The persons referred to in this verse of Scripture are the Jews as a nation and what is said about them is absorbingly interesting and immensely important.

The Jews, says the Apostle Paul, are in a unique spiritual situation as a people. On the one hand they are 'enemies'; yet, on the other hand, they are 'beloved'. They are, we might summarise, both hated and loved at one and the same time and in different ways.

We who live in this age of over-emphasis on politics and on ethnic conflicts must take special care that we do not let our political or ethnic prejudices colour our interpretation of such a passage as the above. The present writer, let it be stated at the outset, has no interest in aligning himself with either Jew or non-Jew so far as the modern Palestinian question is concerned. On such points Christians may think as they please. Our sole interest here is to investigate what exactly the Apostle Paul means when he allocates to the Jewish nation so remarkable a position as that given them here in this text.

It is surely evident that it is the Jews, and no other group of persons, who are referred to in this 28th verse of Romans eleven. These words of commen­tary from Charles Hodge state the meaning exactly:

The Jews, he says, were now, as far as the gospel was concerned, regarded and treated as enemies, for the benefit of the Gentiles; but, in reference to the election, they were still regarded as the peculiar people of God, on account of their connection with the patriarchs.¹

It will be remembered that in Romans 9-11 the Apostle is giving to the Christian church an inspired interpretation of history. It was necessary for him to do this because of the evident fact that in his day, and ever since up to the present day, the bulk of the Jewish nation — uniquely favoured of God in Old Testament times — has rejected the gospel of Christ. This phenomenon of unbelief in the one nation of mankind which was, from Abraham to Christ, so blessed by God with faith and truth, called in Paul's day for explanation. Indeed, two thousand years of Christian evangelisation of Israel and painful realisation that the Jews as a nation are blind to the identity of their own Messiah, only make this strand of Paul's teaching more relevant than ever.

The position of ethnic Israel, then, according to the Apostle Paul, is this. They are at one and the same time 'enemies' and 'beloved'. Paul is not alluding to the way other nations did or would regard the Jews. He is not, for instance, suggesting here that some nations outside of Israel would regard Israel with detestation, while other nations would hold Israel in love and in honour. This could well be true. But it is not what Paul is here referring to.

The context makes it certain that it is Israel's relation to God, or rather, God's attitude to Israel, that is in mind when he uses the expressions 'enemies' and 'beloved' of them in this verse. For Paul has just said that the Old Testament prophecies had given of old a prediction that one day God would take away their sins in fulfilment of his covenant with them (v. 26­-27). And Paul immediately follows the verse which we are studying with the profound observation that divine gifts and calling given by God to the Jews cannot be, and will not be, withdrawn (v. 29). This is to say that the special position of the Jews as the children of Abraham will never be altered by God. He will not 'repent' of it.

This is a very strong statement and it is open to misunderstanding and to misrepresentation. It is, of course, nonsense to suppose, in view of this statement of verse 29, that Jews are saved or brought to heaven in spite of unbelief on their part. It would be a monstrous misreading of this passage to conclude that the Jewish people, because of their Jewishness, are auto­matically redeemed. Unbelieving Jews — alas! — will perish like unbelieving Gentiles. Our Lord makes this most clear in his words to a Jewish audience: 'If ye believe not that I am he ye shall die in your sins' (John 8:24).

At the same time there is something in being Jewish which cannot be cancelled out or made void even by unbelief. This Jewish-factor is their being the racial descendants of Abraham and the recipients of important favours as a result. Paul insists that we who are Gentiles should never forget this fact: 'What advantage then hath the Jew? Or what profit is there of circumcision?' Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. For what if some did not believe? Shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, 'That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged'. These words mean nothing if Jewishness is only an empty name. The Jew, whether in Paul's day or in ours, is to be respected as a descendant of those holy men of old with whom God made a religious covenant.

The above discussion is important if we are to understand the meaning of the text before us: What precisely does Paul mean by stating that the Jews are both 'enemies' and yet also 'beloved'? To answer this question is both to throw light on Scripture and to understand our own times more perfectly. We may, for convenience, here look first at the second statement of Paul: 'But as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes'.

This expression means that God has not forgotten his covenant with Abraham even in this New Testament age. Calvin comments correctly on this verse 28:

God was not unmindful of the covenant which he had made with their fathers, and by which he testified that according to his eternal purpose he loved that nation.²

As John Murray puts it:

On account of their relation to the fathers they (the Jews) were belove.³

The basis of this divine love is God's 'election', says Paul. It is important to see that by 'election' in this text Paul is not referring to what in theology we normally refer to by the term. On this occasion it refers, not to election in Christ, but to 'theocratic election', i.e. the election of Israel to be a peculiar people upon earth.

The point is perhaps best grasped in this way. Paul is explaining that God has seen fit to save sinners in three great stages or epochs. First God called the Jews and excluded the Gentiles. This was the case from Abraham to Christ. Secondly God called the Gentiles, to the exclusion of the Jewish nation. This second phase began at Pentecost and it will continue until some point in the future which Paul calls 'the fulness of the Gentiles' (v. 25).

