Romans 11

Wesley: Have they stumbled so as to fall—totally and finally? By their fall (or slip: a very soft word in the original) salvation has come to the Gentiles, to provoke the Jews themselves to jealousy. The stumble is genuine; the fall is not finished. Israel’s trespass opened a door, not a grave.

Wesleyan Arminians hear a national slip God turned to Gentile salvation, aimed at making Israel jealous so they might return. Paul again answers, “By no means!” is pastoral: God has not written the people off. The same God who used their unbelief to reach Gentiles still seeks those who stumbled. Fall is not fate; jealousy is a means of recovery.

Calvin: they who perversely stumbled at Christ fell and fell into destruction; yet the nation itself had not fallen, so that a Jew must necessarily perish. It was the Lord’s purpose that Israel be provoked to emulation: they were not so fallen as to be precipitated into eternal ruin, but that the blessing despised by them might come to the Gentiles, that they might at length be stirred up to seek the Lord.

Individuals who reject Christ fall; the nation as such is not abandoned, because a seed of blessing remains. Jealousy is God’s appointed means, not a gamble. Salvation to the Gentiles is inclusion in the one people; it does not undo the remnant or the covenant.

If Israel’s slip already enriched the world, their fullness—Wesley: their full conversion—will mean still more. The argument runs from the lesser to the greater: God is not done with them.

Wesley treats this fullness as a grand event so well attested by prophecy that it is surprising any Christian can doubt it. Israel’s full inclusion is conversion, not a secret list. Gentiles should expect it and not despise the people whose failure already blessed them.

Calvin: if their fall raised the Gentiles and their diminution enriched them, how much more their fullness? The first was contrary to nature; the last will follow a natural order. Nothing would more advance Gentile salvation than grace flourishing among the Jews.

Fullness is restoration of the people according to promise, not Gentile loss. The olive tree will be richer, not replaced. Do not envy Israel’s return; it is life for the world.

Paul turns to the grafted: I am speaking to you Gentiles. He magnifies his ministry—Wesley: far from being ashamed of ministering to the Gentiles, I glory therein; the rather, as it may provoke my brethren to jealousy.

The apostle of the Gentiles will not let Gentile pride swallow the story. Magnifying the office includes seeking Israel’s good. Inclusion is true; it is not a license to forget the people whose stumble opened the door.

Calvin: though peculiarly the Gentiles’ apostle, Paul faithfully discharges his office by gaining any of his own nation; that will be for the glory of his ministry, and so for Gentile good. The salvation of both is so connected that the same means promote both.

Gentile calling and Jewish hope are not rivals. Magnifying the ministry means displaying God’s one purpose. The apostle’s boast is the gospel’s reach, not a Gentile takeover of the tree.

The aim: that somehow he might provoke his own flesh to jealousy and save some of them. Wesley: my flesh—my kinsmen. Jealousy is a means of salvation, not spite.

“Some” is honest: Paul does not claim he will convert the nation by his own preaching, yet he labors as if each kinsman might believe. Jealousy can save; the means are not in doubt; “some” keeps human responsibility in view. God uses Gentile fullness to draw Israel, and Israel’s faith remains faith.

Calvin: the minister of the word is said in some way to save those whom he leads to the obedience of faith; preaching is an instrument, though it can do nothing without the Spirit. Paul seeks to excite his own flesh to emulation and save some.

“save some” is the remnant in the present; fullness waits. The Spirit makes the instrument effectual. Jealousy is God’s appointed goad, not a human trick that might fail His purpose for the elect.

If rejection meant the world’s reconciliation, acceptance will be life from the dead. Wesley: overflowing life to the world, which was dead. The world already gained by their casting away; their receiving will be resurrection-scale.

Do not treat Israel as a spent branch. Acceptance is receiving back. Gentile inclusion—reconciliation of the world—and Israel’s future life stand together. Pride that needs them gone has not heard this verse.

Calvin: since rejection availed to reconcile the Gentiles, how much more their resumption—will it not raise them even from the dead? Gentiles have no cause for envy, as though Jewish restoration would worsen their condition. God drew life from death; how much more will resurrection of a people bring life to the Gentiles.

Life from the dead is God’s power, not a maybe. The same purpose that used rejection will use acceptance. The olive tree’s future is life, not a swap of peoples.

