresy through ignorance and social pressure — not to mention its catering to the non-believing Jews' heavily-monied aggression and malevolent influence on popular Christianity — man's interpretation is there for the taking, but truth will never be. God's true meaning will endure regardless of how many human minds are taken in by Satan's lies.
To understand the truth, about how many Jews will be saved or any other questions, one should start with and always prioritize the Gospels. As for the heretic's cliché of Romans 11 or Romans 11:26 that "it's as simple as that" or "that's all you need to know," this is of course chicanery. We have already countered it by logically acknowledging the superiority of the God Jesus Christ to human Paul, by reading Romans 1 to 10 and finding there some quite useful knowledge (to say the least!), by recognizing that Romans 11 from the start intimates dependency on at least Romans 10 with its opening phrase "I say then", and by considering how Paul complexly separated the "Israel" of Romans 11:26 back in Romans 9 among other places. To the misinterpretations of Romans 11, a further logical counterargument might therefore be to prove that, while Romans 11:26 can be presented in isolation to wrongly conclude that all Jews will be saved, that another more important verse from the Gospels can likewise be presented in isolation to wrongly conclude that all Jews will be damned to hell. As one might expect, there is such a verse in the Gospels from the mouth of our Lord Jesus Himself — actually two such verses. They are both worth memorizing and repeating: firstly Matthew 8:12 "But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.", and secondly Luke 14:24 "For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper." In the respective contexts, both doubtlessly refer to the Jewish people, and had anyone read just those verses or just those chapters, they logically very well could have concluded that every single Jew will be sent to hell regardless. We know differently because, and only because, we have qualified those verses with the rest of the New Testament, which presents a fair offer of salvation to every single human regardless of race and past interactions with God, even though in the unlucky case of the Jews that history is shown in the same Bible to generally work against their acceptance of Christ.
Then to evaluate the Jewish-remnant angle from which Paul expressed the gospel truth in Romans 11, it is critical to read the Gentile-dominant angle from which he expressed it in the totality of Romans 1 to 10, and also quite helpful, as it turns out, to read Romans 12 to 16 — in other words to read the entire letter. We should be constantly aware that it was not written by him in chapters and that "Romans 11" as distinct from "Romans" is a later invention, in some ways helpful but with vast potential for misuse. If there is any chapter of the Bible that we should not read in isolation it is Romans 11 because 1) It is expressed in complicated language that references terms and ideas that are complexly and counterintuitively defined by Paul in the preceding parts of the Epistle. 2) Most directly, it is a continuation of Romans 9 and 10, which are perhaps the most harshly leveled against the Jews in the entire Bible, and for that reason is a check against anyone going so far in Romans 9 and 10 interpretation as to deny the Jews the possibility of becoming Christians. 3) Since it was intended as a check against well-directioned overreach to those who already had read and understood Romans 1-10, without the reading and understanding of Romans 1-10 it becomes a misdirection to what are not key beginning principles of Christianity (like those in Romans 3:21-31 are) but are instead rather footnotes or refinements dealing with a relatively unimportant but interesting subject — the small amount of racial Jews that will indeed be saved. This is unimportant in the sense that Romans 1-10 defines Christianity as a religion where there is no difference between saved Greeks and saved Jews. The Jews who are saved therefore give up their Jewish identity just as Paul did (Phil. 3:3-9, Gal. 1:13-16). What is important about Romans 11 is that it holds Gentiles to the universal faith-based definition of Christianity, even when dealing with those who are of a race which rarely chooses to have faith in and make profession of Jesus Christ. It is therefore a call to further eliminate race from one's consideration of who is and who is not a Christian but, without the context of at least Romans 1-10 — where Jewishness and Jews are constantly berated for faithlessness, just short of unconditional exclusion — without that context one might jump into Romans 11 and think that Paul is somehow crediting Jewishness. He is instead trying to prevent Christians from discrediting other Christians if their race happens to be Jewish, which it in practice most rarely will be. Therefore Jews would be the most easily arrived at exclusion, but those Jews who accept Jesus will indeed be saved just as Gentiles who accept Jesus but, as well agreed upon and empathized by Paul himself, in no way due to their Jewishness but entirely due to their faith in Christ who is the One Way to Salvation. Any other interpreted means to their salvation is simply heresy in that it violates this most sacred principle of God's one true religion of Christianity, and in that it will never defeat His Truth.
But oh how the Devil and his minions have tried! The meaning of Romans 11 can be exegeted well enough in ten pages, and writing a book of 200 pages on its true meaning would be challenging. However a compilation book of the heretical attempts that have been made with misinterpretations of Romans 11 as their basis could easily fill 2,000 pages. In our modern day, they pollute all ends of the internet, but the Zionist political movement of the 20th century jumpstarted the lies, unsurprisingly made in the name of "Israel." Recall though that Peter warned from the 1st century, "Our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness" (2 Pet. 3:15-17).
Having examined Romans 1 to 10 in this essay, and having read the entire Bible at other times, let us make an attempt at explanation and simplification of this most controversial chapter of Romans 11. Its meaning with the light of context is transparent enough to be expressed accurately in even one sentence, and to that end let us do the same for the inseparable Romans 9 and 10 that precede it. In Romans 9, Paul tells us that God will exclude, spitefully use, and destroy the majority of Jews because they have not and will not accept Jesus Christ. In Romans 10, Paul tells us that God gave and continues to give Jews a fair chance to accept Jesus Christ. In Romans 11, Paul tells us that God cannot be said to have rejected the Jewish people by destroying them because he has consistently given them that fair chance to be saved as Christians as evidenced by the few Jews who have or will actually accept Jesus Christ.
Quoting again the end of Romans 10 and the start of Romans 11, which Paul wrote without the separation of chapter or verse: "But to Israel he saith, All day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people. I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin." Let us now recall 10:1, "Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved." — where he spoke of an "Israel" group which he had no participation in, referring to the Christ-rejecting non-believing Israel from his division of the term in Chapter 9 (pronoun reference in 10:1 directly back to the unrighteous Israel of 9:31). Here at the start of Chapter 11 however, he has shifted which "Israel" he is focusing on, as he now claims participation as an "Israelite" because he is "of the seed of Abraham." Paul is definitely a believer, so is he saying that he is part of believing Israel because he is of the spiritual seed of Abraham? More naturally from the end of Chapter 10 where he is still referring to the non-believing Israel nation which is damned, he is using "Israelite" as to himself only racially. In verses 11:1-2 it seems that he is saying quite complexly rather that 'God has not rejected his Old Covenant people whole because I am part of the racial group "Israel" from which we now have two faith-determined groups: the non-believing Israel and the believing Israel'. In other words, he is saying that all of the calamities destined or predestined to apply to the Jews generally, that he just enumerated in Romans 9 and Romans 10, will not apply to him even though he is a Jew, because he has accepted Jesus Christ. That he has taken God's stretched out hands in this entirely-Christian and Jew-regardless manner is the one difference, and 11:1 of course in no way means that those Jews who do not will ever again receive any special "chosen people" favor with God. Recall Romans 4 which determined that the chosen people of God are only those who have faith in Jesus Christ (Rm. 4:13-14). God has not cast away the Jews or anyone else in the world because he has stretched forth his hands all day long through Jesus Christ! That is all that 11:1 means, and to cite it without the context of the end of Chapter 10, as if chapterless and Christ-everything Paul wanted it used to claim any continued Old-Covenant allegiance of God to the Jews other than offering them New-Covenant Jesus Christ like everyone else, is Satan-inspired intellectual dishonesty. On the contrary, a very high percentage of Jews are instead stuck forever in the non-believing Israel — the non-chosen people in the New Covenant eternity! — according to Paul's informed and divinely-inspired estimation, as evidenced by his Romans 9:27 and by his Romans 11:2-5 analogy that now follows.
