Even John Murray, a leading amillennialist (one who does not believe in a literal, 1,000-year earthly kingdom promised to the Jews and ruled by Christ on the throne of David in Jerusalem, but who generally believes that God’s dealing with the nation of Israel ended with their rejection of Jesus Christ), cannot resist the power of the marvelous truth that Paul stresses here. In his commentary on Romans, Murray amazingly observes that “there cannot be irremediable rejection of Israel. The holiness of the theocratic consecration is not abolished and will one day be vindicated in Israel’s fulness and restoration” (The Epistle to the Romans [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965], p. 85).
In order to be faithful to His own Word, the Lord must provide a future salvation for Israel. Israel has not yet completely fulfilled God’s covenant promise to Abraham or His countless reiterations of that promise to redeem and restore Abraham’s descendants. If the root, Abraham and the other patriarchs, is holy, then the branches, their descendants, are holy too. They were divinely called and set apart before the foundation of the world and God’s work with those branches will not be complete until they bear the spiritual fruit He intends to produce in and through them, until the end of the age when they actually become the holy people they were destined to be.
“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness,” God said to Israel through Isaiah, “who seek the Lord: Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who gave birth to you in pain; when he was one I called him, then I blessed him and multiplied him” (Isa. 51:1-2). God established His permanent relationship with Israel through His covenant with their forefather, Abraham. They were consecrated as a people in the consecration of Abraham.
Paul continues with the figure of a tree: But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree.
Here the apostle makes his point by referring to the familiar practice of grafting. Olive trees were an agricultural and commercial mainstay in ancient Palestine and much of the Near East and Mediterranean areas, and still support a valuable industry in most of those regions today. Olive trees can live for hundreds of years, but as they age, they become less and less productive, and in order to restore productivity, branches from younger trees are grafted to old ones. When a branch ceased to produce olives, a younger one was grafted in its place.
That is the figure Paul uses here. The old, unproductive branches of Israel were broken off. Centuries earlier God had warned His people of what their continued unbelief and idolatry would bring. “The Lord called your name, ‘A green olive tree, beautiful in fruit and form’; with the noise of a great tumult He has kindled fire on it, and its branches are worthless. And the Lord of hosts, who planted you, has pronounced evil against you because of the evil of the house of Israel and of the house of Judah, which they have done to provoke Me by offering up sacrifices to Baal” (Jer. 11:16-17). Jesus Himself warned His own people Israel, “Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you, and be given to a nation [better, “a people” niv] producing the fruit of it” (Matt. 21:43).
In place of the unfaithful, unproductive branches of Israel, those of a wild olive, the believing Gentiles, were grafted in among them. Those Gentile branches, people from all nations who believe in the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, then became partaker with them, the believing descendants of Abraham, in the rich root of the olive tree, the root of divine blessing and of eternal relationship to God through salvation.
At the beginning of that verse, Paul makes clear that some, but not all, of the branches were broken off. That is also indicated by the phrase among them. There always had been a believing remnant in Israel, and many Jews believed in Christ during His earthly ministry and in the time of the early church. Probably until the end of the first century, most Christians, including all the apostles, were Jews. Those original Jewish branches remained attached to the rich root of God’s olive tree, as have Jewish branches from then until now. Gentile believers are joint heirs with them and of Abraham, “the father of all who believe without being circumcised [without being or becoming Jews], that righteousness might be reckoned to them” (Rom. 4:11).
Now comes a command to the Gentiles based on that truth: Do not be arrogant toward the branches, that is, the unbelieving Jews who were cut off; but if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the root (the promise to Abraham that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” Gen. 12:3), but the root supports you. The Gentiles themselves were not the source of blessing any more than believing Jews had been. Believing Gentiles are blessed by God because they are spiritual descendants of faithful Abraham. We are blessed because we have been grafted into the covenant of salvation that God made with Abraham and now graciously offers to all who believe in Abraham’s God. As Paul had explained to the churches in Galatia a few years earlier,
Even so Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the nations shall be blessed in you.” So then those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer. (Gal. 3:6-9)
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It is tragic and lamentable that, throughout much of church history, Jewish converts to Christ have often been subjected to attitudes of Gentile superiority and been shunned or reluctantly accepted into Christian fellowship.
Paul anticipated that, in spite of this clear truth, some of his Gentile readers would continue to argue against him. You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.”...
raying: