Romans 11:12

THE SALVATION OF THE JEWS

‘Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?’

Romans 11:12

Either these words of St. Paul in this eleventh chapter of Romans mean nothing or they mean what they say, that at some future time—how it will happen we know not—illumination will come to the hearts of the Jews, conviction to their minds, and the whole body of the Jews, so wonderfully preserved, will turn to Christ and enter the Catholic Church.

I. Consider the marvellous manner in which the Jewish nation, driven from their own land, their temple destroyed, the Holy City trampled under the feet of the Moslem, persecuted, scattered, despised, has yet been kept undestroyed, unmelted into other nations. Surely this is for a purpose. Surely this must be due to God’s providence. And when we look at the promises of old made to patriarchs and by prophets, we must come to the conclusion that at some time or other the Jewish people will turn to Christ. And when they do turn, what an infusion of strength it will be to Christ’s Church; how it will draw all those who have been wandering after their own lights as by a magnet into the Church, and how the variances in the Church will necessarily disappear (Is. Romans 11:13).

II. Surely this points to the cessation of all party feeling in Christ’s Church.—Nothing, I take it, but the conversion of the Jews en masse will dissolve this antagonism, and so all men become of one mind in God’s house. But see how that St. Paul, not in one passage only, speaks of the restoration of the Jews. In the Epistle to the Hebrews (Romans 8:8), we have this assurance: ‘Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt.’

III. A new Covenant.—What can that be but the Covenant—the New Testament—the reception into the Church with all its promises, all its graces, all its sanctity, all its glorious hopes? Do these words mean anything? We dare not say that they are empty words, that they contain no promise. A certain nation and certain known events in its history are spoken of, events that apply to no other people whatever. The words of the apostle agree with those of the prophet (Jeremiah 31).

Rev. S. Baring-Gould.