When in verse 11:2, Paul asks the Romans if they do not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, he is presumably asking them only rhetorically, and he is definitely not scolding any behavior of anyone, because the "appeal to God against Israel" (NIV, ESV) or "intercession to God against Israel" is what faithful Elijah did, what inspired Paul just did in Romans 1 to 10, and what our perfect Savior Jesus Christ did with consistency. The analogy here is more so Paul to Elijah harmoniously, in other words Paul compared to Elijah because of their favorable similarities. Jesus likewise proclaimed before His Father and man that the Jews had killed His prophets, betrayed His worship, and that they sought to kill Him as well. However Paul more so fits the "I am left alone" of Romans 11:3, as quoted from Elijah's "I, even I only, am left" of 1 Kings 19:10. Per Paul's Romans 11:1, this statement of his individual faithfulness to Christ despite the Jewish masses' nonbelief is the beginning of his latest proof in a string of proofs as to why God is fair and why the vast majority of Jews deserve the punishments that they will get as he has described in Romans. Paul is certainly not here telling the Gentile Christians in Rome to be careful about criticizing non-believing Israel or to stop telling the truth about non-believing Israel, nor is he warning them later in the chapter of anything other than being arrogant and racially-exclusionary in Christianity like the Jews are arrogant and racially-exclusionary in Judaism. The Elijah analogy itself is not a warning to anyone, but a further means to prove that God has not rejected the Jews whole but rather that most of the Jews have rejected a fair and just God. The remnant analogy within it will make the absolution of God doubly clear.
If Paul had been the only racially-Jewish Christian then or to come on earth, an argument might very well have been made that 'God did cast away his Old Covenant people and gave them no real chance at salvation through Jesus, because only one exceptional man out of the millions of them found Christianity. The road was too obstructed for any but the elite of elites to pass and therefore God was cruel and unjust.' Let us consider if this is not the misassumption that Paul is preventively writing against, when he says in Romans 11:2-5: "Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elijah? how he maketh intercession to God against Israel saying, Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life. But what saith the answer of God unto him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal. Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant [leimma] according to the election of grace."
Paul is saying to the Gentiles, if you take the preceding dissertation explaining that God is at eternal odds with the Jews in general to mean that it was the unfaithfulness of God that caused it to be that way, or that it is and will be that way uniformly to the man, then you are mistaken. This because 1) I am myself am a rare-God-serving "Israelite" like Elijah was when seemingly all other Israelites had abandoned the true God. 2) Now like then God has made known to me like He did to Elijah that there is and will be a small but significant number of rare "Israelites," present and future, who are not visible like me but like me in that they serve or will serve the true God. They abide or will abide in the only way to salvation which is acceptance of Christ, similarly to how the remnant in hiding abided in the First Commandment in the way that it was applicable in Elijah's Before-Christ time. The analogy beautifully reflects God's answer back on Paul himself, confirming that he is distinctively correct in accepting Christ as Elijah was correct in staying with the true God when almost all other Israelites did not. Paul by his choice of parallel life is in no way apologizing for A.D. intolerance of Judaism any more than Elijah apologized for B.C. intolerance of Baalism, and the overarching principle of the First Commandment is applied that, when compared to Christianity, the false religion of Judaism is now and forevermore as bad or worse than Baalism. Beyond the remnant of seven-thousand, all the other Jews are unquestionably those who have "bowed the knee to the image of Baal," as complexly as they were the Esau that God hates in Romans 9:13. Further confirmation of this, as if it were needed, will follow shortly in our Romans 11.
Comprehension of Paul's analogy of Elijah, the remnant, and the Baal worshipers is not too difficult to grasp when one has read the short passages on Elijah in Kings and at minimum the rest of the Epistle to the Romans, but to throw the average American into the Scripture at Romans 11 is as perilous as dropping a man into the ocean without a raft. If we can use an analogy of our own, the average American was not taught how to swim in secular-democracy school — not theologically, and usually not philosophically or historically. He was instead busy learning the "facts" of science like how many unreachable planets there are or which beast was the biggest dinosaur — both fun inquiries with some limited application, but ultimately proved relatively hollow like all scientific inquiries are by their lack of impact on the soul's salvation or virtue. Then secondarily and post-secondarily, he learned how to make money by satisfying a certain professional demand, and most collegiate references to Christianity that perchance flew by his ears were intended to obscure rather than to transmit truth, from "teachers" who themselves would have been as interpretively lost in such a complex Christian analogy by Paul as any of their paying students. Thus into the void of democracy-assured ignorance often today enters the Deceiver and his Judaizing deceivers to make in his mind what they want of it. Some aim to promote mass acceptance or financial leverage for Christ-hating modern Israel, others for themselves to be popular enough to maintain a nominally "Christian" professional position in the heretical society, and others to just generally mix up what is and is not God's Christian truth. Countless bad outcomes proceed from his not knowing what should have been firmly established in his mind years ago. The final of which will be his place in everlasting hellfire if he does not understand the New Covenant well enough to accept Christ himself, or his children's eventual place there if they do not accept despite having an ignorant father and they too will most often suffer from the same most critical ignorance for the same democratically-propagated reasons.
Romans 11 Verse 5 again, and now verse 6: "Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace. And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace: otherwise work is no more work." It is critical here in early Romans 11 to grasp and to hold the understanding that — consistent with the rest of Romans and the rest of Scripture — Paul is saying unequivocally that the Jewish remnant is and will be according to grace, which is one in meaning with "faith in Christ." He is also explicitly saying that the Jewish remnant is not and will in no way be of works, which is one with Jewish Law. He is also obviously using "works" to dismiss not only false qualifications involving performance of the Law, but also to dismiss the false qualification of being Abraham's racial seed through the Law, an inseparably negating link which he cited in the similarly-intended passage of Romans 4:13-14, that "For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect." Back there in Romans 4 he was following up his main synopsis of salvation by faith in Christ alone (Rm. 3:19-31), by explaining that the law of faith applies fully to Gentiles, with the historical basis of his argument being there that Abraham was in truth a Gentile when his faith was credited to him as righteousness before circumcision. Here in Romans 11:5-6 finally comes the flip to the other side of the racial coin (as was token-mentioned by Rm. 4:12), that those who are racially of Abraham can still be children of Abraham just like the believing Gentiles now are but — Paul is consistent — if and only if their inclusion is by the same grace of Christ. All work, all Jewish law, all Jewish race are meaningless — not of any consideration towards those Jews' individual salvations, not the driver of why there happens to be a remnant of Jews, and not at base any part of any special Jewish fulfillment or promise kept. The Jews who are saved are simply acting as a hundred times more Gentiles have by believing in Jesus Christ, and therefore the remnant becomes an identically-credentialed part of the Christians. The Jewish Christians once saved are no more a different group than are Irish Christians or Kenyan Christians or red-haired Christians, but since Jewish race was involved in the deprecated unsalvatory Old Covenant, and since the Old Covenant became a hindrance, God especially saw to it that not every single one of those hindered for their race were hindered beyond escape. That he did not blind every single Jew does not mean that those Jews who were not blinded were saved because of their Jewish race, but only that those Jews were allowed to proceed to Christianity normally with the sight of the typical Gentile. The only two meaningful groups are therefore the "unsaved" who will go to hell and the "saved" who will go to heaven since they have accepted salvation through the grace of Jesus Christ. The grace-saved Christian "remnant" is a part, a very small part, of the grace-saved Christian "Church." Let us keep this singular means to singular Christianity in mind, this reinforcement of what we already knew, for defense against misrepresentations of what "election" means to Paul in the upcoming Romans 11:28. That he explained it even in the same "chapter," in our verses 5 and 6, is not enough to prevent the deceivers from ripping verse 28 out and striving for corruption. Let us also hold it to fend off heretical misassertions that the believing Israel that will be saved in Romans 11:26 is a group which God will save in a significantly different way than He has saved Gentiles.
But before that comes Romans 11 verses 7 to 10 which is a further foundation for understanding that in 11:26 Paul is speaking only of a small number of believing Jews, a remnant, which will be saved. The very most critical verses nearby to understanding that are Romans 9:6 where he separates out believing Israel from racial Israel, while expressing both using the same word "Israel," and also 9:27 where he attests to the relatively small number of those who will be in that saved remnant compared to all racial Israel. However in Romans 11 verses 7, 8, 9, and especially 10 Paul through Moses and David (if not also Isaiah) offers prophetic confirmation that the non-believing Israel, in other words the vast majority of Jews left in racial Israel who did not accept Jesus Christ, will indeed almost all be that way permanently. To quote these four verses of Scripture, the others who did not obtain righteousness through Jesus Christ, will be blind, deaf, and with "their backs be bent forever." Some individual Jews will be saved as time progresses, and this is the "fulness" and "receiving" of the "some of them" — and only "some of them" (Greek "tinas ex autōn") — that he will speak of in verses 12 to 15. However the condition that the vast majority of Jews are non-believing, non-Christian, and non-saved — in other words blind and with their backs bent — will remain the condition of their race generally for all eternity. The KJV translates this (dia pantos) in verse 10 as "alway" and the NIV and ESV translate it as "forever" — but the meaning is the same, the vast majority of Jews will never be Christians and never be saved. Only all of a small remnant "Israel" will be saved, and the rest of race-only Israel will be the "vessels of wrath fitted to destruction," "the elder" that "shall serve the younger," and the "Esau have I hated" of Romans 9.
