As regards the glad tidings, [they are] enemies on your account; but as regards election, beloved on account of the fathers.
God gives two verdicts on Israel at once. As to the gospel they are enemies; as to His choice they are loved. So has God finished with the Jewish people, or does their unbelief serve a purpose in a plan He has not dropped?
The two halves of the verse look at Israel from different angles, and they belong to different times. One writer traces both, and says what God will and will not go back on.
The Jews proved hostile to the gospel instead of being saved by it. God turns that, as we have seen, into His gracious call of the Gentiles in the meantime. But in the last days the love of election will still prove faithful to the sons for the sake of the fathers... He may regret creation (Genesis 6), but never what grace gave in promise to Abraham and to his offspring.
The enmity has a purpose. God treats the nation as an enemy and puts its promises on hold. Into that gap He gathers the Gentiles.
"As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake" — and God treats them as such. Their own distinctive promises are put on hold, so that He may gather the Gentiles into the church... These are words often quoted, but rarely applied the way the Spirit of God applies them here — to the calling and promises of the nation of Israel!
Their hostility was not passive. It showed itself in resisting the very mercy now reaching outsiders:
Instead of accepting it and believing themselves, they are enemies. The apostle says they hinder us "from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved."
Notice where the love rests. Not on what Israel is now, but on promises made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
As regards the gospel, they are enemies as a people, so that the Gentiles may be brought in. But as regards the election of the people, they are loved for the sake of their fathers. Clearly this is the election of the people. It stands in contrast with blessing through the gospel, and the ground of their being loved is the fathers — as we find again and again in the Old Testament, in places like Exodus 32:13 and Leviticus 26:42.
Some read "Israel" here as a picture of the church. Neither half of the verse fits Christians, and the choosing it names is not the choosing that takes people to heaven.
This does not apply at all to what people call the spiritual Israel, for they are friends as regards the gospel, and loved by God the Father — not because of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Take it as the literal nation of Israel, and everything is simple... The election spoken of here is the election of the beloved people Israel. It must not be confused with the election according to grace, by which, during the time of Israel's rejection, called Jews and Gentiles are taken for heaven. The first is a national election, the second an individual election, which sets us in far greater blessing, since its aim and result are to bring us into heaven.
God may discipline Israel hard and for a long time, and His choice still stands. How God governs the earth is one thing; what He has purposed is another.
In God's government of the earth, Israel, or a great part of it, may be cut off because of sin and unbelief. "Lo-ammi" — "not my people" — may stand written over the nation for centuries. But God's affection and final purpose never change, and Israel can never stop being the nation of His choice.
The promise stands, but Israel will not collect it as a debt. Losing every claim is what makes the final blessing pure gift.
Through this unbelief they lose all right to the promises. So they must receive what the promise gives on the ground of pure mercy and the sovereign grace of God, just like the poor Gentile... Their apparent loss of everything is only the means of their receiving everything from sovereign grace, instead of having it by human righteousness or by a promise they never forfeited.
God still loves them for the sake of their fathers. So taking their promises for ourselves is no harmless way to read the Bible.
He loves Israel — loves them for the sake of their fathers. We can be sure He will not approve our meddling with their place, their portion, or their future.
- Two angles. As to the gospel, Israel stands as an enemy. As to God's choice, the same people are loved. One nation, two true verdicts.
- Your sake. God holds their promises in suspense so that He can gather the Gentiles in. Their enmity serves the mercy now reaching you.
- Their fathers. The love rests on promises made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not on Israel's record. So Israel's failure cannot cancel it.
- Government, not purpose. God may write "not my people" over them for centuries, yet they never stop being the nation He chose.
- Mercy alone. They forfeited every claim. So the promise reaches them as it reached you — pure mercy, not a reward for human righteousness.
For the gifts and the calling of God [are] not subject to repentance.
Paul has just said that Israel's rejection is not the end of its story. This verse gives the reason, and it turns on one word: irrevocable. What does God never take back, and whom is He speaking about?
Older translations render this "without repentance," which can confuse a reader. It does not mean God feels no regret about anything. It means He never changes His mind about what He has given and whom He has called. One writer contrasts God's acts with God's gifts:
If God is the giver of the blessing, He does not change. The gifts of God are without change of mind on His part. When it is not a gift or a calling of God, He may repent. So He repented of making the world (Gen. 6:6), as we are told; and He destroyed it. That was not a gift; it was simply an act, however immense. But in sovereign love He calls poor guilty men to Himself to make them His own. He gives eternal life, for instance, or forgiveness of our sins, or the place of a child. Such benefits are the gifts and calling of God, and they are without repentance. Here His mind never changes.
