But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a
wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in
the nourishing root of the olive tree, 18 do not be arrogant toward
the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the
root, but the root that supports you. 19 Then you will say,
"Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in." 20 That
is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you
stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe.
21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he
spare you. 22 Note then the kindness and the severity of God:
severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you,
provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be
cut off. 23 And even they, if they do not continue in their
unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them
in again. 24 For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild
olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated
olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be
grafted back into their own olive tree.

I said last
time that Paul gives three reasons why the Gentiles should not
be proud and boast over unbelieving Israel . In other words, Paul
is very concerned with any rise of anti-Semitism—any feelings
or attitudes or words or actions that puff up Gentiles at the
expense of Jews. I dealt with one of his reasons last week, and
will take one more today.

There is reason for his concern about pride. The truth that Paul
teaches could be taken by a proud heart and made into a platform
for pride. What is that truth? You see it in verse 19: “ Then
you will say, ‘Branches were broken off so that I might be
grafted in.' That is true.” It is true that in God's
mysterious way of designing redemptive history, the unbelief of
Israel is a means of salvation for the Gentiles. And the salvation
of the Gentiles in turn is going to be a means of salvation for the
Jews in the future.

Look a the summary statement of the whole chapter in verses
30-32:

Just as you [Gentiles] were at one time disobedient to God [a
reference to all the centuries that they went the nations went
their own way while God dealt mainly with Israel] but now have
received mercy because of their [the Jew's] disobedience .
. .”

That is what we are seeing in Romans 11:19-20. Because of the
disobedience of the Jews in rejecting their Messiah, Gentiles are
now receiving mercy. Or as verse 19 says it:

Branches were broken off [Jewish people rejected Christ and were
cut off from the covenant blessings] so that I [a Gentile] might be
grafted in.”

Verse 30 and verse 19 are saying the same thing.

How Does Israel's Disobedience Bring
Mercy to the Gentiles?

A little review: How does the unbelief and disobedience and
breaking off of Israel result in mercy for the Gentiles? Two
answers from two texts: First recall what John the Baptist said to
the crowds of Jewish leaders outside Jerusalem:

When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for
baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned
you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruit in keeping with
repentance. 9 And do not presume to say to yourselves, “We
have Abraham as our father,” for I tell you, God is able from
these stones to raise up children for Abraham. 10 Even now the axe
is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does
not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. (Matthew
3:7-10)

In other words, he is saying that being Jewish (having Abraham
as your father) is no guarantee of salvation. You must repent and
bear fruit that fits with repentance. Otherwise the axe is laid at
the root and you will be cut off from the covenant promises.
(Notice the similar imagery to Romans 11:17ff.) He sees an
objection rising in their minds and says, “Don't say to
yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father.” In other
words, don't bank on your physical descent from Abraham to save
you. And don't think that God is locked into Abraham's physical
descendants to make a people for himself. In other words, don't
think that God has to save you, because otherwise he won't have a
covenant people and won't be able to fulfill his promises. Don't
raise that objection. Why? “God is able from these stones to
raise up children for Abraham.” If natural Israel is cut down
by the axe, or broken off because of unbelief, don't think God is
without a people to praise him. He will raise them up from
stones.

And that is what he has done in saving Gentiles. So you can see
how advantageous it was to stones that Israel in fact did refuse to
repent and believe on her Messiah. God turned to the Gentiles. He
applied the new covenant promise to the nations and took out of
their heart the heart of stone and put in a heart of flesh (Ezekiel
11:19; 36:26), and he is bringing the nations to himself by a great
sovereign work of grace. So the first answer to the question: How
does Israel 's disobedience bring mercy to the Gentiles is this:
God aims to have people to worship and praise his Son, and
if Israel won't do it, God will create his people
out of Gentile stones.

The second answer comes from Romans 3:19-20:

Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who
are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the
whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For by works of the
law no human being will be justified in his sight.

The point here is that the law of Israel stops the mouth of the
world—Jew and Gentile. It silences all our objections that
God is unjust in punishing us. We all know that we are guilty and
have no claim in God's court.

