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§25 The Remnant of Grace (Rom. 11:1–10)

Israel’s rejection of Jesus Christ was a denial of its own calling and redemption. It was as though an infant in the womb could somehow decide not to be born, and thus frustrate the rightful goal of its life. But contrary to expectation, Israel’s denial of its destiny does not frustrate God’s purpose. We saw in Romans 9 that God was prepared to make sovereign choices in history, even wrathful choices, in order to extend his mercy. The present section is closely tied to that argument. Verses 1–6 are a defense of God’s grace in the establishment of a believing remnant in Israel, while verses 7–10 are a polemical description of God’s hardening of greater Israel. But Israel’s hardening is neither total nor final. It is not total because God’s grace has preserved a remnant of Israel which has confessed Christ (v. 5); and it is not final because it is Paul’s understanding that all Israel will be saved (11:26). In the following section (11:11–24) Paul will argue that Israel’s unwillingness to enter the promise allowed room for the Gentiles to precede Israel. Israel’s loss is the Gentiles’ gain (11:12), but it will not be a permanent loss (11:11, 23), according to Paul, for once the Gentiles have fully entered into salvation, Israel will be aroused to jealousy and will return to its saving heritage (11:25–32).

11:1–4 / It is true, as Paul established in 10:21, that Israel rejected God. But God is sovereign, which means that God’s will is not determined by something outside itself; and God is love, which means that God, unlike humanity, does not have to reject those who reject him. Did God reject his people? (v. 1). Paul counters with the strongest possible negation, By no means! The idea of the chosen people (Gk. laos) is controlled by two understandings in the OT. On the one hand, it separates Israel from the “nations” and assures its election as God’s “treasured possession” (Exod. 19:4–6). On the other hand, both the prophets and Paul warn Israel against complacency over that fact. Being God’s treasured possession does not entitle Israel—or the church—to an exemption from faithful obedience; rather, it heightens their responsibility to God.

Paul argues for God’s abiding purpose for Israel not by a theological argument, but by personal experience. I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. Paul is “Exhibit A” that God has not rejected his people. There can be no doubt of the central role which Paul’s conversion experience played in his subsequent understanding of the gospel. Would God have chosen a Jew to be his special envoy to the Gentiles if he were finished with the Jews? As Luther notes, “if God had cast away his people, then above all he would have cast away the apostle Paul who fought against him with all his strength” (Lectures on Romans, p. 305). The Damascus road experience was, of course, a demonstration of grace to Paul personally. But it was more than that. Paul saw it also as an example of grace to his people, believing that his conversion was but a foreshadowing of the conversion of all Israel.

Paul emphatically denies his own question, God did not reject his people (v. 2). The OT assured him of this (cf. 1 Sam. 12:22; Ps. 94:14). The existence of a remnant of Jews who had believed in Jesus Christ was a further sign. From the time of Elijah onward had not God provided for a righteous minority within greater Israel? At a particularly bleak passage in Israel’s history, when worship of the true God seemed to hang by a thread, Elijah, overcome by discouragement, cried out, “Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me” (v. 3; loosely quoted [from Paul’s memory?] from 1 Kings 19:10–14). But God’s perspective differed greatly from Elijah’s. And what was God’s answer to him? “I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal” (v. 4; again loosely quoted from 1 Kings 19:18). The Greek original does not exactly say God’s answer. A word occurring only once in all the NT, ho chrēmatismos, and meaning, “a divine statement or answer,” appears here. The choice of expression heightens the contrast between Elijah’s opinion and the divine authority: Elijah may figure he is the only true believer left, but in actuality there were seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal. Seven thousand is not to be understood as 6, 999 + 1; in Hebrew thinking it means completion or totality, i.e., “more people than you can count.” Baal was a fertility god of the Canaanites whose influence the prophets, in particular, dreaded in Israel. Despite Baal’s cancerous growth in Zion, God still preserved a faithful remnant. It was not given to Elijah to know precisely who the true believers were. Nevertheless, a faithful minority survived, and not by chance, but by God’s grace. “There is a remnant chosen by grace” (v. 5). Elijah presumed to number the elect but failed to get beyond himself; God had preserved the elect beyond number for himself.