Elsewhere Scripture says God changed His mind. One writer divides God's gifts from His ways with sinful men:
When it is a question of God's gifts and calling, which are according to His purpose, no change of mind is possible. When it is a question of His ways with sinful men, they vary in detail, though in the end all achieve His purpose. God tested Abraham, telling him to offer up Isaac, but when he had fully responded, God cancelled the order, having reached His purpose.
Christians love this sentence. One writer asks who it was first said about:
We Christians boast of this, that "the gifts and calling of God are without repentance"; well we may — it is a scriptural principle. But to whom does the apostle apply it? Not to us, but to the Jews.
The verse explains the line just before it, where Paul calls Israel "beloved for the sake of their forefathers":
The meaning is this. The Jews proved their hostility to the gospel instead of being saved by it. God turns that, as we have seen, into His gracious call of the Gentiles meanwhile. And election love will still prove faithful in the last days to the sons for the sake of the fathers. This is not the principle on which souls are blessed now, whether from Gentiles or from Jews. But after the actual unbelief of the Jews, sovereign mercy will step in at the end of the age. He never repents of what grace gave in promise to Abraham and to his descendants, nor of His call, first shown publicly in Abraham, the father of the faithful.
How can God discipline a nation and still love it? One writer separates how God rules the earth from whom He has chosen:
As to God's government of the earth, Israel, or a great part of it, may be cut off because of sin and unbelief; and Lo-ammi, "not my people," may be written over them for centuries. But God's affections and final purpose never change. Israel can never cease to be the nation of His choice.
One writer uses the same principle against a common fear: that bad behaviour can throw a Christian out of grace:
The words "fallen from grace" are sometimes used wrongly. People take them to mean that a believer once stood in the grace of God, and God has now thrown him out of it because of his bad behaviour... In the case of a true believer being caught up in this, the fall, we repeat, is in his own mind and conscience. God's grace and the relationship that grace created stay the same, for "the gifts and calling of God are without repentance."
Paul's point is not Jewish privilege but universal mercy — nobody, in either group, gets in on merit:
The Gentiles had no claim to salvation; they were dead in sins, in unbelief. God showed them pure mercy. Israel would not believe such mercy. They forfeited all their privileges through unbelief, so that God might at last save them as a whole nation — but as objects of mercy... Not one will be found in the church above or in the future kingdom of God on earth who has not been saved as an object of mercy.
- Irrevocable. God may change His mind about an act. He regretted making the world and destroyed it. He never changes it about a gift He has given or a person He has called.
- Purpose, not moods. God's ways with sinful people vary; His purpose never does. That is why God changing His mind elsewhere in Scripture does not contradict this verse.
- Israel first. Commentators insist Paul applies this verse to the Jews. Election love stays faithful to the sons for the sake of the fathers, even while they are hostile to the gospel.
- Government, not choice. God may write "not my people" over a nation for centuries without cancelling His choice of it.
- Mercy for all. No one — Jew or Gentile, on earth or in heaven — stands there on any ground but mercy.
For as indeed *ye* [also] once have not believed in God, but now have been objects of mercy through the unbelief of *these*;
Paul is speaking to the non-Jewish believers in Rome. He reminds them how they came into blessing at all. Their standing rests on mercy, and that mercy reached them through another people's failure.
Commentators differ over the key word here. Some translate it as disobedience, others as unbelief. Kelly's rendering sets verses 30 and 31 side by side.
"For as you were once disobedient to God but now have become objects of mercy through their disobedience, so they also have now become disobedient to the mercy shown to you, so that they also may become objects of mercy." (Verses 30, 31.)
These readers had no claim to bring. One writer traces that back to a principle about God Himself.
The literal reading of verses 30 and 31 is important. It is very wonderful, and shows the principle — He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy. The Gentiles had no claim to salvation; they were dead in sins, in unbelief. God showed them pure mercy. Israel would not believe such mercy, and lost all their privileges through unbelief, so that God might at last save them as a whole nation, but as objects of mercy.
Mercy reached the nations by way of Israel's refusal. Commentators see God's wisdom in that arrangement, not an accident of history.
So the Spirit of God shows the wonderful moral wisdom of God in these plans. The Gentiles had long been unbelieving, so now it was pure mercy to them. The Jews had rejected this mercy shown to the Gentiles, and were themselves in unbelief, so it had now become pure mercy to them too... The Jews had promises, and if they had received Christ, faithfulness would have fulfilled those promises in Him... But the Jews rejected Christ, and so came under mercy like the Gentiles.
So no Gentile reader can treat his place as an achievement or a birthright.
First, God brings Gentiles — outsiders, without God and without hope in the world — into this mercy in a wonderful way, through the very unbelief of Israel. Let Gentiles learn well from this that they are only a second choice, having never been the chosen people of God. This dismisses all high thinking. God has conquered them by mercy.
