There was trouble brewing in the church in Rome. When Jewish Christians were allowed to return, new tensions arose. Conflict became a problem. Disagreements threatened church unity. And underneath it all was an emerging antisemitic pride. In Rom 11:17-24, Paul addresses a feeling among Gentile Christians that they somehow deserved salvation more than the Jews did. Not only is that kind of pride unloving, it is a contradiction of the Gospel Christians believe. We are sinners saved by grace. Christian faith is humble by definition.

Verses 25-32 contain two revelations about God's plan for the Jews that humble you so you don't stop believing. In verses 25-27, Paul announces what God’s plan is and backs it up from the Bible. Those verses are mostly just declarations. But then that changes explanation in verses 28-32. That second part is carried by words like “for” and “because” and “so that.” So I thought it would be helpful to arrange my headings around two things revealed here: first, what you need to know, and second, what you need to understand about God’s plan for the Jews. The goal is to humble you so your faith stays real.

You need to know what God is about to do (25-27)

Proverbs 3:5 says, "Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” Verse 19 shows that’s exactly what some Christians in Rome were doing. Leaning on their own understanding. Reasoning that if God removed the Jews in order to include Gentiles, that must mean Gentiles deserved it more. They look at that sweep of history and interpret it in a way that downplays grace and poisons real faith. Leaning on your own understanding is a good way to transform a Gospel-preaching Christian church into a faithless congregation of hypocrites who forget the Gospel altogether. “Leaning on your own understanding” is the opposite of “trusting in the LORD with all your heart.” Look at the end of verse 22: Paul encourages these Gentile Christians to continue believing in God’s kindness. And look at verse 23: Paul hopes the Jews will not continue in unbelief. So he’s hopeful that the Jews will one day stop not believing, and he is very concerned that the Romans not stop believing. He wants Gentile believers to keep believing and Jews to start believing. And for that to happen in this church in Rome, they need to stop leaning on their own understanding: [read v25a].

That word “unaware” is literally, in Greek, to be ignorant.[i] This is something you need to know. Paul calls it a “mystery.” A mystery isn’t a whodunnit, or a riddle, but something hinted at in the Old Testament that is now trumpeted in the New Testament.[ii] So what is it? [read v25b] You need to know two things here: first, what has happened. “A partial hardening” has “come upon” Israel. More accurately, “a hardening has partially come upon Israel.”[iii] God did not harden every single Jew. Verse 1 points out that Paul himself was spared. But the ones God hardens are completely hardened. Verse 7 teaches that the ones God chose or elected obtained salvation “but the rest were hardened.” I pictured this like their unbelief was like wet cement that God hardened. One scholar describes it as calcification that makes it harder and harder to move until you can’t.[iv] That’s what happened to most of the people Israel. They were calcified in their unbelief.

The second thing is that it’s not forever. It’s only “until the fullness of the Gentiles” comes in. It means “the full number.”[v] The full number of Gentiles God plans to save. I’ve been seeing a lot of news about low water levels and rivers running dry. So I found this story surprising. On the border of Argentina and Brazil is a waterfall called Iguazú Falls. Normally the flow of water is around 1.5 million litres per second. But they had to close the falls to tourists a couple of weeks ago because it’s running more than ten times normal—over 15 million litres per second. Well right now Gentiles are pouring in to God. But a day is coming when that flow will stop. When God will have finished saving the full number of Gentiles He has chosen to save. And do you see that little word in verse 25, “until”? It means when that day comes, the flood gates will burst open for Israel to come in. And Paul proves this from the Scriptures.

[read vv26-27] Paul quotes a blend of passages from Isa 29:7; 59:20-21, and Jer 31:33.[vi] [vii] The Bible says God’s anger will turn away from Israel and He will bring His people back. God will send the Deliverer from Zion.[viii] Christ will remove ungodliness from Jacob—another name for the people of Israel. God will bring the Jews into His covenant and take away their sins. Israel will be converted, made clean, and forgiven. In verse 26, Paul uses three future tense verbs in a row:[ix] Israel will be saved; the Deliverer will come; he will banish ungodliness from Israel. Which means Paul’s not talking about what Christ had already done. He’s talking about what Christ is still going to do. Part of that quote comes from Isa 27:9 which says He will remove Jacob’s sin. And three verses later Isaiah says God will gather in His people like a grain harvest, “one by one” and that wherever they are scattered, to Assyria, or to Egypt, “those who were lost… will come and worship the LORD on the holy mountain at Jerusalem,” (Isa 27:13). It says God will bring every individual of Israel, “one by one” and gather them in again. So “all Israel will be saved.” Every Jew on earth on that great day. Gathered to God “one by one.” Converted. Forgiven. Saved.