This term is very appropriate because it denotes the moment in God's providence when his dealings with the Gentile nations to the exclusion (or at least, to the very large exclusion) of the Jews, has reached its full end. At this point in history God will send the Holy Spirit of Christ as the Deliverer 'out of Sion (i.e. heaven)' to call the Jewish nation back into the full enjoyment of his covenant favour. When that day dawns in the future, the Jews — still preserved as they are to this day as an ethnic group distinct from other nations — will be 'regrafted' back into their own 'olive-tree', i.e. the church of God. The expressions are, of course, those of the Apostle himself in this chapter (v. 23-24).

The event which is denoted by the future sending of the 'Deliverer' (v. 26) will be of the utmost importance to the Jewish nation because it will introduce the third and final period of God's dealings with mankind in which he will favour equally both Gentiles and Jews in the church of the New Testament age. This favour will involve for Israel the removing of the blindness (v. 25) which has been so characteristic of them as a nation from the Apostles' day to the present.

Put simply, it must mean that there is to be a distinct revival in the future in which God will begin again to save Jews in very great numbers just as he has in this New Testament age saved Gentiles in very great numbers out of many nations. The 'veil' (2 Corinthians 3:16) will be removed from Jewish faces at that date and they will again see Christ in their own Scriptures. This is something which their forefathers in Old Testament days could do but which Jews generally have not been able to do in this New Testament age.

This last point is an undeniable fact and it brings us back to the text which we are studying: Romans 11:28. Scarcely any attempt to evangelise the Jews has met with more than modest success over the past two thousand years. In all generations there has been a thin trickle of Jewish converts. But never have the Jews as a people given up their prejudices towards the Lord Jesus Christ. They are blind to so many of the Old Testament prophets' teachings which they profess to admire. They are, and for these many centuries have been, implacably opposed to the way of salvation taught by the gospel.

It is not the least interesting part of this text that it gives us an inspired explanation as to why the Jews have, over this period of history, been so hard to win to the Saviour. It is, says Paul, because 'they are enemies for your sakes'. But now, in what sense are the Jews here called 'enemies'? Paul's thought here is not that they are hated by other nations. This, of course, has often been true at various points in the past and it is still true of some nations today. But this is not the issue here. Neither is this term 'enemies' used here to suggest that they are haters of God. Tragically this also has been true of the majority of Jews in this New Testament age. They have sadly given occasion to other nations to regard them as the murderers of Christ in that they take sides with those Jews who crucified the Lord of glory by steadfastly rejecting the gospel.

However, here Paul calls them 'enemies' to explain that it is God who has rejected them at this present time. And this God has done for a very special reason. It is 'for your sakes', i.e. for the sake of the Gentiles. This rejection of the Jews by God for the past two thousand years can be explained at two levels. It is punishment for their rejection of their Messiah (v. 9-10, quot­ing Psalm 69). But, more profoundly, it is owing to the secret purpose of God, who has seen fit to facilitate the evangelisation of the Gentile world by a temporary rejection of the Jewish nation.

This state of affairs began to happen in Paul's own day. He witnessed it at the synagogues in which he preached all over the world. As time went on this Jewish hardening intensified. Scattered all over the Roman world (and even beyond) as they were after the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the Jews hardened in their attitude of opposition to Christianity. Still further bigoted and prejudiced as they became with the rise of Rabbinical Judaism a little later on, the Jews as a people stumbled fatally over the Cross of Christ. With the exception of a tiny elect remnant who believed in the gospel, they spent their wretched years wandering in a maze of religious traditions bearing little relationship to their own Old Testament Scriptures.

That, by and large, has been the sad condition of the Jews from Paul's day to ours. Their unbelief, of course, does not excuse the cruel treatment handed out to them by many European nations over the centuries. It does not excuse the ghettos or the Holocaust. But it all illustrates the statement of the Apostle here that Jews in Christian times have been, with few exceptions, so far regarded by God as his 'enemies'.

Our study has shown us that the Jews at this present time are in a condition which calls for both pity and also hope on the part of Christians. We pity their unbelief, their prejudice against the gospel, their slowness to listen to Christian missionaries and their profoundly sad national experiences over the centuries since Paul's time. This is not to deny that they have made tremendous contributions in nearly every department of human study. Their contribution to the sciences and to the arts has been far beyond their relative size as a nation. For genius and learning, the Jew has often been the envy of the world. This honour we do not grudge him. But as Christians we yearn for something far better for him. We long for him, as our 'elder brother', to come home to the Saviour and to find his place once again in the home of the heavenly Father.

Paul, writing as he did all those years ago, yearned to see his fellow-Jews spiritually blessed and eternally saved by faith in Christ (Romans 9:1-5; 10:1-4). He knew that their rejection in this age is for our sakes as Gentiles. He knew too that — most happily! — their rejection was neither total nor final (Romans 11:11). One day in the future God will 'receive' them again (v. 15) and so their present position as 'enemies' will cease. They will, not in twos and threes but in their thousands, one day turn as a nation to their blessed Saviour and ours. And when they do so it will be so great a blessing to the world that it can be called nothing less than a 'life from the dead' (v. 15).

Just what spiritual and social blessings are depicted by this rich phrase we may not know now. But we may be right, and surely must be right, to see it as a phrase meaning great blessing to all the Gentile nations on earth and — at long last — an end for ever to the hostility of Jew and Arab.

May God hasten this day in its time — and meantime may he bless every missionary endeavour to every nation.