The role of Israel in this global indictment is that they are
exhibit “A” that the law cannot save. They had the law.
It was addressed to them. They were favored with all manner of
blessings, along with the law. But they could not measure up to the
highest demands of the law. And so no justification could come by
the law (v. 20). Israel was a lesson book for the
nations: we Gentiles saw in Israel 's inability
the hopelessness of law-keeping as way of justification and we
discovered that the only hope is by grace alone through faith alone
on the basis of Christ alone. And in this way the fact that
Israel stumbled over the stumbling stone of grace and faith in
Christ opened the door for us. We saw that it is futile to insist
on human distinctives and prerogatives, even Jewish ones. How much
more futile Gentile ones. So we were helped by Israel 's fall to
see that all is by grace. We fled to Christ ourselves and were
saved.

So in these two ways Romans 11:30 and 11:19 came true. Jewish
branches were broken off from the tree of the covenant so that we
Gentile branches might be grafted in. Or as verse 30 says it,
“We have received mercy because of their
disobedience.”

1. Their disobedience meant that God turned to the Gentile
   “stones” to make a people for himself.
2. The failure of Israel to have a righteousness based on law
   showed us that salvation must be by grace alone through faith alone
   on the basis of Christ alone, so even Gentiles could be
   included.

And to be sure that we have the whole picture of the summary in
verses 30-31, we have to see that this mercy shown to Gentiles will
later result in the future Israel's salvation. Verse 31: “So
they [the Jews] too have now been disobedient in order that by
the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy
.” So the salvation of the Gentiles is not the end of the
story, as if God were finished with Israel . All Israel —that
is, some future generation of Israel —will turn to Christ and
be saved, because of the mercy shown to the Gentiles. Their
disobedience leads to our salvation. Our salvation will lead to
their salvation.

Beware Lest You Make the Most Humbling Doctrines into a Ground
for Boasting

Now, all this is meant to destroy boasting and make Jew and
Gentile humble and broken and dependent under the mercy of God. But
we are all sinners and our pride can find reasons to boast even in
the most humbling doctrines. And that is what Paul is dealing with
here. And Oh, how crucial this is for us to hear—us who
believe that true doctrine really matters. Let us be aware that you
can take the most humbling of doctrines and use them as a ground of
boasting.

Paul sees that about to happen in this text—or maybe it is
already happening. Verse 19: “Then you will say,
‘Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.' 20
That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but
you stand fast
through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in
awe. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will
he spare you.” The central concern here is: “Do not
become proud.” Do not boast over the broken off branches. Do
not speak of unbelieving Israel in a way that exalts you. Speak of
them in a way that shows you tremble with fear and awe at the
freedom of God's grace in saving you. Don't be proud, but
fear—stand in trembling awe that you are saved by mercy
alone.

If You Go on Boasting, You Too Will Be Broken Off

Seeing Israel in her unbelief and lostness should produce
trembling, not taunting. But it was about to produce pride and
boasting. So Paul gave three reasons why this was utterly wrong.
The first we saw last time: Verse 18b: “Remember it is not
you who support the root, but the root that supports you.”
The one we want to deal with today is found in verse 21: “For
if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare
you.” What does this mean? Verse 22 explains: “ Note
then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those
who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue
in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut
off.”

The second reason I want to deal with for why we better not
boast over the broken off branches—why we better avoid all
anti-Semitism—is that if we go on boasting in this way, we
will be broken off ourselves: Verse 22b: “You too will be cut
off.”

How Does This Fit with the Perseverance of the Saints?

The main question I want to deal with here is how this threat
fits with the Biblical teaching of eternal security and the
perseverance of the saints. Can we teach that a genuine believer in
Christ—a person who has been born again by the Spirit of God
and is justified by faith—should be threatened this way? Does
such threat imply that Paul believed genuine
believers—regenerated, justified people—could
perish?

My answer is that yes , we should use these kinds of
threats when we speak to the church which has in it genuine
believers and false believers; and no , this does not
imply that Paul thought genuine believers could lose their
salvation. What's our basis for affirming these two things?

The basis is that both are in the Bible: The Bible teaches that
God will cause his elect people to persevere to the end in faith
(not perfect faith, and not without struggles); and the
Bible threatens Christians in general that if they make shipwreck
of their faith they will be lost. The reason this is not
inconsistent is that these threats are one of the means God
uses to keep his people faithful to the end.

When he gives a threat, like “Don't become proud, don't
boast over the unbelieving Jews (vv. 20, 18), because otherwise you
too will be cut off” (v. 22), the true believers take it to
heart and stand in awe. They fear. They tremble at how fragile they
are and how dependent on grace they are, and how crucial their
authenticity is and how urgent it is that they prove real in their
behavior. In this way the threat serves to keep them from
falling.