Romans verse 11:7 is a direct reference back to the non-believing Israel of Romans 10:3 which "being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God." In Romans 11 Paul now writes of these useless efforts: NIV "What then? What the people of Israel sought so earnestly they did not obtain. The elect among them did, but the others were hardened" and KJV "What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for; but the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded." The "What then?" refers to the immediately preceding verses 11:5-6 where he said that the election was by grace and in absolutely no way by works. It was to say that not an ounce of Judaism can directly contribute to making one a Christian. So "What then?" — or in other words "therefore" — the vast majority of racial Israel, which he in verse 7 simply calls "Israel," did not obtain righteousness or justification before God because they predictably continued to seek God through law-defined Judaism. The Jews, in general, did not and will not obtain salvation because they did not and will not seek it through the grace of Jesus Christ. That is where the "election" (eklogē) comes in since it is the exception for the Jewish race and was chosen or selected out of their much larger group that was hardened. Similarly to Romans 9:6, here in Romans 11:7 Paul for the same purpose breaks "Israel" into "the election" and "the rest" — very notably both still under the race-categorical title of "Israel" but at the same time with opposite destinations despite both still being referenceable by the word "Israel." The righteousness-not-obtained "rest" are obviously an overwhelming majority within their racial "Israel," which is why in verse 7 he first says that simply "Israel" is that unrighteous group. He then clarifies that doomed racial "Israel" to be divided between "the rest" which are indeed doomed, and the "elect" which are still racial "Israel" but exceptionally not doomed. We will see starting in Romans 11 verse 12 that he will begin talking of those who might go — or be revealed as destined for transit as he was — from "the rest" of racial "Israel" to the "elect" of racial "Israel," whom in verse 14 he appropriately calls the "some of them" that "might" be saved. This is consistent with the proportions conveyed in verse 7, and the rest of Romans, particularly Chapters 9 and 10, where Paul leaves no doubt that when one speaks of "Israel," that they will always be speaking of a damned entity, unless he or she by "Israel" is speaking of the tiny minority "some" or "elect/election" or "remnant" within the larger racial entity.
The "some of them" of Romans verse 11:14, the "election" of 11:7, and the "remnant" of verses 11:5 and 9:27, and all the proportion-indicating language throughout Romans helps us know just how small of a sighted "part" is separate from the "blindness in part" that has "happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in" which Paul will express in 11:25. In other words, it helps us know how few of the Jews will ultimately be in the "all Israel" that will be saved — obviously the election and remnant as opposed to the "all Israel" that will not be saved, and obviously not "the rest" who fail the Christ acceptance condition which he has expressed many more times over as all-important for salvation. Most of racial Israel really are "vessels of wrath fitted to destruction" which exist only to aid the "vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory," which Paul was not kidding about in Romans 9:22-23. That is why he brings up again the Isaiah prophecy of blind and deaf Jews in Romans 11:8, similar to Christ's reference in Matthew 13:14. It would also be Paul's parting shot to the non-believing Jews in Acts 28, with no consolation for them whatsoever, and it is fairly safe to say that those Jewish men who left his house in Rome that day ended up dying without accepting Jesus. It is also quite certain that well over 99% of the murderous Jews back at Jerusalem and 99% of worldwide Jews since then have done the same. Was Jesus in Matthew 8:12, Luke 14:24, and Mark 16:16 joking about their damnation? We must think not, and Paul thought not, as best evidenced in the Roman Epistle by Romans 3 and Romans 9 but present end-to-end in droves.
In Romans 11:8, in speaking of the Jews that are blind and deaf, the Apostle also includes Isaiah's "unto this day." Yet if anyone thinks that this implies that the condition will largely resolve itself sometime after, even after the "fullness of the Gentiles has come in," that is what the Romans 11 verses 9 and 10 passage conveniently rebukes. The answer via the Psalms 69:22-23 prophecy of David is here recited as "May their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them. May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see, and their backs be bent forever." The "table" that David and Paul wish "becomes a snare" may here be equated to the Jews' potential "advantages" that Paul spoke of in Romans 3:1-2, before concluding in Romans 3:9-10 that Jews are in no way better off because all are sinners and then in Romans 3:22 that all need Christ's redemption in the same way. As to their being racial children of the prophets, and having all the other historical Old Covenant honors of Romans 9:4, he now goes further than the acknowledgement of their eternal separation from God which appeared right after in Romans 9:7 and interrupts his lament that has followed. In Romans 11:9, Paul is instead aggressively saying that he actively hopes that all Jewishness becomes a "snare, a trap, a stumbling block, and a retribution for them." In contrast to the opening tone of Romans Chapter 9, where he expressed sorrow for their impending damnation, he in Romans 11 verse 9 is alluding to David's Psalm where he beseeches God to "pour out thine indignation upon" his enemies and to "let thy wrathful anger take hold of them" per Psalm 69:24. In the 1st century A.D. case of Paul, the poured-out wrath by way of their table would be that the Jews' having been God's people in the Old Covenant way would inhibit their finding how to be part of God's people through Christ in the New Covenant way. Paul apparently does with conflict wish this inhibition so that the Gentiles can continue to benefit, while at the same time otherwise hoping that more Jews will join them in Christianity. If all else were equal, and the Jews' vast-majority blindness were not helping the Gentiles, he would wish that all Jews would come to Christ but, the reality as it is, he is only hoping for "some of them" to join the "remnant" because 1) The Jews' Christ-blindness is better for the promotion of Christ-acceptance in the Gentiles, as planned by God. and; 2) The Jews' separation from God is the lasting reality of their rejection of God's New Covenant, as ironically caused by their Old Covenant relationship with God, as well described in Romans and especially in Romans 9.
Paul gives the impression of a compassionate man who cried tears for his race even while they habitually tried to kill him. David however is a better agent for the "backs bent forever" wish of Romans 11:10, which by Paul's use of it is really nothing more than a servant acquiescing to his King's justice. The King of Kings Jesus Christ was like David temporarily usurped by the people of Judah, so much so that in John 18:36 the All-Mighty Incarnated told Pilate before the crucifixion that He was neither the King of the Jews, nor was his Kingdom at that time (see the verse's operative word "now", Greek "nyn") of this world. When after his resurrection Christ's servants, overwhelmingly Gentiles, began to establish his Kingdom on earth, and in direct fighting opposition to the usurping Jews as in John 18:36, the "retributions" began. The Second Temple destruction of 70 A.D. by the Romans was a physical prophetic fulfillment of Christ's destruction of its spiritual importance which Paul's ministry furthered through those same Romans. The Roman Emperor Constantine would one day realize Christ's Kingdom on earth politically. Yet when Paul wrote to Constantine's predecessors in 58 A.D., he doubtlessly already had a conscious or subconscious association of King David with their Monarchical Rome. David in his time of restoration had surely been bitter at the people for how they had similarly usurped him temporarily and how they had ungratefully tried to kill him. He in the afterlife (when and if he has one, Acts 2:34) would find bitterness in how the Jews left his dynasty behind for illegitimate rule, and most of all how they usurped and crucified God's Incarnation of Whom he was the most important ancestor in the flesh. We certainly might imagine that he would wish the Romans Chapter 11 verse 10 punishment on the Jews forever and that he would side with the Gentiles who more so shared his love of the true God and also his monarchical soul. Any thought that a ruling King David or ruling King Jesus could be compatible with Pharisaic Judaism, the overlapping Second Temple Judaism, or the spawned modern day Rabbinic Judaism is great error, as they are as ideologically inimical as monarchy vs. democracy, or God vs. the Devil. This is why in his Romans Epistle asserting God's Christianity over Satan's Judaism, Paul chooses King David to deliver the final judgment on the Jews of his Royal Son in the flesh. May we read once again for memory, this time as translated by the ESV, that Romans 11:9-10 quoting David says, "Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them; let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and bend their backs forever."