This is the mystery you need to know. Bible prophecy reveals how massive God’s plan is for the world. Before Christ came, God’s work of salvation focused on Israel. But from that first Advent to this very day, God’s work of salvation is gathering in His elect from the Gentiles while Israel remains hardened. And when that number is complete, no more Gentiles will be saved. But then all the Jews will. And they won’t owe their salvation to the fact that they’re Jewish. They will owe their salvation to the grace of God; to the power of the one who will rise up as their Deliverer.[x] There’s nothing as humbling as when you finally see your sin for what it is. It forces you to tremble before your holy God. It shocks your eyes wide open to your need for a Saviour. And at then in the Gospel, God shows you the Saviour you need: the Lord Jesus Christ. The very Son of God who bled and died under the outpouring of God’s wrath against sin that wasn’t his—that’s what it took to save you. When the Holy Spirit finally opens the eyes of the Jews to see that truth, there won’t be a single proud heart left among them. And among those whose eyes the Holy Spirit has already opened there is no room for pride that imagines you deserved what Christ did. There is no room for leaning on your own understanding and wisdom.

Bible prophecy reveals a plan so big it should make you feel very small. And very loved. And very grateful. The more you grasp of what God reveals in His Word about how He is moving and working in world history, and what He has in store in the future, the more you will realize that your own wisdom and understanding is a shallow little puddle. But God’s wisdom is an infinite ocean of understanding. Don’t let your little puddle make you proud. Let His ocean make you humble so that you trust Him. This great mystery is that God’s wise plan is that the Jews will stop not believing. And the reason you need to not be ignorant about this wise plan of God is so that you will not stop believing! Verses 25-32 contain two revelations about God's plan for the Jews that humble you so you don't stop believing. First, the “what”—God has hardened most of Israel for now, but when He finishes saving His elect from the Gentiles, then He will save all of Israel. So second…

You need to understand why God is about to do that (28-32)

Christians, especially Jewish Christians, suffered some intense persecution at the hands of Jews who were opposed to the message of the Gospel. Paul talks about that in his letter to the Thessalonians:

For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all mankind by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved… (1 Thess 2:14b-16a)

No wonder Gentile Christians began thinking of the Jews as enemies. So Paul helps them see how God sees the Jews. [read v28] This is God’s point of view. God sees them as enemies of the Gospel because of how they refuse the Gospel and then try to block it from spreading. But God also sees them as beloved. Not because he overlooks the way they oppose the Gospel, but because of the promises God made to their forefathers. “As regards election” means “from the stand point” of the choice God made to save Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and to elect children for Himself from their race, the Jews are still beloved by God. A few chapters later, Paul says the Lord Jesus himself ministered to the Jews [read Rom 15:8b]. Jesus confirmed God’s promises to the patriarchs. From the standpoint of God’s election and predestination of the multitude of Jews He plans to save, God still loves Israel. And God will never break His promises: [read v29].

“Irrevocable” is a legal word that means what God gave and what God promised, God will never take back.[xi] He won’t take back the gifts He gave to Israel. Paul listed them in Rom 9:4. The adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the Law, the worship, and the promises. These gifts were given to lead the Jews to believe in God and be saved. And God won’t take back His call. He called Abraham in Gen 12. And Gen 21:12 God promised to call people to save from among Isaac’s descendants—Paul quotes that verse in Rom 9:7. God’s promises and call cannot be taken back. They are irrevocable. And this has absolutely huge implications.

If you consider that chain of events in how people get saved, as Paul explains it in Rom 8:30, the ultimately decisive moment in salvation is not when you decide to follow Jesus, but when God decided to choose you. Your salvation was set in motion millennia before you were born. And everyone who God predestines, He calls; and everyone He calls, He justifies when they finally come to the point of believing in Jesus; and everyone He justifies by faith, He will one day raise from the dead and welcome into Glory. God’s election final. God does not take back His gifts. And God will never revoke His call. This is good news for believers whose hope and faith rests in the power of God. And it is good news for Israel. But is really bad news for pride. [read vv30-31]

