Israel's Rejection Not Final

Concerning the gospel they [the Jews] are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For as you were once disobedient to God, yet have now obtained mercy through their disobedience, even so these also have now been disobedient, that through the mercy shown you they also may obtain mercy. For God has committed them all to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all. Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! (Romans 11:28-33).

Read Romans 11:1-33 here.

No one was ever saved by virtue of their physical, genetic connection to Abraham. God has always considered those to be children of Abraham – Israel, God’s chosen people – who were Abraham’s children by faith. Jesus makes this case to the Pharisees in chapter eight of St. John’s Gospel.[1] Jesus says that the Pharisees, because of their unbelief, are not children of Abraham, but of the devil, because Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.[2] God cultivated the nation of Israel to bring forth Jesus, the Seed. He is truly Abraham’s offspring, the promised Seed, true Israel.[3] And we know that Scripture has confined all, Jew and Gentile, under sin, that the promise of redemption might be given to all who believe.[4] It is therefore also accurate to say, as St. Paul does, that God has committed them all (the Jews) to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all.[5] This does not guarantee that all Jews, because they are Jewish, will either come to faith in Christ, or be saved according to some other plan apart from Christ. As St. Paul says elsewhere, the veil of Moses remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament among the Jews, because the veil is taken away in Christ.[6]

St. Paul quotes the prophet Jeremiah prophesying about the nation of Israel and their spiritual adultery, to show that not all of Israel according to the flesh (indeed, rather only a small portion of it) would come to faith in Christ and be saved. St. Paul compares the situation to that of Elijah hiding in the cave afraid for his life. Elijah laments to God that the whole of Israel has turned against God and was seeking to kill him. But God tells Elijah that God had reserved to Himself a remnant, 7,000 men who had not bowed the knee to Baal.[7] God will save the Jews, as He saved St. Paul, as He saved all of faithful Israel, as he saves Jew and Gentile today – through faith in the promised Seed, Christ.

St. Paul likens the falling away of his fellow Israelites in the flesh to branches being broken off an olive tree. Dead branches were broken off, and wild olive branches were grafted in. It is no accident that St. Paul writes this way. God called Israel, “Green Olive Tree, Lovely and of Good Fruit”.[8] But, because they broke the covenant by worshipping false gods, God, through the prophet Jeremiah, proclaimed the following: With the noise of a great tumult He has kindled fire on it, And its branches are broken.[9] But Jesus, the Seed of Abraham, the Righteous Branch, is Israel reduced to one. He did all the things Israel could not do. He kept the Law perfectly. He died as the atoning sacrifice for the sin of the world.[10] He rose from the dead. Christ conquered sin, death, and the devil; He gives us the gifts of forgiveness and eternal life that He won for us, by His grace, through faith in Him.

Jesus describes Himself as the True Vine, and He calls those who believe in Him branches: I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.[11] We are connected to Christ, the True Vine, to His death and resurrection, through baptism.[12] We are nourished through the life-giving sap of Word and Sacrament. We are fed by Christ’s true body and blood given us to eat and to drink in the Sacrament of the Altar, the Lord’s Supper. We are fed when we do not despise preaching and God’s Word, but rather hold it sacred, and gladly hear and learn it. And, as we are nourished by the True Vine, we branches bear much fruit. Cutting ourselves off from these things is to cut one’s self off from the True Vine. A severed branch remains green and supple for a short time after it is cut, but is soon dry and dead. Such is the risk we run when we neglect the assembling of ourselves together.[13]

All Israel will indeed be saved. True Israel, those connected to the True Vine, do not reject the call of repentance, and the gift of forgiveness of sins and eternal life which God gives us in Christ, through faith in Him. They, who sleep in the dust of the earth, shall awake to everlasting life on the Last Day.[14] This is the will of the Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life, and be raised up at the last day.[15]

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[1] John 8:37-40

[2] Galatians 3:6

[3] Genesis 22:18; Galatians 3:16

[4] Galatians 3:22

[5] Romans 11:32

[6] 2 Corinthinas 3:16

[7] 1 Kings 19:18; Romans 11:4

[8] Jeremiah 11:16

[9] Ibid.

[10] 1 John 4:10

[11] John 15:5-6

[12] Romans 6:3-5

[13] Hebrews 10:25

[14] Daniel 12:1-3;

[15] John 6:39-40

The True Vine

Christ: The True Vine

“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

Jesus is the vine. The vine carries the nourishing sap to the branches, from which fruit will grow. We are the branches. In order to produce fruit, we branches must remain connected to the vine. Branches which are disconnected from the vine and do not receive sap do not produce fruit. God the Father, the Vinedresser, removes those dead branches. Every branch that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Just as branches must abide in the vine in order to bear fruit, we must abide in Christ to bear fruit. Without Christ, we can do nothing. Apart from Christ we are dead, fruitless branches. Such branches are broken off and cast into the fire.

What is the fruit of which Jesus speaks? Good deeds? Certainly. We know that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.[1] Certainly a disciple of Christ who abides in Him and keeps His Word will exhibit these fruits to a greater, or lesser, degree. A good tree, Jesus teaches, cannot bear bad fruit. One does not collect figs from thistles. But Jesus is not simply talking about doing good deeds; He certainly isn’t telling His disciples to do good works in order to merit, increase, or strengthen their connection to the vine. After all, it is the Vinedresser’s job to graft branches into the vine, and cleanse the vine by pruning it back.[2]

God does this grafting in and pruning through His holy Word. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.[3] God’s Word lives and abides forever, and through it men are born again.[4] The Gospel of Christ is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes.[5] Through His Word God shows us our sin; He brings us to repentance. In we who were spiritually dead and the enemies of God by our nature, He creates faith though the power of the Holy Spirit, working through His Word. Using His tools of word, water, bread and wine, He cleanses us from our sin and grafts us into the True Vine, where we receive the gifts of forgiveness of sins and everlasting life, won for us by the death and resurrection of Jesus.

We are still called to bear fruits worthy of repentance.[6] Our good works are evidence of our faith; faith without such works is dead.[7] You cannot separate faith from its natural fruit of good works. If you have one, the other follows naturally. And so, as St. Paul explains to the Philippians, we work out our faith in fear and trembling.[8] We cannot boast about all the good things we do; we cannot boast about our salvation. God’s action is the cause of both. And though we work out our salvation with fear and trembling, we go about it doing the works which God prepared beforehand for us to do.[9] It is God who works in you, both to will and to do, for His good pleasure.[10]

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[1] Galatians 5:22-23

[2] Romans 11:11-26

[3] Romans 10:17

[4] 1 Peter 1:22-23

[5] Romans 1:16

[6] Matthew 3:8

[7] James 2:14-26

[8] Philippians 2:12-13

[9] Ephesians 2:10

[10] Philippians 2:13