Romans 11 Verse 11 immediately picks up on why such judgment has a holy purpose, and is not just cruelty: "I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy." The outcome of their fall is just Paul's Romans Chapter 9 answer reiterated — that one is hated by God, usually the Jew, so that the other may the better loved by God, usually the Gentile. Falling away from God's one way to salvation, and therefore living bound for hell, has no consolation unless the Jew himself or herself were to individually accept Jesus Christ before he or she dies. Make no mistake that here in Romans 11:11 that Paul by acknowledging this standard outcome is again "making intercession to God against Israel" as in Romans 11:2, and what clarification, albeit numerically small clarification, was given to him by way of the Elijah analogy in 11:2-5 and continuing into 11:6-7? It was as to the credit, rather than any detriment, that a remnant of Christ-believing Jews would be to Paul and other Christians such as the Gentile Romans. Therefore we see in the latter part of 11:11 that he now mirrors the same type of clarification with the very theoretical thought that some Jews might be stimulated to jealousy to the point of a "if you can't beat them, join them" response. That would after all further prove that God has not "rejected his people," in the sense that he has not treated them completely as pawns without a single thought of offering a motivation for their own salvation experience. God knows, we know, and Paul knew full well that this response will only be from "some" Jews that "may" be "provoked to emulate" the Gentiles in becoming Christians per his language in 11:14 but, if any are, against all other odds given their many special obstructions, it will be quite a wondrous turn of events worth celebrating.
Along those lines, and reading between the lines, Paul seems to suggest that a Jewish man or woman's conversion and subsequent life in Christianity can potentially be an even more useful exhibition of God's miraculous power as his own has been — even more useful than the self-enslaved lives of the many Christ-denying Jews whom God has still put to work albeit against their wills. The Gentile Christians upon such a rare occasion could benefit all the more, per Romans 11 verses 12 to 15: "Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness? For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office: If by any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them. For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?" The riches were said in Romans 10:12 to be distributed equally to all who call on our Lord, and here in Romans 11:12 we see that Gentiles through the Jews' fall were motivated to call on the Lord more so than otherwise. This is the tone of his entire letter to these Romans, that the spirit of Christianity is opposition to Judaism and opposition to the Jewish people generally, who not only reject Christ but do so vehemently and offensively by their substitute of legalism for faith, racial exclusion for universal love, and man for God. Thus the Gentiles by seeing the mistakes of another, as so often happens, were able to get it right in their own lives — in fact most of the "world" already seemed to be headed that way except for the Jews. The alternative would have been if the Jews had not rejected Christ, had not wanted the Gentiles to blaspheme His name, and had not brutally deferred the role of the New Covenant leadership that God has fairly offered them "first." But since the Jews did not accept Christ, the outcome became exponentially worse for them, and we might here speculate that it became a little less favorable even for the Gentiles in some ways. Gentile Christians per the grand finale of Romans 8 have been justified by the true God, glorified by the true God, and inseparably loved by the true God. Yet still it would have been nice for these Christians to have had the Jews on their side in genuine Christianity, rather than as enemies in outright opposition, or insidious workers of deception as is more often the case in our modern times. That when even one or a few of these Jews legitimately change their ways and decide to join the Gentiles in the "fullness" of Christianity, that this is all the greater riches for the already rich, is what Paul is trying to tell his students of the Christian religion of love and universally-offered mental-acceptance inclusion.
In verses 11:13-15, Paul writes "I speak to you Gentiles" to remind us who the letter is addressed to and he identifies himself as "the apostle of the Gentiles" — taken together he is almost making the "Gentile" side entirely synonymous with the Christian side. In different words, he is saying, 'you Romans and I are already the glorious winners because we accepted the Christianity that nearly all of the Jews rejected. I was chosen to minister to the Gentiles because so many more of you are accepting of Christ than are the Jews. This being the happy case, I further enlarge the greatness of my ministry if I subsidiarily also save some of the Jews despite it all. Just perhaps, by the unlikely and irregular way of feeling envy toward you whom they hate, when they see you victorious in Christianity, they might be motivated to act like Gentiles themselves in that they become Christians. When they are miraculously taken away from Judaism and transformed by God into Christians like I was, it will be as if a man is raised from the dead. At such an incredible event of a Jew actually becoming a Christian, how can any Gentile Christians not praise God all the more?' Paul may even been implying, 'How can we not praise God even a bit more than when a Gentile becomes a Christian, since this is a much more regular occurrence owing to the nature of God's planned and implemented Christianity, which has proven to be very much Jew-contrarian?'
Then the latter part of Romans 11 verse 16 begins the often misinterpreted tree analogy, which actually resolves itself in a reflection of Gentile-heavy Christianity, although with a view to fallen Jews making their way into it. Verse 16 continues his thought from the prior verse 15, which read together are: "For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches." The "firstfruit" and "lump" preceding analogy when coupled with the mention of the receiving of remnant Jews does seem to imply that their fathers who were received in the Old Covenant way will make their racial descendants being received in the New Covenant way of more cause for celebration than otherwise. This *potential* receiving indeed applies to the entire lump, but Paul himself just said a mere two sentences ago that he hopes only that he "might save some of them" (See also 9:6 and 9:27). How "holy" (11:16) would God consider "the rest" (11:7) of the Jews whom he destroys (Romans 9:22, Mark 16:16)? What Paul is getting at in Romans verse 11:16 is that if, and only if, those some in the lump offer themselves to God through His Person of Jesus via the New Covenant, similarly to how the best of their fathers offered themselves to God through First Commandment adherence during the times of the Old Covenant, then it will be similarly holy. The Jews in the Old Covenant did absolutely have a one-of-a-kind chance to serve the true God before the Gentiles had a vastly superior chance to, and some of the B.C. Jews — the firstfruits among them both in terms of quality and order — did do that in a favorable way. However Paul is abundantly clear throughout that the Law and Jewishness cannot save anyone (Rm. 3:9-10, 3:20, 3:27-28, 4:14, 7:1-10, 8:1-3, 9:30-33, 10:1-4, 11:6), and to now offer one's self in those ways or any other way without Christ is certainly to be denied reception onto God's tree. And why were all Jews cast off that tree in the first place, so that Paul is only hoping that he might graft back on some of them? It certainly did not happen because Jews at the time of Jesus suddenly adhered less to the Law or to their Jewish-race-specific ways — their loyalties to those delusions had increased ever since the fall of the First Temple and especially since the onset of the Maccabees, Hasidim, and Pharisees. On the contrary, every single Jew was cast off of God's tree because Jesus Christ instituted the New Covenant, and accordingly the condition for who was on God's tree became entirely based on faith acceptance of Jesus Christ. The tree itself suddenly changed, though God's determination and preparations had been evident in human history centuries before. It became a Christian tree, and since the Gentiles soon became the overwhelming majority in Christianity, it soon became a Gentile tree in the sense that it soon became overwhelmingly full of Gentiles.
It is important therefore to understand that the Romans 11 verses 17 to 25 that follow are in no way trying to bridge any gap of Gentiles from Jews. The Gentiles are not in need of being Jews but rather Christians on a Christianity-transformed tree. By way of Jesus Christ, all Jewish branches were knocked to the ground and the Old-Covenant operation of the tree ceased to exist. Paul explained this profusely in his Christianity-defining Romans Chapter 3 where he identified all men as sinners. To use a modern database analogy of what he is conveying with the Jews more so in mind in Romans 11, it was a mass delete of the entire table and all records in that table were deleted along with it. In its place God chose to use the greater table that He had designed since the beginning, which potentially accommodates all humans universally and eternally, but into which only those persons who satisfy the faith condition have been and will be inserted in. The tree itself might even appear the same as before to the untrained eye, as it is after all being run by the same authority and still is predicated on this authority's choice. However God's permanent choice of Jesus and the New Covenant has ensured that forever after the tree has been operating with a new list of branches which must in all cases have faith in Christ, or else be left excluded. Whether broken branches lying on the ground nearby from where they fell, or branches still stuck to a wild olive tree at a distance, they will all be purged and burned in hell per Matthew 3:12 among many other confirmations. As for the tree, the difference that is readily apparent to anyone who honestly looks on it with Christian eyes is that it has in practice become a "Gentile tree," because over 99% of its branches are now Gentiles instead of Jews, and that because over 99% of Christians are Gentiles instead of Jews. This happened because the tree's condition for branch acceptance changed by way of our Savior. If anything, Romans 11:17-25 shows again that Jews are rather the ones trying to bridge the gap to be beside of the Gentiles but, with the divide being dependent on acceptance of Christ, the analogy is better explained as non-believers trying to find their way onto the New Covenant tree of Christian faith.
