All Israel will be saved

Sermon for the week of Trinity 20

Romans 11:25-36

We come back again this evening to a Lesson from Romans 11, which we also considered together last year during this same week of the Church Year. It’s good for us to study it, because the devil has spread a lot of false doctrine into the world by influencing people to misinterpret St. Paul’s words in Romans 9-11, where he focuses on Israel’s place in God’s plan of salvation. These false teachings concerning Israel have had devastating consequences on the Church, and on the nations of the world. So Christians need to be able to answer these questions: Where does Israel fit into God’s plan of salvation? And what does the Apostle Paul mean when he says that “all Israel will be saved”?

You all know what Old Testament Israel was: the people descended from Israel, that is, Jacob—the people whom God brought into a special covenant with Himself at Mt. Sinai and eventually brought into the land of Canaan, giving it to them to possess. We can refer to them as “genetic Israel.” But He made that covenant with them for a very specific purpose: to teach that one group of people on earth to know Him rightly, so that they might be ready to receive His Son when it was time to send Him into the world. It was always about the coming Christ, the Seed of Abraham, the Seed of the woman from Genesis 3, who would be a blessing to all the families of the earth. And Israel got to know Him, ahead of time, through the prophecies about Him, and through the Law of Moses that taught them about God, about sin, about the need for atonement, and about the need for a priestly mediator between God and man. All the prophecies, the Law, the Old Testament sacrifices, and the priesthood itself, pointed the people of Israel ahead to the coming Christ.

And, as you heard on Sunday, when God sent His Son into the world, He faithfully sent Him to the Jews. And then, He sent His servants, the apostles, first to the Jews, to invite them to celebrate the arrival of Christ the Savior. But the people of Israel did the unthinkable: They rejected their own Christ. God had planted His Son in the soil of Israel, like a fertile olive tree, and He had cultivated the Israelites as natural branches that grew forth from that tree for over a thousand years. But when those branches rejected Jesus as the Christ, they rejected the very tree from which they had grown, and were, therefore, cut off from Christ, like branches that are cut off from an olive tree.

That’s the illustration St. Paul uses in Romans 11, in the verses leading up to our Lesson this evening. Israel according to the flesh, that is, the genetic descendants of Israel, who had rejected Christ, had been cut off from Christ, cut off from the true Israel that is Christ Himself. The genetic Israelites were no longer the true Israelites.

But as a result, it freed up the apostles to take the Gospel forth to the Gentiles. And many of those Gentiles believed the Gospel and were grafted into God’s kingdom, like wild olive branches that are grafted into a cultivated olive tree. Yes, they were like wild branches, having grown up as pagans in a pagan world, worshiping idols, with all sorts of pagan beliefs and pagan rituals, steeped in adultery and every form of sexual immorality and lawlessness. But those wild olive branches repented when they heard the Gospel and were grafted into Christ and His kingdom through faith, so that they became true Israelites, even though they weren’t genetic Israelites.

What Paul warns the Gentile Christians about in these chapters of the book of Romans is growing haughty, is considering themselves superior to genetic Israel, as if the Gentile Christians were inherently better than the Jewish unbelievers. No, Paul reminds them, and us, that we only stand by God’s mercy. The Gentiles had been completely unworthy of salvation. But God allowed the Gospel to come to them, after the Jews rejected it, and accepted them when they believed the Gospel. You Gentiles used to be the disobedient ones. But now that Israel has become disobedient by rejecting Christ, you Gentiles have received mercy, not because you were deserving of it, but because God wanted to show mercy to you who were undeserving.

Well, now, Paul says, the tables have been turned. You have been shown mercy now, as the Israelites had in Old Testament times, and they have been cut off from the olive tree that is Christ. But here is what God wants to do. Now that the Jews have become disobedient, now that they have been cut off from the kingdom of God, God wants to attract them back to the olive tree of Christ through the mercy He has shown to you. He doesn’t want to have them remain cut off forever. He wants His mercy to draw them back, and you should want it, too, because your Father wants it, and because it’s only by God’s mercy that you yourselves have the gift of salvation.

So let’s answer our questions. Who is “Israel” and how does “Israel” fit into God’s plan of salvation? The answer is this: God’s kingdom is made up of all believers in Christ Jesus. That kingdom of believers is the true Israel. That true Israel includes some who are genetic Israelites, and many who are not genetic Israelites, but who have become adopted children of Abraham (and children of Israel!) through faith in Christ Jesus, who is the God of Abraham, and the God of Israel. The Jews received a special dose of God’s mercy in the Old Testament, while He chose not to focus on the Gentiles. And the Gentiles, at the time of St. Paul, were then receiving a special dose of God’s mercy, while God chose to turn away from the Jews who had rejected Him. But the time would come, and has now come, when “Jew” and “Gentile” are essentially meaningless terms. The only “Israel” that now matters is the spiritual one, the true Israel, the kingdom of Christ, made up of genetic Israelites and adopted Israelites. And God wants all men, from every nation, to enter that kingdom and be saved. There is no other way to God. There is no other path to salvation. Jesus is the Door. Jesus is the Gate. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Him.

In our current times, this truth helps us to avoid both sinful extremes: the one that holds up genetic Israelites as if they still held a special place in God’s plan of salvation, and also the other extreme that holds the Jews in hatred and contempt, as if God didn’t want them to be saved anymore. The truth stands that God wants all men to be saved. And His call, His invitation to the wedding banquet of Christ, is indeed “irrevocable,” as Paul says in today’s Lesson. God’s call to the Jews still stands. “Come to the wedding! Come to the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved!” Just understand that, as Jesus said in Sunday’s Gospel, many are called, but few are chosen. Few will come to Christ and remain with Him until the end.

Those who remain are the true Israel, made up of people from every nation, tribe, and language, including some from the nation of Israel. And so, in this way, “All Israel will be saved.” That is, all the elect children of God, those who have come to feast of salvation in Christ and who remain there until the end, clothed with faith in the Lord Jesus. God chose that Israel in eternity to be with Him forever, and He will not bring this wicked world to an end until they have all been called, and have all come to His wedding banquet. They—we who hold firmly to Christ—are the citizens of the New Jerusalem, not the old one by the Mediterranean Sea that has been destroyed multiple times and will be destroyed again, but the one that will soon come down from heaven, and will never be destroyed. And in this way all Israel will be saved, including you. Amen.