Some read the next verse to mean that believing Gentiles will be the means of Israel's recovery. Kelly rejects that, pointing to the aim of the passage and to the warning given to the Gentiles.
The express point is to crush all conceit in both Jew and Gentile, and above all in the Gentile, who now enjoys light while the Jew sits under a dark and cold eclipse. Nowhere does Scripture hint that the mercy shown to the Gentiles is the means (or a means) of Israel's recovery... The Gentiles were warned that they must be cut off if they did not continue in God's goodness, so their sentence is to be cut off, not the honour of bringing Israel into the faith.
Both sides end in the same place.
God's way in giving His gifts and carrying out His call is to use man's unbelief as the occasion to show His mercy. He shuts all up in unbelief so that He may have mercy on all. So the great truth stands: we owe all blessing to the sovereign grace of God.
This mercy is not just doctrine. It shapes what a believer does with his own body.
If the Gentile Christians at Rome were justified and saved, it was through the mercy of God (see Rom. 11:30). It was so likewise with any Jews there. It was all the mercy of God. God will receive the nation back at last on the ground of mercy, after the Gentiles have turned away. Because of the tender mercies of God, we are to give up our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is our reasonable service.
- Cause: disobedience. Paul names their past first — they were "at one time disobedient to God" — so nothing in them explains what follows.
- Gift: mercy. They had no claim to salvation. They were dead in sins and unbelief. What they received was pure mercy: God has mercy on whom He will.
- Route: their disobedience. Mercy reached the nations through Israel's rejection of Christ. Commentators read this as God's wisdom, not an accident.
- Reach: all. God shuts up all in unbelief so that mercy may go out to all, Jew and Gentile alike, on one and the same footing.
- Result: no boasting, but a living sacrifice. The passage exists to crush conceit in both Jew and Gentile. The mercy that saved becomes the reason to give the body to God.
so these also have now not believed in your mercy, in order that *they* also may be objects of mercy.
God has not written off Israel, and here Paul shows how Jew and Gentile end up in the same place. Everything turns on one short phrase — "by the mercy shown to you" — and how it links to the rest of the sentence.
Older English versions made the Gentiles' mercy the channel by which God saves Israel. One commentator calls that a mistranslation. In his reading Israel disbelieved the mercy going out to the nations.
This says that the Jews as a nation will receive mercy through the Gentiles' mercy. No doubt that is what the translators thought. But it is a mistranslation... "These have now disbelieved the mercy shown to you Gentiles, so that they too might be brought in on terms of mercy." The promises had belonged to the Jews. But they forbade anyone to speak to the Gentiles so that they might be saved, and so filled up their sins... God shut up all in unbelief: the Gentiles by nature, the Jews now in His wise ordering of the ages. So both might come in on the same terms of mercy.
Another writer weighs that older reading against the chapter, its context, and the rest of Scripture.
It clashes with the chapter, because the earlier argument treats the restoring of the Jews as life from the dead for the world. It does not make the full number of the Gentiles the means of restoring them. It clashes with the context, because the whole point here is to crush all pride in both Jew and Gentile... It clashes with Scripture as a whole, because nowhere does Scripture hint that the mercy shown to the Gentiles is the means of Israel's recovery.
Their unbelief had a target. They turned down the very mercy God was sending out to the nations.
As a nation the Jews rejected the Gospel just because it was mercy, sent especially to the Gentiles (Acts 22:21-22 shows this). In the end they will be deeply humbled. They will receive blessing on the same ground as the Gentile they had scorned as a dog.
Israel held the promises. That is what makes their position so striking once they refused them in the Son who came to fulfil them.
But Israel would not believe. They refused the fulfilment of God's promise when He sent them His beloved Son. What claim can they dare to make now? The promises really were theirs. But since they refused them so proudly, it is plain that to receive them now they too must become mere "objects of mercy."... So the mercy given to the Gentiles is a lesson in humbling for Israel. It puts them on the same level.
The apostle's answer to all this is worship, not analysis. God kept His promise and still brought Israel in on mercy alone:
This is what makes the apostle cry out at the depth of God's wisdom. The rejection of the Jews brought mercy to the Gentiles. And since they rejected Christ in unbelief, it brought the Jews in on the footing of mere mercy too. Yet God only showed Himself all the more true to His promise, which He carries out despite everything.
Some use this talk of mercy for all to argue that everyone will be saved in the end. One writer answers that the mercy in view here is for Israel as a nation.
The Jews refused a mercy that took up Gentiles. So they lost all claim on God, and became objects of mere mercy just as much as the Gentiles. But this is how God could show them mercy — once it was clear that mercy was all it was. He will show this mercy in a day that is coming fast, and all Israel will be saved, that is, the nation itself. The words have nothing to do with universal restoration.