Yet since as admitted there are definitely similarities and a degree of lesser non-salvatory continuum between the former state and current state of the tree, the memory of the Old Covenant tree could theoretically help the fallen branches find their way to the New Covenant tree through salvatory Christian faith. With its history in mind, it can be said as Paul does in 11:23-24 that the Christian-converted Jews are "again...grafted into their own tree." Before Christ, it was indeed the true God who honored the Jewish race by giving them laws, prophets, and miracles from Him, and, After Christ, those Jews who accept Christianity are indeed returning to the same true God who honored their fathers. However per Christ's own words in Matthew 11:11, the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than the best of their prophets or fathers were. Paul seems to feel more passionately than anyone that the Kingdom of Heaven only includes those who believe in Jesus Christ. Therefore spiritually speaking, if they amazingly break through their race's walls and gain the Christian faith then the grafting will absolutely be each Jew's first inclusion on the far greater New Covenant upgrade of the tree. However in practice the resilient Jewish race has shown that they can overcome anything but this. That when they have in this most critical way fallen down that they still stay down, although in all other ways get up, might demonstrate that God is fine with them staying down from His tree and that Satan helps them get up for other pursuits because they are his anti-Christian force. They themselves mistakenly deny that they have fallen and deny that the tree of God has been wholly transformed, just as many Zionists deny when they misuse this passage.
If any denies that this analogy represents a tree completely transformed from an Old Covenant state to a New Covenant state, we should ask them: 1) Was the tree before not full of unredeemed sinners who were in that way enemies of God since the Law was practically insufficient for salvation, even if they at times might have pleased God by non-sinful and even laudable thoughts and actions? 2) Is the tree after not inclusive of only those saved by Jesus Christ?
As Paul alluded to at the start of Romans Chapter 10, the covenant switch was somewhat counterintuitively a raising of standards. It might be said here in Romans 11 that the New Covenant tree is much easier for most of us, in other words the Gentiles, to be grafted onto, because it requires only our faith, but at the same time raises the standard because it is now truly God's tree. The Jews in contrast have a much more difficult time because their ancestors and ancestral ways were once on a tree that was operating in a way that was "from God" but nowhere near the highest sense of operating "of God" and abiding in his highest eternal truths which have been so "since the beginning" (Mt. 19:8). It did have a much greater level of human effort associated with it, but it was not a tree that could ever reward one with righteousness, in other words justification from sins, in God's mind. However those B.C. Jews were certainly on that tree of the unrighteous, the immature tree which God was getting ready to strip of its branches and to use those branches for our wild olive tree benefit. There is no denying them that, and we accede to the boasts that non-Christian Jews often endlessly make about that part of their history, even though they tragically do not understand it. Paul hopes that this pride — which when coupled with their ever-present Gentile hate might yield envy — will get them on the New Covenant tree so that they can be all the more proud and for the first time "holy" in the sense of being justified by Jesus Christ for salvation in heaven. In the past before Jesus, their Old Covenant was holy and "from God" but it was not God's holy New Covenant "of Jesus Christ" which He gave the power to redeem humanity from their sins. Jews and Gentiles alike should be grateful that God has this "replacement theology," because if Jesus Christ had not won the transformation of the tree's conditions with His blood, we would all die as sinners (Rm. 3:9-10) subject to the "wrath of God" (Rm. 1:18). How can anyone read Romans Chapter 3 and think that any racial-descendant branches of the old branches of the Old Covenant tree will be excluded from God's punishment, unless they find their way to the New Covenant tree through Jesus Christ?
After all that followed the monumental Chapter 3, namely Romans 4 to 10 in which Paul the converted Jew meticulously attested to Gentile dominance in Christianity, here in Romans 11 beginning with verse 17 he sets a limit to his enterprise. That is, he does preventively warn Gentiles about any desires to keep Jews from finding their way to the tree of Christ, but having read the rest of Romans, we know that he is more so qualifying his own very strong and more copious anti-Judaism language. Paul the Christian is trying to prevent his words from being taken as against Jews coming to Christ, which would instead be anti-Christian and in violation of the race-negligible aspect of Christianity's law of faith. Read Romans 11:17-25 and see if he is not trying to prevent Christians from acting exclusively toward the rare Christ-seeking Jews, a way that the many race-centric Jews often act toward all other humanity: "And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree; Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in. Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear: For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted in: for God is able to graft them in again. For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree? For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in."
Paul in the meat of his Epistle had just expounded Christianity as the opposite of Judaism, to the degree of saying in Romans 7:1-6 that one must be entirely dead to Jewish Law before he can be joined to Christ. After starting with a criticism of arrogant self-righteous Jews in Romans 2, he positively and expansively defined how Christians should be different. After declaring this superiority and eternal victory at the end of Romans 8, he lamented the Jews' loss in Romans 9, Romans 10, and also at the start of Romans 11. Here in the latter part of Romans 11, he is telling Christians not to make Achilles' mistake of dragging the body of the defeated foe, but rather to take Christ's advice of loving one's enemies and praying for them that persecute (Mt. 5:44). The main human-to-human advice here is to pity and hope for rather than to hate and wish ill on the fallen Jewish branches on the ground that still "be broken off," which of course is over 99% of them, but Paul also makes mention of former branches already back on the New Covenant tree which includes himself! A contemporary of Jesus, he had been thrown off by Him as had all other living Jews, but he unusually had been regrafted by Him through a one-of-a-kind intervention. To the Christian Gentiles who were wild in their pagan ways of Romans 1, whom he more than any other man took to Christ, he tells them to "boast not against the branches" whom they were "grafted in among" and with whom they "partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree." As for the fallen-and-can't-get-up branches, the verse 17 mention of those as if broken off right before the grafting on of the Gentiles invokes replacement on that level as well, that the Gentiles took their place, but we must remember that the higher level "replacement" was the Old Covenant with the New Covenant. To say that the Jews were replaced is to give them too much credit, because the plan since time immemorial was always for it to be a Christian tree (suppl. Jn. 1:1-14, 1 Cor. 2:7, Eph. 1:4-5, 2 Tim. 1:9). Instead the Gentiles and Jews who accepted Jesus Christ were placed onto the tree in the New Covenant way which uniformly replaced the Old Covenant way, and by which replacement faith in Christ became the only condition for inclusion. In God's mind it was always destined to be a New Covenant tree so it was not really a replacement in that sense either but a coming to fruition. Paul is telling us here to be mindful that some Jews will be scattered in among those many Gentiles destined by way of the New Covenant to be Christians, even though most Jews will not, and therefore we should not treat the racial minority Christians differently since "belief" is their deciding factor as it is ours.
Of course with such a vast majority of those in the Jewish race having chosen unbelief, it is quite an easy assumption to make when one sees a Jewish race individual, whether randomly or even in a Christian church. That is why Paul perhaps goes beyond warning the Gentiles against losing their faith in Christ, which he does in verses 18 to 21 where he tells them that if they lose faith they will end up unspared like all the damned unbelieving Jews. The "faith not works" Apostle even goes so far in verse 22 to tell the Gentile Christians, "Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off." He has said countless times that belief alone determines salvation, most firmly perhaps in Romans 3:28, which reads "Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law." Here in Romans 11:20 he just said "because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith" and in 11:23 will say "if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted in." However his words in verse 11:22 tell us to continue in God's goodness rather than to, it seems, act in badness like the Jews on whom fell God's severity. He might indeed be partially saying that if we act like non-believing Jews by trying to exclude others — which here would be an attempt to exclude from God's New Covenant of faith in Jesus Christ — we will be treated with the same severity by which God treats them. It is safe to say that we are to act as loving Christians to all humanity including all Jews, both saved and unsaved, which is the opposite way that many Jews treat Gentiles. As for the non-believing Jews on whom has fallen God's severity, if we treat those non-believing Jews like they treat us, then God will look at our actions similarly and chasten us for it. Based on the endless assertions both in Paul and the Gospels that faith in Christ yields salvation, and the Romans 8 assurance that nothing can separate us from it, we cannot conclude that any amount of improper behavior can cause us to lose our salvation as long as we have that faith in Jesus Christ. Therefore when Paul in 11:22 tells us to "continue in His goodness," he is probably only commanding us to continue in belief, since that is the only goodness that he specifically mentions and does so both before in verse 20 and after in verse 23. In any event, he certainly does not mean that we are to refrain from acknowledging and proclaiming the Jews' doom apart from Jesus Christ, which is what Paul did in this very verse with the word "severity" and which he did in more detail in Romans 9:6-33 and which he did ten thousand times over in his ministry. Romans 11 instead teaches us again what we should already know, that our hearts should ache for the non-believing Jews as his does in Romans 9:2. Their fall is in some ways more tragic, but recall that Paul is the textbook example of why we should still spend more time ministering to Gentiles. Acts Chapter 22, verses 18 and 21, "And saw him saying unto me, Make haste, and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem: for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me... And he said unto me, Depart: for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles."
