The Jewish Question

The eleventh chapter in the great Epistle to the Romans is perhaps the least studied of all in this Epistle of our salvation. It contains not alone deeply interesting truths, but is of great importance and puts before us most solemn facts. The Holy Spirit unfolds here the purposes of God concerning the Jewish race. The knowledge of Israel’s place and position in God’s revealed plan is of incalculable importance. All the confusion in doctrine and practice we see about us, is more or less the result of a deplorable ignorance which exists throughout Christendom concerning Israel’s place and future. The carnalizing of the professing church has been the result of this ignorance. All Christendom attends to Israel’s earthly calling, and not only fails in it most miserably, but also dishonors God and His Word.

If it were possible to straighten out the confusion existing about us in the professing church, the proper starting point would be, no doubt, to teach God’s purposes concerning Israel.

Let us first consider in what part of Romans we find the chapter which contains the Jewish question.

Romans is divided into three parts. The first section extends from chapter i-viii; the second contains chapters ix, x and xi; the last is from chapter xii-xvi. Over the first part we put the word “Salvation” over the second “Dispensation” and over the third “Exhortation.”

This is how God makes His truth known. First He tells us what He has done for us in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ; how rich and full His Grace is toward all who believe, Jew and Gentile. In the next place He acquaints us with dispensation; that is, How He, the Sovereign, dispenses; how He deals with Jew and Gentile. In dispensational truths He takes His child, so to speak, into confidence, because He has made him a son and an heir, and introduces him into the knowledge of His ways in the government and future of the earth. Having shown us what He has done for us and what He has made us, He speaks to us once more, showing what manner of men we should be. This is exhortation. Reverse this order, salvation, dispensation and exhortation, or leave one out, and you will have but confusion.

Our chapter then stands in the second, the dispensational part, that great parenthesis, in which the Holy Spirit traces God’s righteous and merciful ways. At the end of the salvation part of this Epistle we find a chapter of summing up, the eighth. The second part has likewise such a climax, the chapter which is before us. It brings in not only the Jews, but the Gentiles, and in a measure the church of God. From this chapter we can reach back over the entire history of Israel. From here we can learn their present condition and, above all, we can study their future and learn what God will yet do in fulfillment of His oathbound covenants.

There is, however, a special reason why the Holy Spirit in Romans introduces the three chapters, which form the second part.

It is the following. In the first part, chapters i to viii, the Spirit of God shows that Jews and Gentiles have no righteousness and are lost, that there is not one that doeth good, no, not one. Then God reveals His righteousness and His salvation for Jew and Gentile, which is by faith. An old saint was asked what the three great lessons are which he had learned in his Christian experience, and he said: “First, I learned that I have never done anything good in my life; secondly, that I could never do anything good; and, thirdly, that Christ has done it all.” This is precisely what is taught in the first part of Romans.

Now, after the guilt and lost condition of the Jew and Gentile are fully demonstrated, the Jew is left out of sight. In this dispensation of Grace God deals alike with the believing Jew and Gentile; there is no difference. The believing Jew and Gentile are under Grace, linked with the Second Man, in possession of every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus, a Son and an Heir, destined to be like the Firstbegotten from the dead.

But now comes an objection from the side of the Jew. Questions are frequently asked in Romans. The Jew now has a question, after he has heard all about this salvation by Grace for him and for the Gentile, as well as the results of this salvation.

This is the question: “What becomes of our national promises and blessings? God has promised us so much as a nation, and these promises are not yet fulfilled; will He keep them?” In other words, “Does God’s dealing in Grace with the Gentiles mean that He is through with us as a nation, that our people are now completely and finally rejected and are the many promises contained in the oracles of God never to be fulfilled?”

This question is answered in the second part of Romans. In it the Holy Spirit shows how righteously and mercifully God deals with the Jews and Gentiles, and the end of the section, our chapter, shows most blessedly that God has not cast away His people; a time of their fullness and reception is coming and all Israel shall be saved.

The chapter in its construction is very simple. In the preceding one we read: “But Esaias is very bold, and saith, I was found of them that sought me not; I was manifested unto them that asked not after me. But to Israel he saith, All day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people.” The quotation is from Isaiah lxv:l, 2, and in it the call of the Gentiles is plainly foretold as well as God’s attitude towards His own people Israel. Now if God is found of them (the Gentiles) and manifested unto them that asked not after Him, and if His own people have no answer to His hands stretched forth towards them, would one not be justified to say He has cast away His people? The eleventh chapter therefore asks this very question: “Hath God cast away His people?” This question is the great superscription of this chapter. The fact that God has not cast away His people is demonstrated throughout the chapter. Up to the 27th verse the Holy Spirit gives seven answers and proofs to this question that His people, Israel, are not finally nor completely cast away. After this fact is demonstrated comes the great and sublime ending (verses 28-36) corresponding to the ending of the doctrinal part of the Epistle in the eighth chapter. We shall follow in our exposition these seven answers and proofs. They are the following:

I. The conversion of Saul of Tarsus (verse 1).

II. There is a remnant according to the election of Grace, hence Israel is not completely cast away (verses 2-6).

III. The blindness of Israel is partial and judicial. It is never complete nor final. The Scriptures prove this fact (verses 7-10).

IV. Salvation has come to the Gentiles by their fall and by it God wishes to provoke them to jealousy (verse 11).

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