Every single phrase here is designed to crush your pride. When God chose you Gentiles, you weren’t more deserving than the Jews—you were disobedient to God. But instead of throwing you into Hell, when the Jews disobeyed the Gospel, God gave you mercy. And see those first words in verse 30, “For just as…”? It means, in the same way God extended such mercy to disobedient old you, right now, the Jews are disobedient in order that the mercy God gave you is what He is about to use in turn to shower them with mercy.[xii] But this isn’t just about your story and your individual salvation. Paul has the whole world in view. [read v32] “Consigned” means “to make a prisoner.”[xiii] Paul teaches this in Romans 5. Sin came into the world and spread to all human beings and leads to condemnation for all people. So sin reigns and rules over all, holding the human race imprisoned, as Paul says here, “in disobedience.” “All” means the world. Jews and Gentiles. There are fools who twist this and try to claim this means God is going to save “all individuals without exception” but Paul’s meaning in this whole passage and in the whole book of Romans can lead to only once consistent conclusion, that God saves only His elect and that, with the flow of the whole argument in Romans 11, “all” here in verse 32 means Jews and Gentiles, not without exception, but without distinction.[xiv] And that’s what’s so humbling. That’s the mercy that crushes both antisemitic pride and semitic arrogance. Mercy that right now spares countless Gentiles the Hell we deserve and brings us, through faith in Christ, into the family of God; and mercy that will on the last day, spare countless Jews the eternal death their sins deserve, and bring them, through faith in the Messiah, back into the spiritual family of their ancestors.[xv]

Verses 25-32 contain two revelations about God's plan for the Jews that humble you so you don't stop believing. God has hardened most of the people of Israel until now. But as soon as God is finished saving the Gentiles He chose to save, He will save the Jews. Not a trickle of Jews like Paul saw come to Christ, or like we see even today. But a tsunami of Jewish converts who will suddenly, by a mighty work of the Holy Spirit, realize that Jesus is their Deliverer from Zion—and He will take away their sin and gather them in one by one and save them all. The plan of God is so big it should make you feel small. Rico Tice says if the Gospel isn’t the best news you’ve ever heard then you haven’t understood it.[xvi] Similarly, if the mercy of God doesn’t leave you breathless, then I guarantee you don’t yet get it. But you will.

Look at verse 30 again. The word “you” is plural in Greek. “You Gentiles.” This is B.C. and A.D. Before Christ came, “you Gentiles” were all disobedient to God. Meaning the whole world deserved death. Then came “the year of our Lord,” Ann domini. The Jews who were offered salvation rejected it and disobeyed God. That’s why God, ever since then, has been making His mercy known, in the message of the Gospel, to Gentiles.[xvii] [xviii] But His endgame is that at the very end of this age, He’s going to rain down mercy on the Jews. The year 2026, then, is somewhere near the tail end of “the Age of Mercy to the Gentiles.” And when this age is done, and the “full number of Gentiles” have been brought to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, then it will happen!

There’s a wonderful Hebrew word that Christians like to use: “Hallelujah.” Literally it means, “praise Yahweh.”[xix] And it is found in only once place in the entire New Testament: Revelation 19. A chapter predicting something that’s going to happen just before the Lord Jesus returns. A prophecy predicting a day when Jews will praise Yahweh. That’s why their praise is recorded in Hebrew.[xx] They will praise God when He finally judges and punishes the Roman Catholic Church (Rev 19:2).[xxi] [xxii] And they will praise God when they finally realize how merciful God has been, all this time, saving Gentiles through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (Rev 19:6-8).[xxiii] They will finally understand God’s mercy. Because they will see the Church, the Bride of Christ, ready and waiting for Her Lord, and they will see that God has made the Church beautiful.[xxiv] Clothed in the pure, bright linen of the righteous deeds of the people He made holy. And the multitude of Jews alive on that day will see it because God predestined them to see it; He chose their generation to bear witness to the reunion of the Church with our Saviour; He invited them to be guests at the wedding of His Son. And just as that great wedding celebration is about to happen, something else will happen that will fill the Universe with awe for the mercy of God: the wedding guests, the final generation of the Jewish people on that day, will be saved. They will believe in the Lamb. They will worship the Lord Jesus Christ. And they who are beloved by God for the sake of their forefathers, will love the Saviour who died for their sins. That’s why, the very next thing the angel says to the Apostle John in the Book of Revelation is this: “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” (Rev. 19:9 ESV) The blessing is that they will be folded into the Bride.[xxv] That day might be very soon. But Paul was concerned for the faith of these believers in Rome a long time ago. And that’s why he wrote this.

The church in Rome was in trouble. Conflict between believers. Disagreements over all sorts of things. Tension between Gentiles and Jews. And underneath it all was an emerging antisemitic pride. But Christian faith is humble by definition. Christians do not feel more deserving than anyone else. Christians stand in awe of grace. And if you’re a Christian who understands the mercy of God that saved your soul, and the mighty end-times mercy the Bible says is coming, it will humble you. And it should take your breath away. If it doesn’t, then you haven’t understood it.