Before we go to Romans 11:26 — the misinterpretations of which we have already largely addressed upon finding their refutations in earlier Romans — let us look squarely again at the preceding Romans 11 verses that are in fact warning Gentiles on some level about something. Verse 11:18 was "Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee." We identified these particular branches as Jews who were formerly on the Old-Covenant-operating tree and who, like Paul, are unusually back on the New Covenant tree after having been thrown off. We should also note the second part which identifies such boasting as an offense to the root which represents God through His Person of Christ, because self-glorying would be arrogance toward the omnipotent Origin of our salvation and of our fruit afterwards per John 15. Per the nearby context of Romans 11:18, we are obviously being told there to appreciate the unwarranted grace that we have received simply from our belief, and that praise should therefore be directed to God rather than claimed for own vanity — which in this case would also cause friction or even racial contention among believers. The "Be not highminded, but fear" part of verse 20 means the same, that glory should be given to God because, as it says, "of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith." Neither of the two are achievements of man but the latter is the acceptance of the gift of God, who has the power to give and take as He pleases. We have assurances that He will not take away our eternal life unless perhaps if we lose faith, and these verses seem to suggest that in that case He might.
Verse 11:22 was "Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off." We just before determined this to probably be only an admonition to maintain our faith or possibly end up in the hell that will definitely be the final destination of those who never had it. However if this verse is to any degree also referring to behavior of faith-undeterred Christian believers, then given the Romans Epistle on balance, the higher ranking Gospels, and the Bible whole, we cannot conclude that it means that the believer will be cut off from salvation but only that they will be disciplined by the same God. In so much as the "cut off" of verse 22 means removed from the tree representing salvation, the "continue in His goodness" must mean continue in His goodness as a Christian which is defined by Christ and Paul as one who believes in Jesus Christ. Therefore a goodness-continuing Christian is one who believes, regardless of their works, as Romans 11 verse 6 taught us yet again, although this principle from Jesus was affirmed by Paul best in Romans 3.
Finally, before the Christian "joining of hands" section of Romans 11 as it were, is Romans 11:25 which reads, "For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in." The inner meaning is that Paul is telling the Romans that he has been used by God to give them the keys to God's Kingdom, and that they should therefore administer it in humility before God and in full accordance with his law of faith. They should not treat the fallen Jews as irredeemable because the "part" of them, however small in total is this "remnant," whom God intends to save in the End Times will be saved — and that will be completely creditable to God as is their own salvation. The implication of course is that those Jews who come to Christ before then should also be welcomed. In some sense, God should be praised even more for the salvation of these Jews since it is more difficult for them to accept Jesus Christ because a general "hardening" of Jewish hearts for the Gentiles benefit has been enacted by God Himself. Yet one day, after the Gentiles are entirely taken care of with as much eternal life as He can possibly give them while still allowing for their free will, He will partially release His holds on the Jews' free wills and more of them will come to Jesus than Gentiles have been used to seeing. When they do they should be integrated in, but until then Gentile Christians should not racially boast against those Jews who are already Christians, or think themselves more holy because they are in the Christian Gentile majority rather than the Christian Jew minority, because all glory for Christian salvation is God's alone. This is helped along by the revelation that "some" additional Jews (11:14) — perhaps a few thousand in the remnant like Elijah's seven thousand (11:4) — will indeed get in as branches with the many Gentile branches on that final tree. This will apparently happen in the last few years when God lessens or stops his blinding of the Jews, which He will have already done for thousands of years so that He could fill the tree more "full" of Gentile branches.
In the 1st Century, it was almost inevitably a "mystery" to those early Christians — difficult to understand — that the reason the Jews had almost completely rejected Christ, while the Gentiles were prolifically accepting Him, was because God was using the Jews' rejection to promote the Gentiles' acceptance. Two thousand years later, with God's finalized Word distributed to all ends of the earth many times, it should now be less of a mystery why the phenomenon persists of there being but a very small fraction of Jews who are saved. As far as a Christian Gentile being conceited or boasting to a Christian Jew, that today is still worthy of being guarded against but, what has changed in those two millennia is that there is now a feverishly popular heresy in the other direction. The modern democratic societies, meaning those after World War II and the creation of modern Israel especially, have been in an absolute epidemic of instead violating the very synopsis of Paul's Romans Epistle and of Christianity itself. These leading principles were stated in Romans 3, continued strongly into Romans 4 with his determination of the children of Abraham being only those spiritually defined, and reinforced and expounded in detail up to and including Romans 11. Concerns about being conceited or boasting toward the few Christian Jews are secondary, just as Paul arranged them to be in his letter, but much more secondary in importance now that many confused Christians and non-believing Jews are working together to use racially-based pro-Jewish sentiment to harm Christianity. Our one true religion centered on Jesus Christ faces a wave of faith-regardless Jewish infiltration so as to recenter our allegiance and focus on a still non-believing "Israel," or at least partially to do so by moving aside our Lord and Savior in our hearts so as to make space. The mental state of our Christian masses has deteriorated to the point that anyone who is not a Judaizer is often not popular enough to maintain a pastor's salary because the audience is at odds with him if he interprets the true meaning of Paul's writing as it is intended by Paul through God. Whether the conformers mistakenly think that they are doing something socially beneficial for humanity, and whether they are promoting these anti-Christ pro-Jewish stances by accident or on purpose, a great many of these modern "pastors" frequently have the effect of weakening their congregation's understanding of the New Covenant and the indisputable law of faith. They insidiously: shift people's allegiance to a modern Christ-hating Israel, moderate Christian feeling toward Jewish rejection of Christ, and try to distort the Christian principle of the all-or-nothing choice of allegiance to Christ or fire in hell.
Very few modern preachers are willing to speak against Judaism and non-believing Jews even half as strongly as Paul did in Romans 1-10 and especially in Romans 9 and 10. They prefer instead to water down or avoid the truth in them so as to find their financially comfortable place in a society of people rule, which will always veer to the average human intellect and average human ethics which due to man's nature are guaranteed to be unacceptably far from God's. It is not like Paul did not try to make his message accessible by all, in terms of his respectful tone, but in sharp contrast to these modern clowns he never compromised an ounce of the truth about the Jews and Judaism. He never bent his knee to Baal, which in Romans 11:4 is the equivalent of Judaism, but instead demanded that Jews bow their knee to Christ — no matter how much odium this honesty brought on His own person or how much this incendiary theology endangered his own physical safety. The Romans Epistle is a perfect example of that which is why God saw it prominently placed in the Biblical canon that emerged. Paul does state in 1 Corinthians Chapter 9 verses 19 to 23 how he tried to act agreeably to Jew and Gentile alike in the various encounters, but he there clarifies that he made these lesser sacrifices so as to win their infinitely more important acceptance of Christ. Anyone who ultimately did not therefore accept, we may rest assured that Paul damned them to hell as he did unapologetically throughout the Romans Epistle and in Acts, and in fidelity to Jesus' own condemnation of them on His ascension in Mark 16:16. With Paul being a kind and passive man, unlike many more aggressive personalities whom it is well agreed that God has still used, we might surmise that one should go at least as far as Paul in opposing Judaism and non-believing Jews. To not do so risks suffering in one's own walk by not being entirely dead to Judaism as Paul said in Romans 7:1-6 was necessary in order to fruitfully serve God in newness of spirit. More than this, for our developing children and many weak-willed Christian neighbors to not be taught that Jews and Judaism are the enemies of Christianity — the very opposites as planned by God — risks seeing them fall in with the Jews' nonbelief while falling out of Christianity. We are to have brotherhood with the believing Christians of Jewish race who are on the tree and to pity the Jewish non-believing branches on the ground, but never to jump off of the tree after the branches on the ground. They tend to be rather assertive, influential, and invasive, and whereas the Jews have a magnetic pull, 99% of them are magnets pulling us down to a fate of hell with them — and that because as Christ said, Satan is the Father of Pharisees and those who promote his lies instead of recognizing Jesus for who He is (John 8:42-44).