Wesley: this will surely come to pass. If the firstfruits are holy, so is the lump—the conversion of a few Jews is an earnest of the conversion of all the rest. If the root is holy—the patriarchs from whom they spring—surely God will at length make their descendants also holy.

The holiness of root and firstfruits pledges the branches. The remnant now is earnest of a people yet to believe. Holiness here is consecration that aims at actual faith, not a label that cannot be lost. The tree is holy; branches still stand or fall by faith (vv. 20–22).

Calvin: from Abraham an hereditary holiness passed to the posterity because of the promise, not because a just father transmits uprightness. Holiness is the spiritual nobility of the nation from the covenant—a supernatural privilege, not first nature. The firstfruits sanctified the lump; the juice diffuses from root to branches.

The root is the patriarchs and the covenant. The tree is one people of God. Relative, covenantal holiness explains why broken branches can be grafted again: they belong to a holy root. Personal faith is still required; the root is not discarded.

Some branches broken off; you, a wild olive shoot, grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the root, sharing the nourishing root. Wesley: Thou—O Gentile. Had the graft been nobler than the stock, dependence for life would leave no room to boast; how much less when, contrary to men’s practice, the wild olive is engrafted on the good.

Gentile inclusion is sharing in Israel’s root. Arminian readers insist on both: you are in, and you live from the root, not from yourself. Broken-off branches prove branches can be broken. The graft that boasts has already forgotten how it lives.

Calvin: Gentile dignity is only to be of the branches, taken from a wild and unfruitful olive; whatever glory they had was from their new insition, not from their old stock. Paul does not say the whole top was cut off, but that some branches were broken, and God took some here and there from the Gentiles and set them in the holy and blessed trunk.

One olive tree, one people of God. Gentiles grow as God’s people only as grafted in Abraham’s stock. “Some” preserves the remnant. Inclusion is grace; origin was curse. No glory against the Jews.

Do not be arrogant toward the branches. Wesley: do not they do this who despise the Jews, or deny their future conversion? If you boast, remember: you do not support the root; the root supports you.

Pride toward broken Jewish branches is the Gentile sin this paragraph exists to kill. Denying Israel’s future conversion is a form of this boast. The grafted live from Abraham’s root. Arrogance is already a crack in the graft (v. 22).

Calvin: as unreasonable as branches boasting against the root would be Gentiles glorying against the Jews as to race. The calling of the Gentiles was like an ingrafting; they did not otherwise grow up as God’s people than as grafted in the stock of Abraham. After Christ pulled down the partition-wall, the whole world partook of the favor first given to the chosen people.

The root is Abraham and the covenant. Gentile salvation has a Jewish origin. Boast is theological amnesia. The one tree supports wild shoots; they do not replace it.

The imagined Gentile boast: branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in. The sentence is half-true as history and wholly poisonous as pride. “I” makes Israel’s loss a platform.

Paul will grant the fact (v. 20) and strip the swagger. Being grafted because others were broken off is not security. The same unbelief that broke them can break you. Do not read your place in the tree as a right extracted from their fall.

Calvin: in the person of the Gentiles he brings forward what they might plead—but it ought to have made them humble, not proud. If Jews were cut off through unbelief and Gentiles grafted by faith, their duty was to acknowledge God’s favor and cherish modesty.

The plea is allowed as fact and condemned as boast. God set some Gentiles in the holy trunk in others’ stead; that is mercy, not merit. The “I” that glories has not yet feared (v. 20).

“True.” Broken off because of unbelief; you stand by your faith. Wesley: both conditionally, not absolutely: if absolutely, there might have been room to boast. By faith—the free gift of God, which therefore ought to humble thee.

Here is the Arminian hinge of the tree: standing is by faith, conditionally. Unbelief breaks; faith stands. Pride is the opposite of that stand. Fear is required because the condition is not illusory. Faith as free gift still humbles; it does not make the stand unconditional.

Calvin: faith’s nature is to generate humility and fear—fear in no way inconsistent with the assurance of faith; Paul would not have faith vacillate or quake. The fear is an antidote to proud contempt. The exhortation subdues the flesh, which is insolent even in the children of God, and derogates nothing from the certainty of faith.

They were broken off for unbelief; you stand by faith—yes. The stand of the elect is God’s work; the fear is how He keeps them from pride. Address is also to the Gentile body, among whom many profess rather than have faith. Do not flatten “fear” into uncertainty of election, and do not skip it.