The same ground holds for everyone God blesses, now and in the age to come.
The Gentiles had no claim to salvation. They were dead in sins and in unbelief. God showed them pure mercy. Israel would not believe such mercy, and lost all their privileges through unbelief. So God will at last save them as a whole nation, but as objects of mercy... In the church above and in the future kingdom of God on earth, not one will be found who has not been saved as an object of mercy.
- Refused. Israel did not just miss the gospel. They disbelieved the mercy going out to the nations, and that refusal filled up their sins.
- Levelled. They rejected the promises in Christ. So the people who held every privilege now stand where the outsider stands.
- Mercy. Only one ground of blessing is left for either side — not claim, not promise held onto, but sheer mercy.
- Kept. God does not break His word to Israel. He keeps it, and still brings the heirs of promise in by mercy alone. That depth of wisdom makes the apostle break into praise.
- Bounded. Mercy for "all" means the Jews and Gentiles in view here. Writers read it as Israel's coming national salvation, not the salvation of every person.
For God hath shut up together all in unbelief, in order that he might shew mercy to all.
Paul closes his long survey of Israel and the nations with one sentence that explains it all. It answers why God set Israel aside, why He brought in the other nations, and on what ground anyone at all is blessed.
One writer sums up where the whole argument lands:
The failure of Jew and Gentile shuts up all the world to the mercy of God.
To be "consigned" here means to be shut in. Older translations read "shut up together in unbelief." No one keeps an exit of his own making. Man's unbelief then becomes God's occasion to give:
God's way of giving His gifts and carrying out His call is to take occasion by man's unbelief to show His mercy. He shuts all up in unbelief so that He may have mercy on all. So the great truth is established that we owe every blessing to the sovereign grace of God.
God tested the two halves of humanity in different ways, and both failed. One had the law and the promises; the other had neither. The verdict fell on both:
So they were all sinners. God dealt with them in holiness and love and truth. This only brought out two things: the stubborn refusal of both Jew and Gentile to submit, and the incomparable mercy of God. Man's claims, righteousness and privileges all ended in unbelief and rebellion. But God never shone out as God more truly than in His mercy that lasts for ever.
The word "all" is not a claim about every person who ever lived. It reaches back to the two groups named just before it. Commentators are firm that stretching it wider breaks the argument:
The application of "mercy upon all" is a complete misapplication. Here is what the apostle is teaching. The Gentiles had no promises, so mercy to them was sovereign mercy. The Jews had broken the law, and they rejected the promises when they rejected Christ, in whom those promises were held. So they too now come under mercy, just like a Gentile — though the promises will still be fulfilled. The "all" in verse 32 refers to the Jews and Gentiles of verses 30 and 31.
Another writer answers the same misuse, and shows where the mercy lands:
The Jews refused a mercy that took up Gentiles. So they lost all claim on God, and became objects of mere mercy just as much as the Gentiles themselves. But in that way God could show them mercy, once it was clear that it was mercy and nothing else. God will show this mercy in a day that is coming fast, and all Israel will be saved — that is, the nation as such. The words have nothing to do with universal restoration.
Everyone ends up on one ground, and it is not the ground the Jew once stood on:
They rejected the Messiah and hated the good news going out to the Gentiles. This brought out the full measure of their guilt. If God shut all up in unbelief, it was so that He might have mercy on all... Even the Jew, who stood on the principle of righteousness, comes in on the ground of mercy.
The same holds for what is still to come:
You will not find one person in the church above, or in the future kingdom of God on earth, who was not saved as an object of mercy. In both cases the free favour of God reigns in triumph.
The burst of praise that follows this verse is not a change of subject. It is what happens when a person sees a plan no human mind could have designed:
He must show in all His ways that man throughout is a debtor to mercy alone. This is what draws out the apostle's worship as he sees the "riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God." The plan is His. Man could never have worked it out this way. Left to himself, he would never take the very place where God's grace still finds him.
And mercy gives more than any claim could ever have won:
On the ground of mercy He can bless in a way and in a measure none of us could ever claim.
- Shut in — The failure of Jew and Gentile shuts the whole world up to the mercy of God. Nobody has an exit of his own.
- Shut in, so that — God uses man's unbelief as His occasion to show mercy. The prison exists for the sake of the gift.
- Mercy to both — The "all" covers the two groups of verses 30 and 31: Jew and Gentile. Commentators reject reading it as universal restoration.
- Mercy on one footing — The Jew who once stood on righteousness now comes in as a Gentile does. No one in heaven or in the coming kingdom will be there on any other ground.
- Mercy beyond claim — On this ground God blesses beyond anything anyone could claim. So Paul ends not in argument but in worship.