A Remnant, Not an End

(Isaiah 6, Isaiah 29:9-16; Romans 11:1-15)

I’ve argued over the course of this sermon series that much of the book of Romans is a theological retelling of the history of Israel, and that in that theological story, chapters 9-11 retell the Exile—God’s judgment of Israel for their unfaithfulness to him. Paul’s insistence that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, even for Jews—and that Jews who reject Christ have no place in the people of God and no share in his salvation—raises the question of whether God’s promises have failed, but the Exile raised that question first, and the prophets grappled with it at some length.

Paul begins his own answer to this question by making the case that God’s choice of Israel as a nation had never guaranteed the salvation of every individual Israelite—and maybe not even close. His salvation was nothing they had earned, and it was nothing they could compel; God had freely chosen Israel, and if he wanted, he had every right to freely choose others. And even if they could have obeyed his law well enough to deserve salvation, they clearly hadn’t; rather, their disobedience and unfaithfulness were more than sufficient to justify God’s rejection of them.

And yet, Paul roundly declares that God has not rejected Israel; Paul himself is living proof of that, since he is an Israelite. God chose Israel as his people, and he chose them with full knowledge of everything that would happen—including their unfaithfulness and their rejection of their Messiah. God has not changed his mind, and there’s no reason he should, since nothing that happened was in any way a surprise to him. He hasn’t saved everyone in the nation, but by his grace, he has preserved a remnant for himself. It might look like nothing more than a twice-burned stump, but out of that stump, new life will come. No matter how great God’s judgment on his people, it will not be the end of them; he will always preserve some through it for himself.

Nor is this all there is to say. Israel rejected Jesus when they should have recognized him as their foundation stone, and so the promised Rock of their salvation was instead a stumbling block for them; but their stumble not only wasn’t the end of them as a people, it wasn’t the end of their place in God’s plan, or of God’s plan for them. Though God hardened most of Israel, saving only a remnant, he didn’t do so permanently; though they stumbled, it wasn’t his purpose for them to fall.

Instead, their stumble served a purpose in God’s plan for the world, and then ultimately for them as well. Their rebellion and rejection of God created the opportunity for the good news of salvation to come to the Gentiles; this in turn is designed to inspire jealousy among the Jews, and thus to provoke them to return to God and be saved. As the New Testament scholar Leon Morris put it, “the salvation of the Gentiles was intended . . . to arouse in Israel a passionate desire for the same good gift.” Out of Israel’s turning away from the Messiah, which was sin and failure and defeat, God brought great blessing for the world—but he isn’t going to stop there. His final purpose is the end of death, the resurrection of the dead and the renewal of the world, and that will involve the salvation of Israel. Their part isn’t over; God isn’t finished with them yet.

So what do we do with this passage? In the first place, obviously, we must recognize that Paul is turning here to address the Gentiles in the church to warn them—and us—against any feeling of superiority to their Jewish brothers and sisters, and indeed against the idea that they can be the people of God, that they can be the church, without the Jews. Christianity has too often down the centuries been used to justify anti-Semitism, and that’s absolutely forbidden here, because it’s absolutely contrary to the gospel, and to the will and character of God. It is, in fact, the same sin Israel committed in refusing to realize that God hadn’t chosen them so they could be better than the rest of the world, but so they could bless the rest of the world. It’s the refusal to understand that what God is doing isn’t all about us, and it isn’t all for us.

When we frame it this way, we see that there’s a deeper concern here—I don’t say a bigger concern than how we are to treat Jews, but a deeper one that underlies the temptation to anti-Jewish arrogance. It’s the temptation to spiritual pride. It may show itself in a conscious attitude of superiority to others, as it evidently was among the Gentile Christians in Rome; but it may not. That’s a symptom, not the disease itself. It’s the desire to make my faith all about me—indeed, to make it my faith; it’s the failure to admit and acknowledge our absolute and utter dependence on grace, both from God and from other people. It’s the belief that God chose me because I deserve it, because I’m good enough to earn my salvation. As Paul will go on to say later in this chapter, this attitude isn’t only sinful, it’s delusional and dangerous.

The bottom line here is the grace of God, and this is our hope. He has preserved a remnant of Israel for himself and his name’s sake, not because anyone or anything required it, but by his gracious choice—it’s all a part of his choice of Abraham, and the promises he made to Abraham beginning in Genesis 12. He has reached out beyond Israel to make us a part of his people, and that too is purely an act of grace, pure gift. And if in our day the church seems to be captured by the surrounding culture, as Israel was, and to demand that God conform to the supposed wisdom of the world, that won’t be the end of us, either, because it isn’t about our deserving, it’s about his choice, his will, his love—and they are all free of us, completely free.

Whatever may come, God’s plan has already included it, and though his people may stumble, we will never entirely fall; he will use it to his purpose, and there will always be a remnant. His choice never fails, for there is nothing that happens that he didn’t already know; his plan never fails, for everything that happens is already a part of it; his promises never fail, for there is nothing in all creation that could make him change his mind; and his love and grace never fail, for they are infinite beyond our ability to comprehend. Whatever may come, he is faithful. Let’s pray.

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