_THE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL DIRECTLY FORETOLD: ALL IS OF AND FOR GOD_
ROMANS xi. 25-36
Thus far St Paul has rather reasoned than predicted. He has shewn his
Gentile friends the naturalness, so to speak, of a restoration of
Israel to Christ, and the manifest certainty that such a restoration
will bring blessing to the world. Now he advances to the direct
assertion, made with a Prophet's full authority, that so it shall be.
"_How much rather shall they be grafted into their own Olive?_" The
question implies the assertion; nothing remains but to open it in
full.
[Sidenote: Ver. 25.] =For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, of
this mystery,= this fact in God's purposes, impossible to be known
without revelation,[198] but luminous when revealed; (=that you may
not be wise in your own esteem,= valuing yourselves on an insight
which is all the while only a partial glimpse); =that failure of
perception (πώρωσος), in a measure,= in the case of many, not all,
of the nation, =has come upon Israel,= and will continue =until the
fulness[199] of the Gentiles shall come in,= until Gentile conversion
shall be in some sense a flowing tide. [Sidenote: Ver 26.] =And so all
Israel,= Israel as a mass, no longer as by scattered units, =shall be
saved,= coming to the feet of Him in whom alone is man's salvation
from judgment and from sin; =as it stands written= (Psal. xiv. 7,
Isai. lix. 20, with Isai. xxvii. 9), ="There shall come from Sion the
Deliverer; He shall turn away all impiety (ἀσεβείας) from Jacob;=
[Sidenote: Ver 27.] =and such they shall find the covenant I shall
have granted,[200]= such shall prove to be My promise and provision,
'ordered and sure,' =when I shall take away their sins,"= in the day
of My pardoning and restoring return to them.
This is a memorable passage. It is in the first place one of the most
definitely predictive of all the prophetic utterances of the Epistles.
Apart from all problems of explanation in detail, it gives us this as
its message on the whole; that there lies hidden in the future, for
the race of Israel, a critical period of overwhelming blessing. If
anything is revealed as fixed in the eternal plan, which, never
violating the creature's will yet is not subject to it, it is this. We
have heard the Apostle speak fully, and without compromise, of the sin
of Israel; the hardened or paralysed spiritual perception, the
refusal to submit to pure grace, the restless quest for a valid
self-righteousness, the deep exclusive arrogance. And thus the promise
of coming mercy, such as shall surprise the world, sounds all the more
sovereign and magnificent. It shall come; so says Christ's prophet
Paul. Not because of historical antecedents, or in the light of
general principles, but because of the revelation of the Spirit, he
speaks of that wonderful future as if it were in full view from the
present; "_All Israel shall be saved_."
We read "no date prefixed." As far as this chapter is concerned, years
and days are as if they were not. On the whole, surely, a large range
of process is in his view; he cannot expect to see fulfilled within a
narrow season the accomplishment of all the preliminaries to the great
event. But he says nothing about this. All we gather is that he sees
in the future a great progress of Gentile Christianity; a great
impression to be made by this on the mind of Israel; a vast and
comparatively sudden awakening of Israel, by the grace of God, however
brought to bear; the salvation of Israel in Christ on a national
scale; "the receiving of them again"; and "life from the dead" as the
result--life from the dead to the world at large. However late or
soon, with whatever attendant events, divine or human, thus it shall
be. The "_spiritual failure of perception in part_" shall vanish.
"_The Deliverer shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob._" "_All Israel
shall be saved._"
"Believest thou the Prophets?" The question, asked of Agrippa by St
Paul, comes to us from this prediction of his own. "Lord, we believe."