If God didn’t spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. The a fortiori is severe: natives were not spared; wild grafts have no immunity. Wesley on the nearby command: this fear is not opposed to trust, but to pride and security.

The emphasis is on a threat to grafted Gentiles. Privilege of origin did not save unbelieving Israel; privilege of inclusion will not save an unbelieving church. “Neither will he spare you” is not theater. The God of the tree spares those who stand by faith.

Calvin: a most powerful reason to beat down all self-confidence. They were not spared, though natural branches; what then shall be done to us, wild olive and aliens, if we become beyond measure arrogant? The thought leads us to distrust ourselves and to cleave more firmly to the goodness of God.

The discourse is addressed to the body of the Gentiles; the excision could not apply to individuals whose election is unchangeable, based on the eternal purpose of God. The warning is means to crush pride and bind us to kindness—not a fake threat, and not a proof that the elect can be finally unsparred.

Note then kindness and severity: severity toward the fallen, God’s kindness to you, goodness, if you continue in his goodness; otherwise you also will be cut off. Wesley: else shalt thou—also, who now standest by faith—be both totally and finally cut off.

This is the key verse. Wesley already used it against an unbreakable golden chain (Rom 8:30): whom He justified, provided they continued in His goodness, Rom 11:22, He in the end glorified. The warning is to grafted Gentiles now standing by faith. Kindness is not a fiction; so is the provided. Branches can be cut off for unbelief. Continue—or be cut off. Do not turn the condition into a certainty that cannot fail.

Calvin: salvation shall not continue to thee except thou humbly recognisest the mercy of God; it is not enough to have once embraced the favor of God, except thou followest his call through the whole course of thy life. Those illuminated ought always to think of perseverance. Yet he speaks of the whole body, not of each of the godly apart: it would be improper to say God had mercy on one of the elect provided he would continue, for the perseverance of faith flows from election itself.

Do not flatten 11:22 into a fake threat, and do not ignore it. Though excision cannot happen to the elect, they need the warning to subdue the pride of the flesh: “Take heed lest thou be cut off.” As far as Christians are illuminated by faith, they hear that the calling is without repentance; as far as they carry the flesh, they are taught humility. Many in the Gentile body were members in name only. Kindness and severity are both God’s.

Even they also, if they don’t continue in unbelief, will be grafted in; God is able to graft them in again. The same condition runs both ways: unbelief keeps them off; ceasing from unbelief brings them in. What was broken for unbelief can be restored by faith.

Here is the perseverance hinge from the other side. If Jewish branches can be grafted in again when they don’t continue in unbelief, then standing in the tree is not an irreversible decree in either direction. God is able; they must not continue in unbelief. Kindness remains open to the broken. The Gentile who needed 11:22 should welcome 11:23 as the same logic of faith.

Calvin: God had so punished unbelief as not to forget his mercy, having often restored the Jews after He had apparently banished them. The faithful look on God’s power as in present operation. It would be easier for natural branches to draw substance from their own root than for the wild from a foreign stock.

“If they don’t continue in unbelief” is how God grafts—the instrument is faith. Power to graft again is covenant mercy, not a proof that the elect were lost and found. Those of the remnant will believe; the broken-off as a body may yet be restored. Do not treat the “if” as God waiting on autonomous will, and do not deny that unbelief is why they remain off.

You were cut from a wild tree, and were grafted contrary to nature into a good one; how much more will the natural branches, be grafted into their own. Wesley: according to nature we graft the fruitful branch into the wild stock; here the wild is grafted into the fruitful.

Gentile inclusion was the harder miracle. Israel’s return is “how much more.” Keep both: wild shoots share the tree, and the natural branches belong there. The God who grafted against nature can graft according to it. Pride that thinks the wild graft is the tree has not read the verse.

Calvin: how much easier for the natural branches, put back where they were cut off, to draw from their own root than for the wild and unfruitful from a foreign stock—such is the comparison between Jews and Gentiles.

One cultivated olive tree, Abraham’s stock, the people of God. Gentiles in by sheer mercy, contrary to nature; Israel’s grafting back is homecoming. The remnant will be kept; the nation is not finally discarded. Kindness grafted you; severity can cut off the proud; power will graft the natural branches in again.