11:5–6 / Verse 5 contemporizes the Elijah story and shifts the focus to the present. This is less apparent, however, in the NIV than in the Greek. As God had preserved a faithful minority in Elijah’s day, so he had preserved a minority of Jews who believed in Jesus Christ as a remnant chosen by grace (v. 5). This is the only place in the NT where the word remnant (Gk. leimma) occurs, although it is quite close in meaning to the word “chosen” (Gk. eklogē, vv. 5, 7). The idea of the remnant was first presented in 9:27, though in different terminology. The word for remnant (leimma, v. 5) may have been suggested in Paul’s mind by the word for “reserved” (Gk. kataleipō) in verse 4 above, of which it is a cognate. It is not a remnant of virtue or good works or merit, but a remnant chosen by grace. Israel and the church rightly understand their election only when they understand it as an action of God’s free grace, not as an achievement of their works. Had the Jewish Christians become a remnant because of their works, they would have had no significance for greater Israel, for Israel itself “pursued a law of righteousness” (9:31). But since the remnant had been preserved by grace, it became a pledge of God’s continuing favor towards Israel as a whole. The remnant of grace, in other words, affirms that Israel was called into existence by grace (9:8–11) and awaits a future consummation of grace (11:28–32).

11:7–10 / Paul now repeats and amplifies the thought of 9:31 (“Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it”). A portion of Israel, the elect or “remnant” of Jewish Christians, has attained righteousness (see 9:6). But the larger part of unbelieving Israel, holding fast to its righteousness by the law, was hardened (v. 7). The idea of hardening recalls the thought of 9:18, though in different terminology. The Greek word here, pōroō, a medical term, can refer to a (gall or kidney) stone, or the collar of bone which grows around a fracture. The passive voice, were hardened, is clearly a “divine passive,” meaning God’s hardening of Israel. The quotations of verses 8–10 were gathered by the early church to explain why Jews failed to receive Jesus as Messiah. As we saw earlier (e.g., 1:24ff.), God hands people over to the sins they desire. Human resistance and disobedience are of course present and working concurrently with God’s will, but the final result is more than human failure. The outcome is a hardening from God so that they cannot see what they will not see, or hear what they will not hear. From this perspective hardening is not an obstacle to Israel, but God’s judgment on Israel.

The bulk of the supporting quotation from Deuteronomy 29:4 in verse 8 recalls Israel’s resistance to God in the wilderness. The phrase, spirit of stupor, however, is adopted from Isaiah 29:10 as part of Isaiah’s scathing attack against the city of David for its faithlessness. The word for stupor is a rare word in Greek literature and means “torpor” or “spiritual insensitivity.” Coupled with the references to blindness and deafness, the quotation signifies Israel’s utter inability to recognize or respond to righteousness.

The second quotation in verses 9–10, taken from Psalm 69:22–23, is equally direct. Psalm 69 played a central role in the formation of the passion narratives of Jesus (Matt. 27:34, 48; Mark 15:23, 36). Paul quotes the passage where the suffering righteous man, having been subjected to every form of abuse, reproaches his tormentors. Since the early church identified the lament of Psalm 69 with Jesus’ fate, it is worth considering whether in this instance Paul employs the reproach of the righteous sufferer as Jesus’ reproach to Israel.

The reference to their table becoming a snare and a trap (v. 9) might derive, according to some commentators, from a blanket on which a bedouin would lie to eat or sleep. Should he be surprised by an enemy and try to jump to his feet, it might catch his feet and trip him. A cultic interpretation, however, would regard it as a reference to the table of showbread or perhaps the altar of the temple, which, when maintained apart from its reference to Christ, became a snare and a trap. A more general (and perhaps preferable) interpretation sees in the table a simple but profound irony of table fellowship: when the hospitality of eating together, so honored in the ancient Near East, is broken by treachery (recalling Judas at the Last Supper?), then the table becomes a snare and a trap. Whatever the precise meaning, all three quotations underscore Israel’s blindness and obstinacy in the face of God’s grace. The fact that the three quotations come from the three major divisions of the Hebrew Bible—Law, Prophets, and Writings—amounts to a comprehensive condemnation of Israel from its own scriptures. This returns the reader to the conclusion of 3:20ff., that condemnation is the necessary and inevitable prelude to grace.