Theodore Winston Pike gives us, in his book Israel: Our Duty... Our
Dilemma, the following commentary on Romans chapter 11. Herein is
what I have tried to convey, but so much less eloquently than he.
--
Howard Duck


Abraham, the Christian

Deep within the core of all that Israel represented through faith was
Jesus Christ. Nowhere was it more graphically evident than in the
life and wanderings of the founder of the Hebrew nation, Abraham:
Jesus Christ directing Abraham to settle in the promised land, so that
there Christ might be born where He would some day reign; Jesus Christ
enabling Abraham and Sarah to conceive a son by faith alone, without
provision for the flesh; Jesus Christ commanding Abraham to offer his
only begotten son as a sacrifice on the mount where God's only
begotten would one day be crucified, and Jesus in turn providing
Abraham with a symbol of His own substitution in the ram caught in the
thicket.

Everywhere in the saga of Abraham, we see Jesus Christ as the reason
for Abraham's mission. Abraham was not the real genius behind Israel,
nor were the patriarchs, nor Moses. They were but branches whose
existence and fruitfulness depended upon their adherence to Christ the
root who gave them meaning. Israel, then, owes little to its own
genius. Israel owes everything to Jesus Christ.

Now throughout the story of God's relationship with Abraham, as
contained in Genesis, we are confronted with the fact that although
there is no doubt that God is the source of Israel's blessing, as
Abraham was its first recipient, yet the identity of those who
constitute the "seed" of Abraham has throughout the centuries been
hotly disputed. Like the inheritor of a vast estate, Israel and the
sons of Ishmael, the Arabs, have always contended, often to the point
of blood, that each was the "true seed" of Abraham. And while God's
clear statement, "In Isaac shall thy seed by called" settles the
question in favor of the Jews, yet the Arabs have a point.

Both Isaac and Ishmael did proceed from the loins of Abraham, although
from different mothers. Yet Ishmael, being the first born, had legal
right according to ancient custom over Isaac. The descendants of
Isaac, the Jews, however hotly maintain that the spiritual legacy
which Isaac embodied transcends ancient custom, giving him the
birthright.

Since history has made it abundantly clear that neither are willing to
share the inheritance that comes from the paternity of Abraham, then
who gets the spoils? Who can claim all the real estate which God
promised the patriarch as he visually "possessed" Canaan upon his
arrival from Ur of the Chaldees? Who can claim the protected position
among the nations which God promised to Abraham, saying: "I will bless
them that bless thee and curse them that curseth thee?" (Genesis 12:3)

St. Paul Defines a Jew

During the next few pages we will be taking a hard look at St. Paul's
definition of who is an heir of Abraham and who is not, as is revealed
primarily in the third and fourth chapters of Galatians and the ninth
through eleventh chapters of Romans. In these very perceptive
Scriptures, whose meaning is so at loggerheads with what we want to
believe and what we have been taught, St. Paul vastly expands the
concept of the Israel of God. Can we tradition-fettered mortals
temporarily forget what Jewish leaders have been shouting at us and
what we have heard preached all our lives and listen very intently
only to what St. Paul has to say on the subject? Let us give it a try
and turn to the ninth chapter of Romans.

As Chapter 9 begins we find Paul continuing his discussion of the
concept of predestination or election: the principle which states that
God ultimately has foreknowledge of who will be saved or lost. Paul
is affirming that the principal of election is crucial to an
understanding of the purpose of Israel in God's plan.

After stating his great burden for the salvation of Israel and
reaffirming the fact of a weighty tradition which even unbelieving
Jews are heir to, St. Paul then drops a theological bombshell. He
states that not everyone who is born of Jewish parents and educated in
the synagogue is a Jew. "For they are not all Israel which are of
Israel: Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all
children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed by called. That is, They which
are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but
the children of the promise are counted for the seed." (Romans 9:6-8)

Good orthodox Jews of pure descent are "not the seed of Abraham"? Can
the earth hear such words? Did not Paul realize that the Christian
church today stands trembling before the Jew because it believes him
to be the "seed of Abraham," inheritor of his ancient patriarchal
privileges, and that the nation of Israel lays claim to Palestine
because such was promised to the "seed of Abraham"?

The Remnant

Who then are these "children of the promise" which are "counted for
his seed?" Throughout the remainder of Romans Chapter 9, and as in
the previously mentioned chapters in Galatians, Paul tells us the true
"seed" of Abraham constitute a pure remnant in every age which has
been chosen by God for salvation. The difference between the
inheritance due to an Isaac versus an Ishmael or to a Jacob versus an
Esau consists not in the fact of physical blood inheritance or who was
first born, but who had been spiritually approved by God to become His
saints and heirs.

