JEWISH SALVATION

[Ro 11:11] to make them jealous. Now if their transgression be riches for the world and their failure be riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fulfillment be! But I am speaking to you who are Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle of Gentiles, I magnify my ministry, if somehow I might move to jealousy my fellow countrymen and save some of them. For if their rejection be the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? (11:12–15c)

God’s second objective in setting Israel aside was to make her jealous of Gentiles. To make translates a Greek infinitive with a preposition and carries the idea of purpose. And although jealousy is essentially a negative term, God’s intention was for Israel’s jealousy of Gentiles to be a positive stimulus to draw His people back to Himself. But Jews had long disdained Gentiles, whom they considered to be outside the boundaries of God’s grace. To be told they had lost their special relationship to God was distressing enough, but to be told that God offered that forfeited relationship to Gentiles was a bitter pill indeed.

Paul already had reminded his Jewish readers of God’s ancient revelation concerning His purpose for the Gentiles. Through Moses He said, “I will make you jealous by that which is not a nation, by a nation without understanding will I anger you,” and through Isaiah said, “I was found by those who sought Me not, I became manifest to those who did not ask for Me” (Rom. 10:19–20).

But God’s ultimate purpose in setting Israel aside was not to drive His people further away but to bring them back to Himself. He wanted to make them face their own sin and its consequences, to sense their alienation from Jehovah and to recognize their need for the salvation that He now offered the Gentiles. As Jews see the Lord pour out the kind of blessings on the Gentile church that once were reserved for Israel, some of them desire that blessing for themselves and come to Jesus Christ, their spurned Messiah, in repentance and faith. That happens with individual Jews throughout this age, and will one day happen to the whole nation.

One of the great ironies of history is the relationship of God’s chosen people (the Jews) to the rest of humanity (the Gentiles). Anti–Semitism by Gentiles has often been paralleled by, and sometimes precipitated by, the anti–Gentile sentiments of Jews. It therefore was—and no doubt still is for many Jews—an enormous leap from a negative contempt of Gentiles to a positive jealousy of them. Yet that is precisely the leap the Lord intends for them to make as a first step in bringing them back to Him.

It should be the desire of every Christian to manifest the spiritual realities of a transformed life that would draw unbelieving Jews to belief in our Lord and their Messiah, a witness that would tap their divinely-inspired jealousy of Gentiles and be used to turn it to a divinely-desired faith in His Son.

Unfortunately, the Christianity that Jews see in many professed, and even some genuine, Christians reflects little of the love and righteousness of Christ and of the salvation He brings. When they see Gentile Christians who are dishonest and immoral, and especially those who are anti-Semitic in the name of Christ (who was the supremely perfect Jew), they are deeply and understandably offended and repulsed. They are anything but jealous of such Gentiles, and they distance themselves still further from the Lord instead of drawing closer to Him.
A future time will come when the nation will recognize her Messiah, repent of killing Him, and be saved (Zech. 12:10).

God has used even the great transgression of Israel in rejecting her Messiah to accomplish His ultimate purpose of bringing spiritual riches to the world, that is, the Gentiles, just as He had declared to Abraham when He first called Israel to Himself: “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). Although Israel failed to witness to the world in righteousness, God caused her to witness to the world, as it were, in unrighteousness. Because the Lord could not use Israel’s faithfulness to bring riches to the Gentiles, He instead used her failure.

But how much more will their [the Jews’] fulfillment be! Paul exults. That is, if the Lord has used Israel’s great transgression of rejecting her Messiah to bless the Gentile world, how much more will He bless the world when Israel turns to Him in faith and the glorious millennial kingdom comes.

Earlier in the letter Paul had used another extreme contrast to portray the greatness of God’s love and grace: “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life” (Rom. 5:8–10). If a dead Savior could redeem us, how much more can a living Savior sustain us.

By the same logic, if a faithless Israel could bring salvation to the Gentiles, how much greater blessing will her faithfulness bring. The Lord promises that when Israel one day receives the Messiah she rejected, He “will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced” (Zech. 12:10). “In that day a fountain will be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for impurity” (13:1). Following that, “the Lord will be king over all the earth; in that day the Lord will be the only one, and His name the only one.… And there will be no more curse,… Then it will come about that any who are left of all the nations… will go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts” (14:9, 11, 16).
In that day the Lord Jesus Christ will establish His kingdom on earth, Israel will reign with Him, and her people will become the faithful witnesses and blessing to the world that God always intended them to be. And in that day when Israel turns to Christ, Satan will be bound, the heavens and earth will be renewed, justice will prevail on earth, and there will be worldwide righteousness and universal peace. That will be the much more blessing that Israel’s faith will bring to the world.

As this spiritual revival of Israel begins during the Great Tribulation, the Lord will seal for Himself “one hundred and forty-four thousand… from every tribe of the sons of Israel” (Rev. 7:4), and through their faithful witness “a great multitude [of Gentiles], which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, [will stand] before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches [will be] in their hands” (v. 9). The fruit of Israel’s faithful fulfillment will be worldwide salvation. That also will go on during the kingdom, as Jews lead Gentiles to the Lord Christ.

Paul reaches deeper into the evidence of his own genuine affection for Israel. I am speaking to you who are Gentiles, he says, and inasmuch then as I am an apostle of Gentiles, I magnify my ministry. In other words, he does not want to underplay his special calling to reach the Gentile world for Christ. He emphasized that calling wherever he ministered (see Acts 18:6; 22:21; 26:17–18; Eph. 3:8; 1 Tim. 3:7). But he also knew that “salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22), and that “the gospel … is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16). In addition to that knowledge, he had great personal love for his fellow Jews and “great sorrow and unceasing grief in [his] heart” because of their lostness. “For I could wish that I myself were accursed,” he testified, “separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites” (Rom. 9:3–4). His constant “heart’s desire and… prayer to God [was] for… their salvation” (10:1). His special calling to and love for the unsaved Gentile world in no way diminished his affection for unsaved fellow Jews and for unbelieving Israel as a people.

He therefore makes no apology for his own intention, which reflected his Lord’s intention to bring to jealousy [his] fellow countrymen and save some of them. In addition to wanting to bring Gentiles to salvation for their own sakes, he also wanted their salvation to be God’s instrument for redeeming Jews. And if their rejection can lead to the reconciliation of the world, he goes on to say, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? The tragedy of their rejection will be surpassed by the glory of their acceptance.

In speaking of life from the dead, Paul was not referring to bodily resurrection. Regarding individual Jews, he was speaking of receiving spiritual life as a gracious gift to displace spiritual death, the wage of unbelief. Regarding Israel, he was speaking of its rebirth and the rebirth of the whole world in the glorified millennial kingdom of God (see, e.g., Isa. 11:1–9; Rev. 20). In that glorious day, even “the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21).

MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1991). Romans (Ro 11:12). Chicago: Moody Press.