As we revisit the topic of truth versus the promotion of lies, we happen to arrive at our long-awaited Romans 11:26, which is entirely true and decipherable with full context, but in unintended isolation or misinterpretation is the single verse through which the most lies and distortions have been promoted. Lies about this verse have had no little success in the minds of weak and lazy Christians, whom still being our brothers and also now spreading the heretical Zionist disease to others, we feel obligated to correct in support of our religion and of God's truth. The full sentence which spans Romans 11 verse 26 and also 27 is, "And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins." Misrepresentations usually involve when, how many, and in what way these Jews will be saved. The "when" is obviously after the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, per the "And so" continuation of verse 25, and since we do not expect the Gentiles to have fully come in until near the End Times, this uptick in the saving of Jews is slated to happen close to the last days before Jesus Christ's return. The "how many" we found by all contextual indications to be relatively small by the proportion-revealing language of "election" in Romans verse 11:7, "some of them" in Romans 11:14, and most relevantly by "remnant" in Romans 11:5 and 9:27. Verses 9:28 to 33 then made the dramatic comparison of the saved Jews' scarcity to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, for the reason that God "will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness" and if not for the few saved then none of the Jews would be saved. For the sake of those Bible readers with short or selective memories, let us recall that this Romans 9 passage nearby Romans 11 then says very plainly that, "the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith. But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone; As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed." Since God will "carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality" (Rm. 9:28) and "only the remnant will be saved though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea" (Rm. 9:27), then it must follow that the rest of Israel will be part of that sentence and will be seen to have been "objects of his wrath prepared for destruction" (Rm. 9:22) the entire time.
The "all Israel" that will be saved per 11:26 will be this much smaller Christianity-believing Israel part that Paul separated out from the racial Israel by his Romans 9:6 and following verses, which we have already discussed in detail. Let us remember that the majority Israel's failure vs. the small elect believing Israel's success is exactly what Paul is again talking about in Romans 11:7, when he writes "Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened." These rest will be damned and per 10:21 to 11:6 this will not reflect poorly on God because that "elect," "remnant," or believing "Israel" — whatever you want to call them and Paul calls them all of these — will be saved. Therefore God is demonstrated by them to have not made it impossible for Jews to be saved. Therefore, and this is why he put 11:26 and 27 in his letter, the prophecy that God will redeem "Israel" through the New Covenant is fulfilled in them — this small number of believing Jews whom Paul was able to call "Israel" to that end but are at the same time just a small remnant or elect as he readily admits. Hence, so too is the Romans 9 prophecy of next-to-total destruction fulfilled in "the rest" whom Paul is also able to call "Israel" — the vast majority who will make the Jews' destruction seem almost as complete in the End Times as was Sodom and Gomorrah's destruction all those years ago. It is not a dishonest literary ploy by Paul, but an inspired revelation of how both prophecies are fulfilled. Since they on the surface portend two opposite fates for "Israel," it is only natural that the solution to how both prophecies are true is clever and counterintuitive.
As for the "in what way" the few exceptions who make up the believing Israel separated in Romans 9:6 (see "reserved" in Romans 11:4) will be saved, Paul again uses Isaiah in Romans 11:26-27, just as he used Isaiah in Romans 9:27-29. If we turn back to Romans 11's Isaiah 59:20-21 source, we very quickly find yet another confirmation that the "in what way" for this remnant is through the New Covenant of Jesus Christ, the original Scripture being "And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the Lord. As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the Lord; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and for ever." Our easiest way to identify this with the New Covenant is right after Romans 9, just before Romans 11, really just all in the same Romans Epistle passage, in the part we today call Romans 10, where the righteousness of Christian faith is differentiated as "The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach. That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Rm. 10:8-9).
Romans 11:26-27 dually references the prophecy in Jeremiah Chapter 31 and its verse 33 agrees that this will be an entirely new covenant available to the Jews unlike their old, and in its verse 34 is the universal Gentile-inclusive aspect of the same New Covenant, in that "No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, 'Know the Lord,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." Therefore we see yet again that Christ's promise or covenant fulfilled to the Jews by saving some of them is the exact same promise or covenant that He fulfilled to the Gentiles by saving exponentially more of them. Jesus Christ died and rose again in the exact same way for all, and his blood covering a Jew is the same blood covering a Gentile. It turns both into a Christian spiritually defined by the law of faith and humans in truth are spiritually (mentally) defined beings whether saved or unsaved. Hence, the only two pertinent groups in proper Christian Theology, and in highest truth the most pertinent groups in this world, are "saved" and "unsaved" — in other words "Christian" or "non-Christian."
Satan's corrupted tools, posing as Christian Theologians (2 Cor. 11:13-15), who try to split the "saved" Christian group into multiple other groups are usually trying to provide a basis for Christians to allow Baalistic Judaism in what should be the City of God, and therefore to violate the First Commandment. "See those Jews are just future saved Christians who God has a plan for so let their synagogues coexist beside of your churches," is what they seem to say as an excuse. Meanwhile every day in this condition: 1) The First Commandment is violated. 2) The followers of Satan-approved false Judaism have a pernicious effect on our culture, our children, and our walk with God which should be entirely dead to that before all else. 3) and finally, the Zionists are proven wrong daily when such members of the false religion die without having accepted Christ and it is shown that God's fate for them as far as salvation was only hell. They often can be memorialized as partially responsible for having taken would-have-been Christians along with them, since most people are followers and since this bad example was inordinately mass-available for them to follow. It is true that the Jews' rejection is to promote our acceptance, but that is if we know to reject their rejection which now permeates any society that allows it to. When a modern society accepts the Jews' rejection of Christ, and places their religion of Christ rejection on equal political footing with the religion of Christ acceptance, that society will tend to reject Christ more themselves. Most of our friends and family will simply follow the leader and we must give them appropriate leadership and stimulus to the right direction of pure Christ-centered Christianity or many will be part of the herd that charges into hell beside of the Jews. That Christ-hating group collectively never lacks the desire to lead and influence, and they will lead most of a nation to hell if they are allowed to and they have been allowed to in modern democracies.
If Jonathan Gilderstein's descendants are saved a hundred or five thousand years from now, it will not be much consolation to him if he goes to hell for eternity or to you if he takes your son along with him. When any Christian supports the false Zionist/Judaizing misinterpretations of Romans 11, he or she is opposing the New Covenant as it truly is in the Romans Epistle and in the Gospels — a universally equal chance at heaven or hell dependent wholly on belief in Jesus Christ, the outcome of which renders each person either a saved Christian or a doomed non-Christian. When any Christian supports multi-religious secular democracy, he or she is opposing the First Commandment as it forevermore stands if we accept that New Covenant Christianity to be the one true religion and the Trinity of God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit to be the one true God. Your faith in Jesus might prevail regardless of a society of bad influence, but your son or grandson's faith may not, and might never be realized at all, and their souls will be lost in exchange for what? The typical Christian today exchanges support for national true adherence to the First Commandment in order to support the secular democratic traditions that are common and popular, to conform to the one side of the argument that he has heard constantly all around him lest he be thought different, and in order to be socially accepted in a society that believes in "freedom" which they practically translate into official godlessness, under a government that has never officially aligned with Jesus Christ. Our children's personal religious consciences cannot and should not be coerced, but should be heavily supported and encouraged to move toward acceptance of the true religion of Christianity. A government that does not align officially with Christianity falls entirely short of the First Commandment in exchange for the anything-goes religious liberalism that opens the door for Satan to support and encourage what he wants people to believe instead. The flagrantly erroneous presentation of Romans 11 as a defense of Jews who do not accept Jesus Christ — to excuse that or to lessen our opposition to that on any level or at any time, whether past, present, or future — is case in point. Zionism is a heresy that never would have festered in an absolute Christian monarchical nation — no more than would have the cults of the Mormons or the Jehovah's Witnesses. In a proper Christian monarchy, Christ-centered Christianity will be firmly established and defended from the likes of Joseph Smith, the Watch Tower Society, and modern Israel. When there is instead a democracy run by popular opinion, that nation's way of living and its governing aims will always be taken and we find that they are most often taken by Jews by way of their money. We then find that these Jews and their associates rather choose to oppose our Christianity, and to socially and culturally manipulate it out of our children. Even what is popular among genuine Christians and typical churches is turned into a theological mess as they force in as many alternative Jew-serving and Satan-serving falsehoods as they possibly can. All Christians should be aware of this, as the time for being wary of it has already passed since it has already happened. This essay forms a foundation to combat it by pointing to God's truth as revealed to us in His Holy Scripture.