Our Master knows that for us in our day it is not easy. The bad air of
materialism, and the profound and stolid fatalism which it involves,
is thick around us. And one symptom of its malign influence is the
growing tendency in the Church to limit, to minimize, to explain if
possible away, from the Scriptures, the properly and distinctively
superhuman, whether of work or word. Men bearing the Christian name,
and bearing it often with loyal and reverent intention, seem to think
far otherwise than their Lord thought about this very element of
prediction in the holy Book, and would have us believe that it is no
great thing to grasp, and to contend for. But as for us, we desire in
all things to be of the opinion of Him who is the eternal Truth and
Light, and who took our nature, expressly, as to one great purpose, in
order to unfold to us articulately His opinion. He lived and died in
the light and power of predictive Scripture. He predicted. He rose
again to commission His Apostles, as the Spirit should teach them, to
see "things to come" (John xvi. 13). To us, this oracle of His "chosen
Vessel" gives us articles of faith and hope. We do not understand, but
we believe, because here it is written, that after these days of the
prevalence of unbelief, after all these questions, loud or half
articulate, angry or agonizing, "Where is the promise?" the world
shall see a spiritual miracle on a scale unknown before. "_All Israel
shall be saved._" Even so, Lord Jesus Christ, the Deliverer. Fill us
with the patience of this hope, for Thy chosen race, and for the
world.
It is almost a pain to turn from this conspectus of the passage to a
discussion of some of its details. But it is necessary; and for our
purpose it need be only brief. Whatever the result may be, it will
leave untouched the grandeur of the central promise.
1. "_Until the fulness of the Gentiles come in._" Does this mean that
the stream of Gentile conversions shall have _flowed and ceased_,
before the great blessing comes to Israel? Certainly the Greek may
carry this meaning; perhaps, taken quite apart, it carries it more
easily than any other. But it has this difficulty, that it would
assign to the "_salvation_" of Israel no influence of blessing upon
the Gentile world. Now ver. 12 has implied that "_the fulness_" of
Israel is to be the more-than-wealth of "_the world_," of "_the
Gentiles_." And ver. 15 has implied, if we have read it aright, that
it is to be to "_the world_" as "_life from the dead_." This leads us
to explain the phrase here to refer not to the close of the
ingathering of the Gentile children of God, but to a time when that
process shall be, so to speak, running high.[201] That time of great
and manifest grace shall be the occasion to Israel of the shock, as it
were, of blessing; and from Israel's blessing shall date an unmeasured
further access of divine good for the world.
As we pass, let us observe the light thrown by these sentences on the
duty of the Church in evangelizing the Gentiles for the Jews, as well
as the Jews for the Gentiles. _Both_ holy enterprises have a destined
effect outside themselves. The evangelist of Africa, India, China, is
working for the hour of the "salvation of all Israel." The evangelist
of the Hebrew Dispersion is preparing Israel for that hour of final
blessing when the "saved" nation shall, in the hand of God, kindle the
world with holy life.
2. "_All Israel shall be saved._" It has been held by some
interpreters that this points to the Israel of God, the spiritual sons
of Abraham. If so, it would be fairly paraphrased as a promise that
when the Gentile conversions are complete, and the "spiritual failure
of perception" gone from the Jewish heart, the family of faith shall
be complete. But surely it puts violence on words, and on thought, to
explain "Israel" in this whole passage mystically. Interpretation
becomes an arbitrary work if we may suddenly do so here, where the
antithesis of Israel and "the Gentiles" is the very theme of the
message. No; we have here the nation, chosen once to a mysterious
speciality in the spiritual history of man, chosen with a choice never
cancelled, however abeyant. A blessing is in view for the nation; a
blessing spiritual, divine, all of grace, quite individual in its
action on each member of the nation, but national in the scale of its
results. We are not obliged to press the word "_all_" to a rigid
literality. Nor are we obliged to limit the crisis of blessing to
anything like a moment of time. But we may surely gather that the
numbers blessed will be at least the vast majority, and that the work
will not be chronic but critical. A transition, relatively swift and
wonderful, shall shew the world a nation penitent, faithful, holy,
given to God.
3. The quotations from Psalms and Prophets (verses 26, 27) offer more
questions than one. They are closely interlaced, and they are not
literal quotations. "_Out of Sion_" takes the place of "_for Zion_."
"_He shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob_" takes the place of "_For
them that turn from transgression in Jacob_." "_This is the covenant_"
takes the place of "_This is His blessing_." And there are other
minute points of variation. Yet we reverently trace in the originals
and the citations, which all alike are the work of prophetic organs of
the Spirit, the great ruling thought, identical in both, that "_the
Deliverer_" belongs primarily to "_Zion_," and has in store primarily
a blessing for her people.
