Chapter # 11 Paragraph # 5 Study # 7
June 16, 2019
Humble, Texas
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1769 Translation:
30 For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief:
31 Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy.
32 For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.
1901 ASV Translation:
30 For as ye in time past were disobedient to God, but now have obtained mercy by their disobedience,
31 even so have these also now been disobedient, that by the mercy shown to you they also may now obtain mercy.
32 For God hath shut up all unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.
- I. A Second Rationale.
- A. Romans 11:29 begins with gar, which is "a conjunction used to express cause, explanation, inference, or continuation" (Logos Library System), and it sets forth an explanation of why the hateful Jews are "beloved".
- 1. From the perspective of God's divine "election" of people to fulfill the commitments He made to the "fathers", and which they believed, this generation of hateful rebels are "beloved" as a part of the flow of generations that will ultimately come to the fulfillment of all of the promises regarding Messiah and His Kingdom.
- a. Being "beloved" only means that they are "considered valuable" in view of some objective and/or some process. It does not mean that, as rebels, they shall receive from the Lord those benefits which are restricted to those who "love what He loves" and "believe what He declares as truth".
- b. The "objective" identified in this text is "the fulfillment of the promises to the fathers" who trusted in Him (11:28). One of those promises was identified by Paul in 4:18 as Abraham becoming "the father of many nations".
- c. These "beloved" enemies of the Gospel were to be considered "valuable" because they would produce the offspring of Israel as numerous as "the sand of the sea" (9:27), out of which would arise "the children of the promise" as a "remnant that shall be saved"; an "elect" remnant within the larger body of "Israel" (9:6) exemplified by God's intervention with Saul of Tarsus to turn him into the Paul of God.
- 2. Thus, the current generation of Gentiles need to recognize that they are to bear no sense of superiority over the Jews. "Election" is not just of the generation of Jews who are proving to be hateful enemies of the Gospel, it is also of the generation of Gentiles who are proving to be receptive to that Gospel, and "election" is of "Grace" so that no "sense of superiority" can legitimately exist.
- B. So now, 11:30, also beginning with gar, sets forth a second rationale regarding the previous declaration of the "beloved" status of the Jews who are "enemies" because of their opposition to the Gospel.
- 1. Continuing under the general thesis of "election" from 11:28, Paul now gives a second rationale for the Gentiles to not be arrogant toward the Jews.
- 2. His words are "...just as [verse 30]...so [verse 31]...".
- II. This Rationale.
- A. First, there was a time, not long before the present, when the Gentiles were in a state of "alienation from God" (Ephesians 2:12; 4:18; Colossians 1:21) that has now been reversed.
- 1. This "state of alienation" is called by Paul "you were unpersuaded by The God" (which, ipso facto, led to "disobedience" as the Authorized Version often translates the term, though in this text it is "have not believed").
- 2. But now they are in a state of being shown "mercy".
- 3. And the catalyst for this altered "state" was the attitude of the Jews in their alienation from God.
- a. This "state of alienation" is also called "unpersuasion" (translated "unbelief" in the Authorized Version).
- b. But the rationale is what Paul developed earlier when he claimed that God was turning to the Gentiles to extend mercy to them to "provoke" the Jews to jealousy).
- B. Second, there is a present condition in which the Jews are now in the state of alienation that characterized the Gentiles not too long ago.
- 1. And this present condition of the Jews has resulted in the Gentiles being shown mercy.
- 2. And this display of mercy to the Gentiles is going to result in mercy to the Jews.
- III. The Backdrop.
- A. God uses the disintegration of "faith" so that a people come under wrath, so that He works to bring them back into "faith", so that they receive the benefit of "Grace".
- B. Everyone has been subjected to this reality. The large cycle began in early Genesis where God is recorded as "striving with men" (Genesis 6:3) to bring about blessing with gradually diminishing returns so that He destroyed all mankind except for those on the ark. He then returned to His striving with men unto blessing, but, again, with rapidly diminishing returns so that He confused their languages and turned His attention to Abram. Over a long period of time, His dealings with Abram produced a special "nation" of people under His blessing. But, they also were "afflicted" with the germ of depravity so that they actively participated in the gradual diminishing returns until they reached the outer boundaries of rebellion in their hatred for God as revealed by their murder of His Special Provision for Blessing, Jesus. It was at this point in history that Paul was made an apostle and began to declare that God had, once again, turned from those He had marked for blessing to those who had been languishing in their own moral quagmire and were "not My people". Thus, began another long period of divine "striving" for blessing for the "not My people". But, Paul declares that the future will repeat the past as God will, once again, turn from "striving" with the "not My people" (there is an "end" to "the time of the Gentiles" (11:25)) in order to bring "all Israel" to His salvation. The Bible also reveals that the cycle will not end at the point of "salvation for all Israel" but will, once again, be subject to a long period of diminishing returns that will climax with a world-wide rebellion against the rule of Messiah: at this point the cycle will end with the final destruction of all the wicked and the final judgment of God upon them.
- C. Paul uses this "Big Picture" reality to argue for the Gentiles to maintain some level of humility in the face of the facts of God's pattern of cyclical dealings with human kind until His Plan has reached its zenith and Eternity dawns.
- IV. The Final Argument.
- A. The cycle is that one group is subjected to the processes of "an absence of persuasion" (resulting in unbelief) so that another group might be brought into "persuasion"; then, the latter group is subjected to those "processes of an absence of persuasion" so that (by jealousy) the former group is returned to "persuasion".
- 1. The methodology is "jealousy" (11:11 and 11:14); indeed, a curious means.
- 2. And the process is cyclical.
- B. Paul's words are "The God has shut up the whole unto 'unpersuasion' in order that the whole might be shown mercy".