So it has been throughout history. God has always had His pure
"remnant" (verse 27) or "seed" (verse 29) in spite of the grossest
apostasy of those who were blood descendants of Abraham, yet had
nothing to do with His spiritual patronage.

This is what Christ meant when He replied to the pious defenses of the
Pharisees, who claimed blood descent from Abraham guaranteeing their
Jewishness, saying: "If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the
works of Abraham" (John 8:39).

And this is what St. Paul confirms as he begins Chapter 11 of Romans:
"I say, then, hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also
am an Israelite of the seed of Abraham of the tribe of Benjamin. God
hath not cast away his people which he foreknew." Catch the last
sentence very carefully. It defines "his people," those whom He has
not "cast away," as those, like St. Paul, whom He foreknew and did
predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son. The remainder
He has cast away. "His people" in Paul's time, described as New
Testament Hebrew Christians, constituted the descendants of a
"remnant" within Israel which had always existed in its center,
despite the apostasy surrounding it.

Paul continues to equate the New Testament church with this remnant,
repeating God's answer to Elijah after his victory over the prophets
of Baal on Mt. Carmel, saying: "But what saith the answer of God unto
him? I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed
the knee to the image of Baal. Even so then at this present time also
there is a remnant according to the election of grace" (Romans 11:4,
5).

In Romans 11:7, St. Paul describes this Christian remnant as those who
had really grasped the meaning of Israel. Israel of the flesh did not
comprehend their Messiah - only Israel of the spirit, for the rest
were blinded.

The Rejected

It is significant at this point in Romans 11:9-10 that Paul begins to
quote the grievous curses against false Jews with which David cursed
them. It illustrates that there always existed around the living root
and tree of Jesus and true Israel many false branches which encumbered
the tree, sometimes even threatening to obscure all light from the
growing fruitful branches. Concerning these men who were all pedigree
descendants of Abraham, David says without fear of cursing God's
"chosen people": "Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a
stumbling block, and a recompense unto them: Let their eyes be
darkened, that they may not see and bow down their back alway" (Romans
11:10).

These were men like Cain, the spiritual forefather of the Pharisees,
who resisted Christ in His demand that blood must atone for sin.
These included the rebels of Korah, who defied the authority of Moses
as a type of Christ, and insisted as did their rabbinic descendants
that "all of the congregation are holy, every one of them" (Numbers
16:3). Kings like Saul, a fleshly monarch who persecuted God's elect,
the spiritual king David; and Jereboam who blasphemed Christ's choice
of Jerusalem as His center of worship and instead set up an image of a
beast at Bethel for Israel to worship, were among them. Such are
examples of Jews who constituted those dry branches which encumbered
Israel. So were the many Jews who became false prophets of Baal and
Ashteroth and Dagon during the various periods of servitude which
Israel underwent for her sins. The men of Anathoth who persecuted
Jeremiah, and the princes of Israel who imprisoned him up to his
armpits in a mire-filled dungeon, were on that roster.

Finally, with them, there were the Pharisees and those of Israel who
rejected Jesus and continued persecuting His disciples. It is these
dry branches whom Jesus calls in Revelation the "synagogue of Satan
which say they are Jews and are not but do lie" (Revelation 3:9).
These are they which filled up the cup of unbelief for false Jews from
the beginning. During Jesus' life on earth, the Pharisees, like their
forebears back to the time of Cain, did everything they could to
frustrate Christ in His mission to man. The culmination of their
unbelief consequently entitled the Pharisees to be guilty of all the
righteous blood shed from the foundation of the world (Matt. 23:35).

Desolate Israel

So when the Pharisees at last crucified Christ and the veil of the
Temple was rent, those dry Jewish branches which had so long been
tolerated on the green fig tree of Christ and Israel were at last
broken off. They had become so matted and dense that in addition to
nearly choking out all light to the healthy tree they had made it
nearly impossible by their intense racism and legalistic restrictions
for any Gentile branches to be grafted on.

The "Holy City" Jerusalem now became "Sodom and Egypt," the
personification of those ancient systems of spiritual darkness, a
title which continues from Heaven's point of view unto this hour.
Unto those people which cried, "His blood be upon us and upon our
children," "which say they are Jews but do lie," Christ's parting
words to Jerusalem now came into awful effect: "Your house is left
unto you desolate. Henceforth ye shall see me no more until ye shall
say "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." A miasma of
spiritual slumber settled over false Israel, giving them "eyes that
they should not see, and ears that they should not hear" which
persists, as St. Paul says, "unto this day" (Romans 11:8).