Are we, with some devout interpreters, to explain the words, "_The
Deliverer shall come out of Sion_," as predicting a personal and
visible return of the Ascended Jesus to the literal Zion, in order to
the salvation of Israel, and an outgoing of Him from thence to the
Dispersion, or the world, in millennial glory? We deliberately
forbear, in this exposition, to discuss in detail the great
controversy thus indicated. We leave here on one side some questions,
eagerly and earnestly asked. Will Israel return to the Land as
Christian or as anti-Christian? Will the immediate power for their
conversion be the visible Return of the Lord, or will it be an
effusion of His Spirit, by which, spiritually, He shall visit and
bless? What will be the attendant works and wonders of the time? All
we do now is to express the conviction that the prophetic quotations
here cannot be held to predict _unmistakably_ a visible and local
Return. If we read them aright, their import is satisfied by a
paraphrase somewhat thus: "It stands predicted that to Zion, that is,
to Israel, belongs the Deliverer of man, and that for Israel He is to
do His work, whenever finally it is done, with a speciality of grace
and glory." Thus explained, the "_shall come_" of ver. 26 is the
abstract future of divine purpose. In the eternal plan, the Redeemer
was, when He first came to earth, to come to, for, and from "Zion."
And His saving work was to be on lines, and for issues, for ever
characterized by that fact.
Assuredly the Lord Jesus Christ is, personally, literally, visibly,
and to His people's eternal joy, coming again; "this same Jesus, in
like manner" (Acts i. 11). And as the ages unfold themselves,
assuredly the insight of the believing Church into the fulness and, if
we may say so, manifoldness of that great prospect grows. But it still
seems to us that a deep and reverent caution is called for before we
attempt to treat of any detail of that prospect, as regards time,
season, mode, as if we quite knew. Across _all_ lines of interpretation
of unfulfilled prophecy--to name one problem only--it lies as an
unsolved riddle how all the saints of all ages are equally bidden to
watch, as those who "know not _what hour_ their Lord shall come."
But let us oftener and oftener, however we may differ in detail,
recite to one another the glorious essence of our hope. "To them that
look for Him will He appear the second time, without sin, unto
salvation"; "We shall meet the Lord in the air"; "So shall we be ever
with the Lord" (Heb. ix. 28, 1 Thess. iv. 17).
We shall never quite understand the chronology and process of
unfulfilled prophecy, till then.
Now briefly and in summary the Apostle concludes this "Epistle within
the Epistle"; this oracle about Israel. [Sidenote: Ver. 28.] =As
regards the Gospel,= from the point of view of the evangelization of
the world apart from Judaism, that "gospelling" which was, as it were,
precipitated by the rebellion of Israel, =they are enemies, on account
of you,= permitted, for your sakes, in a certain sense, to take a
hostile attitude towards the Lord and His Christ, and to be treated
accordingly; =but as regards the election,= from the point of view of
the divine choice, =they are beloved, on account of the Fathers;=
[Sidenote: Ver. 29.] =for irrevocable[202] are the gifts and the call
of our (τοῦ) God.= The "_gifts_" of unmerited choice, of a love
uncaused by the goodness of its object, but coming from the depth of
the Eternal; the "_call_" which not only invites the creature, but
effects the end of the invitation[203]; these are things which in
their nature are not variable with the variations of man and of time.
The nation so gifted and called, "not according to its works," is for
ever the unalterable object of the eternal affection.