On the other hand, the hypocrites in the church—the
pretenders, the people who are not really spiritual and are only
going through the religious motions—do not tremble humbly at
the warnings of the Bible. They may even use the doctrine of
eternal security or perseverance to justify their indifference to
these texts. That is a sign that they are in great danger and may
not be true Christians at all.

Let's make sure you see that the Bible does indeed teach that
God will keep his own and, though they may stumble often in this
life, he will not let them fall utterly and abandon the faith. This
was promised as part of the new covenant in the Old Testament. For
example, Jeremiah 32:40, “I will make with them an
everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to
them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may
not turn from me.” God will work so deeply and transformingly
in the hearts of his people that they will always come back to him
as their treasure over all the idols of this world.

Then you come to the New Testament and find this same
teaching:

Philippians 1:6, “And I am sure of this, that he who began
a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus
Christ.”

1 Corinthians 1:8-9, “[Christ] will sustain you to the
end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is
faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord.”

In other words, if he called you, his faithfulness commits him
to sustain and keep you. See Jude 1:24-25 and 1 Thessalonians
5:23-24.

Romans 8:30 , “And those whom he predestined he also
called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom
he justified he also glorified.”

It does not say, “Some of those whom he justified will be
glorified.” It says, “Those whom he justified he also
glorified.” There is a rock-solid assurance that if we are
justified by grace through faith in Christ, we will be
glorified. God is faithful and will keep us believing.

What About Those Who Seemed to Be Christians but Went Away from
the Faith?

What about those we know who seemed to be Christian and have
gone away from the faith, never to return? The apostle John writes
about them like this in 1 John 2:19:

They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had
been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out,
that it might become plain that they all are not of us.

The crystal clear teaching here is this: Someone may be a part
of the church, baptized, eating the Lord's supper, attending
worship, morally upright on the outside, but “not of
us”—that is, not truly born again and not truly
trusting Christ and not truly justified. “For if they had
been of us, they would have continued with us.”

The teaching is not that they were really saved and lost it. The
teaching is that they proved, by their failure to persevere, that
they were not truly saved. “They were not of us.” Or as
Hebrews 3:14 puts it, “For we share [literally: have shared]
in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the
end.” That is, our perseverance to the end is the ongoing
evidence that we have become a partaker of Christ. If we don't
persevere, then we never had become a partaker of Christ.

What Does It Mean That Some We Will Be Cut Off and Not
Spared?

So, in conclusion, what does Paul mean then, when he speaks to
the church in Rome , and says at the end of verse 21,
“Neither will he spare you”? And at the end of verse
22: “You too will be cut off”? He means that, on the
one hand, there are real, genuine, spiritual, inward
attachments to the tree —the covenant of grace and
salvation; and, on the other hand, there are unreal,
counterfeit, unspiritual, outward attachments to the covenant.
If a person gives way to on-going pride and anti-Semitism, they
show that their attachment is merely external and unspiritual and
non-transforming, and they will be cut off.

When Does the Cutting Off Happen? What Is It Like?

But let's be specific, when does this cutting off happen and
what is it like in experience? Notice that in both warnings, the
future tense is used. Verse 21b: “Neither will he
spare you.” Verse 22b: “You too will be cut
off.” When does that happen? What is it like? My answer is
that it takes place at the final judgment and surprises many
people.

The cutting off will be the severing from the people of God and
from God once and for all forever. This is what Jesus said in
Matthew 7:22-23:

On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not
prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do
many mighty works in your name?” 23 And then will I declare
to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of
lawlessness.”

In that word “Depart from me,” we hear the terrible
squeezing of the omnipotent clippers lopping a fruitless,
unspiritual, hypocritical church-going Christian from all
attachment to the family of God.

A Warning to Us All

Oh, what a warning to us all! Listen carefully and lay this to
heart: Just as in the Old Testament you could be a circumcised,
sacrifice-offering, outwardly law-abiding, physical child of
Abraham and not a spiritual child of Abraham (John 8:39-44; Romans
9:8), so in the New Testament church—so in
Bethlehem—you can be a baptized, communion-taking,
worship-attending, tithe-giving, doctrine-affirming church member
and not be a child of God.

I close with the words of Paul in 2 Corinthians 13:5:

Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test
yourselves.
Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus
Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the
test!

And one of the tests, Paul says, is: Don't become proud, and
boast over the branches. But tremble with a humble thankfulness
that you are saved by grace alone through faith in Christ alone.
Amen.