In retrospect we must agree with Paul that those barren limbs did
partake of that olive tree which was figurative of Israel, although
they were now dry and brittle. The wood was olive wood, the same
stock as the root; the leaves and remnants of fruit, though dry, once
partook of the fatness of the olive tree. Truly, even in its withered
broken condition the dry branches of Israel in the flesh still
pertained to the "adoption and the glory and the covenants and the
giving of the law and the service of God and the promises" (Romans
9:4). All this except for one thing - the branches were now desolate,
temporarily deserted by God.

Israel had once been like a mighty river, flowing with a righteousness
that proceeded from the Water of Life Himself. But that righteous
stream had changed channels and flowed elsewhere, so that what had
once been full of life was now a dry ravine with only the fouled
waters of rabbinic disputation stagnantly meandering down its gully.
To be sure, the familiar cliffs and bends and gravel bars were still
discernible, but the action had moved elsewhere.

Israel Fulfilled

Fleshly Israel after her crucifixion of Christ became shunted away
from the momentum and direction of the true Israel of God - which was
now in even greater flower than it had ever been. Christ, who had
been the center of the Jewish Israel, was now "the God of the whole
earth," the center of an Israel which embraced the elect of both Jew
and Gentile. This is what St. Paul describes when he boldly
proclaims: "peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God"
(Galatians 6:16). "And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed,
and heirs according to the promise" (Galatians 3:29). Israel never
ended with the termination of God's covenant with Judah, but, with the
grafting on of the Gentile branches, waxed and flourished as never
before.

St. Paul concludes on a theme which ushers him out of Romans Chapter
11 exclaiming: "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and
knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways
past finding out!" (verse 33). Having given us bad news concerning
fleshly Israel throughout the first half of the eleventh chapter, he
informs us, as all the prophets did, that some day those withered
branches which have lain spiritually desolate so long will bud and
blossom and be grafted back into their natural tree. When God has at
last taken full advantage of their absence to graft in the Gentile
branches, then a remnant shall believe at Christ's Second Coming and
"all Israel shall be saved: as it is written "There shall come out of
Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob"
(Romans 11:26).

With the balance so characteristic of Scripture, Paul reminds the
Church that although "concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your
sakes," yet they are enemies out of whom God will yet choose a remnant
in the last days. Like the Apostle Paul himself, who was beloved of
God even while he made havoc of the church, and like his Jewish
brethren was "exceeding mad against them," so God in that love which
telescopes across the centuries has chosen a beloved remnant. These
will emerge from the dry branch of Jewish unbelief and help Him
establish His millennial kingdom.

"Boast Not Against the Branches"

Because God loves this remnant whom He foreknew, Paul sternly cautions
both Jewish and Gentile Christians from boasting themself against the
branches. This does not mean that the Christian does not have the
right to consider himself part of the real Israel of God, while
unbelieving Jews as a whole are not. As I have pointed out, Paul
gives us every encouragement to believe that [we are a part - ed]. He
only means that Christians should not boast that God loves only them,
and is utterly finished with Israel of the flesh. Paul makes it
perfectly clear that although the Jews fell from grace, such a fall
was necessary for the inclusion of the Gentiles into the spiritual fig
tree. In fact, as Romans 9 and 10 emphasize, the very magnitude and
duration of this fall will only serve to heighten the fullness and
passion of the Remnant's love for Christ when they are at last
converted.

To sum up, we may confidently assert that while unbelieving Jews today
do not constitute the "seed of Abraham" as do Jewish and Gentile
Christians, nevertheless God has a very specific and wonderful destiny
for a Jewish remnant which will one day be revealed. Although nearly
two millennia of Rabbinic Jewry have died without indication that a
remnant exists in Israel, still the Scriptures everywhere assure us
that this remnant will someday appear.

Perhaps those Jews who have been chosen to believe on Him are even now
existing, reserved until the Second Coming of Christ, when out of the
Great Tribulation they will at last look on Him whom their forebears
pierced, and realize their true Messiah. If this were so, it only
serves to emphasize not only the importance of a fervent and balanced
witness to the Jews, but also the necessity of kindness toward those
who might well become our fellow-heirs of salvation.

"For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that
circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is
one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit,
and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God" (Romans
2:28-29).