Romans 11:28-29

“ As touching the gospel, they are, it is true, enemies for your sakes; but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sake; for the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. ”

To sum up, Israel are in a two-fold relation to God, at once enemies and beloved; but the latter character will carry it in the end over the former. The term ἐχθρός, hated, opposed as it is here to ἀγαπητός, beloved, can only be taken in the passive sense: an object of the hatred, that is to say, of the just wrath of God; comp. chap. Romans 5:10. It needs not be said that when the feeling of hatred is applied to God, we must eliminate from it all admixture of personal resentment, or of the spirit of revenge. God hates the sinner in the same sense in which the sinner ought to hate himself, that is to say, his own life. This sentiment is only the hatred of holiness to evil; and then to the wicked man in so far as he is identified with evil.

The words: as concerning the gospel, refer to what was said above: that the Jews being once determined not to abandon their law and their monopoly founded on it, needed to be struck with blindness, so that they might not discern in Jesus their Messiah; otherwise a Judaized gospel would have hindered the offer of salvation to the Gentile nations. The apostle might therefore well add to the words: as concerning the gospel, the further clause: for your sakes.

But in every Jew there is not only an object of the wrath of God, there is an object of His love. If it is asked how these two sentiments can co-exist in the heart of God, we must remark, first, that the same is the case up to a certain point with respect to every man. In every man there co-exist a being whom God hates, the sinner, and a being whom He still loves, the man created in His image, and for whom His Son died. Then it must be considered that this duality of feelings is only transitory, and must issue finally either in absolute hatred or perfect love; for every man must arrive at the goal either absolutely good or absolutely bad of his moral development, and then the divine feeling will be simplified (see on chaps. Romans 5:9-10).

The words: as touching the election, must not be referred, as Meyer will have it, to the elect remnant, as if Paul meant that it is in consequence of this indestructible elect that God always loves Israel. The antithesis to the expression: as concerning the gospel, leads us rather to see in election the divine act by which God chose this people as the salvation people. This idea is reproduced in the following verse by the expression: ἡ κλῆσις τοῦ Θεοῦ, the calling of God.

This notion of election is closely connected with the explanatory regimen: for the fathers' sake. It was in the persons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that the divine election of Israel was originally realized, and through them that it was transmitted to the whole people. The love with which God loved the fathers continues toward their descendants “even to a thousand generations” (Exo 20:6). Only let the hearts of the children return to their fathers, that is to say, let them return to the sentiments of their fathers (Malachi 4:6; Luke 1:17), and the beneficent cloud which is always spread over their head will again distil its dew on them.

Vv. 29. This verse justifies the assurance of salvation expressed in favor of Israel in the second proposition of Romans 11:28. The gifts of God might denote divine favors in general; but it seems to us more in harmony with the context, which refers throughout to the destination of Israel, to give this term the special meaning which it usually has in St. Paul's Epistles. He there uses the word to denote the moral and intellectual aptitudes with which God endows a man with a view to the task committed to him. And who can fail to see that the people of Israel are really endowed with singular qualities for their mission as the salvation-people? The Greeks, the Romans, the Phoenicians had their special gifts in the different domains of science and art, law and politics, industry and commerce. Israel, without being destitute of the powers related to those spheres of mundane activity, have received a higher gift, the organ for the divine and the intuition of holiness. The calling of God is on the one hand the cause, on the other the effect of those gifts. It is because God called this people in His eternal counsel that He entrusted the gifts to them; and it is because he enriched them with those gifts that in the course of time He called them to fulfil the task of initiating the world in the way of salvation, and of preparing salvation for the world. Of this august mission they have for the time been deprived: instead of entering first, they will enter last. But their destination is nevertheless irrevocable; and through the overflowing of divine mercy (chap. Romans 5:20) it will be realized in them at the period announced by the apostle, when, saved themselves, they will cause a stream of life from above to flow into the heart of Gentile Christendom (Romans 15:12; Romans 15:15; Romans 15:25-26).

This irrevocable character of Israel's destination has nothing in it contrary to individual liberty; no constraint will be exercised. God will let unbelieving generations succeed one another as long as shall be necessary, until that generation come which shall at length open its eyes and return freely to Him. And even then the movement in question will only be a national and collective one, from which those shall be able to withdraw who refuse decidedly to take part in it. Only it is impossible that the divine foreknowledge in regard to Israel as a people (“the people whom God foreknew,” Romans 11:2) should terminate otherwise than by being realized in history.

There is nothing in this passage pointing to a temporal restoration of the Jewish nation, or to an Israelitish monarchy having its seat in Palestine. The apostle speaks only of a spiritual restoration by means of a general pardon, and the outpouring of the graces which shall flow from it. Will there be a political restoration connected with this general conversion of the people? Or will it not even precede the latter? Will not the principle of the reconstitution of races, which in our day has produced Italian unity, German unity, and which is tending to the unity of the Slavs, also bring about Israelitish unity? These questions do not belong to exegesis, which confines itself to establishing these two things (1) That according to apostolical revelation, Israel will be converted in a body; (2) That this event will be the signal of an indescribable spiritual commotion throughout the whole church.

The theme of the chapter is properly exhausted; we are furnished with light from all points of view, that of right, that of cause, and that of aim, on the mysterious dispensation of the rejection of Israel. Nothing remains but to gather up what has been said of the past and future of this elect people into a general view of God's plan as to the religious progress of humanity. This is what the apostle does in Romans 11:30-32.