The next verse is Romans 11:28: "As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, they are beloved for the father's sakes." We have already observed, just before in Romans 11:25 as well, how the Bible indicates that the Jews' nonbelief and blinding can serve the purpose of increasing Gentile belief. However this is only if the Gentiles do not act like the typical Jew, but instead act in the opposite manner and accept Jesus Christ in spite of the Jew, in contrarian opposition to 99% of the Jews. We just above framed it as "if we know to reject their rejection" and not to accept their rejection instead. If there is the least bit of Christ-rejecting imitation involved, and in the modern democracies there has been an immense amount of Jewish imitation and Jewish-influenced departure from Christianity, then the Jews are not being used for our sake as divinely intended. Using the Jews for our sake happens if we oppose their anti-Christian norm as the Epistle to the Romans tell us to, and here in Romans 11:28 is another confirmation that the vast majority of them are "enemies" of "the gospel," which obviously means that we should not act like them but act entirely differently than them. We should not make them our senators, or broadcast their anti-Christian views on an inordinate amount of television channels, or try to include their anti-Christ religion next to our Christ-defined religion. A monarchy which bans Jews from political office, which has blasphemy law to keep hate for Christ off of television just like hate for race is kept off, and which only allows public organization of religion if it is Christian, will go a long way to setting Christ-hating Jews as contrarian examples for its citizens rather than as objects of imitation. "Enemies" of the gospel will therefore neither be given immense political power, nor regularly put on a tv screen in every home, nor publicly validated before our children, as if they were some kind of allies or purveyors of truth. For Christians who love their Lord and His gospel, these are immeasurably important advantages of Christian monarchy over secular democracy, among many more that could be realized.
"But as touching the election" meaning the small amount of Jews that are genuinely Christians — the "some of them", the "remnant" that "shall be saved though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea" — we have already concluded that they will be saved to prove that God did not permit every last one of the descendants of his Old Testament people to suffer the sentence of destruction. This is what Paul refers back to when in Romans 11:28 he says that this elect or remnant is "beloved for the father's sakes," and then in 11:29 justifies the need for it as because "the gifts and calling of God are without repentance." If He had not saved these few of them, they would have been destroyed as completely as were Sodom and Gomorrah, as Paul told us in Romans 9:27-33. That was right after he told us in 9:26 that the Gentiles are mainly God's people now, after having earlier in Romans Chapters 3 and 4 defined God's people now as only those who have belief in Jesus Christ.
Romans 3:5 also confirmed that the Jews will not get by uncondemned even if their unrighteousness is used by God to contrarily show his righteousness to the Gentiles, and that too of course is very relevant to the interpretation of our current chapter. Romans 5 taught us that the need for Christ has been universal since the first man, that the legalistic Jewish era that followed solved nothing in this regard, and that naturally therefore Christ's graceful gift of salvation is a universal institution apart from any Jewishness. Their Law by increasing sin only further showed the universal need for Christ to conquer death and to give us eternal life. Romans 6 then cleared up that since we are now Christians baptized to life in Christ, that we have no need for Jewishness since we are not under their Law but under grace. "God forbid" that we sin so as to mimic the deleterious effect of Jewishness. Therefore, with thought to the analogy of Romans 11, do Christian Gentiles really need Jews back on that tree? Do Christian Gentiles need any Old Covenant Jewish ways to live by, even if the individual Jews themselves become legitimate Christians by believing in Jesus? Romans 7 doubly assures us that they do not. They only need Christ and to serve Him in "newness of spirit," and the analogical start of Romans 7 remarkably sets it up as an either-or proposition. Anything short of being dead to Jewishness and their Law is there defined (Rm. 7:1-6) as spiritual adultery which keeps one from marriage with Christ and prevents us from bringing forth fruit unto God. Therefore, Romans 11 and Romans whole means that the remnant Jews must themselves ideologically "dejudaize" by putting aside what has prevailed as the "Jewishness" of their fathers, and that God despises it, but that those Jews who do put it aside and become Christians, like the many more Gentiles, will be accepted in. Yes, God did have a good relationship with some of their fathers, in the much lesser non-salvatory Old Covenant way, before his relationship with their people at large became bad to the point of being just short of their receiving total annihilation in hell. Instead over 99% of deceased Jews after Jesus have gone to hell for eternity, and over 99% will probably also be the final figure since there will only be a numerically small improvement on this percentage and that only among the living and only in the final days. If not for God's desire to show that the Old Covenant and the old Jewish era was not entirely a cruel joke being played on them, and that they are in fact offered the New Covenant just as much as the Gentiles are offered it, then God would have left them to their natural fate which would have been very nearly total destruction — the Jews wiped out when Jesus returns like Sodom when the fire rained from heaven. He instead made and will make a special intervention so as to bring some of the racial Jews over the wall of obstruction, and to make them spiritual Christians, although he leaves the vast-majority rest as "enemies of the gospel" (Rm. 11:28) and "vessels of wrath fitted to destruction" (Rm. 9:22).
Romans 11 verses 30 to 32 therefore tell Gentiles in their immense numerical supremacy in the Kingdom to have mercy on Jews who have Christian faith as they do, since God will have the same mercy for all of the Christian Jewish remnant as He has had for all of the Christian Gentile majority. In Paul's words: "For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief: Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy. For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all." Notice how Paul here yet again puts all Christians in the same bucket in the most critical way, starting verse 30 with "For as ye" and "For just as you," which refers primarily to how both are saved by belief in Jesus Christ. However he then finds a second similarity in that the faith of each is helped along by a reaction, but the nature of reaction differs and it is by no means a simple "you gave us this" and now "we give you this back" comparison! Jesus Christ is the only one giving salvation in the entire Bible, and the Jews are giving absolutely nothing of any value willingly in these verses of Romans, as is usual. The Gentiles instead have a contrarian reaction to the nearly uniform nonbelief of the Jews, an aid to Gentile salvation as orchestrated on a mass level by God to exist for thousands of years and against the non-Christian aims of the non-believing Jews. This is a significant part of how the Gentiles became dominant in Christianity and why they always will be. The Jews' secondary reaction in contrast alludes back to how Paul in verses 11 to 14 said that he hopes that he "might save some of" the Jews by using their jealousy of the Gentiles' Christian glory to provoke the same Jews to "emulation" of the Gentiles. Romans 11:25 conveys that this later type of Jew-salvatory reaction will mostly only happen after the first Gentile-salvatory reaction is complete. The Jewish remnant proper will be implemented after the "full number of the Gentiles has come in," and we do not expect God to stop saving Gentiles any time soon. Therefore God has arranged, per verse 32, for these remnant Jews to obtain mercy through the Gentiles' mercy, but since belief in Christ is the prerequisite and will not be satisfied by the Jews much until the End Times, the Gentiles until then will in practice have a limited opportunity to show social mercy as the few believing Jews receive salvatory mercy from God by way of their belief.
And when a Jew now or a Jew in the last remnant does believe in Christ? All glory should be to God for their salvation, and yet concurrently per Romans 11:14, these Jews will also be emulating Gentiles by that belief. We have just seen in Romans 11 that God has arranged for a small number of Jews to find their way to Christian Gentile emulation which is the one and only way that God will favorably fulfill any prophecies, covenants, or promises for any Jew forevermore. They will be rare Jews acting more like the typical Gentile and will receive the same mercy by the same blood of Christ. "For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all," says Romans 11 verse 32, which leads into the praise of God for the unified and singular Christian group in Romans 11 verses 33 to 36: "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen."