May we not extend the reference of a sentence so absolute in its
oracular brevity, and take it to speak the secret of an indefectible
mercy not only to nation, but to individual? Here as elsewhere we
shall need to remember the rule which bids us, in the heights and
depths of all truth, "go to both extremes." Here as elsewhere we must
be reverently careful how we apply the oracle, and to whom. But does
not the oracle say this, that where the eternal Love has, without
merit, in divine speciality, settled upon a person, there, not
arbitrarily but by a law, which we cannot explain but which we can
believe, it abides for ever? Still, this is a reflection to be made
only in passing here. The immediate matter is a chosen people, not a
chosen soul; and so he proceeds: [Sidenote: Ver. 30.] =For as once you
obeyed not our (τῷ) God, but now,= in the actual state of things, in
His grace, =found mercy, on occasion of their disobedience;=
[Sidenote: Ver. 31.] =so they too now obeyed not, on occasion of your
mercy,= in mysterious connexion with the compassion which, in your
pagan darkness, revealed salvation to you,[204] =that they too may
find mercy.= Yes, even their "_disobedience_," in the mystery of
grace, was permitted _in order to_ their ultimate blessing; it was to
be overruled to that self-discovery which lies deep in all true
repentance, and springs up towards life eternal in the saving
"confidence of self-despair." The pagan (ch. i.) was brought to
self-discovery as a rebel against God indicated in nature; the Jew
(ch. ii.) as a rebel against God revealed in Christ. This latter, if
such a comparison is possible, was the more difficult and as it were
advanced work in the divine plan. It took place, or rather it is
taking and shall take place, later in order, and nearer to the final
and universal triumph of redemption. [Sidenote: Ver. 32.] =For God
shut them all (τοὺς πάντας) up into disobedience, that He might have
mercy upon them all.= With a _fiat_ of judicial permission He let the
Gentile develop his resistance to right into unnatural outrage. He let
the Jew develop his into the desperate rejection of his own glorious
Messiah. But He gave the _fiat_ not as a God who did not care, a mere
supreme Law, a Power sitting unconcerned above the scene of sin. He
let the disease burst into the plague-spot in order that the guilty
victim might ask at last for His remedy, and might receive it as mere
and most astonishing mercy.
Let us not misuse the passage by reading into it a vain hope of an
indiscriminate actual salvation, at the last, of all individuals of
the race; a predestinarian hope for which Scripture not only gives no
valid evidence, but utters against it what at least sound like the
most urgent and unequivocal of its warnings. The context here, as we
saw in another connexion just now, has to do rather with masses than
with persons; with Gentiles and Jews in their common characteristics
rather than taken as individuals. Yet let us draw from the words, with
reverent boldness, a warrant to our faith wholly to trust the Eternal
to be, even in the least fathomable of His dealings, true to Himself,
true to eternal Love, whatever be the action He shall take.
Here the Apostle's voice, as we seem to listen to it, pauses for a
moment, as he passes into unspoken thoughts of awe and faith. He has
now given out his prophetic burthen, telling us Gentiles how great has
been the sin of Israel, but how great also is Israel's privilege, and
how sure his coming mercy. And behind this grand special revelation
there still rise on his soul those yet more majestic forms of truth
which he has led us to look upon before; the Righteousness of God, the
justifying grace, the believing soul's dominion over sin, the fulness
of the Spirit, the coming glory of the saints, the emancipated
Universe, the eternal Love. What remains, after this mighty process of
spiritual discoveries, but to adore? Listen, as he speaks again, and
again the pen moves upon the paper:
[Sidenote: Ver. 33.] =Oh depth of wealth of God's wisdom and knowledge
too! How past all searching are His judgments, and past all tracking
are His ways!= [Sidenote: Ver. 34.] ="For who ever knew the Lord's
mind? Or who ever proved His counsellor?"[205]= [Sidenote: Ver. 35.]
=Or who ever first gave to Him, and requital shall be made to the
giver (αὐτῷ)?= [Sidenote: Ver. 36.] =Because out of Him, and through
Him, and unto Him, are all things[206]: to Him be the glory, unto the
ages. Amen.=
Even so, Amen. We also prostrate our being, with the Apostle, with the
Roman saints, with the whole Church, with all the company of heaven,
and give ourselves to that action of pure worship in which the
creature, sinking lowest in his own eyes, yea out of his own sight
altogether, rises highest into the light of his Maker. What a moment
this is, what an occasion, for such an approach to Him who is the
infinite and personal Fountain of being, and of redemption! We have
been led from reason to reason, from doctrine to doctrine, from one
link to another in a golden chain of redeeming mercies. We have had
the dream of human merit expelled from the heart with arrows of light;
and the pure glory of a grace most absolute, most merciful, has come
in upon us in its place. All along we have been reminded, as it were
in fragments and radiant glimpses, that these doctrines, these truths,
are no mere principles in the abstract, but expressions of the will
and of the love of a Person; that fact full of eternal life, but all
too easily forgotten by the human mind, when its study of religion is
carried away, if but for an hour, from the foot of the Cross, and of
the Throne. But now all these lines converge upwards to their Origin.
By the Cross they reach the Throne. Through the Work of the SON--One
with the FATHER, for of the Son too it is written (Col. i. 16) that
"all things are through Him, and unto Him"--through His Work, and in
it, we come to the Father's Wisdom and Knowledge, which drew the plan
of blessing, and as it were calculated and furnished all its means. We
touch that point where the creature gravitates to its final rest, the
vision of the Glory of God. We repose, with a profound and rejoicing
silence, before the fact of mysteries too bright for our vision. After
all the revelations of the Apostle we own with him in faith, with an
acquiescence deep as our being, the fact that there is no searching,
no tracking out, the final secrets of the ways of God. It becomes to
us wonderfully sufficient, in the light of Christ, to know that "the
Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious," is also Sovereign,
Ultimate, His own eternal Satisfaction; that it is infinitely fit and
blessed that, as His Will is the true efficient cause of all things,
and His Presence their secret of continuance, so He is Himself their
final Cause, their End, their Goal; they fulfil their idea, they find
their bliss, in being altogether His; "all things are UNTO HIM."
"_To whom be the glory, unto the ages. Amen._" The advancing "ages,"
αἰῶνες, the infinite developments of the eternal life, what do we
know about them? Almost nothing, except the greatest fact of all; that
in them for ever the redeemed creature will glorify not itself but the
Creator; finding an endless and ever fuller youth, an inexhaustible
motive, a rest impossible to break, a life in which indeed "they
_cannot_ die any more," in surrendering always all its blissful wealth
of being to the will and use of the BLESSED ONE.
In these "ages" we already are, in Christ. We shall indeed grow for
ever with their eternal growth, in Him, to the glory of the grace of
God. But let us not forget that we are already in their course, as
regards that life of ours which is hid with Christ in God. With that
recollection, let us give ourselves often, and as by the "second
nature" of grace, to adoration. Not necessarily to frequent long
abstractions of our time from the active services of life; we need
only read on into the coming passages of the Epistle to be reminded
that we are hallowed, in our Lord, to a life of unselfish contact with
all the needs around us. But let that life have for its interior, for
its animation, the spirit of worship. Taking by faith our all from
God, let us inwardly always give it back to Him, as those who not only
own with the simplest gratitude that He has redeemed us from
condemnation and from sin, but who have seen with an adoring intuition
that we and our all are of the "all things" which, being "of Him," and
"by Him," are also wholly "unto Him," by an absolute right, by the
ultimate law of our being, as we are the creatures of the eternal
Love.
[198] Such is the normal meaning of μυστήριον in the N. T. It is a
thing which in itself may or may not be what we mean by "mysterious."
But it is a thing which mere observation and reasoning cannot _à
priori_ arrive at; God must disclose it.
[199] Πλήρωμα is the practical realization of an ideal.
[200] So we paraphrase αὕτη αὐτοῖς ἡ παρ' Ἐμοῦ διαθήκη.
[201] The aorist εἰσέλθῃ may rather gather up the great ingathering
into one thought than mark a narrow crisis in it.
[202] Ἀμεταμέλητα: literally, "_unrepented-of_," and so, "_admitting
no repentance_," μεταμελεία, "_change of mind_." This is fairly
represented by "_irrevocable_."
[203] See above, p. 19.
[204] It is possible to render here: "_they did not obey your mercy_";
_i.e._, they refused submission to that Gospel in which you found
embodied the mercy of God. But the balance of thoughts and sentences
is in favour of the rendering above.
[205] He quotes nearly verbatim from Isai. xl. 13. Cp. Jerem.
xxiii. 18.
[206] Τὰ πάντα: the Greek gives us at once the items and the sum of
the "_all_."